Slow, painful task: identifying Guatemalan dead

Guatemala's 36-year civil war cost some 200,000 lives, mostly of Mayan Indians caught between government forces and rebels. Twelve years after peace was signed, forensic anthropologists are still hunting for the missing.

So far they have found 6,500 buried in mass graves around the country.

Each discovery and positive ID is a milestone for survivors who have spent decades with no formal recognition of their loved ones' deaths. Each confirmed death also entitles the bereaved to a $3,000 payment from the government.

As the bones are dug up, identified and handed over to family members for burial, many people relive the horrors as if they happened yesterday. Women dressed in traditional Mayan garb gather around the narrow, open coffins filled with aged bones. Some mourners weep.

Villagers in Cocop, 75 miles northwest of Guatemala City, were preparing for Good Friday on April 16, 1981, when soldiers moved in and killed 79 people.

Fifty-one of them were recently exhumed from a mass grave. According to forensic anthropologist Alfredo Angerman, about 45 of them were women and children.

Terra/AP