Author’s Note

More than ten years ago, when I visited the place known as La Isla for the first time—where the Historical Archive of the Guatemala National Police is currently housed—rescuing that sordid accumulation of papers and aberrations was still an ambitious and risky project, which on more than one occasion came close to being cancelled. Today the Archive is public (http://archivohistoricopn.org); the painstaking work of cataloging millions of police documents has facilitated the legal clarification of cases regarding the disappearance of persons and other crimes against humanity.

I want to thank Gustavo Meoño, Director of the Archive Recovery Project, who allowed me, a fiction writer, to venture onto that island.

Rodrigo Rey Rosa

2017

Postscript

Postscript

The Guatemalan National Police Archive (AHPN) has become a world reference. Nearly 24 million folios of documents have been processed and their digital images are available for public consultation inside and outside of Guatemala. Hundreds of relatives of missing persons, who for decades have sought in vain to know something about the whereabouts of their loved ones, have requested and obtained valuable information from the Archive. The prosecutors who are in charge of investigating the atrocities committed during the years of the Guatemalan internal war have found in this Archive information and documentary evidence to contribute to more than a dozen trials. The judges have given them evidentiary value and these documents have contributed to sustaining harsh sentences against high-ranking military and police chiefs.

However, in August 2018 something unexpected happened. Just after one of the most consequential trials—due to the high status of the condemned generals—the government of Guatemala decided to intervene in the Archive. The director, Gustavo Meoño, was dismissed after thirteen years of work. A third of the qualified personnel were also dismissed as of December of this year, and the rest of the workers are in a state of total uncertainty about what will happen in the future. Multiple highly respected voices have spoken in solidarity with the Archive in more than twenty countries. There are many clouds that hover over this valuable documentary collection; the dangers that lie in wait for it are great indeed.

December 2018

Translator’s Acknowledgments

Translator’s Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kristin Siracusa Fisher for her invaluable insights and recommendations as first reader of this English version; Marian Schwartz and AATIA’s Literary Special Interest Group (LitSIG) for their input workshop-ping early excerpts from this translation with me; and Inés ter Horst, Angelica Lopez-Torres, and Lynne Chapman of the University of Texas Press for their kindness and support. I am also grateful to Rodrigo Rey Rosa for trusting me with his work and the good conversations about words.

Eduardo Aparicio

2018