History of the hanged woman

Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

When they got to the town, they sent word to her mother, informing her that her daughter had been captured by the patrol. So her mother went running to help her daughter and she said, “This is my daughter. She’s not a guerrilla.” The daughter had already been handed over to the army base, and it was already really late, maybe around five in the afternoon. Even so, her mother tried to get her daughter out, but no one would listen to her at all. Later in the night she took the baby with her to ask the commander of the civil patrol (PAC) for help. She said to him, “Please, let my daughter go free.” With tears she was pleading with the man, saying to the commander, “Look how much the baby is crying. Please free his mother.” Well, the woman fought incredibly hard to save her daughter, but the commander did not do her the favor of freeing her daughter. The commander - it didn’t bother him even to kill her. He was just fine, stretched out on his bed, while the woman was crying, pleading for her daughter. But the commander wouldn’t help her and he didn’t want to listen to her. Rather, he told the woman to leave. “Get out of my house and if you don’t do what I say then you’ll stay here too because here is your father whom you must obey.” He threatened the woman with his weapon, which was right beside him. This really frightened the woman so she left. She could say nothing more because if she did they were going to kill her. She couldn’t help her daughter because now she couldn’t do anything at all.

She went home that night, but on the next day she heard the sound of the bell being rung. That sounding of the bell signifies death according to army tradition. If they sound the bell it’s to gather the people of the town. Just at that moment, they came to inform the woman that they were going to execute her daughter by hanging. She was filled with sadness for her daughter’s fate because the hour of her death had arrived and there was no reason for it. The woman hoisted the baby on her back and left to see her daughter, but she couldn’t endure watching her daughter’s death. She was very frightened for herself and also for her grandson whom she carried on her back. Nevertheless, she saw that her daughter was still hanging and she asked them if they could take her daughter down. She told them that her baby needed to nurse because he was dying of hunger from so much crying. But the soldiers wouldn’t allow it. They said, “We don’t need children here, so get out,” and so the woman left. She hid because she didn’t want to see what they were going to do to her daughter. And that’s how her daughter died. She died even though she was innocent.

Interviewer: The story of this event was recorded in 1998 and, all the while she recounted the history of la violencia in 1982, the woman cried and cried. She felt sadness, pain, worry, and anguish. The daughter was hung in front of the municipal building with all the people looking on because they were forced to watch the soldiers carry out their justice. But this was not justice, because they killed honorable people, people who were without blame.

We hope that the war will never return, that what we suffered will never happen again, because this history is so terrible, so horrifying.