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Requiem Guatemala reflects the horrors of war as enacted upon the people of the small hamlet of San Martin Comitan in the Guatemala highlands. The story, as framed by Marshall Bennett Connelly, recreates imaginatively Guatemalan priest Father Fernando Berrnudez’ report of the assassination of five young church workers during some of the darkest days of the Guatemalan civil war. While the story line follows faithfully the priest's report as recorded by Penny Lernoux in her book People of God, the message or theme of Connelly's rendering extends beyond the circumstances of the historical incident itself and challenges the reader's own responsibility for man's inhumanity to man. The theme might be defined as "duty or responsibility in the face of hopelessness." 

The theme of duty is framed immediately in the story as a question by the mayor of San Martin Comitan.  Reporting the demand for the execution of the sons to the parents of the young lay workers in the church of the community, Don Lázaro Emilio Cardenas, asks desperately, "What can a man say to something like that, and what's a man supposed to do?" The question is both rhetorical and semantic--that is, a question that points to the obvious hopelessness and at the same time challenges the reader to address the issue personally for his or her own context and community. 

As a rhetorical question, "What's a man supposed to do?" accents both the helplessness and the hopelessness of the mayor and the incredible alternatives he and his townspeople face: to kill their own sons or to be killed themselves along with the rest of their town. Don Lázaro seems helpless to do more than relay the ultimatum of the Guatemalan Colonel Julio Alfredo Guzman: "You've got five boys in Comitan teaching the campesinos how to read. That's subversive. That' s communist. So tonight, you have to kill them." The hopelessness of the situation is punctuated by the knowledge of the military' s carnage that has swept away the countryside in other communities: 

"Have you forgotten what the militaries did in Cuarto Pueblo?" asks Rolando Semitosa, signing the cross in benediction over his head and chest. 

"Can you not remember the massacre in Puente Alto," interrupted Josue Vallez, "how they locked all the women and girls in the school house, threw in grenades, and burned them all up? How they placed all the men in the Protestant church and clubbed them to death?" . . . 

                       "Surely, they will come and kill us all!" cried Jaime Chopul. 

Clearly, the narrow time frame and the threat of immediate annihilation leaves them no alternative and consequently no hope for saving themselves or those whom they love. 

As a semantic question, "What's a man supposed to do?" arches over and beyond the horrific circumstances of the narrative and challenges the resolve of the reader to address such inhumanity. Unlike the characters of the story, the reader has alternatives: outrage, yes, but also the capacity to respond beyond the debilitating threats leveled at the characters of the story. The only source of strength and hope, the American priest is not with them at the time of their greatest need. "'Yes, the Padre is not here, so what choices  do we have?' asked Don Lázaro, his open hands outstretched before them." Without the priest to intercede, so goes the implication, the townspeople of Comitan are completely exposed to the repression and its terrifying consequences. With no one else within the tale to respond, the only resolution to the unacceptable horror within the story is to react from without. 

What that responsible action must be is dramatically implied in the decision of the five young men who agree to give up their own lives for the safety and security of the rest  of the town. "'What choices do you have?' asked the boys, waiting breathlessly for an answer, scanning the anguished faces of their families for some sign of hope, searching about the room for even a margin of hope." By analogy, as readers we are challenged, like them, to be ready to lay down our lives for those we love. 

"Now what can you say? You tell me! What can a man say to something like that, and what's a man supposed to do?" The mayor can neither act nor react. The mayor cannot choose between two evils without compromising his responsibility to serve all the people of his town.  Neither can the parents choose to kill their own sons without sacrificing in an ultimate sense their roles as parents. Only the sons themselves can resolve the impossible dilemma through their own decision to give up their lives. Only for the sons is the duty clearly defined in the face of hopelessness. The only resolution to their hopelessness is the resolve of the readers to act on their sacrificial behalf.
 

Dr. Grimes