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 / The long road to justice

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regularly seized by terrible hallucinations in which they relive 
the events of the past, and others who suffer from depression, 
mild schizophrenia, stress and anxiety. For years, survivors 
were forced to swallow their grief and cry for their loved 
ones in silence and the trauma they suffered has often led to 
psychosomatic illness. So far, two survivors of the massacre 
have suffered from depression and have subsequently died of 
cancer. 

After the massacre, many survivors and their families returned 
to the towns in the southern coast that they had migrated 
from but more than sixty decided to stay at Las Cruces, either 
because they had nothing to go back to or because they felt 
that leaving amounted to abandoning their dead. Given the 
geographical dispersion of the survivors, only those who 
stayed in Las Cruces have received counseling. 

In 2008, a young MSPAS counselor who prefers not to be 
identified as the confidentiality contract she signed with the 
Ministry of Health prevents her from speaking openly about 
her work. Whereas in 1982, Las Cruces was a small village 
where no more than twenty families lived, in November last 
year it became Guatemala’s 334th municipality, with a total 
of 35 thousand inhabitants. Something that has not changed, 
however, is the fact that after three decades the roads remain 
unpaved.

Overcoming fear and getting survivors to tell their stories was 
not an easy task, as many of them still felt the gaze of the 
watchful eye boring into their skin, and feared that the army 
could take reprisals against them. 

The counselor began to set up women’s support groups, 
which gradually began to expand until an Association of 
Survivors of the Dos Erres Massacre was created. To this