Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

P

12

It didn’t take long for Lesbia to feel at home in a community 
that had welcomed her with open arms and in her free time 
she spent many happy moments playing with Don Lalo and 
Doña Fina’s children.

On special days, such as Independence Day or Mother’s 
Day, she would take photographs of her pupils, a series 
of portraits that can be found today in the office of the 
Association of Family Members of the Detained and 
Disappeared in Guatemala (Famdegua), a poignant reminder 
of a new generation that embodied the future of Dos Erres. 
A generation that was bludgeoned to death and plunged into 
a dark well.

III

Although Dos Erres was a quiet and almost idyllic village, 
life was overshadowed by war, which always hovered close 
by like a harbinger of doom. When the inhabitants of Dos 
Erres went to Las Cruces to sell their products and buy basic 
supplies, the soldiers, in every checkpoint, demanded to see 
their ID and anyone who was caught without his or her 
documents could be disappeared.

If someone pulled more than one bucket of water out of the 
well, the soldiers would ask why that person needed so much 
water and who they intended to give it to, implying that 
the people of Dos Erres were supplying water to guerrilla 
groups. The soldiers went as far as searching the bundles 
of corn tortillas that women from Dos Erres carried to Las 
Cruces to sell on market days. 

Every male over fifteen years of age was forced to walk for three 
hours to Las Cruces where he would reluctantly pick up a rifle