So from the little township we travelled throughout the mountains to a remote location, through a manned and gun controlled checkpoint looking like a James Bond set...up the zigzagging side of the dam through a tunnel and out to the panorama of this massive man made lake.
We left our car and the guides' motorbike at the helipad and climbed aboard a metal dingy...
All above us large flocks of vultures circle eerily... it's a very spooky feeling and given I perhaps knew more than everyone else that the lives of many people had been forfeited to create this dam, its stark beauty did nothing to alleviate the feeling...
where we travelled for over 40 mins to a small wooden landing that is their only access to the outside world having been cut off by the damming of the river... what was once their livelihood and food source..
whilst he ......went to visit the many mass graves that they were taken to see ...
pictures with thanks from Juliana Skaggs.
All above us large flocks of vultures circle eerily... it's a very spooky feeling and given I perhaps knew more than everyone else that the lives of many people had been forfeited to create this dam, its stark beauty did nothing to alleviate the feeling...
where we travelled for over 40 mins to a small wooden landing that is their only access to the outside world having been cut off by the damming of the river... what was once their livelihood and food source..
From there we waited for the 20 or so villagers that had been walking the 8 hours over these impossibly steep mountains to arrive to join us and have the only power source turned on by generator to watch the documentary on the history of this small mountain village...!
the host running the event was a survivor... he had been the same age as these kids I photographed the next day when, as a young child his family were massacred before him. He, like a handful of survivors, escaped and ran into the mountains where they survived on berries for two years... many did not make it and the feeling is profound...
love that these two made friends if only for a day or so...
While my son went with the group up the mountains for several hours in full midday heat... and it was again very different here, dry arid and very hot where the day before had been cold and wet not one hour drive away as the crow flies
I am glad to say I stayed and played with the children and got to be with the women and their wares
... but I believe it left an impression on my son.
In these graves lie just a fraction of the 200,000 massacred by the Guatemalan government this little village only lost a mere 500 people...for refusing to leave their land to build this hydro electric dam... part of at least some 1.5 million that were mutilated tortured displaced or murdered throughout Guatemala during the political war not 30 years go... I became very aware just how dangerous this country was and how deeply vulnerable one can be... even though it was serene and a time of political peace, these things can erupt very quickly.
I have come home with a very different feel to how I will move forward in my life and I hope my son has taken the best from it also...
samjewel.com
