Photo by OCW StaffRonald Reagan's much-heralded Morning in America never shone on Denese Becker. On the morning of March 13, 1982, the U.S.-backed Guatemalan army stormed the Mayan village of Rio Negro, machine-gunning and strangling anyone they could find. The villagers' crime: they had voiced their opposition to a World Bank-funded dam that would flood Río Negro. When the smoke cleared, soldiers had massacred hundreds of people—including 70 women and 107 children—and dumped their remains in a mass grave. Nine-year-old Denese—then known as Dominga Sic—was one of the few survivors, escaping into the hills with her mortally wounded infant sister. Ten days later, Efraín Ríos Montt—nicknamed Ríos de Sangre (Rivers of Blood) and a man Reagan later claimed got a “bum rap” from human-rights groups—took power in a coup and continued the Mayan genocide.
A missionary family from Iowa adopted Denese and brought her to America. Twenty years later, she returned to her village to indict the guilty. This is the focus of Discovering Dominga, a wrenching 58-minute documentary that first aired on PBS last summer. But rather than serve as a mere update on a much-ignored human-rights issue, Discovering Domingaalso records a dual passage of discovery—Denese/Dominga's reclamation of her Mayan identity and the emergence of an activist who won't let anything stop her quest for justice, even her supportive husband.
Discovering Dominga begins with a haunting re-enactment of the Río Negro Massacre. No faces are shown; low-angle shots are blurred, while Denese's hushed voice provides somber narration. It's as if we're reliving the moment through a preteen Dominga. We then see a modern-day Denese in Iowa, where a Baptist minister and his family took the orphan two years after she escaped the death squads. She is now nearly indistinguishable from your typical corn-fed Iowan—a manicurist who doesn't speak Spanish, wears stone-washed jeans, digs Madonna and dotes on her two sons with devoted husband Blane. She jokes about how her fellow classmates assumed she was Chinese.
But when the sun sets each day on this Rockwellian life, Denese continues to suffer from nightmares about her Mayan childhood. Director Patricia Flynn smartly traces Denese's attempt—ultimately successful—to reconcile herself with the violent past. Flynn's camera switches between Iowa and Guatemala, where Denese meets surviving family members and witnesses the excavation of her father's remains. Between the multiple trips, Denese morphs into an activist; she even begins wearing traditional Mayan garb and joins the Widows and Orphans committee, a group of Guatemalan women who risk assassination threats in seeking prosecution of former military generals, including Ríos Montt.
In some segments, Discovering Dominga plays more like a staged drama than cinéma vérité, especially whenever Denese speaks with her family members; although the tears are real, Denese's pronouncements seem rehearsed. Nevertheless, the film is gripping and honest, a much-needed reminder of what American foreign policy wrought in Central American during the 1980s. And no amount of planning could've predicted the film's parallel personal development: the unraveling of Denese's marriage.
Flynn is unflinching in capturing Blane's obvious discomfort. While sympathetic, he isn't pleased his wife spends more and more time in the Guatemalan highlands. Denese notices her husband's unease but is unrepentant; Río Negro's story must be told. By the end of the movie, Denese and Blane are divorced. “A war that happened so long ago has broken our family apart,” Blane bitterly tells the camera. And you can't help thinking that this, too, was Ronald Reagan's legacy.
Discovering Dominga was directed by Patricia Flynn; produced by Flynn, Mary Jo McConahay and Jane Greenberg. Denese Becker speaks after the screening at The Unitarian Church, 511 S. Harbor Blvd., Anaheim, (714) 758-1990. Fri., 7:30 p.m. Free.
