Human rights groups hope to save the files because they may provide evidence that the National Police -- disbanded in 1997 because of its notorious reputation -- and other shadowy government security forces wrongfully imprisoned, tortured and killed suspected insurgents.
"They are concrete proof from an official source and they all are intact," said Iduvina Hernandez, director of the Institute for Democratic Security, a non-governmental group helping to analyze and protect the Guatemalan files. "They detail everything, not like US declassified documents that come with the names of those responsible for many atrocities blacked out."
Heavily redacted US government files about the Guatemalan war have been made public in Washington thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests by the non-profit National Security Archive, which has published them online. In contrast, the Guatemalan effort is shockingly low-tech: Simply cleaning off and sorting through the sheer magnitude of documents, some of which date back to 1900, may take decades.
Complicating matters is the fact that potentially useful information, such as pictures depicting torture and lists of people classified as "disappeared," "assassinated" or "political detainee," are mixed with such mundane paperwork as applications for new driver's licenses, or reports detailing what songs a police band played during an independence day celebration.
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