Chajul, Guatemala
. Another outing we had from Nebaj was to the neighboring village of Chajul, which was another hard-hit area during the civil war (noticing a pattern?). We met with a group promoting education, community organization, and women's rights in Chajul and outlying urban areas. After that we walked down to the church and she told us what it was like to live in Guatemala during the armed conflict. In all my traveling, her account was the most vivid and riveting. For a long time, people remained in the town while the army moved in, and the violence escalated as people were "disappeared." One had to be very cautious and clever during this time. For example, the woman we talked to told us of a time strangers came to her home and urged her to join the guerillas in fighting the army. If she had gone with them, she would have been tortured and killed, because it was army men in disguise, looking for people who wanted to resist them. The church, below, was taken over by the army and us...