Finding Oscar: Massacre, Memory and Justice in Guatemala, Chapter 4

(Editor’s note: This is the fourth of an eight part series)

By Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica, and Ana Arana, Fundación MEPI

Chapter 4: Strange News From Home

In the summer of 2000, Oscar was living near Boston when he received a perplexing letter.

“AG Looks for Abducted of Dos Erres,” the headline declared. “They Survived The Massacre.”

The story went on to explain that prosecutors had identified both young men. Prosecutors believed that one of them, Oscar Ramírez Castañeda, was living somewhere in the United States. It was quite possible that he had been too young to remember anything about the massacre or his abduction by the lieutenant, the prosecutors said.

The newspaper ran a family photo showing Oscar as an 8-year-old. The article reported more information about Ramiro than about Oscar because prosecutors had succeeded in finding and questioning the older boy before helping him win asylum in Canada.

There was a recent snapshot of Ramiro as a military cadet, holding a rifle and wearing the uniform of the army that had slaughtered his family. The story mentioned the investigators’ suspicion that the two boys, who both had light skin and green eyes, were brothers.

“The order was to finish off all the inhabitants of Dos Erres,” the article said. “No one can explain why Lt. Ramírez Ramos and Sgt. Lopez Alonzo made the decision to take the boys.”

Oscar was mystified. He called an aunt in Zacapa.

Guatemala City newspaper article

“What is this all about?” he asked. “Why is my photo in the paper?”

The aunt had seen the article. She told him she didn’t know what to make of the allegations, except that they were false. She insisted that the lieutenant was Oscar’s father, period. The story struck her as an attempt by leftists to smear the name of an honorable soldier.

In the persistent ideological strife of Guatemala, that was plausible. Many families affiliated with the

military and right-wing political parties felt that the left had distorted the narrative of the civil war. They complained that Guatemalan and foreign critics exaggerated the abuses of the armed forces while playing down the violence by guerrillas.

Oscar’s aunt convinced him that the allegations were too bizarre to be credible.

“If I really have a brother like they are claiming, let him find me,” he told her. “He’ll know if he’s my brother or not.”

Oscar’s memories of his early childhood were hazy. He had never known anything about his mother. He had no real memories of the lieutenant. The boy grew up in a two-room house on an idyllic farm in the hot and dry region of Zacapa, where his family raised cows and grew tobacco. The family matriarch was Oscar’s grandmother, Rosalina. She had taken charge of his upbringing after the death of Lt. Ramírez. Oscar considered her his mother.

Rosalina was affectionate and strict. Oscar always had chores. He milked the cows at 5 a.m., worked in the fields after school, tried to make cigars — though he never quite got the hang of it. He loved life on the farm, riding horses, roaming the countryside. His aunts made sure he was clean and neat for school.

The Ramírezes were strivers. One of Oscar’s uncles was a prominent local doctor. Two aunts were nurses. The family and their neighbors and friends idolized Oscar’s father, the lieutenant, for his battlefield exploits and his generosity. He had helped pay for the education of his siblings. He had brought fellow fighters from his mercenary days in Nicaragua to settle in Zacapa. The community had even named a soccer field at a military school in Ramírez’s honor.

Curiously, though, Oscar had shown no interest in following in the lieutenant’s footsteps. His aunts urged him to go to military school, but he had an independent streak. He didn’t like taking orders.

Oscar got a vocational high school degree in accounting. It was hard to find work. After his grandmother died, he skirmished with relatives over an inheritance. He decided to seek his fortune in the United States. So in late 1998, Oscar made his way north like so many fellow Guatemalans. He flew to Mexico and slipped illegally across the border into Texas.

After a brief stay in Arlington, Va., Oscar settled in Framingham, Mass. The suburb west of Boston had a growing community of Central Americans and Brazilians. He found a job in the produce section of a supermarket. The pay and benefits were solid, and nobody bothered him about his immigration status.

Oscar’s new life soon consumed him. He reunited with Nidia, his teenage sweetheart, who had arrived from Guatemala. In 2005, they moved into a small duplex in a weathered residential complex.

Nidia gave birth to two girls and a boy, smart and energetic kids who slid easily between English and Spanish. The family kept Oscar busy: church, swimming lessons, cookouts on the outdoor grill. He rose to assistant manager at the supermarket but lost the job in an immigration crackdown in 2009. He found new jobs as a supervisor: mornings at a cleaning company, evenings at a fast-food restaurant.

Oscar was polite and poised and spoke English well. Some of the regulars at the Mexican burrito place that he managed even mistook him for the owner.

Despite the precarious nature of life as an illegal immigrant, Oscar was healthy and putting food on the table. He considered himself a happy man.

The newspaper article had stirred doubts. But he came from a part of the world where mysteries abounded, where allegations and suspicions outnumbered facts.

As the years went on, he thought about the episode less and less.

This article first appeared in ProPublica.

With reporting fromHabiba Nosheen, Special to ProPublica, and Brian Reed, This American Life

Read Chapter 1 HERE.
Read Chapter 2 HERE.
Read Chapter 3 HERE.