This is a drawing that represents the army gathering some young men in the church for the obligatory military service. I drew this one in Nebaj in 1982. In the beginning when they started to appear there was some kind of private intelligence service, which informed the young men before the soldiers came, so they could escape into the mountains or the cornfields. The army improved their methods, though, - let me give you an example: Some times they enter - especially if there is a market - about 20 civilians enter to point out the people - and suddenly the soldiers enter - either in the marketplace or in the church.  
 
      In this particular case they entered the church and I was standing next to it. First, they point out some of the persons - so they know whom to kidnap and next thing you know, the soldiers come sneaking in and close all the entrances. Then they gather the people in the square or in the church and some big trucks come to pick up these men... Normally, they will start hitting one or two of the men they know they won't take anyway - and by stating this example and thanks to the tremendous fear that overwhelms the village, they can do whatever they feel like. And these young men can do nothing at all - they're not even allowed to take their clothes, their personal belongings, say goodbye to their mothers - nothing - they don't make like a receipt or make lists with the names - nothing - they just take them - and they leave...  
 
      And NOBODY knows if they took 40, 10 or 30 of these people... They just leave... And everything happens so quickly... It is the kind of military action we've seen so many times. They're very good - very experienced - the real "talented" ones are the "Caibiles" - they are specially trained troops ‚ it is a Guatemalan battalion specialised in the kidnapping of young men between 15-16 and about 20 years old. According to my knowledge nobody knows anything about how many of these young men return to their village - a lot of them - around 20% - these are my calculations - who stay in the army - either as professional soldiers or "Comisionados Militares" - or - maybe they become members of one of the paramilitary groups - a lot of them become members of that kind of organisations - the so-called "Escuadrones de muerte" (Death Squads) - they are working at night - the ones who take care of the political murders, kidnappings, torture and that kind of things... This means that this is totally different - it has to do with the intelligence service etc.  
 
      All of this implies that whoever thinks that a piece of paper will bring peace to the region is a fool - specially when we're dealing with Latin America... We have the cases of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala - this is still happening... Maybe this kind of violence is even more usual in times of peace than in times of war... It has other characteristics, nevertheless, its the same violence... Today, nobody could execute a massacre of the Indigenous population, because the international journalists would be there immediately. But you can transfer this kind of violence into other examples of peace - for example lawyers, teachers, artists, unionists etc. etc - and this is exactly what is going on in Guatemala nowadays....  
 
      You don't even have to recruit new people - the whole machine is still there - perfect in all its details after so many years of practice. You know, in Guatemala, a dictatorship is characterised by the all the safe houses, apartments and - you name it - in the countryside. They have cars in which to escape, torture-centres, training-centres, housing facilities for all the paramilitary groups - you have places where they can get food, clothes, arms - everything - they don't need anything - its an enormous machine - and somebody has to pay for all this... This leads us to know that SOMEBODY is paying their wages - and you know, the other day somebody told me that in today's Guatemala they have just as many political murders as in the early '80s....  
 
 
Download a Mp3 sound file (Danish - 2.9 MB)