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1 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
2 NORTHERN DIVISION
3
4 JUAN ROMAGOZA ARCE, JANE ) Docket No.
DOE, in her personal capacity ) 99-8364-CIV-HURLEY
5 as Personal Representative of )
the ESTATE OF BABY DOE, )
6 )
Plaintiffs, )
7 vs. ) West Palm Beach, Florida
) June 27, 2002
8 JOSE GUILLERMO GARCIA, an )
individual, CARLOS EUGENIO VIDES)
9 CASANOVA, an individual, and ) VOLUME 4
DOES 1 through 50, inclusive, )
10 )
Defendants. )
11 _______________________________ x
12
13
14 COURT REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT OF
TESTIMONY AND PROCEEDINGS HAD BEFORE
15 JUDGE DANIEL T. K. HURLEY
16
17 APPEARANCES:
18 For the Plaintiffs: JAMES GREEN, ESQ.
PETER STERN, ESQ.
19 BETH VanSCHAACK, ESQ.
20 For Defendant: KURT KLAUS, ESQ.
21
Court Reporter: Pauline A. Stipes, C.S.R., C.M.
22
23
24 PAULINE A. STIPES
Official Reporter
25 U. S. District Court
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1 THE COURT: Good morning, everybody. Are we all
2 set and ready to proceed?
3 Mr. Caldwell, would you bring in the jury?
4 Who will be our witnesses this morning?
5 MR. GREEN: Just one witness, Professor Mauricio.
6 THE COURT: All right. I will explain to the
7 jury we interrupted a witness, and we may do that in other
8 parts of the trial. The jury will understand.
9 MR. GREEN: Thank you.
10 (Thereupon, the jury returned to the courtroom.)
11 THE COURT: Please be seated. Ladies and
12 gentlemen, as you understand lawyers on both sides
13 occasionally need to work to accommodate each other and
14 accommodate witness' schedules, and what we thought we
15 would do -- remember when we stopped last night, we were
16 in cross examination of Professor Gilbert. What we
17 decided to do is stop, and Professor Gilbert is going to
18 come back this afternoon to go back to the cross
19 examination.
20 We will turn to the Plaintiffs, and the
21 Plaintiffs will call Professor Mauricio as I understand as
22 the next witness for the Plaintiffs.
23 Let me turn to counsel and allow you to do that.
24 MR. STERN: Thank you, Your Honor. We call
25 Professor Carlos Mauricio to the stand.
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1 THE COURT: Professor Mauricio, would you come up
2 to the witness stand?
3 Sir, if you pull that chair up you will be more
4 comfortable.
5 CARLOS MAURICIO, PLAINTIFFS' WITNESS SWORN.
6 THE COURT: Sir, of course the jury met you at
7 the very beginning of the case, but I wonder if you would
8 restate your full name for the record simply for its
9 clarity and spell your last name.
10 THE WITNESS: Sure. My name is Carlos Mauricio,
11 M-A-U-R-I-C-I-O.
12 THE COURT: Thank you, sir.
13 Now, let me suggest if you sit back in that chair
14 but pull it closer, you will be much more comfortable.
15 Let me turn to Mr. Stern and allow him to
16 proceed.
17 DIRECT EXAMINATION
18 BY MR. STERN:
19 Q. Good morning, Professor Mauricio.
20 A. Good morning.
21 Q. Where do you live?
22 A. I live in San Francisco.
23 Q. What do you do for a living?
24 A. I am a teacher.
25 Q. Where do you teach?
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1 A. I teach in an inner city high school, African American
2 students and Latino students.
3 Q. Is that in San Francisco?
4 A. Yes.
5 Q. What do you teach there?
6 A. I am a science teacher, mathematics, and biology.
7 Q. Do you enjoy that work?
8 A. I love it.
9 Q. I would like to go back to your earlier days in El
10 Salvador. Could you please tell the jury where you were
11 born in El Salvador?
12 A. I was born in a village west side of El, the name is
13 Ahuachapan. Mayan named. I am the third of family of
14 four. My older sister, Gloria Elida, Jose Roberto and me,
15 and my younger sister, Maria Elena.
16 MR. STERN: If I could ask Mr. Green to put on
17 the easel the small map we brought today. If I could also
18 ask Mr. Green to hand Professor Mauricio the pointer.
19 BY MR. STERN:
20 Q. Could you show us on the map where your hometown of
21 Ahuachapan is located?
22 A. On the west side of El Salvador, around here. This is
23 not exactly the map, but after Sonsonate, the west side.
24 Q. How far is that from the City of San Salvador?
25 A. 40 miles.
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1 Q. What kind of a town is Ahuachapan?
2 A. Now grow up to not a big city, but still a small town
3 and basically the inhabitants of Ahuachapan, we have a
4 Mayan inheritance, basically majority, we are Mayan people.
5 Q. You mentioned your other siblings. Did you grow up in
6 a family with your mother and father?
7 A. No. My mother was a single mother. I have no father,
8 we have no father. Basically she raise us, she provide
9 food and clothe us, and location for us, although I am the
10 first kid who was able to go to college.
11 Q. Economically how well off was your family?
12 A. Well, I may say among the poverty of the Salvadoran
13 people, we were privileged because she was a kind of
14 business woman, she sold goods in the market. She come to
15 the market to carry out her business.
16 Q. What were the circumstances of your -- where you grew
17 up, can you tell us about the house where you grew up,
18 please?
19 A. Well, as I say among the poverty we have in El
20 Salvador, I was kind of privileged kid in a way because my
21 mother was a business woman, and she was able to provide
22 for us. And I remember we have a fairly big house in which
23 we have electricity, which was a luxury item in El
24 Salvador, not everybody have electricity. I remember
25 everybody came to my mother's home, and she was a woman who
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1 usually took people from the street and feed them at my
2 home.
3 Q. Was your family religious?
4 A. My mother was very, very religious woman. She
5 attended mass at least every Sunday. She took us, all the
6 kids with her, although because she work a lot by herself,
7 and we were four kids, so, Saturday and Sunday we went to
8 mass.
9 Q. As a young child, did you go to school?
10 A. Yes, I went to school in Ahuachapan. I did to six
11 grade in Ahuachapan.
12 Q. How long did you stay in your town?
13 A. It happened my mother died when I was 11 years old,
14 and after that I had to basically, not to take care of
15 myself because I was 11 years old. After my mother died, I
16 stay with my older sister, Gloria Elida. As soon as I
17 finished elementary, I moved to El Salvador looking for a
18 job. At the age of 14 I went to San Salvador to find a
19 job.
20 Q. And what kind of job did you get?
21 A. I was lucky enough to find a job in the University of
22 San Salvador in a construction site.
23 Q. What kind of construction did you do?
24 A. I was a worker construction. Although I was only 14
25 years old, I was performing the same job that every man
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1 did. And I do remember I was trying to lift cement bag, it
2 was heavier than me. Hundred pound cement bag was too much
3 for me because I was probably 80, 80 pounds.
4 Q. During the time that you were working on the
5 construction site, were you able to continue your
6 education?
7 A. Yes. That is one of the situations that I always have
8 in my mind. I work every day eight hours, every day, but I
9 manage to go to night school.
10 Q. What schools did you attend?
11 A. My first year in San Salvador for night school I did
12 go to a Jesuit college.
13 Q. Jesuit college?
14 A. Not college, high school, during the night.
15 It is Academia de Mar during the day for rich kids,
16 and during the night, Academia Loyola for the working
17 people.
18 Q. What kind of subjects did you study at this school?
19 A. In general, we have sciences, humanities, and normal
20 subjects that I am teaching now in high school.
21 Q. Was that school free of charge?
22 A. No. What happened is that I didn't have enough money
23 to pay the tuition fees for my school, but what I did is, I
24 went to talk to the director of the school and he agrees to
25 give me a half payment, so I did pay only the half of it
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1 because otherwise I wouldn't pay because my salary was a
2 meager salary.
3 Q. How long did you stay at the Jesuit school?
4 A. Well, for -- let me see. Four years. Four years.
5 Q. At that point did you graduate, or did you go to
6 another school?
7 A. No. I continue with the other education because what
8 I have finish in San Salvador called secundaria, but I move
9 to another school which is Liceo Salvadoreno for the rich
10 kids again. It is a Marist school. And I take lessons in
11 the night, Academia la Mar, working people that take
12 classes during the night, because I was working during the
13 day. I take classes during the night, and I got my high
14 school degree there, and I was able to enter the
15 university, the school.
16 Q. You mention the Marist school. Is there some
17 connection?
18 A. Yes, they are the brothers, Maristas.
19 Q. At this time when you were in high school growing up,
20 did you have a sense what you wanted to be when you became
21 an adult?
22 A. Indeed. I always kept in the back of my mind that I
23 want to go to college, and also, I like to teach for some
24 reason, I like to teach. And as a kid, I also taught other
25 kids how to read because for some reason when I was in
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1 first grade and second grade, I was doing very well in
2 classes and my teacher ask me to help her to teach the
3 other kids. And I remember that I enjoyed teaching the
4 other kids.
5 Q. Now, you mentioned during this period you went to
6 school at night and worked during the day. How long did
7 you continue working on construction for your day job?
8 A. Well, I work and study during the night for six years.
9 Although I did work at the construction site doing the
10 construction jobs for about a year only, I was too young to
11 carry out all of the hard job that is made by the
12 construction workers, and because I was a little -- I was
13 very innocent, a guy, he was the foreman, and because he
14 carry a hard hat, I call him engineer every day. I say
15 good morning, engineer. He liked that because he was not
16 an engineer, he was kind of foreman. And he moved me to
17 the office, he move me to the office, and I was the kind of
18 the paper boy in the office. I clean the office, I run the
19 errands. But eventually being in the office, I learn how
20 to type, and later on I was assigned some tasks, office
21 tasks.
22 And I remember that I was given more and more tasks as
23 an office, and one day my two bosses, they, for some
24 reason, it is not clear for me, they gave up their jobs and
25 I was left in the office. And the administrator, he was
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1 very, very worried because we have to present a paperwork
2 for a payroll of probably 800 men, and he was very worried
3 because the guy who was able to do it already left. I was
4 the only person left in the office. I was 16 years old.
5 And then administer came to me to complain, and I said I
6 will do it. He didn't believe me. I said I could do it,
7 and I did. I put paper and everything together for 100
8 payroll people.
9 Q. Did you have a chance to go to college after you
10 graduated from high school?
11 A. Well, yes. I graduate from high school in 1972, but
12 while I was working in the university in 1972, the Army
13 came to the university and I was taken to the police, such
14 a day, not only me, students, workers, and professors were
15 taken to the different headquarters of the security forces
16 in El Salvador.
17 That particular day, 19 July 1972, the Army came to
18 the university and university was closed. I finished my
19 degree that allows me to enter the university in December,
20 1972, so when the university was open on September, 1973, I
21 get in as a student.
22 Q. Which university is this?
23 A. This is University of San Salvador, people call it the
24 national university.
25 Q. And when you began to attend the national university,
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1 what classes did you study?
2 A. The University of San Salvador has two levels, general
3 education in which students are asked to take subjects as a
4 general biology, general chemistry, mathematics, I say
5 biology already, science classes in one side, but also we
6 have to take a lot of humanities, psychology, philosophy,
7 et cetera, et cetera.
8 Q. Were you on a track for a particular profession at
9 that point?
10 A. Yes. It came to my mind that I really wanted -- I
11 love medicine, and I wanted to be a doctor, but in my
12 situation, in the situation in which I have to help myself
13 and I have to help my family, I decided to go for a short,
14 a short career in El Salvador, and one of them was
15 agricultural engineer. That is a five years career,
16 medicine is almost nine years. So I gave up my elusion of
17 becoming a doctor, and I prefer to go for something more
18 practical, something that would allow me to make a salary
19 as soon as possible.
20 Q. Why do you think that practical work appealed to you?
21 A. I think I made a good decision, because when I grow
22 up, I went to the forest, I went to the rivers, I went to
23 the countryside, and I am very close to nature. I like
24 nature.
25 Q. You mentioned you had a chance to take classes outside
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1 of the sciences. Could you tell us about some of the other
2 classes you took, please?
3 A. The other subject I really love is literature. I took
4 poetry classes, and I also write, and I nurture and develop
5 my skills for writing. I write poetry and short stories.
6 Q. In what year did you obtain your degree in your major
7 field of study?
8 A. I got my degree as an agricultural engineer in
9 December, 1979.
10 Q. And what did you do then?
11 A. Before 1979, I got a position as a teaching assistant
12 in the University of El Salvador. Before that in order to
13 make a living, I also teach mathematics in high school. So
14 when I got the position of teaching assistant, I gave up my
15 other position as a teacher, and I work as a teaching
16 assistant in university. And then I graduate in December,
17 1979 and I began to work as a teacher, assistant in the
18 university.
19 Q. Specifically what kinds of things were you teaching as
20 an agricultural engineer?
21 A. Animal nutrition, basically. In the kind of
22 biochemistry area. In order to understand the way that
23 energies produce in the body, you have to know how
24 biochemistry work, and I explain animal nutrition by
25 chemistry means.
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1 Q. Did you attempt to continue your education at that
2 point?
3 A. Yes, yes, I did. My idea of continuing my education
4 was very, very strong in me, and after I got my degree from
5 the University of El Salvador, I apply for Master of
6 Applied Sciences from the University in Yucatan in Mexico.
7 Q. And did you continue that course?
8 A. I continued that course and I went to Mexico in
9 October, 1980, although in August of 1980, August, 1980
10 while I was teaching, while I was in the classroom, the
11 Army came to the university, August, 1980, the Army came to
12 the university and they occupied the university for seven
13 years.
14 Q. I want to ask you more about your education, but at
15 this time, did you also begin a family in the '70's, and
16 during your student days?
17 A. Yes, yes. After 1979, I already have two kids.
18 Q. How long were you in Mexico studying for your Master's
19 Degree?
20 A. From October, 1980 to July, 1982.
21 Q. And did you then return to El Salvador?
22 A. In several locations because part of my contract with
23 the university, it was that they gave me support, and they
24 gave me a scholarship but I have to come back to teach to
25 the university for two years before being released of my
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1 contract.
2 But in the meantime while I was starting in Yucatan, I
3 have to come back. In kind of giving advances of my
4 education at the other colleagues in the university, I
5 remember that when I came back from Mexico to give Master's
6 talk, we call them Master's talk, I remember at that
7 particular time the university was working out of the
8 campos. We call that university in exile because we have
9 no main campus. We rent buildings in order to be able to
10 teach.
11 And I came to teach or to give my speeches to my
12 colleagues in buildings out of the main campus, and we were
13 able to graduate students, although we didn't have the
14 normal facilities that we had before.
15 Q. During the time that you were a student, and then
16 during the period when the university -- you had the
17 university in exile as you described it, were you a member
18 of any student groups?
19 A. Yes, yes, several of them. For example, I work hard
20 for the association of student having a scholarship in the
21 university, and in order to maintain your scholarship, you,
22 as a scholarship student, you have to have very good
23 grades. And I am a person who believe that we were in a
24 disadvantage, because we were poor people, and sometimes
25 the economic situation was very, very hard. I went several
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1 days without food. And asking us for the best grades in
2 the school, I believe it would be unfair because we were in
3 a situation that we have no the best environment in a way.
4 So, for example, one of my goals was trying to got to lower
5 the grades to an acceptable level. That is one of the
6 fights we had.
7 Q. Was that so more students could obtain scholarship
8 moneys? Was that the purpose of that?
9 A. Yes, in a way. That is another situation. For
10 example, I remember a year that the university was closed,
11 the government decided not to pay our allowances, and we,
12 the students, myself as a student leader, we went to the
13 newspaper and asked the government through the newspaper to
14 please pay us allowances.
15 Q. In terms of your involvement in student groups, were
16 there any other groups other than the one you told us
17 about, the group that supported students with scholarships?
18 A. Well, also I belong to the association for students
19 for agricultural sciences. I work hard for academic goals.
20 Q. What did that organization do?
21 A. We ask authorities for better condition, for better
22 teachers, for better curriculum and basically for better
23 teaching environment.
24 Q. In the period of the late '70's and early '80's that
25 you told us about, did you support efforts to reform the
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1 government of El Salvador?
2 A. Indeed, indeed. I am a man who believes that there
3 are needs of change when there is a lot of unfairness and
4 injustice. I believe that through peaceful means you can
5 achieve a change in society that is basically unfair.
6 Q. Can you give us some examples of how you supported
7 reform?
8 A. I remember, for example, I supported the workers when
9 they were asking for better wages. I supported the people
10 when they were asking for health system. And in general I
11 support people who were asking for education.
12 Q. During this period, did you write any letters or
13 publish any articles that were critical of the government?
14 A. No.
15 Q. Were you ever a member of any guerilla group?
16 A. No.
17 Q. Did you know people in the university who were
18 sympathetic to guerilla groups?
19 A. I guess I did. I guess some of the people. But you
20 have to realize that in El Salvador when I was captured,
21 being identified as a member or having sympathy for the
22 guerilla movement, it was real, real dangerous.
23 Q. Why was it that you personally chose not to go along
24 the path toward a violent reform as opposed to a peaceful
25 reform?