During the exhumation of a mass grave at a former military base in the Ixil region of Guatemala, the remains of a man were found with an ID photo and a family portrait in his pocket. His wife, gathered at the site with other relatives of missing loved ones, identified herself in the portrait, taken 30 years earlier.

This man was but one of the estimated 200,000 people who were killed or went missing during the civil war in Guatemala—a 36-year conflict between the state-backed military and leftist guerrillas that came to an end in 1996. According to a 1999 report by the U.N.-backed Commission for Historical Clarification, the army identified all indigenous Maya indians in several parts