15

 / The long road to justice

Pz

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that there was no possible reason why their lives could be 
in danger as they were hardworking, honest peasants with 
no ties to subversive groups. They mistakenly believed that 
those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.

IV

The wretched man that had been forced to lead the Kaibil 
troop to Dos Erres, walked along reluctantly with his hands 
tied, and was pushed and shoved along the way by the soldiers 
who followed him. Their aim was to exterminate every living 
being that they found in the “red village”, an operation that 
Lieutenant Roberto Aníbal Rivera Martínez had called “La 
Chapeadora”, which means “he or she who clears the land 
with a machete”.

In the lead, as always, marched the “assault group”, also 
known as “los rematadores” or “those in charge of finishing 
off the job”, the fiercest and most violent men, whom Rivera 
Martínez trusted above all others.

The nineteen soldiers of the Special Kaibil Troop, plus forty 
other Kaibiles who had been sent in as a backup, had been 
ordered to enter Dos Erres under enemy fire. They had been 
told that the people in that village had refused to take part 
in the mandatory patrols and that carts loaded with sacks 
marked with the letters FAR had been intercepted at the 
checkpoints. FAR stood for Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel 
Armed Forces), a guerrilla group that had stolen 21 army 
rifles in an ambush in the nearby village of San Diego. 
Something the soldiers probably didn’t know was that the 
acronym also stood for Federico Aquino Ruano, the owner of 
the sacks. For the army, such evidence could only mean one 
thing: these people were communists and were undoubtedly 
hiding the stolen weapons.