Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

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one of the two teenage girls who were taken from the village 
after the massacre and raped by the entire troop, in order to 
demonstrate “how to kill someone”.

He added that a week later a military helicopter arrived and 
took him to the School of the Americas, nicknamed “The 
School of Assasins”, which was established in Panama in 
1946 and later transferred to Fort Benning, Georgia. Its 
pupils  included, among others, the former Panamanian 
dictator Manuel Noriega and Roberto Eduardo Viola, who 
staged the 1976 military coup in Argentina, all of whom 
received the Kubark torture manual as a basic textbook. 

When Franco Ibáñez was asked why he had decided to tell 
his story, he answered: “Because I’ve got children and the 
truth is that I’m sorry about what happened…I don’t want 
my children to suffer like I did…” His voice faltered, he 
removed his spectacles and covered his face with one hand 
to hide his tears. 

XX

The survivors of the massacre listened attentively to 
Peruvian military expert Rodolfo Robles Espinoza, who 
testified in the trial of Byron Lima Oliva and Mario Sosa 
Orantes, convicted for the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi 
Conedera, author of the Catholic Church’s REHMI report 
on wartime human rights violations, as well as the trial of 
sergeant Manuel de Jesús Beteta, found guilty of murdering 
anthropologist Myrna Mack, and many cases of massacres 
committed in Peru under the Alberto Fujimori regime.

Robles Espinoza explained that the Guatemalan armed 
conflict occurred during the Cold War when the United 
States had adopted the National Security Doctrine, a brand