7 Oscar Ramírez Castañeda doesn’t remember his mother and eight brothers and sisters, or what happened to them in 1982 the day members of Guatemala’s special forces, the Kaibiles, came to their village of Dos Erres. It was the height of the Guatemalan civil war, and the military men were looking for stolen rifles and the insurgents who’d taken them. The Kaibiles never found what they came for, but by the time they were through with Dos Erres, its population of about 250 men, women, and children had been slaughtered or flung wounded into the town well and left to die. The brutality of Guatemala’s military in Dos Erres, though exceptional, wasn’t unprecedented. About 200,000 Guatemalans—more than 80% of them Mayan—were killed in the country’s 36-year civil war. When the fighting ended in 1996, combatants on both sides were granted amnesty. The peace treaty also called for the prosecution of those responsible for atrocities, however, and most of those war criminals were members of the military. Oscar was one of only two village residents, both young boys, spared by Kaibiles military leaders during the Dos Erres massacre. No one is sure why a lieutenant took three-year-old Oscar with him that day instead of taking his life, but the boy’s green eyes and less Mayan appearance may have set him apart from the other village children.The lieutenant introduced Oscar to his own family as his biological child, and when the Kaibiles leader died later in a road accident, the man’s mother and sister considered Oscar one of the family. In their home, the deceased lieutenant was honored as a model son, brother, father, and war hero. In 1998, following the death of the lieutenant’s mother, Oscar moved to the United States, eventually making his way to Massachusetts. He found employment at a grocery store and was soon working as a supervisor. At 32, he was holding down two jobs and supporting a wife and three children when he received a strange e-mail from Guatemala. In that message, a Guatemalan prosecutor said she had strong evidence to suggest Oscar had been kidnapped, and that he was really the son of a Dos Erres farmer who had been away from the village when it was destroyed. A DNA test resolved Oscar’s doubt, and soon he was communicating daily with his biological father. Although Oscar welcomed the man into his life, he found it more difficult to reconcile what he’d learned about the massacre with what he thought he knew about the lieutenant, whose family had treated him well. The firm’s relationship with Oscar began in 2011 with a call from the Boston office of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project (PAIR). At the request of R. Scott Greathead, a New York lawyer working with human rights organizations in Guatemala, the nonprofit organization was looking for Boston attorneys who could co-counsel Oscar’s asylum case. “Thank you for helping me and my family. Without your legal work, we would not have been able to stay here in the United States. In Guatemala we would have been in danger, and life for my family would be much harder today. We are so thankful for your help and friendship!” Oscar Ramírez Castañeda Mintz Levin client Hidden Roots Revealed continued