The New York Times

Monday, April 10, 2000

EDITORIAL OBSERVER

The Search for Truth in Old Burial Grounds

By TINA ROSENBERG

On December 1981, the Atlacatl Battalion of the army of El Salvador arrived in El Mozote, a hamlet in the war zone of Moraz n. Most of the local men, terrified of being labeled guerrillas, fled to the mountains as the soldiers approached. But the women, children and elderly remained. Over the next three days, soldiers killed around 800 of them in the largest massacre of the war.

Eleven years later, El Mozote was invaded again. Four young Argentines and a dozen or so Salvadorans, this time armed with shovels and brushes, entered the hamlet and began to dig. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team found the skeletons of at least 143 people in El Mozote, 131 of them children under 12. But because an amnesty law passed in 1993 is interpreted as barring even the investigation of wartime crimes, the group was unable to get permission to look at graves in the surrounding hamlets -- until last week. Nineteen years after the massacre, families in the villages of La Joya and Jocote Amarillo will soon receive the bones of their loved ones.

The field of forensic anthropology -- the study of skeletal remains for legal purposes -- is not new. But only since 1984 has it been used as a human rights tool. Since then, small groups of people have been finding and digging up skeletons in mass graves and potters' fields around the world, trying to figure out who lies buried and how they died. Exhumations have taken place in Iraqi Kurdistan, Zimbabwe, Bosnia, Ethiopia, South Africa, Kosovo, East Timor and various nations in Latin America, among other places. Investigators for the war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda are performing hundreds of them.

The exhumations have brought comfort to families and communities. In a few cases, they have provided crucial evidence at trials or proof of atrocities that galvanized a previously indifferent public. A victim's testimony is easily dismissed by those who wish not to believe it. "But it's hard to argue with a skull that has a gunshot wound to the back of the head," says Clyde Snow, the Oklahoma forensic anthropologist who is the father of the movement.

In 1984, Argentina had just returned to democratic rule after seven years of a murderous dictatorship. A truth commission was trying to write the full story of that era's crimes. Its members were learning a lot from the survivors, but very little from the dead. Eric Stover, an official at the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, assembled a team of forensic experts. It included Mr. Snow, who had examined skeletons as part of criminal investigations all over the United States.

The visiting Americans found few trained Argentines with whom they could work -- the medical examiner's office was implicated in the killings and torture, and other experts either wanted high salaries or, quite understandably, were afraid. But a group of anthropology students heard about the mission and showed up at Mr. Snow's hotel to volunteer. A few days later, using string, spoons and screens from their parents' houses, they performed their first exhumation. The group eventually found more than 500 skeletons, and Mr. Snow presented a dramatic slide show as testimony in the 1985 trial of nine top junta members.

Of the original Argentine students, 3 are still members of the 11-person team. The group, which is financed by foundations and European governments, has worked or helped to train local investigators in more than 20 countries.

The exhumation in the Guatemalan village of Rio Negro shows the impact such work can have. Digging began in 1993, at the request of courageous local citizens' groups. A team of Guatemalan students trained largely by Mr. Snow found the skeletons of at least 143 people, including 44 women and 99 children. In April 1994, the remains were returned to the survivors of Rio Negro for a formal reburial with full Catholic and Mayan ritual.

The case was the first massacre investigation that received extensive coverage in the Guatemalan press. The exhumation helped achieve the only convictions that have resulted from the scorched-earth massacres of the early 1980's -- although of low-level triggermen. The Rio Negro publicity helped insure there would be a truth commission, which described the armed forces' slaughter of Mayan Indians as "genocide."

Today, Guatemalan forensic investigators, like the Argentines, participate in digs around the world. Missing, however, is a concentrated effort to train investigators in countries with histories of mass murder. As advances in the use of DNA allow easier identification of remains and as trials for human rights abuses become more widespread, exhumations will be even more valuable for exposing -- and thus helping to deter -- mass killings. Murderers can count on eliminating or intimidating witnesses. Even years later, however, forensic anthropology can make eloquent and effective testimony from the silence of the dead.