‘Finding Oscar’ Film Screening

Massacre, memory and justice in Guatemala About ‘Finding Oscar’ In 1982 amid Guatemala’s brutal civil war, 20 army commandos invaded the jungle hamlet of Dos Erres disguised as rebels. The squad members, called Kaibiles, cut their way through the town, killing more than 250 people. Only a handful survived. One, a 3-year-old boy, was abducted by a Kaibil officer and raised by his family. It took 30 years for Oscar Alfredo Ramírez Castañeda to learn the truth. By then, Oscar was one of tens of thousands of Guatemalans, many of them undocumented, who had fled poverty, unemployment, and violence in their country to relocate in the Boston area. While the war officially ended in 1996, its effects live on in Guatemala and in Guatemalan communities throughout the United States. The screening of Finding Oscar is part of National Hispanic Heritage Month and the Dangerous History Series sponsored by the Salem State History Department and the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Hosted by Avi Chomsky, Professor of Latin American History.