Biggest-ever exhumation from Peru's long, brutal conflict exposes horrors 3 decades later
Biggest-ever exhumation from Peru's long, brutal conflict exposes horrors 3 decades later
By Franklin Briceno, The Associated Press December 3, 2013 1:01 AM
CHUNGUI, Peru - Valentin Casa can't shake the recurring nightmares. And this day certainly isn't helping.
The 36-year-old farmer looks on as forensic investigators unearth a pair of finger bones and two copper rings from a mass grave in the village of Huallhua on the eastern steppes of Peru's Andes. The grave contains the long-buried remains of two women and 13 children, and Casa believes the bones and rings belonged to his mother.
As a boy 27 years ago, Casa watched from behind trees as soldiers and their paramilitary allies dismembered and killed his mother and other women and children left behind by fleeing Shining Path rebels. Civilians suspected of backing the rebels were hunted down and killed. Two weeks later, troops and their civilian confederates caught and killed men from Casa's village, including his father, whose throat they slit.
Three decades later, this isolated corner of Peru is witnessing the biggest exhumation to date of victims of the nation's 1980-2000 internal conflict. The worst of its carnage occurred on these hills between the Andes ridge and Amazon jungle.
"Everybody here is traumatized," Casa says as he watches the work underway. "Whoever says he isn't is lying."
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