Profiles of Dos Erres victims, survivors, perpetrators, and lawyers

Sebastian Rotella of ProPublica and Ana Arana of Fundación MEPI have a terrific story on Finding Oscar: Massacre, Memory and Justice in Guatemala. They tell the story of Oscar Alfredo Ramírez Castañeda. He was a survivor of the 1982 Dos Erres massacre who was raised by one of the massacre's perpetrators. Oscar was recently reunited with his biological father after thirty years. His father was away from the village that day and thought that he had lost his wife and nine children. Little did he know that one survived.

It's worth your time to print off and read the article. I'm thinking of assigning it in my Latin American Politics class in the fall. There's a lot in the story to unpack.

See also Separated By Massacre, a Father And Son Reunite Three Decades Later, Survivor of Guatemala civil war learns his true identity, and 30 years after massacre, family comes together again.

Mike McDonald of Reuters also has a nice profile of Guatemala's tenacious Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz. 

With 39 homicides per 100,000 people today - nearly eight times the rate in the United States - Guatemala is one of the world's most murderous countries, and Paz y Paz is dealing with both current and long-buried crimes on a shoestring budget.

Since her tenure began in December 2010, Guatemala's homicide rate has dropped 5 percent and the number of cases resolved has nearly doubled in just a year.

After overhauling investigation procedures and improving training for prosecutors, Paz y Paz presided over a record 5,000 convictions for serious crimes last year.

"We have tried criminals who once thought themselves to be untouchable," the short, stout 45-year-old woman with curly hair said recently. "The level of impunity in our country is embarrassing. But we have made advances in Guatemala once thought impossible."