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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Sam Jones in Madrid

Disappeared: a daughter’s 40-year search for her father, taken by Guatemala’s military dictatorship

Pictures of disappeared civilians on a wall in Nebaj, Guatemala. More than 40,000 people were forcefully disappeared during Guatemala’s long civil war.
Pictures of disappeared civilians on a wall in Nebaj, Guatemala. More than 40,000 people were forcefully disappeared during Guatemala’s long civil war. Photograph: Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images

One day when she was 12 years old and still new to the ways of remembering the dead, Ana Isabel Bustamante took a photograph from the wardrobe where her mother kept her dark clothes and her most precious things.

Ana set the picture on a small table in the living room, where it remained for two days. On the third day, unable to look at the young, bearded face in the photo any longer, her mother put it back in the wardrobe.

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