Written by Jackie McVicar
Photo: James Rodriguez/www.mimundo.org
Source: The Dominion
TATAMAGOUCHE, NS–Walking through the streets of Guatemala City, HIJOS slogans are hard to miss: “Justice for Nueva Linda”; “Trial and Punishment for Military Assassins!” Words demanding an end to impunity remind everyone that 36 years of civil war in Guatemala have not ended in justice or peace.
HIJOS Guatemala—Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Forgetting and Silence—was founded in 1999 by young people who were forced into exile, or who lost family members due to State repression during the war. (The group’s name, HIJOS, is a play on the Spanish word for “children.”) In June 2009, HIJOS Guatemala celebrated 10 years of fighting to preserve historical memory, to end impunity, to memorialize the victims of the war, and to shed light on the human rights violations committed during the conflict.
Using public education events, protests, and political art and murals to articulate and strengthen the movement toward justice, HIJOS is comprised of students, workers and professionals of Ladinos (Guatemalans of mixed Hispanic and Indigenous origin) and Indigenous descent. A new generation of HIJOS is now being born as those who started the group 10 years ago pass on to their hijos the struggle of those before them. HIJOS members—including children of the disappeared and murdered, and Guatemalans who stand in solidarity with the group—work in rural communities as well as in the urban centre of Guatemala City. While many group members hold “day jobs” with other human rights and social justice organizations, they are more than simply volunteers for HIJOS; for many, HIJOS is a way of life, an extended family.
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