Engracia Remembers the Ixil Genocide: “If I had sneezed they would have killed me”

In the Ixil language she says her name is Kala’s; in Spanish it’s Engracia Reina Mendoza Caba. She was born in the canton of Chajul in the municipality of Chajul, but when she joined her partner, they moved to the canton of Ilom in the municipality of Chajul. In 1980, she was about five or six years old and lived in the canton of Chajul. She remembers it as if she were dreaming. When she played with her friends and classmates in the streets, she remembers seeing the Army, which already had a presence in town: soldiers would enter people’s homes, assault residents, rape people, and destroy houses; she and her parents were afraid. This was the reason her parents decided to leave the canton of Chajul to live in Caserío Chulultze’, a hamlet close to the community of Santa Rosa, in the municipality of Chajul.

She grew up in the community of Chulultze’. They thought the Army wouldn’t come there because it had withdrawn significantly from the heart of the municipality [of Chajul]. But the men from the Army did come to the community. During a neighborhood gathering, she saw some soldiers take a group of men who had gathered together to talk. The soldiers tied their hands behind their backs and kidnapped them. She doesn’t know where they took them, but she saw them take the men away from the community of Chulultze’. This scared her, especially because the soldiers had already been prowling around the community. She had a sister named Manuela who had given birth to a baby. Her sister had been resting for 40 days at that point, and she says that, according to the cultural custom in her village, the family is supposed to take care of the mother after she gives birth, so she stayed with her sister to help haul water, because there was no water at the house. The water source was a little ways away from the house. Her mother told her that they needed to split up, because if they stayed together, they might all die at the same time. The family’s situation was already very complicated, and even more so for her daughter, who had recently given birth and didn’t want to go to another community. That’s why Engracia was told to stay with her sister Manuela, while their mother went to another community.

The mother decided to go to the community of Vi’ Putul to live with her other children. Manuela’s husband said that they couldn’t go live somewhere else because they already had their corn field, their house, and other things there in the community. The husband said, “It’s better to stay here; we’ll just hope nothing happens to us, and in any case, the soldiers probably won’t come back.” They stayed, but they were worried, because the men who had been taken by the Army had not come back. This left a void and they kept waiting for them to return. A long time passed with no military presence in the community.

Until the day of February 16, 1982: the soldiers from the Army returned to the community of Chulultze’. She was already eight years old and remembers what happened very well. The Army did not arrive by land; instead, they came in helicopters. She says that she was playing in the community’s main street with her classmates and they started to count the helicopters that were flying overhead. Twelve helicopters flew over the community. That day, Engracia’s father came to visit them, since they had moved to the community of Vi' Putul, but he always came to see his daughters. He was sitting in the courtyard and scolded her. He said, “Why are you counting the helicopters? That’s bad luck.” They replied, “We're just counting them, it's like counting birds”; they had a habit of counting birds flying in the sky. That was sometime around 11:00 in the morning. The Air Force helicopters had come to check if there were people there or not. They passed by and left, but they returned later.

El Faro Audio · “Twelve helicopters flew over the community”

The helicopters came back at 1:00 in the afternoon, but that time they didn’t come just to observe, they came to bomb the houses and shoot at the people who lived in the community. In that community there were approximately seven families living in seven houses; some of the houses were a little farther away, set apart from the others. When they heard the shots and the bombings, the people of the community got together. They were scared, they were trembling, because they knew that the soldiers had come to kill them. Engracia’s sister told her, “They came back to kill us.” Then the shooting stopped. The families and neighbors pulled themselves together, found their strength, and said, “Let’s go back to our homes and make some food and get ready because we’re leaving right now.” So they went back to their houses and were starting to grind corn for food when they heard the gunshots and bombings again. They immediately fled their homes and went to hide in the trees, but they didn’t go very far; they were still close to their houses. After the shooting and shelling, the soldiers started to descend from the helicopters using ropes. One by one they descended until they reached the ground. The families and everyone else were scared. The homes that were burned were built of sticks that formed the fences.

They were lying on the ground under some trees and bushes, so that they wouldn’t be seen by the helicopters, but it was impossible, because the helicopters were starting to land; this created a lot of wind that moved all the bushes and the branches of the trees, which is how they were discovered. They couldn’t hide anymore because of the wind. When they were spotted, [the soldiers] started shooting and they killed her father in front of her.

El Faro Audio · “They killed my dad in front of me”

Engracia, her sister, and their neighbors stayed lying on the ground. But their father tried to protect them and to find a place to hide, which is why he moved in front of a dead tree. When he sat down, the soldiers found him and shot him in the forehead. When she saw that they had shot her dad, without thinking, she went to his side. She was shocked and devastated; she couldn’t speak or move, and in that moment her mouth went dry. She even forgot about the gunshots, but her sister Manuela reacted and said, “We’ve lost our father, but we have to get out of here,” and pulled her away between gunshots. She dragged her over to the other side of the house because if they didn’t get out, they were going to die with their father. Then she regained consciousness; she saw that the soldiers had their helmets on and were sweeping toward her sister’s house, which was the only one they hadn’t burned. The neighbors came down dodging gunfire to take cover in the house, but the soldiers weren’t satisfied; it wasn’t enough for them to burn the houses. They shot and swept toward the house, looking for the people who had taken refuge there, and the people couldn’t leave and go hide somewhere else, because the soldiers had surrounded them.

Her sister was also in shock and couldn’t move. She was worried about her baby that she was holding in her arms; Engracia’s friend and neighbor, also a survivor, was there too. She insisted that they leave the house. She told Manuela: “Vamos, Ma’l” —Ma’l was what she was called when she was little— “if we don’t leave now, we’ll die here.” But Manuela didn’t want to stay alone and told them to stay with her. If they were going to die, they should both go together. Until finally she changed her mind and told Engracia, “Okay, go with her.” She asked their friend to take care of her sister. Something very important that Engracia will never forget is when her sister told her: “Go. I don’t have the strength to keep hiding. I know I'm going to die here, I can feel it. I know there’s no other way out. You still have life, I’m sure of it. Get out of here, and come back one day for my bones, for my body.”

El Faro Audio · “Come back one day for my bones, for my body”

When the two women exited the house, Engracia’s friend and neighbor grabbed her hand and they ran. Her friend was about 11 years old at the time and she was between 8 and 9. Her friend led her away, and the soldiers saw them and shouted, “Girls, girls, where are you going? Come back!” She only saw their faces from far away. The girls didn’t respond, they ignored [the soldiers] and kept walking down a narrow road. When they saw a ravine, they jumped down it. She didn't even think about whether she would live or die; she just threw herself down and they ended up in the river. This was the only way they were able to escape.

When they jumped down the ravine, they rolled until they reached the river and she doesn’t remember how long it took or how many times they rolled over. When she realized what was happening, she was already in the river. There was blood in the river too, so they started to check to see where they were hurt. She had hurt her leg and had scrapes on other parts of her body; that’s why she was bleeding. She had already lost her faja [traditional Maya belt] and she doesn’t remember where she had dropped it or at what point it had come off. She only had her corte [skirt], which she was holding in place. Her friend was also injured. This happened around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. They continued walking without knowing where they were going, worried that the soldiers would follow them, until it got dark. They started asking each other: “Where will we sleep? It’s already night, what are we going to do?” From a distance, they saw a house and Engracia said, “Let's stay in that house, let’s sleep there”. But her friend said, “No, if we stay in that house the soldiers will find us for sure. We’d better stay under these trees and sleep here.” They slept under the trees.

They stayed under the trees, but without realizing it, they had walked in a big loop back around the mountain. They saw that they were close to the house where they had originally fled from. They didn’t sleep that night. It was probably already between 11 and 12 p.m. and they were about half a cuerda or one cuerda from the edge of the road [in Guatemala, a cuerda is a traditional unit of measure equivalent to 25 varas, or roughly 23 yards]. They couldn’t walk on the road because if they were found they would be killed. They stayed there and hid when they heard the soldiers’ footsteps. They saw flashlights. [The soldiers] were wearing helmets. They saw many soldiers passing by. They stayed still. Only her friend moved her and they tried not to make any noise. They kept quiet. She says: “Thank God for watching over us, because if we had sneezed, we would have been killed for sure.” If we had made any noise, we would have been dead immediately. After this, the soldiers went straight to the houses where the other families had stayed. The soldiers started shooting and she heard her sister scream, because she knows her sister's voice and the way she screams and the words she uses.

El Faro Audio · “The soldiers started shooting and I heard my sister scream”

After they shot all the families in the community, Engracia and her friend were in a state of shock. She says that then, at that moment, she felt someone touching her: they touched her head, her shoulders. She looked behind her and to her sides but there was no one there. The two girls were alone under the trees, at night. She asked her friend if she had felt the same thing she had, that someone was touching her. She said yes, and they decided: “It must be the dead; it’s our relatives who are here with us.” She says that she could feel there presence. “Probably because of what I saw, or because my dead had also come with me.”

The two of them stayed sitting there all night, scared, until dawn broke. At about 6 in the morning, they began to hear the birds singing in the trees. She says: “It was a miracle. Either by God's grace or because I’m meant to do something in this life, that’s why I didn't die then.” But at the same time, when dawn broke, they saw a jaguar on a tree branch, roaring, as if it wanted to eat them. They waited, they didn’t move, and the tiger left. She says it was by the grace of God.

At about 8:00 in the morning, more helicopters arrived to the place where there were already some soldiers. She was hungry. Her friend told her: “The soldiers haven’t come by, they haven’t come back, they’re probably still where we were, with our dead, in the house, and if we go there, they’ll kill us; let's wait.” She even thought about going out to the road so that the soldiers passing by would find her. It was already about 9:00 in the morning and she was starving and ready to die. She told her friend, “If I die, then so be it, but I want to eat; if the soldiers are there, I don’t care, I’m going to look for food, I want to eat.” Her friend said: “We have tomate extranjero [tamarillo], we’ll eat those and I’m sure we can find some corn in the fields we have there. But let’s wait a while for the soldiers to leave, because they’re still there.”

The helicopter came to drop food off for the other soldiers. So they waited. They couldn’t stand the hunger any longer and it was very cold. The clothes they had on were very wet. Little by little they walked farther from the road, they ate tomate extranjero and other plants in the mountains so that they wouldn’t starve to death or go back to where the soldiers were, because there was food there. She believes that the soldiers probably put the food there as a trap to get them to come back, since their objective was to kill everyone. But they didn’t go back. They searched for food in the mountains to survive; they ate wild plants, tamarillo, they found eggs and ate them; at first she didn’t want to eat raw eggs but they didn’t have an option so out of hunger, they ate them. Around 11:00 in the morning they started walking, following the river downstream to make sure they didn’t end up in the same place they were before.

Sometime after 11:00 in the morning, they started wondering, “Where are we going? What about our families, what happened to them?” The two of them talked and decided to go back to see if anyone was still alive. From a distance, they watched to see if the soldiers were still there, but there weren’t any. All they saw was that there were people, and they were moving. They were happy; they were happy walking towards the house, but when they got closer, they were shocked and scared by what they saw: the people were moving because they had been hanged. They were hanging. There were men and three women, among them her sister: “I found my sister dead; she was hanging and moving.”

El Faro Audio · “The people were moving because they had been hanged”

She saw other dead women lying naked on the bed. Other people had had their ears cut off and had been dumped in the courtyard of the house. Their hands were cut off, their necks were cut. Others had been suffocated. Other people who were sitting, apparently alive, had already been shot and were dead. They kept looking at the dead. They probably raped the women because some were hanging without their cortes. The soldiers weren’t very far away because they started shooting and without hesitating the girls ran away. They ran away crying until they reached the river where they would go to fetch water to drink. They were scared by everything they had seen. They were terrified with fear. They hadn’t absorbed what had happened and they didn’t know where to go; they thought they were lost when suddenly they ran into the soldiers who arrested them. This happened on February 17.

[Engracia Mendoza has omitted this portion of her testimony.]

An old man came by who was looking for his son. He’s the one who found them. The soldiers had tied their hands and feet. When the man arrived, he helped them. He released them and asked if they had seen his son. She says: “I had actually seen the soldiers take him away in a helicopter. That was on February 20.”

On February 17 the soldiers took them and they were detained on the 18th, 19th and 20th. They were detained for four days with the soldiers. They weren’t given any food or water; they weren’t given anything.

Thanks to the old man, they were rescued. Engracia couldn’t stand on her own, she had no strength, she was badly injured. Her friend could walk a little and was still holding on. The man saw that she couldn’t move anymore. She had chills and was trembling. He told them, “Come on, I’ll take you and cure you.” He wrapped her in a sack and carried her, took her to some other place and built a shelter for them. He bathed them in lukewarm water. While her friend walked alone, slowly. The old man who helped them has passed away.

She says that this is what little she lived through, saw, and suffered in those days.

How many of your family members survived the massacre?

Four survived: two men and two women. There were five, but her sister Manuela died. She says that she is the one who suffered the most among her sisters and brothers because she stayed with her sister Manuela in Chulultze’, which is where things were the worst, while her mother went to live with her other siblings in the village of Vi’ Putul. Her mother also suffered because she was shot and the bullet stayed in her hip. They didn’t kill her then; she was forced to cook for the soldiers. She died years later; they think it was because of the bullet in her body.

What have your life and your process of recovery been like after surviving these crimes?

It has been very hard work. First, she recognizes that the Peace Accords contributed to ending the war, but says that they have yet to be fulfilled. But they did help somewhat to stop the Army from continuing to massacre people. If it hadn’t been for the Peace Accords, there’s no doubt the massacres and rapes would have continued. It was a small step, but it helped, thanks to the [human rights] organizations. Before the organizations, she was very shy, she was very afraid, she couldn’t express herself, she couldn’t say anything because she was afraid someone would kill her for what she would say. Even though the soldiers had left, she still had those fears and she wondered: “What will happen if I speak out? What if they kill me? These traumas stayed with her, and little by little she worked through them, with the help of ODHAG, CALDH, MUIXIL and the psychologists at ECAP, who helped her a lot with the healing process.

She is also grateful for the support of her family: especially her husband, who had given her permission to participate in the organizations. There are some husbands who are machista, especially in the communities, who say, “You have to prepare our food. Why do you go to the meetings? What are you doing there, you don’t need to leave the house.” Her husband understands this and understands her.

The healing involved several organizations, several people, who in one way or another have supported her in getting to where she is today. She has led organizations and traveled to other countries. This has helped her to overcome it and to seek justice; she has organized with the survivors of the internal conflict. They have demonstrated to demand justice, dignity, and reparations for the victims. Also, after the signing of the Peace Accords, the Civil Defense Patrols, or PACs, which had been organized during the war, were isolated from the community.

What was your experience when you went to testify in the trial against Benedict Lucas?

She has mixed feelings. She feels sad, but at the same time she feels good, because she knowns that there will be justice for her parents, for her sister, and for everyone who was killed. But at the same time, when she gave her testimony, she had to relive the events. Remembering what happened makes her get sick, which is why her daughters don’t agree that she should recount what she lived through because for them, it would reopen the wounds; when she returns home, she feels very bad and very sad. So her daughters encourage her not to retell it, to keep it to herself, since it happened so many years ago, and they tell her: Why keep doing it if they haven’t even issued the verdict?

She says: “My heart tells me that I have to do it. I want to speak about it, so that others don’t suffer. I don’t want my people to suffer again. If I don’t say it, who will? Not all of us want to talk about what we saw, but I will. Mr. Benedicto Lucas is still strong. He continues to insult us, because when we entered the court, he said, ‘Here come the guerrillas, here come the dirty people.’ We have to keep putting up with humiliations and not say anything, because we want to see justice. I’m aware that in the prison where they will send him, if the verdict is favorable, he will have a television, he will live well. He will have good food. But deep in our hearts we will know that justice has been done.

*Translated from Ixil to Spanish by Ana Mariela López and Lucas Mendoza; translated from Spanish to English by Max Granger