For 36 years, civil war raged in Guatemala, killing as many as 200,000 men, women, and children. Over the last decade, mass unmarked graves have been discovered, laying bare the atrocities of the 1980s. While the government claimed armed rebels were responsible, crimes committed by military and paramilitary groups had long gone unreported.
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Daniel Hernandez, an artist and photojournalist who’s worked for Reuters and the Associated Press, volunteered to help identify the remains of thousands now being exhumed. DNA testing is expensive and time-consuming, he says, so most of the dead have been identified by the clothes they were wearing when they disappeared. “Many of the family members were witnesses to the murders,” Hernandez says, “so they vividly recall what the victims were wearing.”
When they returned to the farm, the peasants were tortured, killed, and buried. Hernandez and the forensic team set up shop in the farmhouse. “You could still see the marks on the beams left by the ropes they used to hang the people,” he says.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Daniel Hernandez photo and other uncredited photos.
