Jesús Tecú Osorio, Río Negro Survivor
Shares his Experience

photo - Rio Negro village
Río Negro village
copyrighted photo used by permission of
Stefan Schmitt's Human Rights and Forensic Anthropology

by Christine Whipple - FHRG

On May 11, the Foundation for Human Rights in Guatemala had the honor of hosting an event at Ravenswood Presbyterian Church featuring Jesús Tecu Osorio, survivor of the Río Negro Massacre, human rights activist, and recipient of the 1996 Reebok Human Rights Award. In a moving presentation, Jesús shared his experiences in the struggle to bring the perpetrators to justice and his ongoing work in his home community. Attendees also viewed the documentary "Jesús Tecú Osorio in Guatemala" (Bullfrog Films, 2000). The following includes Jesús' comments during the May 11 presentation and a May 9 meeting with the Foundation.

Jesús was born in Río Negro, a small Maya Achi town located in the municipality of Rabinal, Department of Baja Verapaz. In 1982, 19 of the 38 villages in Rabinal were devastated by a series of massacres carried out by the Guatemalan Army and the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil, or PACs (Civil Defense Patrols). The massacres were carried out within the context of widespread state-sponsored violence in the 1980s, most notably during the dictatorships of Generals Romeo Lucas García and Efraín Rios Montt. Scorched earth campaigns and the creation of the PACS were part of the strategy on the part of the Guatemalan state to crush civilian support for the guerrilla insurgency and destroy popular movements. Indigenous Maya people, especially in the highlands, were among the most cruelly affected by the violence. In Rabinal alone, a total of about 5, 000 people were murdered.

Jesús' parents were killed by civil patrollers in the February 13, 1982 massacre in Xococ, a neighboring village to Río Negro. Exactly one month after the massacre in Xococ, civil defense patrollers from Xococ and army soldiers arrived at Río Negro early in the morning. Most of the men of the village were gone; since the Xococ massacre, they had spent the nights in the mountains with the belief that the army and paramilitaries were interested in killing only the men as suspected "subversives" and would leave the women and children alone. On that day, the patrollers went from house to house, grabbed the women and children, and forced them to a location outside the village, Paxcocom. They then brutally raped and murdered the villagers. A total of about 180 people were killed and their bodies thrown into a ravine.

Ten-year-old Jesús, along with several other children, was forced to lie on the ground during the massacre and observe the killing of his relatives and neighbors. Jesús witnessed Pedro Gonzalez Gomez, a civil defense patroller, kill a woman and her baby with a machete. In the afternoon, Gonzalez Gomez informed Jesús that he was going to take him to Xococ to live with him and his wife, but that Jesús' two-year-old brother would not be able to come with them. Although Jesús begged for his brother's life, Pedro ignored his pleas and murdered the child by smashing his head into a rock. Gonzalez Gomez and the other civil patrollers then took the surviving children, including Jesús, to their village.

Jesús describes his life in the home of Pedro Gonzalez Gomez as that of a slave. He was made to perform domestic tasks and agricultural labor and shunned by the Xococ villagers after Gonzalez Gomez told them that they could not trust Jesús because he was the child of "subversives." Eventually, Jesús learned that his older sister Laura was alive and looking for him. When Jesús told Gonzalez Gomez that he planned to leave and live with his sister, Gomez threatened to denounce him as a guerrilla to the nearby army base. However, Jesús was finally able to leave with his sister Laura in 1985.

For many years, the survivors of the Río Negro massacre were forced to live along the perpetrators as repression continued throughout Guatemala. Most of the surviving inhabitants were obligated by the Guatemala electrical entity, INDE, to relocate to nearby Pacux in order to make way for the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam, a development project funded by the World Bank. After uprooting to Pacux, the former inhabitants of Río Negro lived in what was essentially a "model village", a resettlement tactic used by the Guatemalan army to monitor and control the civilian population. Soldiers guarded the entrance to the community and villagers lived under near-constant military vigilance.

In the mid-1990s, members of Rabinal, at great risk, began to organize and speak out against the crimes they had suffered and the impunity that the perpetrators enjoyed. Jesús was among the survivors who solicited the Equipo Antropologo Forense de Guatemala, or EAFG (Guatemalan Forensic Anthropological Team) to exhume the remains of the victims of the massacre, where they had lain in a clandestine cemetery since the massacre in 1982. The EAFG exhumed the remains in 1993 over a three-month period. After family members identified the remains of their loved ones, they were buried in a ceremony in Río Negro and a monument commemorating the victims was constructed. The EAFG also conducted several other exhumations in the municipality of Rabinal. Their work and the history of the massacres was documented in Las Masacres en Rabinal (EAFG, 1995).

In 1998, Jesús testified in court in the trial of three former civil patrollers who participated in the Río Negro Massacre: Carlos Chen Gomez, Fermin Lajuj Xitmul, and Pedro Gonzalez Gomez. The testimonies of Jesús and other survivors proved integral to the conviction of all three. However, the verdict was overturned on appeal and a second trial began in October 99. Despite death threats to the witnesses and the intimidating presence of ex-patrollers in the courtroom, all three patrollers were once again convicted on October 7, 1999 and sentenced to death.

Currently, Jesús continues to struggle for justice in his community. In a meeting with the Foundation, Jesús shared that although the armed conflict has officially ended, entire communities continue to be affected by the trauma of having suffered terrible violence and loss. At times this trauma has manifested itself in increased levels of family violence. In part to address these issues, Jesús and other survivors of the massacres in Rabinal formed in 1995 the Rabinal Widows, Orphans and Displaced Committee Maya-Achi. The Committee works towards healing the lives of the survivors, including human rights education, community development projects, collecting testimonies from massacre survivors, and pressuring the government to continue exhumations of mass graves and press charges against the assassins.

Jesús also shared that one of the most urgent needs of people in his community is access to legal representation. Because many in the community do not speak Spanish and do not have the resources to pay a lawyer, they are denied their right to exercise their legal rights. Jesús gave as an example the case of a monolingual Achi woman he met one day while at court. After talking with the woman, he learned that she was living in a situation of severe domestic abuse, and had come several times to court seeking to assert her rights as a victim of domestic violence. However, each times she was turned away because she did not speak Spanish. Jesús assisted the woman by advocating for her in court and providing translation. Jesús asserted that clearly interpreter services are sorely needed in Guatemala's court system in order to ensure that all citizens have equal access. In order to address this need, Jesús used the he received as the 1996 recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award to establish a small legal clinic in Rabinal. He added that although the clinic is under-staffed and poorly paid, the staff is committed to providing legal counsel and representation to the inhabitants of Rabinal.

The FHRG thanks Jesús for participating in an event with us and commends him for the work he continues to do in the field of human rights.

----------------------------

*Statistics in this article were taken from the EPICA/CHRLA report "Unearthing the Truth: Exhuming a Decade of Terror in Guatemala" by Grahame Russell, 1996.

**Background graphic used by permission of Stefan Schmitt's Human Rights and Forensic Anthropology.

For more information on the massacres in Rabinal within the context of the Chixoy Dam Project sponsored by the World Dam, check out  the following:

Continue to REHMI - Putting the Pieces Back Together article

Back to Top of Page