• Antunes Pérez, Emilia. Born in 1920. Domestic worker in the capital city. Lives with her children. Booked in 1955 for prostitution.

• Novales, Dolores. Born in 1919. Honduran (Puerto Cortez). Booked in 1955 because she wants to leave prostitution and lead an honest life.

Afternoon.

III. POSTMORTEM FILES

† Ruano Coronado, María Consuelo. Born in 1918. Booked in 1937 for marijuana trafficking and possession. Shot dead in 1980.

† XX. Traits: Between thirty-two and thirty-seven years old. Working class look (tailor, merchant, or driver). Dark complexion. Strangled in the street in 1980.

† XX. Traits: Twenty-plus years old. Straight black hair. Concave nose. Shot dead in front of Doresley department store in 1980.

† Zamora Enamorado, José Cecilio. Living in Puerto Barrios. Day laborer. Details: right index finger amputated. Detained November 4, 1961, for contraband. Killed with a sharp object in 1973.

† XX. Hands and feet tied with banana rope, beaten, and thrown into the river. Clarification: When proceeding to fingerprint the aforementioned corpse, I ran into the difficulty that the fingers were shriveled, making it difficult to take rolled impressions, and although I also attempted the injection technique, that too was unsuccessful. I had no choice but to cut off those fingers that I considered best for the purpose. Signature: José Héctor Terraza T., December 7, 1974.

Note: In an envelope attached to this file I found a strip of paper with the printed grid to set the fingerprints. But, instead of the typical ink spots, there were a few pieces of tissue that resembled dried rose petals. Upon closer examination, they turned out to be human skin.

Pages Attached to the Second Notebook

PAGES ATTACHED TO THE SECOND NOTEBOOK

Other professions registered in the files of the Bureau:

Coal merchant

Typist

Drill operator

Plumber

Train brakeman

Stonecutter

Weaver

Mechanic

Travel agent

Railroad worker

Sawyer

Truck assistant

It would not be wise to conclude anything on the basis of the chaotic and capricious information contained in a series of police files that resisted time and weathering by chance. The number of files that were lost or that disintegrated into humus is certainly considerable. But the list shows the arbitrary and often perverse nature of our own unique justice system, which laid the foundations for the widespread violence that was unleashed on the country in the eighties and whose aftermath we are still living. (It helps to remember that misdemeanors, like not carrying the “employment log” that was required of indigenous people dispossessed of their lands by government decree, continued to be penalized in 1944 with forced labor in government works and on private farms—the very farms created with the spoils of the “Indian territories.”) Our own unique system? Back in the eighteenth century, commenting on the treatise On Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria, Voltaire wrote: “It seems that in times of feudal anarchy, the princes and the lords, being quite poor, tried to increase their treasures by stripping and condemning their vassals, thus creating a revenue stream from their very crime.”

More Voltaire: