Between the Cries for Sadness and for Pain

All day long we were fleeing. We ran seeking the ravines. We brought all of the injured from the other villages; there were many. The largest number were women and little children. We hid in the mountains, but the women wore clothes of many colors, and from the helicopters they could see us very well.

We saw the helicopters begin to fly in circles, surrounding us all. They began to machine-gun the people. The only way of saving ourselves was to run to the ravine and throw ourselves into it, which was quite steep.

We began to run and run to the mountain, falling and falling. The small children ran alone. They were being left behind, getting lost among so many people; and all shouted, "Mama, Mama..." And then the women upon seeing them behind returned to get them. Many of them on returning fell from the bullets. We couldn't return to assist them because the army came to 10 meters from those at the end of the multitude.

On arriving at the ravine, a woman behind me fell. She carried a child on her back and another in her arms, which fell to the ground in a long fall. She was all covered with blood and her hand dislocated. She shouted to me, "Help me, help me with my child. Look, I can't carry it, I can't endure it!"

I took the child without looking at it, because I only grabbed it and ran at the side of the woman. In a moment I heard the child shout, then I saw its head. It was split, almost open.

We fell, tumbled, rose up, and returned to running. Without giving it a thought, we had walked and run for six hours.

We stopped and cleaned the wounds of the women and children. We could hardly do anything, because we had arms and legs completely dislocated or broken. We had no sedatives, nothing to cure or bandage with.

It began to rain heavily. The children cried from hunger. It was seven o'clock and everything was dark, dark. The injured we placed in a ranch that had only a roof, no walls. We also put some children in there. We started looking after how each other was. We were shaking with the cold, beneath the trees.

One woman cried; she cried a lot, talking in the language of Quiche. I didn't understand well what she said. Someone said to me, "She's crying because her child was killed."

I had seen the little child. She had been born only 15 days earlier. The woman had carried the child on her back. She fell when she was running, and she fell on the child and it was killed. She said, "God is going to punish me. I have a great sin on me because I have killed my child." Others tried to tell her that she had not killed it, that it happened from fleeing from the army.

Some men cried and said: "I am not a good father; I lost my child." "I only brought two; three are left and lost." All night one could hear the crying of the people: the wounded cried out in pain, the children cried from fear and hunger, and the women for their lost and dead children; because when we were all together, we could tell that all of the children were not there. That is how we passed the night and part of the morning, between the cries for sadness and for pain.

There came a moment when I could not endure it anymore. I was trying to give courage to the people, but to see so much pain.... When they had calmed somewhat, I went to one side to cry, because I felt that I couldn't do anything for anyone.

A woman said, "God is not with us, God has abandoned us. If we haven't done anything bad, if we haven't asked for so much, why does God abandon us now?"

I no longer had any words. Yes, I had known that it wasn't God that had done this to us, but confronted with so much pain, how could I make them understand that it wasn't the work of God but of men?

Testimony of a woman doing pastoral work in the highlands of Guatemala at the time this article appeared.