Today, August 30 is the International Day of the Disappeared.
To commemorate the lives of the 184 victims of forced disappearances during the 1980s and 90s in Honduras, the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) initiated the “Route of Historical Memory” project, a pathway to landmarks of the practice of State terror during this time that arose from a clearly structured strategy using calculated and ruthless violence.
Those who dreamed of a better future were illegally detained for being insurgents or opponents of the State by COBRA (Anti-subversion Police), the TESON (Special Forces for Jungle and Night Operations), or the Group of the 14 (death squads of Intelligence Battalion 3-16).
The Route of Historical Memory, “la Ruta”, takes one to the locations where these people were arrested, tortured, and secretly buried.
The starting point is the COFADEH office, where the principal documentation is found and where the walls are filled with photographs of those who are missing: fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, sisters, and brothers who disappeared. Few returned. There is not sufficient space or words to express the pain and desperation of the families who will never know what happened to their loved ones or where they are buried.
Next, is a visit to the Merced Plaza, where COFADEH has protested against forced disappearances every first Friday of the month for 33 years. The “Ruta” continues on to horrific places like the “house of terror’, located on the estate of Amilcar Zelaya in Amarateca, where detainees endured unimaginably brutal torture before suffering a cruel death.
The gate of the Diamond House, at that time a base of the Nicaraguan Contra forces, has a structure identical to that of the gate of the estate in Amarateca. It is another location where detainees were tortured. There is a suspected clandestine cemetery at this house, near the slope to the River Frio.
It is clear that this violence is structural and continues to this today, applied differently but always in accordance with the strategy of a State that does not respect human rights.
The last stop on the “Ruta” is the “Casa Contra el Olvido”, the Home against Forgetting, an unforgettable site that emits a serene aura full of light and peace. Here, the memory of all those disappeared remains alive, intangible, waiting and hoping for truth.
More information on:
Acompañantes internaciones recorren la “Ruta de la Memoria” que muestra la impunidad
Honduras Accompaniment Project 