Ombudsman’s Office. It’s almost four in the afternoon, and I’m still waiting for the chief. One of his assistants just told me he’s on his way, but caught in a traffic jam. While I wait, I read the press and I take notes.

“Gang of policemen suspected of a crime against Salvadoran congressmen could have at least 12 members.

“February 19: The burned remains of Salvadoran congressmen to the Central American Parliament were found, along with their car and driver. Three days later, four agents belonging to the Office of Criminal Investigations were captured for the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen. They were sent to jail in Zone 18 by order of a judge; that same day they were transferred to the high security prison El Boquerón (Santa Rosa), where there are individual cells. However, the four agents were locked up in the same cell. Two days later, the four policemen were mysteriously executed in their cell.”

I see the wall clock; I decide to wait another fifteen minutes. However, the fifteen minutes go by and I do not get up. I must get an explanation about my suspension, I tell myself. I wait until five. The chief does not arrive.

Wednesday.

Two days ago—I read in today’s newspapers—there was an enormous collapse of land in Zone 6, where the Archive is located. “At least three people were swallowed by the earth and about 300 had to vacate their homes. In the last few hours, more residents had to abandon their homes when they heard the ground rumble.”

Apparently the “San Antonio Sinkhole,” a kind of cenote with a diameter of fifty meters and sixty meters deep, endangers not only the surrounding homes but also the facilities where the Archive is located, only 185 meters away. Yesterday, the press reports, the directors of the Archive Recovery Project discussed the imminent removal of the documents to keep them safe.

In part, that explains why the chief did not come to our last appointment. I decide to be patient.

Midday. Francisco Marroquín University Library. Nothing about the history of the police.

I browse texts at random. Cesare Beccaria:

In politics, the one who reaps is not always the one who sowed.

Lawmakers should direct public happiness. They should; that is, they do not.

All punishment that does not derive from absolute necessity is tyrannical.

Any man is at a certain moment the center of all the permutations on the globe.

Afternoon.

In the anthology of essays Intellectual History of Guatemala (Marta Casaús Arzú, 2001) that a young archivist lent me, I read:

Roger de Lyss, New Times, Guatemala, 1924:

The Indian cannot be a citizen. As long as the Indian is a citizen, we Guatemalans will not be free. Those poor wretches have been born slaves, they carry that in their blood, it is the heritage of centuries, the cursed fate that the conquistador imposed on them.