Miller was assigned to Huehuetenango in 1981 after a brief exile in the United States. There
He taught and worked on a farm that helped support an Indian school. And he helped Mayan Indians study their own culture and trained them to be teachers so they could go back to the villages and educate. But there was another reason for the education: to keep the Indians from being conscripted into the army.While the Guatemalan government's official version was that Miller was killed by "subversive criminal elements," other evidence leads on to conclude that he was killed by the military because of a case of mistaken identification.
Years later, a close friend of his with ties to the military confided to the brothers that Miller was misidentified.
“He said the priest we killed was by mistake,” Spellman said. “Brother James would have been the last one (to be assassinated), but to them, we all looked the same.”The Catholic Church is currently exploring Brother Miller's candidacy for sainthood.
