As part of this sprawling project, I visited a few additional sites in the capital, ones that I either hadn't known about previously or ones that for one reason or another I hadn't visited, and revisited a few that happened to be relatively nearby. These are mostly markers for individuals who were assassinated or kidnapped in broad daylight. One was the home of Myrna Mack Chang, a Guatemalan anthropologist of Chinese descent. She was one of the pioneering Guatemalan scholars who documented and wrote about the impact of the war on indigenous populations. She focused on the internally displaced populations and the human rights consequences. She was affiliated with AVANSCO, one of the major social science research institutes and in 1990 she was stabbed as she left the office. The AVANSCO office is now in a different location on the Sexta Avenida, the principal thoroughfare of the Zona 1, and there is a brass plaque on the side of the building which I've seen before (I ran past it because my usual running route heads along la Sexta, but I didn't stop and photograph it again). This time I set out for her former residence, which is a different part of Zona 1, on 12th Calle and 12 Avenida. There is a plaque on the building and also at the entrance to the street, there is a hand-painted street sign on the side of the first building on the block, "Calle Myrna Mack". As has been the case with nearly every other urban historical marker I've visited and photographed, I was the only person paying attention to the sign and the location. There was a bus coming along the street; there was a woman in a small store across the street. A few people walking along, but the street was not crowded with either traffic or pedestrians.
I also visited the site at the back of the Cathedral (not actually on the Cathedral building but behind it on 8th Avenida, on the side of a building, a plaque for a young Filipino Catholic priest, Conrado de la Cruz, who was doing missionary work in Guatemala, and forcibly disappeared at that site, presumably on his way to or from the Cathedral.
There was an additional plaque inside the Museum of the University of San Carlos, the country's large public university. The main campus is located pretty far away in another part of town, and there are apparently a number of plaques there, but there is one building in Zona 1, which houses the university's museum. It's pretty much directly across from the Congress so convenient for protests (closing off the street in front of the Congress building is another time-honored protest in Guatemala). University students (and faculty) were key targets for forced disappearances, especially as there were student mobilizations and protests starting fairly early in the 1960s. There was a display of student art work around the walls of the courtyard and a few small exhibits in other rooms -- one on the history of the university, another on the varied cultures of Guatemala (a teeny-tiny ethnographic/cultural exhibit, just one small room with some ceramics, indigenous textiles and a few other things) and an exhibit of works inspired by a deceased Norwegian artist who apparently spent some time in Guatemala.
The plaque was in honor of a law professor. Dr. Alfredo Mijangos López, who was assassinated in 1971 -- again, during the earlier part of the civil war. He wasn't someone I had heard about previously but I dutifully photographed the plaque.
I didn't visit or photograph every single site in the capital -- they have been catalogued elsewhere, or at least most of them, in the Mapeo de la Memoria, a website that is devoted to memory sites of the armed conflict. I could have just looked at the website and read the descriptions there -- some of the sites have full-blown essays including interviews with the people who were instrument in establishing the memory sites -- but I needed to get a "feel" for the overall context, how the sites look and feel and are engaged with (or mostly not) in the larger city scape.
I know, from talking to people, that there are ceremonies held at several of these sites each year on the anniversary of the person's disappearance, abduction or execution. People lay wreaths, place flowers, make temporary shrines, to commemorate the person. I haven't been at any of those -- my trips haven't coincided with any of those dates as far as I know -- but I've seen photographs.
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