Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
On June 24, 1985 the IACHR received the following communication: On
Sunday March 11, at 9:00 a.m., Alvaro René Sosa Ramos was captured
while walking near Avenida Roosevelt on a soccer field in Guatemala City's
Zone 11. In his testimony he relates: “As I walked that way, a man off to the
side called me and, as I turned around to see who it was, aimed a gun at me.
I thought about running, but I saw eight men getting out of three vehicles
with dark polarized windows. They captured me and put a jacket over my
face, violently pushing me into a van. They then took me to a house. The
men left me seated for more than two hours, during which time I could hear
the screams of people coming from other rooms.
With my hands in cuffs, they forced me to take off my clothes, then tied my
feet and hung me upside-down. Moments later, they beat me with the butt of
a machete, accusing me of being a member of the Guatemalan Revolution-
ary Organization. I remember that a 'kaibil' (special forces) struck my face
with the butt of his rifle. One of these blows opened my eyebrow completely.
When they weren't beating me, I could hear the beatings and screams of the
other victims. I lost all track of time while being tortured. Afterwards, they
lowered me and threw me to the ground. A few hours later they hung me
upside-down by my feet again and a kaibil would arrive periodically just to
kick me in the face. After receiving these blows, they would lower me so that
I could see them doing the same thing to another man.
They asked me if I knew that man, who was very deformed from the tor-
tures he had endured. I recognized him as SILVIO MATRICARDI SALAM.
I knew him when he was President of the National Front of Professors and
I was a union leader of the Diana Products factory. I was impressed upon
seeing his body so deformed by the many blows he received. I immediately
told them that I did not know the man. When we returned to the first room,
they hung me up again, this time applying electrical currents to my body.
It is incredible how violently the body reacts to electrical shocks, even
hitting the wall at times. There were times that I would let my head hit the
wall, hoping to lose consciousness, but I was never able to. After the elec-
trical shocks my body burned with fever. I was thirsty and asked for water,
but they gave me none. They said that I was crazy, that what I heard was
air. I could hear the other victims also requesting water, but the torturers
denied that there was any.
After the application of electrical shocks, they always asked me if I would
talk and identify people. The fact that I had remained conscious helped me
to think what I could do to escape. On one occasion when they asked me, I
said that perhaps there would be people I knew on Montúfar Street in Zone
