Ramiro Osorio Cristales is now 41 years old. When he was five, he was asleep at home with his parents and six siblings when the Kaibiles, Guatemala’s US-trained special operations unit, arrived in the village of Dos Erres. That name is now famous for the massacre that followed. Osorio’s father was killed and he was separated from his mother and siblings.  When they left the village, the soldiers took with them Osorio and a three-year boy called Oscar. The attack began on December 6, 1982, and lasted for three days. In 2018, Osorio gave evidence in court against former soldier Santos López who was not just accused of the murder of Osorio’s family and neighbours, he was also Osorio’s adoptive father.

Back at the soldiers’ base, López began to take an interest in Osorio and Oscar, feeding them from his own rations. When López told Osorio he was taking him to live with his own family in Retalhuleu in south-west Guatemala, Osorio thought he had found a new family. But the boys were taken to the Kaibil Training Center and dressed in tiny army uniforms. Growing up, Osorio was forced to call López ‘Dad’ but was mistreated; put to work, malnourished and beaten. In 1998 when he was 22, Osorio escaped by joining the army.

His true identity was confirmed by DNA when he learned some of his family were still alive; uncles, aunts, cousins and his maternal grandmother. He learned his true identity thanks to work by the Families of the Detained-Disappeared of Guatemala [FAMDEGUA], which was investigating the Dos Erres massacre. Osorio later emigrated to Canada.

On 22 November 22, 2018, López was sentenced to 5,000 years in jail: 30 years for each of the 171 deaths that he was held responsible for, and another 30 years for the murder of a girl taken away and later killed.

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