CEJIL 30 Years: Marco Antonio Molina Theissen

Image: original art by Maria Pichel (IG @mariapichelart)

PIECE TAKEN FROM LUCRECIA MOLINA THEISSEN’S BLOG / NARRATED BY SINGER SARA CURRUCHICH

This was an extremely violent rational action, a joint criminal enterprise planned and organized by terrorists who held power, who combined wills, public resources and state institutions to annihilate those who, in their opinion, were identified as the enemy, a definition so broad that it included entire families.

-It was a time darkened by fear, persecution, and the elimination of all the people who thought and acted outside the narrow margin of what was authorized, a rigid framework in which they wanted to imprison dreams and ideals, discolor the flags, and reduce us to obedient, submissive and quiet slaves.

Parallel to the perpetration of crimes against humanity and grave human rights violations in a systematic, institutionalized and massive way, as part of the psychological war, they gave their actions the character of “necessary, patriotic,” and their perpetrators the status of heroes. This, coupled with terror and the paralysis of institutions, disrupted the role of the administration of justice, turning it into a system of guaranteeing impunity and, among other factors, it naturalized and installed violence as an essential component of social relations and the exercise of power.

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This October 6 marks the 40th anniversary of the painful moment in which he was torn from our arms by soldiers who, against all human and divine laws, kidnapped him, depriving him of our love and protection, disappeared him and took his life of just 14 years and ten months. Thus they avenged, with absolute cruelty, that his sister Emma escaped the day before from her illegal captivity in the military base of Quetzaltenango, where they kept her for nine days suffering from hunger, thirst and all kinds of inhumane torture and repeated violations.

I am sure that among those who currently make up the Guatemalan army, there are people capable of imagining the profound suffering that the illegal capture, torture and murder or forced disappearance of any of their sons or daughters would cause them. If they put themselves in my place, as human beings that we are, they would understand that there is no justification in the world to tear a child from his home, deprive him of the love and protection of his mother and his family, and then murder and disappear him, which is what happened with my son Marco Antonio, in 1981, when he was only 14 years old.

I will never forget the smile of my son, Marco Antonio.

Nor will I forget how the army troops tore him from my arms and disappeared him that noon on October 6, 1981. It tortures me that I was unable to do anything to protect him at that time nor rescue him later.

That is why, because of love and because of the suffering that they caused him and us, his family, we still wait … we still fight … We have transformed pain into strength to demand the truth of what they did to him, so that they tell us where he is and demand that they give us his remains to be buried with dignity. Only in this way, may we be able to console ourselves even a little of our pain and anguish.

Emma Theissen (2016)

We cope with pain and anger thanks to the love of Marco Antonio, a feeling buried under bitterness for a long time that does not end at him, it extends to Guatemala, to his people who fight, to life.

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