When the Killers Come Calling
A Guatemalan journalist and his family are terrorized by a gang of thugs
November-December 2009
by José Rubén Zamora, from Pen America, translated by Larry Siems
This has to be recorded for your children, one of my captors says. You’re going to die, you son of a bitch. They throw me in the room with my family. Ramón is 11 years old. The rest of my family have their eyes taped, but not him. He’s watching. I tell him: Be cool, don’t worry. I even smile. And I think deep down: Here the shit ends. Ramón is dripping snot.
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Why are you making trouble? they say. Stop fucking with the higher-ups.
Every so often they say they are going to kill us. There are 12 or 14 guys, and they can’t stop moving. Shouts, threats, guns. One of them closes the curtains and climbs on the bed. He starts jumping around with a shotgun.
Rodrigo cries silently. The raiders tear the house apart. In my son’s closet they find a collection of guns. That’s when they go crazy. They drag me out of the room, say they’re going to kill me. I’ve now lost my bathrobe, I’m naked. Look, guys, I’m not making trouble, I tell them. Whatever you say, we’ll do. Just fucking kill me in the garage, so the kids aren’t brought into it.
They keep me outside for 15 minutes with a shotgun in my chest. Twice they pretend they’re going to shoot me. I’ve accepted my fate. But I lose it when they drag me back in the room, naked, and tie me up with neckties. Tell your children to watch, they say. And to them: You’re going to witness your father’s death. Ramón is in a green pool. I have no idea where so much snot came from. Everyone is crying.
They fire.
False alarm.
We’re going to carry off the little one and your wife, they say. What are they worth to you? There’s no calculating their worth, I tell them. So if you want to keep them, they say, you have to keep quiet.
If you go to the police, if you make a public statement, if you tell anyone you work with, if you complain to an ambassador, if what happens here leaks out in any way . . . we know your family’s routines, we’ll fucking kill them all.
Before they leave, one comes up to me and says, I was the good one. Did you notice? I was the one who kept them from killing everyone. So, in gratitude, you’re going to give me 250,000 pesos. Tomorrow or the next day. I’ll call and tell you where and when. You’ll get in your gray Volvo and we’ll meet up. I’ll be on a motorcycle. I’ve seen your house. You’ve got dough.