When you do figure out how to make the story gripping, when you hit on the exact doses of style and truth, when your words finally rise from your chest and begin to resonate, you will be the first to be disgusted by them. The first to hate yourself, with your entire being. And you won’t be the only one. Those who listen will hate you too, the very people who choose to listen, without being coerced, because you make them face this abomination. Because they’ll always feel you’re holding up a mirror to them: Why didn’t I do it? Why didn’t I say it? Why didn’t I understand? It hurts. A wounded animal usually attacks: He’s the one who’s lying, he’s doing it to throw people off, because he’s corrupt, because he wants fame, or money.
Maybe you think that dealing with all this is a way of redeeming the world. Of reestablishing justice. And maybe it is, in part. But maybe you also have to accept the burden of being a tiny superhero without a shred of power. Of being, in the end, a pathetic human being who has overestimated his strength merely because he’s never run up against its limits before. The truth is that there’s really only one reason for deciding to stay inside these stories of drug traffickers, criminal entrepreneurs, massacres. To know that what you find out won’t make you feel better. Yet you keep trying. And you start to develop a disdain for things. By things I mean objects, stuff. You come to know how things are made, where they come from, how they all end up.
And even if you feel bad, you convince yourself that you can really understand this world only if you decide to stay inside these stories. You may be good at what you do, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want your calling in life to be to stay inside these stories forever. Being inside means they consume you, compel you, corrode your daily life. Being inside means you carry city maps in your head, maps marked with construction sites, open-air drug markets, places where pacts were sealed and where “excellent” homicides were carried out. You’re not inside them just because you’re on the street or you infiltrate a clan for six years, like FBI undercover agent Joe Pistone. You’re inside because these stories are what give meaning to your being in the world. I decided to stay inside them years ago. Not only because I grew up in a place where the clans decided everything and I’d seen those opposed to their power die, not only because defamation dissolves all desire to oppose criminal power. Being inside cocaine trafficking was the only way I could fully understand things. To look at human weakness, the physiology of power, the frailty of relationships, the inconsistency of bonds, the appalling power of money and ferocity. The absolute impotence of all those teachings about beauty and justice I’d been raised on. I realized that the axis around which everything turns is cocaine. There was only one name for the wound.
• • •
“The Serbs. Precise, ruthless, meticulous torturers.”
“Bullshit. The Chechens. They have such sharp knives, you bleed to death before you even know you’ve been cut.”
“Amateurs compared to the Liberians. They rip your heart out when you’re still alive and eat it.”
It’s one of the oldest games in the world. The ranking of cruelty, the top ten of Earth’s most ferocious people.
“What about the Albanians? They’re not satisfied just eliminating you; they wipe out your future generations as well. They cancel everything out. Forever.”
“The Romanians put a bag over your head, tie your wrists to your neck, and let time do its work.”
“The Croatians nail your feet down, and all you can do is pray that death comes as soon as possible.”
The escalation of blood, terror, and sadism goes on for quite a while, eventually getting to the inevitable list of special forces: France’s Foreign Legion, Spain’s El Tercio, Brazil’s BOPE.
I’m sitting at a round table. One by one the men around me, all soldiers, share their experiences and catalog the cultural distinctions of the people they know best, having been on peacekeeping missions in various territories. It’s a ritual, this sadistic and slightly racist game, but like all rituals, it’s necessary. It’s the only way they have of saying that the worst is over, they survived, it’s real life from here on in. A better life.
I keep quiet. Like an anthropologist I try to interfere as little as possible, so that the ritual will unfold without any hitches. The guys’ faces are serious. When their turn comes to talk, they all avoid looking at the guy across the table or the one who just finished talking. Each one tells his own story as if he were in an empty room talking to himself.
I’ve heard dozens of these classifications over the years, in meetings, conferences, dinners, over a plate of pasta, or in court. Usually they’re just lists of acts of increasingly inhuman brutality, but as these episodes gradually accumulated in my mind, a common denominator surfaced, a cultural element that recurred with stubborn insistence. Cruelty is awarded a place of honor in the genetic patrimony of a people. Making the mistake of equating acts of ferocity or war with an entire population, drafting lists of this sort becomes the equivalent of showing off one’s sculpted muscles after endless hours in the gym.
Ferocity is learned. You’re not born with it. As much as one may be born with certain inclinations, or have inherited rancor and violence from his family, ferocity is taught, it is learned. Ferocity is passed down from teacher to pupil. The impulse isn’t enough; it has to be channeled and trained. You teach a body to empty out its soul, even if you don’t believe in the soul, even if you think it’s religious nonsense, a flight of fancy, even if for you it’s all muscle fibers and nerves and veins and lactic acid. Yet something’s there. Otherwise, how do you explain the brake that, right at the last minute, keeps you from going all the way? Conscience. Soul. It has a lot of names, but regardless of what you call it, you can compromise it. It’s convenient to think that ferocity is inherent to the human condition, handy for anyone who wants to cleanse his conscience without first coming to terms with things.
When one soldier finishes his story, the guy next to him starts immediately. Everyone seems to agree that some populations just have that impulse, it’s in their blood, there’s no way around it, we’re born with it. A soldier to my right seems particularly eager for his turn to speak. He fidgets in his plastic chair, making it squeak slightly. He’s obviously not some undisciplined novice: His long beard suits his face, and the insignia on his uniform make it clear that he’s faced quite a few dangerous situations. He shakes his head. I think I even glimpse a scornful smile on his face. It’s distracting, so now I’m eager for his turn too. I don’t have to wait long, because halfway through a graphic description of someone’s nails being removed by some secret service in Eastern Europe, the man silences the discussion.
“You haven’t understood a damn thing. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. All you do is read the tabloids, watch the eight o’clock news; you don’t know shit.”
Then he rummages in his pants pockets—military fatigues—and takes out a smartphone, scrolls his finger nervously down the screen until a map appears. He zooms in, blows it up, zooms in more, and finally shows the others a slice of Earth. “Here, these guys are the worst.” His finger points to a place in Central America. Guatemala.
“Guatemala?”
The veteran utters just one word, unfamiliar to most of them: “Kaibil.”
I’d heard that name in depositions from the 1970s, but no one remembered it anymore.
“Eight weeks,” the bearded soldier starts up again. “Eight weeks and everything human about a human being is gone. The Kaibiles have a way of annulling one’s conscience. In two months they can extract from a human’s body everything that distinguishes him from a beast, what allows him to tell good from evil, to know moderation. They could turn Saint Francis into a killer in eight weeks, capable of biting animals to death, of drinking piss to survive and eliminating masses of people without worrying how old they are. All it takes is eight weeks.”
Silence. I’ve just witnessed a here
sy, the paradigm of innate savagery has been shot down. I have to meet a Kaibil. I start reading. I learn that the Kaibiles are the Guatemalan army’s elite counterinsurgency force. They were formed in 1974, when the Commando School, which would later become the Kaibil training center for special operations, was established. A civil war was raging in Guatemala at the time, and government and paramilitary forces, backed by the United States, had to face first disorganized guerrilla fighters and then the rebel group Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, or Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. A relentless struggle. Students, workers, professionals, opposing party politicians—anybody and everybody—were caught in the Kaibiles’ net. Mayan villages were razed to the ground, peasants slaughtered, their bodies left to rot. In 1996, after thirty-six years and over 200,000 deaths, 36,000 desaparecidos, and 626 confirmed massacres, the civil war in Guatemala finally ended. A peace treaty was signed. The first president after the war, Álvaro Arzú, decided, at the request of the United States, to transform Guatemala’s counterrevolutionary army, considered to be the best anti-insurgency force in Latin America, into an efficient weapon against drug trafficking. On October 1, 2003, a counterterrorism platoon of Kaibil special forces was officially created.
By their own definition, Kaibiles are “killing machines.” They are put through gruesome tests, their courage challenged constantly, day after day, horror after horror. Drinking the blood of an animal he has just killed and eaten raw makes a Kaibil grow stronger. Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission has been taking an interest in these practices and drafted a document entitled “Memory of Silence.” It states that 93 percent of documented crimes in Guatemala in the thirty-six years of civil war were committed by law enforcement or paramilitary groups, in particular the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil and the Kaibil special forces. The report also states that Kaibiles committed acts of genocide.
One of the most brutal slaughters took place in Las Dos Erres, a village in the department of Petén, which was razed to the ground. On December 6, 1982 forty Kaibiles entered the village to take back nineteen rifles lost in a previous guerrilla ambush. No one was spared: They killed men, women, and children; raped young girls; kicked and beat pregnant women with their rifle butts, jumping on their stomachs until they aborted; threw live children into wells or beat them to death with clubs, even buried some alive. The youngest were smashed against walls or trees. The bodies were thrown into wells or left to rot in the fields. There is talk of more than 250 deaths: 201 deaths have been documented, 70 of them children less than seven years old. When they left the village the soldiers took with them two girls, ages fourteen and sixteen. They made them dress as soldiers and held them for three days, raping them repeatedly. When they got tired of them, they strangled them.
• • •
It’s not hard to meet a Kaibil, as it turns out. They are proud of who they are. After I heard that soldier talk I started asking around, looking to meet a Kaibil fighter. I was directed first to a household servant who works for a Milanese entrepreneur’s family. He’s pleasant; we arrange a time and meet on the street.
He tells me he used to be a journalist; he keeps copies of some of his articles in his wallet. He rereads them every now and then, or maybe just saves them as proof of his former life. He knows a Kaibil.
“I know him. It’s hard for a Kaibil to become an ex-Kaibil, but this one has done some not good things.”
He doesn’t want to explain what those not good things are.
“You won’t believe a word he tells you. I don’t believe him either, because if what he says is true, I wouldn’t be able to sleep. . . .”
Then he winks at me. “I know it’s true, but I hope it’s not exactly completely true.”
He gives me a phone number. I say good-bye to the journalist-servant and dial the number. The voice that answers is cold but flattered by my interest. We arrange to meet, in a public place. Ángel Miguel arrives. Short, Mayan eyes, elegantly dressed, as if for the cameras. All I have is a notebook, which he doesn’t like, but he decides to stay anyway. His cold telephone voice has given way to a studied manner of speaking. The whole time we talk, he never lowers his gaze and never makes a gesture that is not strictly necessary.
“I’m glad you’re a fag,” he starts out.
“I’m not a fag.”
“Impossible, I can prove it. You’re a fag, no need to be ashamed.”
“If I were gay I wouldn’t be ashamed, that’s for sure. But what are we talking about?”
“You’re a fag, because you didn’t even notice all this.”
Without ever taking his eyes off mine he rotates his neck a few degrees to the left, and that instant, as if in response to some call, a girl steps forward. It’s true; I hadn’t noticed her. I was concentrating on the Kaibil.
“If you don’t notice even her, you’re a fag.”
Very blond, her dress like a second skin, vertiginous heels. Despite her outfit, not even a hint of makeup, maybe she decided that her fair eyes, with their golden specks, light up her face enough. His girlfriend. She introduces herself; she’s Italian and happy to be there with this man whom she probably thinks is some sort of war hero.
“You have to become cuas. If you’re not cuas, you don’t know what brotherhood in battle means.”
Ángel Miguel, I realize, doesn’t like to waste time. He’s declared me a homosexual and introduced me to his girlfriend. For him that’s enough; now he can begin his story. I read somewhere that in Q’eqchi’ cuas means brother. But now I realize that it’s not a biological relationship. Cuas is not the brother you meet when you’re born; cuas is the brother who is chosen for you.
“Once, during training, I asked some Kaibiles to leave me a bit of food. My cuas went white, like a dead man. The Kaibiles threw their food on the ground and started stomping on it. Then they tied us up and said, ‘Start pecking, hens.’ If we stretched out our tongues too far, they’d kick and shout: ‘Don’t graze, chickens, peck!’
“If either cuas makes a mistake during training, both are punished; if one of them does well, they both get plenty to eat and both get a bed. You’re practically engaged to your cuas. Once my cuas and I were in our tent, and at nighttime my hermano started touching my dick. It bothered me at first, but then I realized we had to share everything . . . solitude and pleasure . . . but we never fucked . . . just touched. . . .”
He barely breathes as he talks, as if he had to deliver his speech, prepared in advance, in the shortest time possible. His girlfriend nods proudly. The gold specks in her eyes shine more brightly now. I would like to interrupt and point out that just a few minutes before he’d been calling me a fag, but I decide it’s best not to interfere with his thought process.
“You learn what a combat brother is there. You share rations, you huddle close when it’s cold, you beat each other bloody to keep your nerve up.”
To stop being a man, with all his honeyed qualities and imperfect defects. To become a Kaibil. To move through the world hating.
“There’s an inscription at the entrance to the Kaibil training camp in Poptún, in the department of Petén: ‘Welcome to hell.’ But I bet only a few people read the second inscription there: ‘If I advance, follow me. If I stop, urge me on. If I retreat, kill me.’”
My contact rattles off the foreigners who have helped train young Kaibiles since the 1980s: Green Berets, Vietnam Rangers, Peruvian and Chilean commandos. During the civil war in Guatemala it was said that the Kaibiles’ distinguishing signature was decapitation, even though some people were convinced it was only a legend, like their war song: “Kaibil, Kaibil, Kaibil! Mata, mata, mata! Qué mata Kaibil? Guerrillero subversivo! Qué come Kaibil? Guerrillero subversivo!” “Kaibil, Kaibil, Kaibil! Kill, kill, kill! What does a Kaibil kill? Guerrilla insurgents! What does a Kaibil eat? Guerrilla insurgents!”
“The first training phase lasts twenty-one days,�
� Ángel Miguel says, “followed by the second, twenty-eight days. In the jungle. Rivers, swamps, minefields. This is the Kaibil’s home. And just like you love your home, the Kaibil loves his. The last week finally arrives. The last step in becoming a real Kaibil. You learn to eat whatever there is, whatever you can find. Cockroaches, snakes. You learn to conquer enemy terrain, annihilate it, take possession of it.
“To complete the training you have to go without sleep for two days, in a river up to your neck. They’d given my cuas and me a puppy, a mongrel with watery eyes. They told us to take care of it, it was part of our brotherhood. We had to take it with us everywhere, and feed it. We gave it a name and were starting to grow fond of it when our chief told us we had to kill it. A knife to its belly, one blow from each of us. By that point we were nearing the end of our training and didn’t ask a lot of questions. Then the chief told us we had to eat it and drink its blood. To show him how brave we were. Even this order we carried out, it was all so natural by then.
“The Kaibil knows that you don’t need to drink or eat or sleep in order to survive. What you need is a good rifle and ammunition. We were soldiers, we were perfect. We didn’t fight because we were ordered to, that wouldn’t have been enough. We had a sense of belonging, which is stronger than any command. Only a third of us made it to the end. The others either ran off or were thrown out. Some others got sick, and some died.”
The Kaibiles’ world is above all a symbolic world. Fear, terror, brotherhood, solidarity with your cuas. It all can and must be flaunted through a clever game of codes and cross-references, through the invention of acrostics. Starting with the word cuas: C = comradeship, U = unity, A = adherence, S = safety. Or through the Kaibil motto, which expresses their philosophy: “The Kaibil is a killing machine for when extraneous powers or doctrines attack the country or the army.” The Kaibil must never—not for any reason in the world—be parted from his maroon beret, which bears their coat of arms: a mountaineering carabiner, which represents unity and strength; a dagger, symbolizing honor, with five notches in the handle, which represent the five senses; and the word “Kaibil” in capital yellow letters. “Kaibil” in the Mam language means “he who has the strength and cunning of two tigers.” The name comes from the great Kaibil Balam, the Mam king who in the sixteenth century courageously held out against the Spanish conquistadors, against Gonzalo de Alvarado’s men. Yet the very troops who bear the symbolic name of the Mayan king and his fierce resistance against the conquistadors became a tool for exterminating their own people. The legend has been so distorted that now the word connotes terror.
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