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town’s public areas. In general, the survivors reject participation in politics and are
skeptical about justice.
The community life project was seriously damaged by the break-up of the group, the
loss of social references, the destruction of their culture, and also by the elimination
of their leaders. The destruction of the social fabric persists owing to the obligatory
substitution of the traditional systems of social control by military control systems,
the obligation to patrol with the perpetrators of the massacre, and the impossibility
of beginning to rebuild the community until 1988.
Family roles were disrupted by the death of the women. The death of the children
entailed the rupture of the lineage and of a life project that included expectations of
progress for the family. The death of the elders destroyed the power structures in
Plan de Sánchez and the traditional forms of conflict resolution, it also impaired the
oral transmission of the culture and spirituality, which was the women’s
responsibility. The men sought to create new households and married women from
other villages, so that today they are fathers when they should be grandfathers.
In the long term, the new generation has been affected by the frustrations and the
feelings of grief, sadness and anguish of their parents, manifested by domestic
violence, alcoholism and avoidance.
After the massacre, the general context of insecurity did not allow the community to
go through its mourning process. The external demands were such that there was no
time to weep for their dead and, even though they knew who and what they had
lost, they could not find a meaning for those deaths. Also, the fact that the survivors
found the calcined corpses of their next of kin and were obliged to bury them without
the funeral rites destroyed the relationship between the living and the dead who
should remain in harmony.
According to the Report of the Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala, the
rape of the women was a common practice designed to destroy one of their most
intimate and vulnerable aspects of a person’s dignity. The memory and the dignity of
women, the group’s procreators and transmitters, were damaged at the cultural,
social, family and individual level. The communities themselves were affected by this
practice; it became a motive of collective shame. The impunity and the continuing
proximity of the perpetrators of the rape has prevented the women from taking part
in the processes of justice and meant that the terror they experienced during the
massacre persists today.
The absence of punishment and justice makes it difficult to assess the effects of the
violence. Society’s failure to acknowledge the violations mean the victims continue to
be isolated and stigmatized, increases the polarization between social groups, and
does not allow either the social fabric or the community life project to be rebuilt.
Community-based measures are needed that are designed to make collective
reparation of the cultural vacuum that has been created and rebuild the community
identity. It is also fundamental that the reparations should take the new generations
into account.
The victims agree that the following are needed: a public acknowledgement of the
events by a representative of the State in the town of Rabinal; State participation in
days set aside to commemorate the massacre; establishment of a monument;
publicizing of the proceedings before the inter-American system; and implementation
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