Paper short abstract:

The forced disappearance of children during the internal conflict in Guatemala, have separated hundreds of families. Understanding what and how it happened was the first part of my 7 years experience as researcher. Then the research process facilitated the reunification of many Guatemalan families.

Paper long abstract:

The internal armed conflict suffered in Guatemala for 36 years was one of the longest and cruelest conflicts that Latinamerica have sadly experienced in the last century. The United Nation Truth Commission registered 626 massacres, about 200 thousands death and disappeared persons, 500 thousand orphans and 250 thousand widows. But probably one of the worst human right violations was the forced disappearance of children. There are hundreds of parents (specially women) that lost their children and after more than 15 or 20 years they continue to live with the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to their children.

The paper I'll present, emerges of a pioneer project created in 1999, by a multidisciplinary team, which I was part, for the localization of disappeared children.

First I'll describe the problem of the disappearances of children during the internal conflict in Guatemala and specially the investigation process for making a social diagnostic of this particular phenomenon. Then I'll explain the experience of being a field researcher and how we created techniques and instruments for localize and make possible the reencounter of parents with their disappeared children after years of forced separation.