Tuesday 24 March 2009

Guatemala: News Round-Up

Various news articles have concerned themselves with issues of memory and justice in Guatemala in the past week.

With echos of the situation in Argentina, it seems that children whose parents were killed during the civil war were put up for adoption, sometimes internationally:
Dirty war orphans put up for adoption (AP)
Guatemala: war orphans sold says gov't (The Latin Americanist)

Exhumations at La Verbena cemetery may reveal as many as 1,000 victims of the civil war:
Guatemala to open mass grave in search for war dead (Reuters)

Then, the rediscovered police archives are bearing fruit - the first arrests of police officers in a 1984 disappearance case. Declassified documents show that the US embassy knew that Guatemalan security forces were behind human rights abuses.
Historical Archives Lead to Arrest of Police Officers in Guatemalan Disappearance (The National Security Archive)
Group says files show US knew of Guatemala abuses (AP)

And, please, do yourselves a favour and go look at the amazing photographs of those archives. An estimated 75 million pieces of paper piled high in dozens of damp, rat-infested rooms. I have a post on photography and memory of the Guatemalan war coming up - and that's a promise!

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