53

 / The long road to justice

Pz

P

XXII

During the Pimentel Ríos trial, the Gómez Hernández 
family told the court that a few days after the massacre they 
had seen a helicopter land with “white men who spoke a 
foreign language”. Thirty years later, they finally knew who 
these men were when the prosecution read out loud a series 
of telegrams sent by the US embassy to the CIA during the 
civil war.

These reports were written by the embassy after a field visit 
to Dos Erres on December 30 and they give details about 
how the village was founded as part of a state policy to 
colonize Petén, and the fact that it appeared to have been 
razed, which suggested, according to the authors, that the 
most likely culprit had been the army.

The US government was fully aware of what had happened 
in Dos Erres and never said a word. Perhaps it believed at the 
time that the 201 peasants who were killed on December 7, 
1982 were no more than collateral damage in the war against 
international communism.

XXIII

Pedro Pimentel Ríos seemed tiny when he stood next to his 
defense lawyer, Manuel Antonio Lima, a bulky man with 
broad shoulders, golden fillings and a pock-marked face, who 
clearly appeared to have coached the former Kaibil soldier 
on when and how to speak.

The former Kaibil soldier looked small and lonely. Unlike 
Ríos Montt or his Defense Minister Héctor Mario López 
Fuentes, who arrived in court with a large number of