LUCAS, JUSTO, ANGEL, DOMINGO AND JUAN

 

Photographer Mary Scully. Mayan wives, mothers sisters, perhaps daughters protesting the war crimes against their people early 1990's. The names of the dead and disappeared.

1952. A democratically elected government in Guatemala was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by the CIA in support of the United Fruit Company and against suspected Communist subversion. That's been the go to since the Russian Revolution. No matter what or where if  US business interests are threatened? "The Commies are coming. The Commies are coming."

John Foster Dulles was secretary of state and his brother Allen had close ties to the fruit company. United Fruit was unhappy with one, land reform and two, efforts to end labor practices that were just above the levels of slave labor.

This was a second attempt. The first happened under Harry Truman but was aborted. Too much bad publicity. The successful operation happened under Eisenhower. I admire Ike as a military leader but, he was a political tyro early in his administration. 

That coup kicked off a civil war that lasted off and on until 1996. Everyone in the country suffered but the booted heel of oppression hit the Maya the hardest, Subsistence farmers in the hill country the civil war saw more than one humdred thousand dead or disappeared,  often by torture, and over four hundred villages destroyed. Some of those villages had existed since before the conquistadors came bearing the cross and searching for gold. 

Largely illiterate but devout, the majority of the villagers were Catholics. The regimes especially in the late seventies and early eighties responded by killing native church workers and  expelling foreign priests and nuns. Anyone supporting land reform, unions, farmers coops, literacy campaigns was a target. Special targets were lay church workers, catechists, who risked their lives to bring in the consecrated hosts to celebrate communion. Often held outside the villages for protection. The wafers were hidden in sacks of corn, baskets of beans or tortillas. Their chapels were closed, convents occupied by troops.

1982. The village of Santa Cruz El Quiche. Five men, their names Lucas, Justo, Angel, Domingo and Juan. They were lay catechists well known to their fellow villagers. The army arrived, gathered the villagers and gave them this message. If the five men were not killed by their own relatives Santa Cruz and surrounding villages would be destroyed. The deadline was the next morning.

The villagers met all night. The final decision was to refuse. The five, probably know that their days were numbered,  refused in turn. Graves dug, prayers were said. When the army showed up the next morning the bodies were presented. The army's goal was to drive wedges between the families and other villagers. It didn't work. Ruler at the time? A general names Rios Mont. Finally convicted of war crimes decades later. Our president. Good old Saint Ronnie.  Who said of the general that he "believed he was getting a bum rap" and that he was a person of "great integrity." Sound familiar? He was a nice person. They were all nice people. All those murdered church workers and peasants. Left wing propaganda.

Source: People of God Published 1989, Viking Penguin press author Penny Lernoux.