Huamanquiquia - What Paz y Esperanza was doing over Thanksgiving

While I and other Americans celebrated Thanksgiving the Paz y Esperanza Team in Ayacucho was using a divide and conquer strategy to (my team) accompany the families and friends of victims of the internal violence in Peru from 1980-2000. I was unable to join them because I was traveling to Lima for YAV retreat and cars in and out of Huamanquiquia only happen twce a week. It was interesting to hear about the prepwork and the report after they got back.
Our team divided into two groups. The first group left the week before Thanksgiving and traveled to a very rural Huamanquiquia with sleeping bags and water. Showers were a small mountain stream. Their role was to accompany the families and friends of the victims. 20 bodies had been discovered in Huamanquiquia using local testimony and witness, along with forensic science. The bodies were not all together like many of our accompaniament projects so this ehumation process would be more detailed. The nationaly certified forensic scientists do the digging and identifying (the exhumation), my team acts as witnesses, and supports those families and friends who are near by.
The Paz y Esperanza Team - Ayacucho is interdisciplinary. We have lawyers working in access and justice, social workers and a lawyer/psychologist in mental health, a reporter and I in communications, and pastors and community organizers in care and development.
So week one, was Omar (com), Ruth (mental health), Karina (lawyer), Felimon (care and dev), and Raul (driver of the illustrious and ubiquitous 4x4 toyota truck). They recovered 2 bodies that week so their families could give a proper burial and begin grieving in new ways, 30 years later.
Week two was the week of Thanksgiving. Edgar (driver), Milagros (mental health/law), I was supposed to go but schedule conflicted, Henry (access).
In the second week five bodies were uncovered, including one in the pueblo graveyard. In total 8 bodies were exhumed of the twenty. More work might be done in March in this area. The two week operation was slowed by high vegetation and difficult terrain.
This seems on the surface like a grizzly task, but it is part of the human rights work that Paz y Esperanza - Team Ayacucho (my team) engages in. Ayacucho was a region that was greatly impacted by the insurgency and the counterinsugency of the years of internal violence in Peru 1980-2000. It is the right of the people to grieve their losses and allow their loved ones to receive a dignified burial, and justice for the crimes purpotrated against them and their communities by the Shining Path and the military. At Paz y Esperanza Ayacucho we walk alongside of these individuals and communities, as long as it takes, and for that the victims of torture and injustice can give thanks.