Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

P

16

But the soldiers never came under enemy fire as they entered 
Dos Erres. Not a single shot was ever fired. It was three 
o’clock in the morning and only the chirp of nocturnal insects 
pierced the silence of the night until the soldiers kicked the 
villagers’ doors down and pulled the terrified peasants out of 
their homes.

They turned the beds over and emptied the contents of 
drawers and wardrobes but the rifles they had been ordered 
to search for were nowhere to be seen. An hour later, the 
Kaibiles had searched every single shack and the men had 
been taken to the village school to be interrogated while the 
women had been led to the Asamblea de Dios evangelical 
church. 

Then, Lieutenant Rivera Martínez ordered Obdulio 
Sandoval, Kaibil instructor Alfonso Vicente Bulux, the cook, 
Fabio Pinzón, and two other soldiers, among them one that 
had a mole on his left cheek, to check out all the shacks once 
again and make sure that no one had been left behind. 

V

María Juliana Hernández Morán felt deeply uneasy as she 
prepared breakfast for her family. The day before, her sons, 
Salomé Armando, 11, and Ramiro, 23, had gone to Las 
Cruces, riding a mule, to buy medicine and other supplies, 
but they had not returned. A few days earlier, María Juliana 
had heard gunshots in the distance.

She was absorbed in these thoughts when the front door 
came crashing down. Olive green uniforms, black boots, 
a Galil rifle pointed at her head. “Sons of bitches, we’re 
going to blow your brains out!”, yelled the soldiers at the 
terrified family. They were wearing military badges and red