by Ken McCormick
Physicians
who are trained by a publicly-funded institution in Guatemala are required to
spend one year providing supervised medical service in rural communities that
would otherwise have little or no access to western medicine. One such young doctor was posted to a town
in the district of Chimaltenango during the 1980’s phase of the Guatemalan
civil war.
Late
one night there came a knock at the door of the doctor’s house. Assuming there was a medical emergency of
some sort, the doctor rushed to the door wearing only his underpants. He was surprised to find three uniformed
soldiers standing outside.
“Are
you Doctor X?” asked one of the soldiers.
Everyone knew that it was a common occurrence at this time for people to
disappear during the night, never to be seen again, but the doctor saw no point
in trying to deny that that was who he was.
“Come
with us,” said the soldier. The doctor
started to suggest that he ought to put some clothes on, but the soldiers just
took him by the arms and said “let’s go.”
They put him in a car with them and they drove in silence to a military
compound. The doctor could not imagine
what he might have done, or who might have accused him, to cause him to become
a “disappeared” person. He clung to the
hope that his medical services were needed.
Inside
the headquarters building, he was led in his underpants before the
commandant. “You are a doctor?” asked
the commandant. The doctor was
relieved. Apparently his services were
needed. Pointing to an empty bucket on
the floor, the commandant said “take that bucket and go with Sergeant Y. You will do as the sergeant instructs you.”
The
doctor was led to a truck and driven to a remote location. All over the ground were dead bodies, heaped
here and there, shot to death as though in a great massacre. The sergeant pulled a sharp knife from a
sheath at his belt and said “take this and cut off the right ear of each of the
dead and place the ears in the bucket.”
Appalled,
but too frightened to resist, the doctor did as instructed. When he had finished, he was led back to the
truck and eventually found himself standing again before the commandant in his
underpants, this time holding a bucket full of human ears. The commandant had him spread some newspaper
on the floor and told him to count the ears.
The commandant sat behind his desk looking at some papers while the
doctor did as he had been told. When he
had finished, the commandant asked “How many?”
“Thirty-six,”
replied the doctor. The commandant
wrote this number upon a piece of paper and said to the doctor, “Very
good. Sergeant Y will take you back to
your quarters now.” The doctor was
driven back to his house in silence.
At the
earliest opportunity, the doctor left Guatemala quite abruptly and sought
asylum in the United States as a political refugee.