{"id":198,"date":"2007-12-03T01:41:42","date_gmt":"2007-12-03T01:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/?p=198"},"modified":"2007-12-03T01:41:42","modified_gmt":"2007-12-03T01:41:42","slug":"laura-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/laura-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Laura"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>In school, the history that we study is about Christopher Columbus, or other histories that happened in nearby countries, but a real history of our community or of our country we never learned in school…Even though I didn\u2019t know anything about the history, in my work I learned what really happened.There are many versions, because some say:\u2018It\u2019s because of the army,\u2019 others say,\u2018It\u2019s because of the guerrillas.\u2019What that helps me to understand is that, despite the fact that the people lived the conflict directly, they don\u2019t know the root of the conflict. So many parents don\u2019t know how to tell the history because if there is no root, then you don\u2019t know how to begin to tell it.Then there are many young people who don\u2019t know the history.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What is the consequence for a community, for a nation, when people do not know their history? No one taught Porfirio, El\u00edas or Laura the true history of their country.There was no national narrative, no agreed-upon and accepted version of historical events. Rather they pieced together the past from various sources:\u201cA guy in a bar told me…\u201d; \u201cI heard a rumor that…\u201d;\u201cYou never knew who you were talking to…\u201dThey had to gather information themselves to try to create a coherent story of what had happened. Today they are committed to making sure that the younger generation learns the truth\u2014an accurate version of the past\u2014which has everything to do with the present and the future of Guatemala.<\/p>\n

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One story that is always with me is a woman who told me, \u2018It\u2019s Rios Montt\u2019s fault that I killed my son. I am a murderer!\u2019 Because she was pregnant when they had to escape to the mountains. The baby was born\u00a0in the mountains…it\u2019s normal for a baby to cry a lot. But the group she was with told her, \u2018Quiet that baby! They are going to hear us.You have to quiet him!\u2019 So she covered his mouth and nose.The baby got sick. He didn\u2019t die right away, he died five days later. She remembers this all the time. She says,\u2018I am a murderer. I killed my son. If I hadn\u2019t killed him, he would be twenty years old.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Hearing these stories, trying to tell her she is not a murderer, that it\u2019s not her fault, is very difficult. Because when the people have suffered a lot, they see everything in black and white.They can only see the black and not the strengths that they have. It\u2019s like that for this mother who survived, and was able to take care of her smaller children after she became a widow. She was left with four little children, and the fact that she managed to take care of them means that she is a strong woman. But she isn\u2019t able to see that light in her life.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In school, the history that we study is about Christopher Columbus, or other histories that happened in nearby countries, but a real history of our community or of our country we never learned in school…Even though I didn\u2019t know anything about the history, in my work I learned what really happened.There are many versions, because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-testimonies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}