On April 15, 1984, Rodi Alvarado, a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl, married Francisco Osorio, a soldier five years her senior. They had known each other only a short time, but societal pressures--the average marriage age in her province was 15--encouraged the union. Soon after the wedding Osorio moved Alvarado from her small town to Guatemala City, the capital, where he continued his often brutal army work.

"The military in Guatemala has tremendous authority," Alvarado declared in her February 7, 1996, application for political asylum in the United States. "Soldiers have the authority to kill people, on the spot, if they commit a wrong--or even if they do not." In her asylum application and in a recent interview, she detailed the harrowing story that follows.

Often drunk after work, Alvarado's husband would brag to her about the many heinous acts he'd participated in. He would describe how he and his colleagues had tossed babies in the air and shot at them, how they had burned down houses with the inhabitants inside. Then he would beat her.

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