Peru: Testimony from the
bones
Just a few months after the fall of the Fujimori government, the
discovery of a mass grave in the highland department of Huancavelica made the
national news. Within weeks, reports of others surfaced in various parts of the
country. In many cases, local people had known of the graves for years, but had
been afraid to speak.
According to the Ombudsmans Office, more than 150
common graves have been found, but we know very little about who is in those
graves, how they were produced or who produced them, said José
Pablo Baraybar, who heads the Peruvian Forensic Anthropology Team.
Like most of his colleagues, Baraybar got his forensic training in
other parts of the world, excavating graves in Haiti, the Congo, Guatemala,
Rwanda and Kosovo, where he has been an expert witness in war crimes cases. Now
he has returned to tease secrets from the bones of victims in his native
country.
You have to know how to talk to death, so it will tell you
something, Baraybar said. The team painstakingly gathers details from
family members that could help identify the remains, as well as information
about possible perpetrators and events surrounding the victims
deaths.
After several graves were dug up haphazardly by local authorities
and residents, destroying valuable evidence, the archeologists gave prosecutors
crash courses in handling such cases.
Although the Truth Commission will only have the time -- and funds
-- to excavate about 20 graves, Baraybar said that the goal is to identify the
remains, return them to the families and bring the perpetrators to justice,
to say to them, Im going to demonstrate beyond a reasonable
doubt that you did this, and these people whom you have silenced -- Im
going to make them speak.
In the Truth Commission hearings, the testimony of the living
blended with the memory of the dead.
-- Barbara J. Fraser
National Catholic Reporter, June 21,
2002
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