Forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli tells Chris Bird about the dangerous work of identifying the victims of the Guatemalan conflict.

摘要

When'Fredy Peccerelli came to Britain to study for a MSc in Forensic Anthropology at Bournemouth University he was asked what he thought of the seaside town: "I like gournemouth - no one has tried to kill me yet."Unfortunately Peccerelli cannot say the same about Guatemala where his work exhuming mass graves and identifying the victims and the manner of their deaths has brought many death threats; when I telephoned him In February he was in the car park taking delivery of a bullet-proof vehicle from the United Nations.Peccerelli is executive director of the Fundacion de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala (Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation -FAFG). He and a team of over 60 have located and exhumed remains from hundreds of unmarked graves, thousands of individuals altogether. "We are working on three sites at the moment" explains Peccerelli. "Last year we recovered the remains of 400 people from 145 sites." But this is just scratching the surface. Around 200,000 people died during the conflict in Guatemala (1960-1996), mainly Mayan Indians killed by the military and paramilitary death squads.