Front Burner - He survived a massacre and became living evidence

Episode Date: March 26, 2019

In 1982 a brutal massacre in a small farming community during the Guatemalan civil war left over 160 men, women and children dead. Over thirty years later, one of the men responsible for the horrific murders has been sentenced to more than 5000 years in prison by a Guatemalan Court. His name is Santos López Alonzo. Today on Front Burner, CBC's Nahlah Ayed explains how a little boy that Santos López kidnapped from the village after the massacre? would one day grow up and help put him behind bars.

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Uncover. The Village. Uncover the Village. Coming April 2nd. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. In 1982, there was a brutal massacre in a small farming community. And what's become known as the massacre of Dos Heres. It was during the Guatemalan Civil War. There was a screaming outside. Wake up, open the doors.

And it left over 160 men, women, and children dead. The unit entered a village, and over the next three days, they systematically killed men, women and children. Over 30 years later, one of the men responsible for the horrific murders has now been sentenced to over 5,000 years in prison by a Guatemalan court. The sentence representing 30 years for each killing and 30 years for crimes against humanity. His name is Santos Lobes Alonso. against humanity. His name is Santos Lobes Alonso. And today, we're going to tell you about how a little boy that he kidnapped from the village after the massacre would one day grow up and help put him behind bars. If I'm alive, it's for one purpose. I want everybody who participates

in the massacre in my family in jail. My colleague Nala Ayed spoke with that boy. only in jail. My colleague Nala Ayed spoke with that boy. His name is Ramiro Cristales. Was Ramiro a trophy or was taking him an act of mercy? It's really hard to say. And the way it unfolds later doesn't make it any clearer. He now lives in Canada and we're going to hear about his amazing story of survival and his fight for justice. A warning here that what you're about to hear includes disturbing details. That's today on FrontBurner. Nella, it's so nice to have you here again. Hi, thanks for having me.

So can you tell me about Ramiro Cristales and his life as a boy? Well, he had a very simple kind of typical life in Guatemala when he was about five years old. He grew up in the northern department of Petén in Guatemala in a little village called Dos Eres. He was in a big family and they were a farming family, a farming settlement. In fact, it was a very hopeful kind of settlement. How did that all change for him? Well, the best way to describe this is that in the early hours of that morning, as you say, war pretty much arrived in Dos Lletras. And it arrived right at Ramiro's front door.

Guatemalan conflict stands out for the one-sidedness of the conflict. Basically, the Guatemalan military against leftist guerrillas. So essentially, armed men who were wearing civilian clothes came into the village and they knocked on every single door. There was a screaming outside. Wake up, open the doors. And they knocked on Ramirez's door as well and asked everybody to leave. And so to him, the way he describes it now as an adult,

he sounds like a little child. He sort of gets the look of a little child talking about this. The fear in his eyes, the way he would have felt this apocalyptic event that he'd seen nothing like before. So it was guys with guns basically showing up at your front door and tying up your mother and your father and dragging everybody out. And these men with guns, who were they and why were they there? Well, they were members in the military. They belonged to an elite unit called the Caibiles. During Guatemala's 36-year civil conflict, there were many atrocities committed by an

army unit known as the Caibiles. And they apparently were there, we're told, because there had been an ambush recently in the nearby area to Deserres where several soldiers were killed and a number of guns were taken away. So ostensibly they were there to look for the perpetrators but also to try to find those guns. And this is all happening in the context of the civil war in Guatemala at the time? Yes, the civil war had started back in 1960 and it was raging.

Around 200,000 people were killed during Guatemala's 36-year civil war. But it really hit a high point or a low point, depending how you describe it. In 1982, when there was a military coup, a military regime was in charge and they were bent on crushing the guerrilla fighters. We started to cry. All of the people who lived behind me had been killed. All the houses were burned to the ground with the bodies inside. All that was left were ashes. And so that year, there were massacres and bodies piling up. There was a lot of carnage that year, and Dos Eres became one of the most infamous massacres

in that year and in the whole war. Can you take me back to that day in Dos Eres? These men walked into the house and tied up his father and beat him and then put rope around his mother's neck and marched everybody to the center of town. So he gets, he's watching all this and the father tells him and tells everybody, just do what they say. Everything will be okay. But of course it wasn't. So they walk all the way to the center of town and they separate the men from the women and the men are taken to the school

and the women and children are taken to the church. And this is when the horror really begins. The way this began is apparently they were interrogating the men, and so they were torturing them. And then when they were done torturing them, they would kill them. Then they began with the women. And so they would take them out a few at a time or one at a time from the church. Ramiro heard screaming. He would hear pleading, and then he would hear the screaming stop. The women were raped, and many of them were killed on the spot. Other horrible things, terrible sounds that Ramiro could hear were coming from the village's unfinished well, which wasn't far. And so what they were doing was shooting. It's hard to describe saying it out loud. I have to say. It's hard to even picture. It's hard to picture, but also not.

And that's what makes it so disturbing. So, so a lineup of people imagine at the well who were either shot or hit in the head with a sledgehammer and then dropped into the well. And, by the way, nearly half of them were children. At some point, we understand that someone dropped a grenade into the well. We asked him, who went into the well? And his response was, told them, everybody went into the well. And we also know that some of the people who were dropped into the well were still alive.

Wow. Where is Ramiro during all of this? Ramiro's still in the church. And until then, he was still with his mother. But there was a point when the door opened and a soldier showed up, actually more than one soldier, and they tried to take his mother away. And the moment when they took my mom was the hardest part for me because I remember grabbing my mom from her leg.

So he was there with his other siblings. He had a twin, another young five-year-old and a bunch of other brothers, and they tried to keep their mother from being taken away. So they held her leg, they clamped onto her body to try to stop these men from taking her away, but the men shooed them away, pushed them back into the church, and took the mother away.

What happened after they took his mother away? Because he wasn't allowed to go, he ran to the back of the church to see if he could tell what was going on. The church is built of wood wood so you can see outside. So there was like slats and you could watch? Yeah, slats, yeah. And then you can see.

He couldn't see his mother, but he could hear her. And again, he could hear her screaming and telling the men, please don't kill my children. What he did see was one of the soldiers grab his youngest sister by the feet and swing her against a tree. He smashed my sister to the tree. My sister stopped crying. My mom was screaming for help. And please don't kill my kids.

You witnessed the murder of your own sister? Yeah. And then he heard his mother screaming for quite a while and then he heard the scream stop and he surmised from that that his mother was dead so romero is now in the church. And what happens to him next? When he realizes his mother is dead, he said he cried nonstop. And then he was so exhausted, he fell asleep. And when he woke up, the church was pretty much empty. There was one other boy, who was three. And at some point, the soldiers came for them. And he was certain, even at that age, that he was next, that he would die next. But instead, they walked them kind of in the direction of leaving the village. And as they walked out, they were asking them,

as they passed these other bodies that weren't in the well, if they recognized any of them. And so they pointed, somebody pointed at a body and said, do you recognize that man? And Ramiro said, no, I don't. We said, no, I don't remember. I don't, I don't know this person. And then he said the most chilling line that I heard in that whole interview. The person who was hanging in front of me was my dad. And I realized then that that's a demonstration of, even as a five-year-old, his survival instinct was kicking in. So after Ramiro is let out of his village and his mother has been raped and murdered, his sister thrown against a tree, the people that he grew up with have been massacred.

And he sees his father hanging from a tree. This is beyond horrifying. Why? Why is he being let out of this? It's a really, really good question. And it's one that haunts him to this day. And there are a number of theories. One is that we heard, is that actually there were two boys.

It was Ramiro and a younger boy. And he was three. His name was Oscar. Is that these boys had light skin and green eyes, and that those things are coveted in Guatemala. We also have heard that it's apparently not unheard of that in these kinds of situations, and there are actually even websites dedicated to helping people find their families, that soldiers will take children from places they had participated in killing their families. It's in Guatemala and during the war.

So it's actually, it was fairly common, enough that there are actually groups out there that help these now grown-up children try to find their families. And so what actually happens to Ramiro after he leaves this village? Well, first they march through the jungle for several days. He doesn't know exactly how many.

And then suddenly they're on a helicopter. And it was only when they land on this large, sprawling base that he realizes that the men who had killed his family were actually soldiers in the military. How does he get off this base? Well, one of the soldiers said, I'm going to take you home. And it's a soldier that had taken a shine to him as they started their walk through the jungle.

He was feeding him, gave him honey and beans, and he said, I'm going to take you home. And he does take him home. And he'd seen that face before. In the village? In the village. It's a face that he recalled very well. It's a long face, high cheekbones, little eyes, a very broad jaw, and a mat of straight dark hair. And the first time he saw him was when he came into the church

to grab his mother. The man that grabbed his mother is now the man that's taking him home. Precisely. Who is this man? His name is Santos Lopez Alonso. He was in the Caibiles unit in the military and he decided to take him home. So he brought him back and changed his name and officially adopted him. Wow. The word, though, really is abduction. When I was living with Lopez, I always wanted to escape. Sometimes they don't even give me food. I was starving. I was skinny. And what is Ramiro's life like under Santos Lopez?

The best way to describe it is that it was an abusive relationship. It was a terrified existence. Ramiro told us about how he cried himself to sleep all the time. Every time he was drunk, he had that scary face. And I was saying, please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. He put him to work almost right away. Like when I asked Ramiro, how did he treat you? Did he treat you like a son? He said, no. I said, well, tell me in one word how he treats you. And he said, a slave. A slave. How did you manage to keep living with him and not show that you knew what he had done? I just pretended to live my life like normal.

But inside of me was like a volcano, sleeping. A sleeping volcano. Yeah. Sleeping volcano. Yeah. So I know that you spoke to Ramiro here in Canada. So he's obviously not still in Guatemala. How did he get here?

Well, it starts with the story of people who, years after the massacre happened, decided to investigate what happened in Dos Serres. So they first, you know, this one woman, Auro Elena Farfan, she's an activist for families who are trying to find missing ones. Her biggest discovery, of course, was when she took forensic anthropologists to the well and uncovered the bodies of 162 people. Wow. 162 people. And their bones.

That was a shocking discovery. But an even more astonishing discovery was that she learned by investigating that there were two boys that had survived the massacre. And she decided they had to be found. And so she and a prosecutor in the case, Sarah Romero, the two together researched, investigated until they found Santos Lopez. And they went and knocked on his door. And what does Santos Lopez tell them? Does he admit to the fact that he's taken Ramiro? Astonishingly, he admits everything. Wow. As long, and he agrees to confess as long as nobody writes anything down. So he tells them the entire story. And he talks about how the men were overcome with euphoria at the sight of blood in Dos Erres. And that that might have been what possessed them.

And he used the word devil. He said that the devil had gotten into them. So these are the words that Sarah told me, quoting Santos Lopez, because she didn't write a word down. But then, so the bigger question for the two women was, where is Ramiro? What happened to Ramiro? Right. And he wouldn't tell them exactly where he was, but he, this is where there's another shocking turn. He tells them that Ramiro is a soldier in the army.

And is he at this point a soldier in the army? Yes. soldier in the army. And is he at this point a soldier in the army? Yes, he's enlisted in the army, the very army, the same institution that was behind the massacre at Dos Eres. But the women were, the two women who were investigating this were horrified because they realized that as living evidence of a massacre perpetrated by the military, being in the middle of the military was the least safe place for him. How old was he at this time? He's about 22 at the time.

So how do these investigators that have discovered that Ramiro, living evidence of this horrendous massacre, is now in the army, what do they do? Well, they believed they'd hit a wall with Santos Lopez. So Sarah Romero, the prosecutor, said that she went to the military herself looking for him. And then later realized that in doing so, she might have outed him. So he was possibly in even more danger than when she started this process. So then now they're really, it's really urgent to find him. And somehow, for some reason, call it belated remorse, call it self-serving interest. But Santos Lopez changes his mind and he goes and physically

removes Romero from the military and brings him straight to the prosecutor. Really? Yeah. Miro from the military and brings him straight to the prosecutor. Really? Yeah. So the man that took his mother, participated in the massacre of his village, and then kept him as a slave for much of his life at this point, essentially helps these investigators locate him. Yeah. And I mean, we should discuss or it should be discussed what what his motivation is. It's hard to discern what his motivation is because he wasn't yet being looked at as a perpetrator necessarily. He was looked at as someone who could be a potential witness. And so it's easy to imagine why this might be self-serving.

It's hard to say, though. We asked for an interview with Santos Lopez. We got him a request. He said no to our request. So now that Santos Lopez has removed him from the military, what happens to Romero? Well, everything that I'm about to tell you happened in a matter of a few days. It was very quick because the urgency was that he was obviously in grave danger. Right. So he would be in grave danger because he witnessed this massacre. And he could conceivably point fingers at the people who were responsible for perpetrating it.

Exactly. So not only is he able to provide very rare witness testimony, but he himself, his existence is evidence of the link between the military and Dos Eres. Because how else would he have ended up in the house of a man who was involved in the massacre? It's incredible. I mean, if there was ever a case of living evidence, it is Romero. Right. So they realize that they need to protect him quickly. They do. And they realize that this was not possible in Guatemala. Because at the time, people were not freely talking about massacres and who did them, and especially whether the military did them or not. So the women, the prosecutor and the activist, basically start to work their contacts at embassies.

They try with Spain, with the U.S., with Australia. And the first to say yes to take him in was Canada. So they've made arrangements. And in the interim, literally within days, he meets his members of his real family. So his grandmother and grandfather, his uncles, aunts and cousins. And a day later, he's on a plane to a country that he's never seen in his life. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so he very quickly, in this whirlwind exit from Guatemala, he meets his real family,

and then he's essentially brought here to Canada alone? Yes, alone. Alone. And what's his life like here when he first starts living here? Well, the way he put it to me is that he's never spoken an English word in his life. It was hard for me because I don't know the language. I don't even know how to say thank you. It doesn't go very well.

Between the family stuff, you know, the fact that he suddenly realized he had this family he didn't know existed and all these memories coming back. It was incredibly cold as well. He was very cold. He found it, I mean, compared to the breezy days of Guatemala, Canada's cold in the winter. And it was just too much for him. He had a social worker and he told that person, I want to go home. I'm desperate to go home. I don't want to stay here. And they would say to him, well, you're a refugee now. You can't leave. And so he fell into a deep depression and actually at one point wanted to kill himself. He was suicidal. The sad part is I don't have a

place to go. You can bury your parents. You can go and talk to them. They never found your families. It was already impossible to recognize them. If you found a different way to talk to them, then. Yeah. How do you do it? When I talk to them is when I'm praying.

And I can tell you, they are with me everywhere. Wherever I go, they are with me. What kept him going? He has made it his life's mission to get justice for himself and for the people of Dos Eres. Now I understand, you know. If I'm alive, it's just for one purpose. I'm the voice of the people who doesn't exist. I want everybody who participates in the massacre in my family in jail.

And can you tell me more about that, this quest to get justice? Well, it's been a long-standing quest of his and others to try to find out exactly what happened there and to get reparations for those who survived, both inside and outside of the village. So there have been court cases both inside and outside Guatemala, and he's made it his business to testify at every one. When he's testifying, does he testify against Santos Lopez, the man who abducted him? Eventually, that is exactly what he does. So what happens to Santos Lopez?

Well, the short version of the story is that he ended up moving to the States. The two stayed in touch loosely and had a major dispute over a matter related to Lopez's family. And the ending of that was that Ramiro said, I'm going to report you. And next time I see you, you will be in jail. You don't remember? You killed my own family. And now you call your family my family? He says, no, enough is enough. And so he told prosecutors where to find Santos Lopez, who had been charged in Guatemala with war crimes. And was he extradited from the United States?

Yes, he was. And what happened to him? Well, he faced trial in Guatemala. And this was finally the two of them again face to face, but not as master and slave or victim and combatant. It was Ramiro on the offensive. And it was the old combatant as the defendant. And it was the first time that the tables had turned since the two of them met. And he destroyed Ramiro's life, you know, three decades earlier.

What did Ramiro tell you about what that was like for him? He'd waited for that moment for a very long time. He told me once that he knew he'd have his day and that one day the truth would come out. And so that's what this trial was, was the truth was finally out. How did the trial end for Santos Lopez? Well, actually, it just ended, and the sentencing was just last November, so it's quite recent, and he was convicted of crimes against humanity. Señor Santos, Señor Santos Alonso tiene algo que decir después de haber escuchado la sentencia.

And he was given 30 years for that, but then he was sentenced 30 years for every single life of 171 people who had died in Dos Erres, which gave him a total of 5,100 years in prison. Incredibly symbolic number, I would imagine. Yeah, so more than 5,000 years in prison, and he was walked away to begin serving that. And so now he'll just be in jail for the rest of his life? Yeah. I mean, you might think that the story ends there. But it's, you know, the story is nothing if not full of surprises. And so there is actually a move in Guatemala, we were just there to look into this, to change the laws, to extend an amnesty that people agreed to just after the war, to extend this amnesty to those who have committed the gravest war crimes,

people like Santos Lopez. So it's actually a way, some people call it a get-out-of-jail-free card. Others have said it's a travesty of justice. The international community has urged Guatemala not to pass this law because they believe it contravenes international law as well. So conceivably, Santos Lopez and others like him, who I imagine are in prison now, could get out soon? The actual bill stipulates that if it is passed, that they are released within 24 hours,

which means there's little recourse for those who oppose it. What does Romero think about all of this? He said it very simply. He said it was like a slap in the face. I feel so angry. I didn't even look at him. So they can be killers. They can be murderers, they can be rapists, and they can steal free. So that's not fair. He didn't say this, but I would say for him it would be devastating. I know that we can't say where he is right now for his own safety.

we can't say where he is right now for his own safety. Before we go today, can you tell us a little bit about what life is like for him right now and whether he has found any peace here, even with this trial going on in Guatemala? I truly think that he has. I mean, if you walk down the street and walk by Romro, you wouldn't think anything. He just looks like every other Canadian walking down the street. He has an honest job. Strange for someone who's come from a warm country to work in construction outdoors and have to wear seven layers in the snow. He has been married and he has three children whom he adores. And that, he told us, was hugely important for him to move on,

especially the fact that he is now this new family. And he believes that that family has partly made up for the loss that he had as a child. I cannot forgive him, but I cannot leave with anger, because if not, I will destroy myself. And that's not life. And the other thing that keeps him going, Jamie, is that he says he believes he is the light in the darkness.

He feels a mission. He really feels that he was spared so that he could speak for all of those people who died and to try to get justice. And he says it's a lifelong thing, that he knows it's not going to end tomorrow. But I think he's able to sleep better. Nala, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me. If you want to learn more about Ramiro Cristales and his story, you can watch Nala Ayed's Fifth Estate documentary, The Soldier and the Survivor. It's online right now. That's it for today. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts,

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