Speaking from the grave

By: Stephen Smith

Last week a group of us from USC Shoah Foundation were in Guatemala with our testimony partner, the Foundation for Forensic Anthropology in Guatemala (FAFG). We attended the funeral of a Mayan man whose remains were recently exhumed by FAFG – 36 years after he disappeared during the genocide there.
Stephen Smith

Lucía Samayoa was born in Guatemala, and, after moving away at age 6, was schooled in various countries throughout Latin America.

But it wasn’t really until last year, when she started working at Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) in Guatemala City, that the 30-year-old really gained a deeper understanding of the genocide that killed roughly 200,000 civilians – mainly indigenous Mayans – at the hands of the Guatemalan military in the early 1980s.

Fredy Peccerelli Tells Story of FAFG’s Partnership with USC Shoah Foundation at Guatemala Conference

The conference hosted by USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research began in earnest Monday morning with a fascinating and at times heart-wrenching presentation by Freddy Peccerelli, executive director of Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala (FAFG).

Los Angeles - July 28, 2015 - USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education has joined forces with La Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG), a Guatemalan forensics organization, to collect video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Guatemalan Genocide, which killed some 200,000 civilians in the early 1980s, mainly indigenous Mayans, at the hands of a military junta whose leader was convicted of genocide and war crimes in May 2013.

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