Profiles

Learn more about the people who live in Santa Anita la Unión. Read their stories...

My name in the war was Moises, but my name in civil society is Julio Laines Perez. 

I was born in the community Cumbre de Papal in the department of HueHuetenango.  I’ll tell you about a few experiences that I had during the war.  One of my first jobs in the war was with the Radio Voz Popular (Popular Voice).  This was a radio broadcast that the guerillas put out every week to inform the people about the struggle.  We talked about why we were fighting, about the injustices that we saw happening in our country, and about what had happened in the last week – how many deaths there had been, how many injured. 

Every week we had to broadcast from a different place because the army was always locating us and coming after us.  They would be able to track our signal, not to an exact place, but to a general area, so every week after the broadcast we had to gather all of our equipment and go to a new location.  I worked there for about a year, hauling equipment and setting it up for the weekly broadcast.

My first combat experience came when I first joined the guerilla front ORPA in 1983.  We got the order to burn down a finca called La Rita, and so we went there and we burned the finca.  Not long after the army came with helicopters and soldiers.  We ran at first, but it was difficult because we had helicopters flying above our heads and soldiers running behind us.  We decided to hide and wait, so we waited the whole night through without sleeping, sitting back-to-back, just listening.  It was hard, never knowing when the army could find you or a helicopter could start shooting at you.  But we had decided to do this because we knew that it was for a cause.  We did it for our family and for the people, to see a change in the society through the use of arms. 

We still fight for these changes, although the fight has changed forms from arms to politics.  There still exists repression, but at least now we are able to speak up against what we feel is wrong.