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 / The long road to justice

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whereas in Retalhuleu we didn’t even have a tiny piece of 
land”, explains Saúl.

Clearing the jungle without chainsaws or vehicles was a huge 
feat. With no more than a machete, peasants cut through the 
dense vegetation in sweltering heat, shaking off mosquitoes 
that often carried tropical diseases such as dengue fever, 
malaria or yellow fever.

At first they had to sleep out in the open, using a few empty 
sacks as a makeshift mattress, and gradually they began to 
build shacks with a soil ground, a palm roof and walls made 
from sugar canes tied together with wooden sticks. The walls 
inside were lined with cardboard or plastic in order to make 
the shack waterproof. A flat earthenware pan used to bake 
corn tortillas, known in Spanish as comal, was placed in the 
outer patio.

Those who survived the Dos Erres massacre remember 
Federico Aquino Ruano as a slim and short man who enjoyed 
smoking cigarettes. He had a deep voice that conveyed a 
sense of authority but he endeavored to solve problems in a 
peaceful manner. 

By the early 1980s, peasant families had arrived from Santa 

Rosa, Jutiapa, Retalhuleu and other departments in Eastern 

Guatemala and the Southern coast. Dos Erres had a total 

of 745 inhabitants and where there used to be jungle, there 

was now an abundance of corn, bean, pineapple and peanut 

plantations, as well as extensions of land where cows, pigs 

and chickens were reared. The harvest was long – lasting 

from September to June – and Saúl remembers that his 

father managed to harvest up to 69 tons of corn per year, 

which he transported in a cart to Las Cruces, the local trade 

hub, where he sold it to the merchants who arrived every 
week with huge trucks.