<p>They had not met each other since troops raided their Cancap village 30 years ago in search of leftist guerrillas. They were reunited Friday.<br /><br />Mario Polanco of the Mutual Support Group (GAM), an organisation representing conflict victims, told reporters that he first met Juana Chamay at a church in southern Escuintla province and later met her sister Magdalena in the San Juan Cotzal town of northwestern Quiche region.<br /><br />Troops dragged the girls' parents, Miguel Chamay and Petronila Toma, from their home, tied them up and beat them while demanding information about the rebels.<br /><br />Though they eventually realised Miguel and Petronilla didn't know anything, soldiers forcibly split the family, GAM said.<br /><br />Juana, who was injured during the troops' raid, was sent to a hospital in Escuintla, where she was adopted by nurse Guadalupe Mendez, who subsequently took the girl to live in Guatemala City.<br /><br />"She raised me as her daughter and she gave me schooling. I reached the second year of high school and as I no longer wanted to study because I didn't like it, she found me work with Social Security (state-run healthcare) in the capital," said Juana, who is now the mother of a seven-year-old girl. <br /><br />"I spent 14 years there in various jobs," she added. "I feel happy to have found my sister," Juana said Friday, adding that she had only a vague memory of their parents. "I was very little. I know that they're dead now."<br /><br />Magdalena remained with her grandmother Teresa Toma in San Juan Cotzal in Quiche. She said she has two children, aged seven and nine.<br /><br />A joint GAM-Red Cross programme has helped to arrange ove 100 reunions of separated relatives since 2001, Polanco said.<br /><br />Guatemala's civil war left some 250,000 dead, majority of them Indian peasants, and Quiche was the province that suffered most under the army's scorched-earth policies. <br /><br /></p>
<p>They had not met each other since troops raided their Cancap village 30 years ago in search of leftist guerrillas. They were reunited Friday.<br /><br />Mario Polanco of the Mutual Support Group (GAM), an organisation representing conflict victims, told reporters that he first met Juana Chamay at a church in southern Escuintla province and later met her sister Magdalena in the San Juan Cotzal town of northwestern Quiche region.<br /><br />Troops dragged the girls' parents, Miguel Chamay and Petronila Toma, from their home, tied them up and beat them while demanding information about the rebels.<br /><br />Though they eventually realised Miguel and Petronilla didn't know anything, soldiers forcibly split the family, GAM said.<br /><br />Juana, who was injured during the troops' raid, was sent to a hospital in Escuintla, where she was adopted by nurse Guadalupe Mendez, who subsequently took the girl to live in Guatemala City.<br /><br />"She raised me as her daughter and she gave me schooling. I reached the second year of high school and as I no longer wanted to study because I didn't like it, she found me work with Social Security (state-run healthcare) in the capital," said Juana, who is now the mother of a seven-year-old girl. <br /><br />"I spent 14 years there in various jobs," she added. "I feel happy to have found my sister," Juana said Friday, adding that she had only a vague memory of their parents. "I was very little. I know that they're dead now."<br /><br />Magdalena remained with her grandmother Teresa Toma in San Juan Cotzal in Quiche. She said she has two children, aged seven and nine.<br /><br />A joint GAM-Red Cross programme has helped to arrange ove 100 reunions of separated relatives since 2001, Polanco said.<br /><br />Guatemala's civil war left some 250,000 dead, majority of them Indian peasants, and Quiche was the province that suffered most under the army's scorched-earth policies. <br /><br /></p>