Inter-American Court of Human Rights' reparation judgments ...

48 Revista IIDH[Vol. 49basic needs, such as their identity and spiritual dimension, would not bethreatened anymore. The Court has been continuously developing repairswith an increasing comprehension of the traditional ethnical cosmovision,and the psychosocial elements inside traditional justice and reparatoryprocesses were just superficially inserted.If we analyze this first Case of Aloeboetoe v. Suriname, the Saramaca’sheritage system was applied to order reparations only accepting andrespecting polygyny (the recognition of all the spouses of a man;accordingly, the children that she had with each one of them had to berecognized as legitimate successors). The true Saramaca heritage systemwas partially ignored. 41On the other hand, the massacre of Plan de Sánchez, a northern nativevillage of Guatemala, was one of the 626 that occurred in the country. Itwas perpetrated on July 18, 1982 during the facto government of EfraínRíos Montt. The army murdered 268 men and women, including childrenof all ages. According to the psychological expert evidence, the massacreof Plan de Sánchez had terrible consequences in many aspects of the life ofits population, such as the breach of family roles, the damage to the culturalidentity, the breaking of its ancient relationship with the land and thetraditional style of conflict resolution. The community sorrow was altered;therefore, they could not carry out its rituals and the Mayan traditionalburials until 1994, twelve years later, when the exhumations took place. 42The psychosocial expert evidence presented in this case analyzedthese issues 43 and deeply recommended to carry out consultations with thecommunities to decide what they want as remedy, as well as more adequate41 Molestina, M., “La sentencia de reparaciones del caso Aloeboetoe y otros: unpunto de vista antropológico”, in: Revista IIDH, No. 25. Inter-American Institutefor Human Rights, San José, Costa Rica, January-June 1997, pp. 109-123.(Author’s translation.)42 I-ACourtHR, Case of the Plan de Sánchez Massacre v. Guatemala. Repara–tions. Judgment of November 19, 2004.43 Nieves, G., “Informe sobre el daño a la salud mental derivado de la masacre dePlan de Sánchez para la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos CentroAmérica”. Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial, Guatemala,2005. (Author’s translation.)