David Stonehouse News

Brother's death inspires 20-year quest for answers

By David Stonehouse

COCAGNE, N.B. -- It was tucked away for 20 years, the gruesome detail of it too much for Andrea Leger to bear.

Its two neatly typed pages speak so cold-heartedly of her brother.She knew him as a man with a heart of gold, whose devotion to the unfortunate and disadvantaged defined him as much as the gentleness in his blue eyes or his brilliant gap-toothed smile.

To the man in charge of the cemetery in zone 7, Guatemala City, Raoul Leger was simply another soul committed to a mass grave, tagged as Corpse XXX: "Age 30 years, son of unknown and unknown, civil status unknown."

She did not tell anyone she had the report and dared not think much about it -- it was not a nice way to remember her Raoul. But filing it away did not bury the thoughts that would haunt her for two decades to come.

"Not a day has gone by in 20 years that I haven't thought of him and wondered: 'What happened to you? Were you alone? Were you hurt?' But I never got any answers," Ms. Leger says as she stands at the kitchen sink at her farm home outside this small fishing village.

She is turned away, doing the dishes, but you know the tears are coming -- her voice quivers with emotion.

She is consumed by a personal quest to find those answers, to seek the truth about her brother's death and to bring those responsible to account.

The Guatemalan government claimed Raoul Leger was a guerrilla commander engaged in a shootout with its armed forces, holed up with seven others in a house in a rich Guatemala City neighbourhood on July 25, 1981.

The morning firefight, carried live by television crews, ended with an explosion tearing through the house and killing everyone inside. Government authorities said the guerrillas blew up the home themselves rather than surrender to the army.

People back home in Canada refused to swallow it: This, after all, was Raoul Leger -- compassionate social worker turned lay missionary to the poor in the highlands of Guatemala.

It turns out that his compassion for those people did drive him to join the guerrilla struggle that took his life -- that much of the Guatemalan government's story appears to be true. But his family and others are not convinced of the rest -- they fear he was captured before being tortured or summarily executed.

Now, Ms. Leger is fighting to have his body exhumed from the family grave in the hope it will yield clues. She has assembled a top-notch team of experts who have agreed to do the autopsy -- including renowned forensic anthropologist and murder mystery novelist author Kathy Reichs -- and recruited Amnesty International to her cause.

It all started last summer when she travelled to Guatemala and talked to people who knew him, who spoke warmly of what he had done for them. She returned from the trip, quit working, and took on this new full-time mission. At the moment, though, she finds herself caught up in a battle at home.

The New Brunswick government wants the autopsy done with experts it selects. The province, which might end up paying the bill, says its option is cheaper.

She is also battling the federal government, which she feels should cover the cost because it failed the family 20 years ago by not ensuring an autopsy was done when the body was first returned to Canada.

She is convinced federal authorities made a deal with the Guatemalan government stipulating there would be no autopsy if Guatemala agreed to exhume the body.

"That's the part I don't get," she says. "How come I am fighting my own government? They are hiding something. I do think they made an agreement. When my father asked for an autopsy, the Guatemalan government said if there was an autopsy, there would be no exhumation."

The body of Raoul Leger, identified only by dental records, returned to Canada in a hermetically sealed steel coffin after two months of negotiations.

More than 1,100 people attended his funeral in Bouctouche, a small Acadian fishing community north of Cocagne, early in October 1981. Some 40 priests were on hand for the service.

A sign hung on the altar bearing the words he once spoke about his mission in Central America: "I want to help the people help themselves and understand themselves."

Canada left it to the Guatemalans to investigate and report on his death, saying it didn't have the power or authority to do so on its own.

After Citizen inquiries about the results, the Department of Foreign Affairs admitted it never received the report. It says it is now renewing efforts to obtain one.

"Despite our requests, the Guatemalan officials did not provide any report. We did pursue the matter to no avail," says department spokesman Reynald Doiron. "We are going to investigate if it can be done."

He denies Canada ever made a pact with Guatemala not to do an autopsy.

"What is being claimed by the family is not accurate," Mr. Doiron says. " There was no deal or no agreement between the Guatemalan government and the Canadian government to the effect that no autopsy was to be performed. Not at all."

Raoul Leger was always a man of compassion. It was ingrained in him from an early age as he watched his parents give away food, drive widows to church, share the bounty of the family farm.

His family is devoutly Catholic. A big wooden cross still stands on the lawn of the home where he grew up. His father, Herve, put it there and folks from all around would gather there for community mass. Raoul, one of four children, went to a Catholic school where the teachers were nuns.

Raoul was always concerned with the welfare of others. If he saw a child without proper shoes, for instance, he would make certain to off-handedly mention it to someone he knew could provide them.

It was perhaps natural that he would grow up to become a social worker. His generosity, patience and penchant for listening intently were perfect fits for the job. He worked with children with mental disabilities and with juvenile delinquents.

But something within him made him feel he was needed more elsewhere. He began thinking about helping out overseas when someone told him about the Foreign Mission Society in Quebec.

He discovered it had people leaving for Guatemala.

He left in early 1979 for a land of poverty, repression and uprising, of dictatorship and ruthless disregard for human life. Although a peace accord was supposed to have brought calm to a land rocked by civil war for four decades, there was still disorder, violence, chaos.

But he couldn't have been happier -- the people needed him.

While others in the mission worked in cities in the lowlands, he ended up in the rural highlands. In Concepcion Chirichichapa, he lived with a Canadian priest and spent his days working alongside the people in the village of 42,000.

But then the threats started. The priest he lived with received a letter telling him it would be best for his well-being if he were to leave the country. Other threats followed. The priest returned to Canada.

Raoul Leger did, too. But the trip back in the fall of 1980 was just a visit. He was determined to return to help the people. Those around him tried to dissuade him, but he seemed undaunted.

This time, though, he did not just return to work in the highlands.

He stayed in Guatemala City, the capital. Andrea Leger does not want to reveal why, or what he did there. She wants that to be disclosed by the documentary on his life now being pieced together for the National Film Board.

But it seems he went there because he had come to believe in the
struggle of the Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms, or ORPA,
the guerrilla movement fighting for repatriation of Mayan lands and
recognition.

"My suspicion is some of the people he was working with were collaborators of that organization," says Dr. Charles Godue, who was also a part of the same mission to Guatemala. He worked in a different area, but spoke with Mr. Leger about his involvement with the group.

"I think Raoul identified with the people he was working with. He was touched by the suffering imposed on the people, the repression," he says. "He just decided to join their cause. At some point, he reached the same conclusion as they did -- that there was no other way to change the society."

Dr. Godue was taken aback that the young missionary aligned himself with a political group, particularly one that took up arms against the military-led government.

"He was not an interventionist. He was not an intellectual -- he was not the kind of leftist intellectual that went there with an agenda," says Dr. Godue, who now works as an adviser with the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, D.C.

"I was surprised that he would make that step," he says. "But after that, that he would have fought? Even with arms? That's not a Canadian style, it's not Raoul's style. But I don't doubt that if needed that he would have done it. I think he just decided that he would walk the whole way."

That Andrea Leger wants her brother's days in Guatemala City to be told by the NFB film, due out this spring, is not surprising. She owes a lot to the project. The producer took her and her sister Cleola to the country last year to retrace her brother's movements.

She spent nearly a month in the country, leaving deeply moved by poverty and the spirit of the people. She now dedicates her efforts to continuing her brother's mission to help improve their lives and to end human rights abuses.

She is organizing a shipment of school supplies to the country and sends out flurries of e-mails detailing the ongoing violence and oppression in Guatemala.

"Raoul left us a challenge," she says. "Raoul had a dream to find peace and justice for the Mayans."

Now that dream is hers.