The work of the Identification Bureau covers two broad areas. One concerns the human matter that enters Police Headquarters day after day for crimes or serious misdemeanors, and who need to be identified by means of the record card, which constitutes, so to speak, the first page in their criminal record, where the details of all future recidivism will appear. The other area where this Bureau acts is in matters pertaining to the laboratories of the Department of Technical Investigations itself: that is to say, the investigation by scientific means known today for the purpose of, on the one hand, identifying a criminal by the traces he might leave in places where he operates, and on the other hand, once identified or captured, furnishing evidence of his guilt.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007.

Today archivists on the second floor listen to salsa music. They give me more Yearly Reports to read. I find more mutilated pages (almost always in the pages corresponding to the report from the Identification Bureau, and rarely in other sections).

In the Yearly Report from 1938, a whole chapter, Chapter XI, is devoted to cases of folk medicine and witchcraft.

Thursday.

Pop music in Spanish: Arjona, Jarabe de Palo, Juanes, Manu Chao.

During the midmorning break, a female archivist, young and funny, who had spoken to me about my books on two or three occasions, approaches me to tell me that she is digitizing a series of “action radiograms”—stenographic copies of communications between police dispatch centers and patrol cars—dated 1970. She shows me one on the sly, which I copy immediately.

Guatemala, 7/4/70

It is possible that as a consequence of the accusations made in Escuintla by Pedro Matus, the police carried out a house search near Escuintla. There was resistance from the people in it, a total of six, who, protected by their weapons, took off to the hills. The police only found a young man in the house, about 19 to 22 years old, tall, blonde, who was arrested without offering resistance. Along the way, near San Andrés Villa Seca, he indicated that they would not get anything out of him, and that they might as well save themselves the trouble and kill him off, which “special” police Prudencio Aguirre did, shooting him between the eyes. This was witnessed by Colonel Carlos Sandoval, Head of the National Police of Escuintla, who finished him off with 14 shots from a .30 caliber gun.

The corpse was left hidden in the underbrush. Aguirre has been a bodyguard for several “anti-communist” leaders.

After the break, I ask Sandra if I could see those documents once they have been cataloged.

I start to get bored from looking through Yearly Reports. I snoop around the library, I kill time, while waiting for permission to see the documents I have requested, and especially the radiograms.

Document 1415 (requested at random):

Telegraphic codes of the National Police

Orders:

RABUA: I require from you immediate capture and safe delivery of . . .