Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
In a mass grave, the role of the psychologists is mixed.
We work during three stages:
before the exhumation, during the exhumation and after the exhumation.
We work in three contexts:
accompanying the families and the direct and indirect relatives,
we also accompany the intervention teams
and we also work at what we call the social dimension
in which the mass grave is a learning space,
a space in which all the people who are in its environment,
either associations or people who live in the village
where the exhumation is happening, are considered, well-informed,
and also can go to visit the exhumation
to learn about what is happening.
Actually, we encourage them to visit the place.
In the context of pre-exhumation,
we try to find out what the expectations are,
mainly for family members:
What are they going to find?
How are they going to find it?
We also act as mediators with the relatives.
We see they will approach the process
within the family and between families.
At the opening of the grave we offer emotional support to families.
In fact, sometimes we cuantify the people who are emotionally affected.
We would like to make clear that there is neither hatred nor rancor.
They are positive processes,
which serve to close the wounds of the families, to close the pain.
During the dig, we also receive other families who come from elsewhere,
who come to tell their stories
and come to give new insights into new locations.
We pay great attention to symbolic details,
for instance, in the entrance of the grave,
there may be photos of the person who is there,
there could also be some letters, drawings, it happens sometimes,
of both the direct and indirect family members.
We also take some breaks during the exhumation
to explain to those who are there and also to those
who are working how the exhumation is going, and at what stage we are in.
If it is relevant, we can stop the exhumation
to listen to some relatives
and record their testimonies at the site of the grave.
What happens with the intervention teams is more or less the same thing.
We work from a non-pathological standpoint
and as members of the team.
We incorporate them into the teams.
What we do is we make it easier for them to speak,
facilitate their expression of emotions.
We must not forget that, in many cases,
the exhumations are done by students and archaeologists.
Here, the work is different because they are going to find remains
with obvious signs of violence.
They will also feel peer pressure from families or major media.
Our intention is to provide them with the opportunity to speak.
And, in the third context that I mentioned earlier,
the one related to the communities,
our aim is to make the grave an educational space of awareness.
What we try to do with the associations
is to make sure that key informants,
politicians, priests or teachers at the schools or institutes know
that there is an exhumation developing and to give them
suitable explanations and let them know that they can go visit the site.
And then, after the excavation,
what we do is supervise the waiting process,
which is sometimes long and can be up to one year.
During that time, what we do is informe the relatives
to make sure that the people who live in the area
are sensitive to everything
that has happened during the exhumation so that,
when that last delivery of the remains comes and we have the burial,
everything is extremely well prepared.
Intermediation between the relatives also happens to make sure
that they agree on how this moment will be and so that they all agree
as much as possible when the time comes.
Our main goal is that, at the time of closure,
when the pressure of the exhumation and the communications media go away,
family members feel protected,
accompanied, and that they feel cared for.