Guatemalan sisters separated by war reunited after 30 years

Guatemala City, Agency
Two Ixil Indian sisters separated three decades ago during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war were reunited here Friday thanks to the efforts of the Mutual Support Group, or GAM, an organization representing victims of the conflict.

GAM's Mario Polanco told reporters he first met Juana Chamay at a church in the southern province of Escuintla and later encountered her sister, Magdalena, in San Juan Cotzal, a town in their native northwestern region of Quiche.

The sisters had not since each other since soldiers invaded the village of Cancap 30 years ago in search of leftist guerrillas.

Troops dragged the girls' parents, Miguel Chamay and Petronila Toma, from their home, tied them up and beat them while demanding information about the rebels.

Though they eventually realized Miguel and Petronilla didn't know anything, the soldiers forcibly split up the family, according to GAM.

Juana, injured in the encounter with the troops, was sent to a hospital in Escuintla, where she was adopted by nurse Guadalupe Mendez, who subsequently took the girl to live in Guatemala City.

Magdalena remained with her grandmother, Teresa Toma, in San Juan Cotzal, Quiche.

"She raised me as her daughter and she gave me schooling. I reached the second year of high school and as I no longer wanted to study because I didn't like it, she found me work with Social Security (state-run healthcare) in the capital. I spent 14 years there in various jobs," Juana, herself now the mother of a 7-year-old girl, said Friday of Guadalupe Mendez.

"I feel happy to have found my sister," Juana said, adding that she had only a vague memory of their parents. "I was very little. I know that they're dead now."

Magdalena, wearing traditional indigenous clothing and speaking broken Spanish, said only that she has two children, ages 7 and 9, before having cousin Ana Torres say on her behalf: "We came yesterday from San Juan Cotzal and we go back today or tomorrow. We only came to meet with my sister."

A joint GAM-Red Cross program has helped to arrange more than 100 reunions of separated relatives since 2001, Polanco said.

Guatemala's civil war left some 250,000 dead, the majority of them Indian peasants, and Quiche was the province that suffered most under the army's scorched-earth policies.