Roberto Pablo Corea Chávez

Roberto’s mother, Nora Isabel Chávez, recounts that since June 1, when the paramilitaries strafed at least 20 houses near the Shick barrio where her two granddaughters lived, Roberto stayed at their house to take care of them. She says that on the 12th, her daughter told her he had been shot. Roberto “had been left lying in the street for about an hour until the armed forces left. When we got there, some caponeros had taken him to the Manolo Morales Hospital, but he was dead on arrival. My younger daughter and my husband saw his tattered shirt and his destroyed mouth. We didn’t let them take him to the Forensic Examiner’s because they would erase the evidence. Finally they gave me his body, with the bullet, and a death certificate that said: Death due to a firearm.”

On Tuesday, June 12, the government’s “Clean-Up Operation” began a new attack on the eastern neighborhoods: Santa Rosa, Larreynaga, El Dorado, Paraisito, María Auxiliadora, Villa Progreso, Enrique Smith and Nueva Libia. According to witnesses, the police had 15 patrol trucks in the area near El Edén bridge. A caravan of Hilux pickups with police and hooded paramilitaries accompanied two excavator trucks and knocked down the barricades. The paramilitaries fired at anyone there. In the Enrique Smith barrio, the attack by 20 hooded paramilitaries left behind nine wounded and two dead: Ariel Ignacio Vivas, who worked as a street cleaner for the Municipal Government, and Roberto Pablo Corea Chávez, who sold sweets in the street.