“But there is something that is not accurate in those rumors. I was a founder of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. I was always part of a political cadre, I never had a military rank. I did not fight with weapons. The army—the enemy,” he clarifies, “gave me the title of commander, I guess to make me seem important.” I ask him if it would bother him if I publish the story. He shakes his head and adds that I can use his real name.
“There’s something I want to clarify,” he tells me, “about those executions. I am also referring to the executions mentioned in the documentary you saw with Uli and Galíndez. I lay claim to my role as a revolutionary, but I also like to recognize my mistakes. I had to explain what happened to several children of the comrades that we had executed, rightly or wrongly, because we were wrong more than once. Some leaders would have preferred that they not be told anything, that they continue to think that their parents had died or disappeared in action. That did not seem right to me, but when I complained, they told me that, if I wanted, I could myself explain what happened. That’s what I did, no matter how much it cost me. You do not, cannot, know how much it cost me.”
He remains silent for a moment and then continues; now his voice is somewhat more serious.
“Talking about it, everything seems a bit light, but this is something very serious. It is probably what worries me the most at this point in life. It is, not in a figurative sense but in a literal sense, a matter of life and death for me. I was fighting to the death then. I think I’m the only jerk who still thinks about all this.”
He pauses again, and I seem to detect a hint of moisture in the whites of his eyes that I had not seen before.
“Those executions within our ranks, I recognize that they were errors, or exaggerations, excesses of severity, when they were not atrocities. Admitting this has not been easy, and what bothers me now is not having been more strongly opposed to the application of those drastic measures, which I was not in agreement with in many cases. If I could go back. . . . But that was another time.” The features of his face, which are rather hard, have now softened a bit. “There are those who, even knowing that we executed their relatives, have not lost their revolutionary spirit. And it’s strange, but, on the other hand, there are also many who would have preferred never to know the truth.”
He tells me of a particular case, the murder of a journalist for which the State has taken responsibility. Despite the fact that, according to what he knows to be true, this woman was executed by order of the leaders of the guerrilla organization to which she belonged, her own relatives prefer to ignore this because there is the possibility of collecting compensation from the State, which would be impossible if the murder were attributed to the guerrillas.
“I would like to talk to you about all of this when we have more time,” he says, insisting on the vital importance to him of these struggles of conscience.
I tell him that I am to go on a trip very soon (I do not tell him where, and he does not ask). I promise to give him, on my return, a draft of the text that I am writing about the Archive. I assure him that I will not make it public without his consent.
Finally, in a humorous tone, he tells me that he has had labor problems with a group of young researchers at the Archive. A local newscast aired an item yesterday, without disclosing its sources, about how he and others in positions of responsibility at the Project are accused of mistreating their employees. “This job is worse than managing a factory,” the former guerrilla leader says with a smile.
We split the bill down the middle.
Tuesday.
On the way downtown, I call Benedicto on my cell phone to confirm our lunch date at La Casa de Cervantes. He has to cancel: he has been called at the last minute by a client who is waiting for him at the courthouse. He wanted to call me earlier, but he couldn’t find my number. We can, if I agree, have lunch next Thursday, same place. Instead of continuing on downtown I turn around and go to Zone 14, for lunch at my parents’.
Thursday.
Meeting with Benedicto Tun and his son Edgar at the agreed-upon place. Mediocre lunch, cordial conversation. Before his son arrives, I give Benedicto two audiocassettes: one with the voice of Lemus that I recorded from his answering machine message, and the other with a short fragment copied from cassettes recorded during negotiations over my mother’s kidnapping. He says that he should be able to share the results with me within two or three days.
He tells me another family anecdote, about the kidnapping by guerrillas and subsequent police arrest of one of his brothers, a pediatrician, in 1970.
About the Tun family, he says later, someone once said in public, while his father was still alive, “It is like a rosebush. It has roses, but also thorns.” He explains that “thorns” probably referred to him, because of his left-wing ideas.
His son arrives. He wanted to meet me because he has read some of my books, he says. He writes plays. I see a clear resemblance to his grandfather, based on the photo that Benedicto (who, by the way, does not look like either of them) showed me.
Edgar Tun is a young man, about twenty-five, thin, frail-looking, and bright. He brings his own lunch, seasoning it with virgin olive oil, which he also brings with him. He suffers from a pancreas ailment, he explains. He studied legal and social sciences, and he now works as a researcher in the Reparation Program for Victims of the Armed Conflict.
Benedicto talks about the death of Turcios Lima, generally attributed to a traffic accident in Calzada Roosevelt of Guatemala City. According to Benedicto’s father, who photographed the remains of the car in which the guerrilla leader traveled with his girlfriend and his mother, it was an attack. “The car, a Mini Cooper, caught fire too fast,” says the son. “They may have used white phosphorus, but the cause of the fire, according to my father, could not have been just gasoline. In any case, it was said that if it was an attack it would have been by the Guatemalan Workers’ Party, who had decided to eliminate Lima for lack of discipline.”
He, Benedicto the son, met Turcios Lima as a teenager. Lima was the younger of the two, and very restless, Benedicto says. He was the godson of the archbishop of Guatemala, Monsignor Casariegos, and, as I understand it, the archbishop’s home was once the scene of his love affairs.
Benedicto also shares some details about the murder of the German ambassador, Karl von Spretti, in 1970. Not all members of the Rebel Armed Forces group that kidnapped him wanted to execute him when the government refused to release the political prisoners that were part of the negotiation. “They almost started shooting at each other,” he tells me, “because they could not come to an agreement.” This is something that was told to him by a friend of his who belonged to that group, and who later disappeared. He was among those who opposed the execution. “Upon getting the news that he had been captured, his girlfriend called me. I went to her house, and she showed me, among other things, letters that Von Spretti had written during his abduction. She kept them hidden behind a mirror. I read them, and then we burned them. Saving something like that in those days was too compromising.”
He also talks about a Swiss journalist who visited Guatemala in the time of Ubico. Accused of being a communist, he was executed by firing squad at the penitentiary in the capital. While in prison, he had become friends with Benedicto’s father, who did not think he was guilty. Before being executed, the Swiss man gave him a portable typewriter, which Benedicto’s son still has today.
At noon, on a cloudy day, with the smell of rain, in the silver Lexus, between traffic lights, I think about my weaknesses. I have a light sense of remorse, and as a result, the thought that perhaps one has to be a bit immoral to be a moral person, at least in certain aspects, in order to understand the “mechanism” of morality.
Friday.
Long interview with Uli at Taco Bell. He’s still thinking of making a documentary about La Isla. The mother of his “partner” who works at the Archive, he tells me, was captured by agents of the National Police many years ago and was n
ever seen again. They are still seeking her whereabouts. It seems that, among the documents at the Archive, there is something about her capture. As a result of this, Uli visited the general cemetery in La Verbena. In the entry books, he tells me, there is data of great interest “if one is looking for the disappeared,” with details about the origin and general features of the corpses. I speak to him extensively about Benedicto Tun.
Sunday. Father’s Day.
In the afternoon, after a strange and pleasant day, but with a bitter end, B+ tells me by phone that she does not want to see me tomorrow, or for a few days—that she needs “time to think.”
Monday.
In the morning I call Tun. He had the tapes analyzed, he tells me, and he believes that it is the same voice. “It is not irrefutable proof, mainly because the samples are not from the same period, right? But it is pretty certain.”
I think of Lemus: pathetic, somber. This was, then, the Minotaur that awaited me at the center of the labyrinth in the Archive. From such a labyrinth, such a Minotaur. He is probably as scared of me as I am of him. If I attacked him, I wonder, would he defend himself?
Almost midnight. Two calls, one immediately after the other. At the other end of the line, silence, maybe the sound of rain, but it is not raining tonight in Guatemala City.
Tuesday.
Until today I had not seriously thought about stopping the writing of this journal, but it is as if the germ of the end has already contaminated the organism.
I got an email from Guillermo Escalón, who has just returned from Paris. I call him on the phone and we agree to have dinner tomorrow.
Long-distance call from Homero Jaramillo. He needs to check some information—the phone number and the exact address of my apartment (where he lived for most of 2003). He is filling out forms to request an extension of his asylum in Canada, he explains. Jovial tone, as almost always. When I hang up, I have a sinking feeling.
The most precious thing in life is uncertainty—Kenko.
Thursday.
Last night I had dinner with Guillermo, after accompanying my father and Magalí to hospitalize my mother. They have inserted a catheter to drain the urine and prevent her defective kidney from collapsing. Long talk with Guillermo about the project at the Archive. Uli has invited Guillermo to work with him on the documentary that he is making. Guillermo has not given a final answer. I told him that the idea of a documentary in the making makes me want to stop writing about the Archive, that the cameras will do a better job than me.
Friday.
Call from Uli. He leaves for Germany on Sunday. He wants to let me watch a documentary filmed by the Human Rights Ombudsman on the discovery of the Archive. We will not be able to see each other before his departure, but he will leave a copy for me at the house of a friend of his.
Monday, nighttime. Hotel Caimán.
On the Pacific coast with Pía, who is on vacation.
I was trying to sort these notes, this collection of notebooks, when she, who had been insisting for several minutes that I tell her a story, asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was trying to put together a story.
“For children?” she asks me.
I say no.
“For grown-ups?”
I tell her that I do not know, that maybe it’s just for me.
“You know how it could end?” she tells me.
I shake my head.
“With me crying, because I can’t find my dad anywhere.” I laugh, surprised. Where did that come from? I ask myself. I listen for a while to the endless rumble of the great ocean waves.
Author’s Note
More than ten years ago, when I visited the place known as La Isla for the first time—where the Historical Archive of the Guatemala National Police is currently housed—rescuing that sordid accumulation of papers and aberrations was still an ambitious and risky project, which on more than one occasion came close to being cancelled. Today the Archive is public (http://archivohistoricopn.org); the painstaking work of cataloging millions of police documents has facilitated the legal clarification of cases regarding the disappearance of persons and other crimes against humanity.
I want to thank Gustavo Meoño, Director of the Archive Recovery Project, who allowed me, a fiction writer, to venture onto that island.
Rodrigo Rey Rosa
2017
Postscript
The Guatemalan National Police Archive (AHPN) has become a world reference. Nearly 24 million folios of documents have been processed and their digital images are available for public consultation inside and outside of Guatemala. Hundreds of relatives of missing persons, who for decades have sought in vain to know something about the whereabouts of their loved ones, have requested and obtained valuable information from the Archive. The prosecutors who are in charge of investigating the atrocities committed during the years of the Guatemalan internal war have found in this Archive information and documentary evidence to contribute to more than a dozen trials. The judges have given them evidentiary value and these documents have contributed to sustaining harsh sentences against high-ranking military and police chiefs.
However, in August 2018 something unexpected happened. Just after one of the most consequential trials—due to the high status of the condemned generals—the government of Guatemala decided to intervene in the Archive. The director, Gustavo Meoño, was dismissed after thirteen years of work. A third of the qualified personnel were also dismissed as of December of this year, and the rest of the workers are in a state of total uncertainty about what will happen in the future. Multiple highly respected voices have spoken in solidarity with the Archive in more than twenty countries. There are many clouds that hover over this valuable documentary collection; the dangers that lie in wait for it are great indeed.
December 2018
Translator’s Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Kristin Siracusa Fisher for her invaluable insights and recommendations as first reader of this English version; Marian Schwartz and AATIA’s Literary Special Interest Group (LitSIG) for their input workshop-ping early excerpts from this translation with me; and Inés ter Horst, Angelica Lopez-Torres, and Lynne Chapman of the University of Texas Press for their kindness and support. I am also grateful to Rodrigo Rey Rosa for trusting me with his work and the good conversations about words.
Eduardo Aparicio
2018
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