Discovering Dominga

58 minutes
Source: Berkeley Media

A young Iowa mother discovers that she is a survivor of one of the most horrific episodes in Guatemala's 30 year civil war. In 1982, Denese Becker was a nine-year-old Mayan girl named Dominga Sic Ruiz. That year soldiers killed her parents and more than 200 residents of Rio Negro who resisted relocation. A U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission later described the massacre, and 440 others like it as "genocide." At the age of eleven, Dominga was adopted by an Iowan couple. Years later, as an adult--haunted by nightmares and scattered memories--she returned to Guatemala to confront her past and that of the country. A study guide published by Facing History and Ourselves, entitled Lost Childhoods, is available to accompany this resource.



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