Maria Eugenia Carrera Chavez

Maria Eugenia Carrera Chavez, a graduate of the 2013 Human Rights Advocates Program, returned to her position as the Coordinator of the Forensic Area Division at the Center for Forensic Analysis and Applied Sciences (CAFCA), where she works with Mayan indigenous communities in Guatemala to locate and identify the remains of those massacred during the 36-year-long civil war. According to a 1999 report, “Guatemala: Memory of Silence,” authored by the Commission for Historical Clarification, approximately 83% of the 200,000 people killed during this time were Mayan. Many bodies are still being unearthed today, and Maria and her organization work to return them to their families and strive for healing, transitional justice mechanisms, and human rights in Guatemala.

One current project at CAFCA is an assessment of the “Kaqchikel Case,” that concerns the grave Human Rights violations that occurred in the central area of the country against the Mayan Kaqchikel population during the Internal Armed Conflict. The process seeks to spur a serious investigative process within the Office of the Ministerio Público, the Attorney General, to provide access to justice to all victims and survivors of the abuses committed by the National Army.  She writes:“The quantity of victims in this case is reported to be around 2,000, which means that if the process is successful, a similar amount of families will have the ability to go to a trial and demand a sentence for the perpetrators of these acts, including forced disappearance, sexual violence against women, massacres, and forced displacement.”

Reflecting on the benefits of HRAP, she notes that it strengthened her capacities, gave her theoretical knowledge of topics such as transitional justice and genocide, taught her how to efficiently utilize media sources, and strengthened her ability to create networks. She remains in frequent contact with her colleagues from the program, writing: “I made great and wonderful friends in the HRAP 2013 and once in a while we have a collective email with life updates. I also have new contacts on Facebook from other HRAP classes and we follow each other’s activities, even if we don’t know each other personally.” She also notes: “In general I feel much more confident with working in English when my work demands it.  HRAP necessitated that I be able to clearly communicate what my organization is doing in a concise way and effective way. This skill has been extremely helpful for me in continuing to create new networks and to represent my organizations in different spaces worldwide.”

-Article composed by Caroline Doenmez