Last night, my 12-year-old son Mateo and I downloaded Finding Oscar from Amazon and watched in Antigua, Guatemala. An important, moving documentary about the 1982 massacre in Dos Erres, with period footage featuring Ronald Reagan and Efrain Rios Montt, and contemporary interviews with investigators, prosecutors, and relatives of victims.

By recounting the search for the then three-year-old boy who survived Dos Erres, Finding Oscar clearly lays out the complicated backstory of Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. At the end of the film, my 12-year-old son said: “Now I understand more about the history of Guatemala and the United States.”

Trigger warning: The film documents exhumation of bodies, violence, and loss.

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