We started today with no real 'welcome to Guatemala,' in fact, I don't think my roomie knows not to flush the TP... What we did start with was an amazing and intense history of Guatemala...yeah '54 CIA coup...yeah '60-'96 civil war...but different and better and I was riveted. I know there is a lot I don't know, but you know how sometimes you just get reminded how much you don't know? This morning was one of those times. Of my small group, I rock the most Spanish and know where to get a plate of fried plantains as big as ya head, but we are all students, of course, and our speakers this morning taught us a thing-er two. We listened to the incredible story of Jennifer Harbury, a American woman whose husband is one of the "desaparecidos" or disappeared from the civil war. Her story is incredible. She is sitting across the courtyard from me right now... Here is a quick bio of her HERE.

In the zone 1 there are always posters of the "disappeared"... young men and women, some not so young, who were "disappeared" during the civil war. Stories of the disappearances and related massacres in certain regions of Guatemala during the civil war are horrific. Ms. Harbury's husband is the man in the picture below; a face I have seen before in these posters... now I know. Her story is long and interesting but the short of it is that her husband was captured and tortured. She was repeatedly lied to by the US Embassy and both the US and Guatemalan governments as well as the CIA as to his whereabouts - all denying any knowledge. Now that we are 20 years after the fact, it is public information that all the above listed agencies knew where he was and that the Guate military which captured, tortured and killed him were on the CIA payroll. Her point is this: Even if he's a "guerilla" you can't capture, torture and kill him. She is representing his case (she's a Harvard lawyer to boot!) which is important here because no one has been found guilty of these "disappearances." Her story has more details, but I can't write it all out. A swift Googling of her name will say more than I can re-say.

From an online interview:

"Jennifer K. Harbury: I'm an attorney, and I had been doing human rights work in South Texas with a number of different groups for a number of years and became familiar with the refugee community, especially the Guatemalans. After doing human rights work in Guatemala from 1985 on, I ended up marrying Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, a Mayan resistance leader. As I'm sure you know, the socioeconomic situation in Guatemala is very similar to the old South Africa, in that the indigenous people there, the Mayans, are the majority – they're 80%. But they are completely disenfranchised, suffer from an extremely high malnutrition level, 80% illiteracy, and the second-highest rate of infant mortality in the hemisphere, second only to Haiti, by way of background.

My husband was picked up by the Guatemalan military. He was captured alive in 1992. Then they falsely stated that he had been killed in combat. I found out six months later that he was, in fact, still alive, that they had faked his death in order to torture him long term, with medical assistance to avoid accidentally killing him, so that he would break psychologically and reveal all of his information to them. I then went on a series of hunger strikes to try to obtain his release to the courts of law for a fair trial, as opposed to his torture and extra-judicial execution. I was going back to the United Nations, the State Department, the OAS, and, of course, Capitol Hill. Congress was trying very hard to assist me. The Ambassador and high-level State Department officials kept responding to me and to Congress that they had no information whatsoever about him.

After two and a half years, after my longest hunger strike, which lasted 32 days in Guatemala and then another 14-day hunger strike in front of the White House in '95, it was revealed by U.S. Rep. Robert Torricelli, who was then on the Intelligence Committee in the House, that my husband had indeed been captured alive, had been held for two and a half years and severely tortured, then extra-judiciously executed or assassinated by military intelligence officials in Guatemala, who were also on the CIA payroll as paid informants.

In other words, the CIA had been paying the very people that were torturing and who eventually killed my husband without trial. The documents from the U.S. government also showed that both the CIA and the United States Embassy had known where my husband was, and the fact that he was being tortured in the hands of U.S.-paid informants, from the first week of his capture. We could have saved him.

The documents also revealed that there were 350 other prisoners in similar circumstances. That was announced to the CIA and the U.S. Embassy during the first year. We not only could have saved my husband's life, we could have saved 350 other lives. But we were not allowed to do so because we were given false information by the CIA and the U.S. – the United States Embassy."

She is a pretty brave lady. She doesn't go out at night, takes precautions because people want her dead. She said, if she were Guatemalan she'd already be dead. There is some kind of magical power that keeps her alive because she is from the North. She, alone, did a 32 day hunger strike in front of the government building in Guatemala City, just blocks from where I write right now. Back in the early 90s when this started, she met with scary, high ranking military officials who tried to get her to stop "making noise." UUUGggg, you get the idea. A crazy story, a brave woman, a tragic and terrible country's history.

I am reminded every now and then, and now by her, what people go through on this planet. Sometimes I forget, even in my social work and public health stuff. Even there I can forget so much. This delegation will be more important than I thought. Tomorrow we set out for a very small village where people have faced forced evictions and displacement because of mining projects, communities in resistance, things that sound made up but are true. I have seen many harsh things in Guatemala, things I've never had to actually live, but I have never seen the things on our itinerary for the next few days. We are able to visit these communities because of the relationships established with the non-profit "Rights Action." Their website is HERE. Basically they raise money for grassroots local groups in Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti and the areas of Mexico, Oaxaca and Chiapas. And this Canadian news report came out yesterday, which details the whole point of this trip I'm on: HERE.