In 2012, ProPublica senior reporter Sebastian Rotella and Fundación MEPI reporter Ana Arana published Finding Oscar: Massacre, Memory and Justice in Guatemala about Oscar Ramírez Castañeda, an undocumented Guatemalan immigrant and father of four living near Boston. At age 32, Oscar learned that his life was a lie. He was not the son of a heroic military officer as he’d been told by the family that raised him. DNA tests proved that he had been abducted at age three by the officer, whose commando unit had massacred an entire village in one of the worst crimes in Guatemala’s civil war.
Oscar’s story is now a feature-length documentary, “Finding Oscar,” executive produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Ryan Suffern. On March 23 in Washington, D.C., ProPublica is hosting a special advance screening of the film before it opens in theaters. The film chronicles how, nearly 30 years after the massacre, a dedicated team uncovered the truth and brought justice to those responsible – by finding the missing boy named Oscar.
The film screening will be followed by a conversation with government officials, policy experts and advocates, moderated by ProPublica’s Sebastian Rotella, exploring the continuing hunt for fugitive commandos involved in the Guatemalan massacre, as well as the many parallels between Oscar’s story and the intensifying conversation around immigration and refugees in the United States today.
Details:
- Thursday, March 23, 2017
- Doors | 6:00 PM, Screening | 6:30 PM
- Busboys & Poets, 1025 5th Street NW Washington, DC 20001
- Free to attend | RSVP here
Speakers include Kelly Fry, attorney at U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Human Rights Law Section; Geoff Thale, program director at the Washington Office on Latin America; and Kate Doyle, senior analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive.
