http://feeds.feedburner.com/GuatemalaSolidarityNetworkTheBlog

or

http://www.guatemalasolidarity.org.uk/?q=rss.xml

- Secuestro de Héctor Reyes el 5 de septiembre de 2003,
- Muertes extrajudiciales en desalojo violento de la finca el 31 de agosto de 2004,
- Secuestro, tortura y asesinato de Eufemia López Morán 25 de abril de 2004,
- Agresión e Intento de Secuestro de René Eustaquio Reyes el 2 de abril de 2004,
- Intento de asesinato en contra del grupo campesino el 21 de noviembre de 2004,
- Lesiones graves producidas por arma de fuego a varios campesinos del grupo.

 
El pasado 27 de febrero de 2008 en el marco de la II Ronda de negociaciones entre América Central y la Unión Europea,  las redes Europeas APRODEV, Amigos de la Tierra Europa, CIDSE, CIFCA, Grupo SUR, Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos –FIDH- y  Oxfam Internacional, junto con la Red Latinoamericana ALOP, organizaron el encuentro: “La sociedad Civil toma la Palabra”.

Un evento celebrado gracias al apoyo del Presidente de la Delegación para América Central del Parlamento Europeo Raimon Obiols y la receptividad de distintos Grupos Políticos presentes en la Eurocámara como el Grupo Socialista Europeo, Partido Popular Europeo, Los Verdes y Izquierda Unitaria Europea.

Destacar también, la acogida de las partes negociadoras como Comisión Europea y los gobiernos centroamericanos, así como los valiosos aportes de  organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil centroamericana y europea en este encuentro. El objetivo era sacar la discusión del ámbito exclusivo de las partes y de las salas de negociación y de poner de manifiesto la importancia de estas negociaciones más allá del comercio.

A frightening and true story, Secrets of the CIA draws on highly personal stories of numerous ex-CIA agents.

Phil Roettinger: I went through World War II as an officer in the Marine Corps, came back, and one night the doorbell rang and I want [to the door] and here was this nattily dressed man in a nice suit and a snap-brim hat. And he said, "May I come in?" And I said, "Well, I think you had better identify yourself. Who are you?" "Well," he said, "I know who you are and you've been recommended very highly to our organization." I said, "What's your organization?" [He said,] "Well, I'm not at liberty to tell you what the organization is." And I said, "This is crazy! But I told him, "Come on in," [because] he was a little guy and I thought I could handle him pretty well. And he said, "You have been accepted in our organization, and we want you to go to Central America." And I said, "What? Central America? Come on!" So that's how it happened. I was to join this group that went to Central America and I found out that I was supposed to be in charge of overthrowing a government in Central America. "It doesn't sound right," and I said, "What's the government?" "Well," [he said,] we don't want to go into it too deeply here, yet." "Well," I said, "I think you'd better forget the whole thing." "Oh, no no no no no! It's very important," and so finally he did let out that we were going to overthrow the government of Guatemala.

Well now, I had been to Guatemala before several years before that because I was a member of the U.S. Olympic team and we were requested to go down and help organize the Games, the Central American/Caribbean Games.

Voiceover: Doves are released: living symbols of the peace and friendship among the twenty-two nations represented.

Phil Roettinger: So I knew people down there. I knew this gentleman by the name of Arbenz, and the CIA was going to have me overthrow these friends of mine. Well, they explained to me that this is extremely important to the security of the United States. (When they pull that, you know there's something wrong because the United States is so secure that nobody is ever going to do anything to it.) Anyway, so I said, "Well, okay, I'll do it." And we organized a group of dissident Guatemalans, armed them and trained them minimally, and sent them off up to overthrow the government [Operation El Diablo].

Voiceover: Fighting ends in Guatemala. These rebel troops backed by air power have compelled the ousting of Guatemala's pro-communist regime and have won a ceasefire from government forces. That red rule in Guatemala is over is grimly symbolized by the determination of the insurgents themselves and by this effigy of ex-president Arbenz who fled the country. The sign reads: "Go back to Russia."

Richard Nixon: You know there were some people during the Arbenz regime that said there was a question as to whether it was truly a communist regime and as to whether it was controlled by Moscow. Do we have here the proof that there was no question whatsoever?

1954 Guatemala Coup Spokesman: There was no doubt at all that Russia controlled all the communists here in Guatemala, sir.

Richard Nixon: In other words, the Arbenz regime was not a Guatemala government; it was a foreign government controlled by foreigners.

Phil Roettinger: What happened was that they went up there and caused great bloodshed and great damage, which have never been corrected even to this day. That started the whole thing in Guatemala and is why we're having all this trouble today.

The only thing that can be done, of course, is to work with our Congress because everything that happens in Latin America or any place else in the world begins in our Congress.

Now look: Are you in favor of killing somebody that you don't know? Are you in favor of torturing somebody? Are you in favor of locking people up in dungeons and things? Are you really in favor of that because I don't think that you are? And I think that I can get that across to you pretty well if I get a chance to talk to you like that.

Ralph McGehee: I feel that because of the problems that I went through, the realizations that I came to, the efforts that I've taken to counter--if I may call it this--this monster, that I am contributing so much now that I could not have contributed had I not joined the agency.

Verne Lyon: There's no way I can make amends, but certainly helping in this effort to expose the abuses of our intelligence services, perhaps, in some small way will help pay that debt.

Narrator: In an organization that celebrates loyalty and security, the public confessions of these former agents have been hard to swallow, but as revelations of the Agency's failures and deceit pile up, the courage to speak out has spread from one agent to another.

Phil Roettinger: I promise that I will do as much as I can for peace in Latin America. Thank you very much.

"Según el último monitoreo efectuado el 3 de abril del 2008, por la Secretaría de Seguridad Alimentaria y Nutricional (Sesan), seis mil 147 comunidades en todo el país presentan algún grado de riesgo y registran casos de niños con desnutrición. De éstas, 332 están en muy alto riesgo, de las cuales 93 se encuentran en el departamento de Totonicapán.

De los 22 departamentos del país, 20 registran algún tipo de desnutrición. Alta Verapaz y San Marcos son los que tienen mayor número de comunidades en niveles variados de riesgo, 972 y 967, respectivamente, pero es Totonicapán el que tiene más comunidades en muy alto riesgo, y Momostenango es el municipio más afectado, con un total de 31, seguido de San Bartolo Aguas Calientes, con 28."

Join key campaigners from Africa, Asia and Latin America to hear about the growing resistance to Europe's plans and how we can link up globally to stop these unjust deals and put in place a new trade system which protects both people and the environment.

    * Charles Santiago – Trade Activist & Member of Parliament, Malaysia
    * Norma Maldonado – International Gender & Trade Network, Guatemala
    * John Ochola – Africa Programme Officer, EcoNews, Kenya

Venue: The Human Rights Action Centre, Amnesty International UK, 17-25 New Inn Yard, London EC2A 3EA

Please email to reserve a place in advance trademeeting@wdm.org.uk

This event is brought to you by: ActionAid, Friends of the Earth, War on Want, World Development Movement …campaigning as part of the Trade Justice Movement.

"Sin duda alguna, yo pertenezco a una de esas redes familiares de larga duración, a la familia Arzú, y yo creo que la originalidad de esta investigación y su poder de movilización fue porque otra persona que no fuera de la oligarquía no habría podido pasar esta encuesta. Sin lugar a dudas, no se la habrían respondido. No habrían podido acceder a la clase dominante.

Yo no hice una investigación así como denuncia, yo misma me sorprendí del nivel de racismo fenotípico y genetista de mis familiares. Yo pensé que iba a ser un racismo más "light", algo así como "los discriminamos porque son diferentes", pero no pensé que iban a decir "porque son una raza inferior".

Lo que me sorprendió cuando yo pasé esta encuesta a 100 miembros de la élite de poder es que un porcentaje muy alto, un 15%, era partidario de la mejora de la raza."

Bibliografía para guión del video: Conferencia impartida por Ing. Mario Sosa Castillo -- Semana de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación CONCYT, Guatemala 2008. Video by Cesar Hernandez M.

Chris Ruane (PPS (Rt Hon Caroline Flint, Minister of State), Department for Communities and Local Government, Vale of Clwyd, Labour) | Hansard source

'El Pais' meanwhile published a piece by their Bogotá correspondent Maite Rico in which she asserted that the FARC operate freely in Ecuador and that not only was there evidence of FARC drug trafficking but of their enjoying official Ecuadorian support (similar charges have been made elsewhere in the international media about Venezuela) and that all of this was witnessed by one OAS functionary who, Rico affirmed, expressed dismay. This has now been rebutted in a letter by José Miguel Insulza, Secretary General of the OAS.

In this letter, Insulza says that such information - that a OAS functionary saw FARC guerrillas moving about freely and busily carrying out all sort of activities in the northern border of Ecuador with Colombia- was absolutely false, since the OAS does not have either special missions, nor functionaries of any kind, deployed in the north of Ecuador. Thus it is impossible that anybody in the OAS could have made such a statement. Insulza went on to say that they checked with OAS reps in Bogotá and Quito and nobody had spoken to Maite Rico.

"La señora Maite Rico escribe: "Los guerrilleros se mueven por el norte de Ecuador en camionetas, como ha constatado un funcionario de la Organización de Estados Americanos, que expresaba en privado el desconcierto que le provocó cruzarse en corredores del área fronteriza con miembros de las FARC perfectamente pertrechados".

Estoy en condiciones de asegurar a usted que tal afirmación es absolutamente falsa, ya que la OEA no tiene ni misiones especiales ni funcionarios de ningún nivel desplegados en la frontera norte de Ecuador, por lo que resulta imposible que algún funcionario de esta organización haya formulado tal declaración. Hemos consultado a los representantes de la organización en Quito y Bogotá y ninguno de ellos ha hecho declaraciones ni tenido contacto con la señora Rico.

En este contexto, es cuando menos sorprendente que un diario del prestigio del que usted dirige incurra en un error de esta categoría, que atenta contra la verdad, afecta el prestigio de un Gobierno y perjudica la gestión conciliadora de nuestra organización."

"Last week, I was in Guatemala—as an aside, I must tell the Minister that many non-governmental organisations there fear that DFID is turning its back on that country—where I was fascinated by a water project there. A local community managed to raise enough money to bring a 35 km pipeline into its village. Unfortunately, however, it was forced to bring the water through surrounding communities, many of whom were jealous that the pipeline was going through their communities but not serving them. The project took three years to be established because communities along the pipeline were simply smashing the pipe out of jealousy because they were angry that they had no access to the water it carried, while other communities did."

JOHN HEGLEY
"scandalously talented: funny, moving, musical poetry"
ROB NEWMAN
"sharp as a razor political comedy"
IAN SAVILLE
award-winning socialist magician
ANDREW BAILEY
audio-visual musical comedy from a true original
plus MAX REINHARDT, world music DJ extraordinaire
and, it's hoped, more....

National Police Archive Contributes Evidence:  The Historical Archive of the former National Police has begun to shed light on human rights violations committed during the armed conflict and the structures that allowed them.

There is not a single document that contains an order for execution or forced disappearance in the Historical Archive of the National Police (PN) in Guatemala City.  The authors of the reports took good care not to be so specific, but left traces that, when scrupulously examined by experts at the Human Rights Ombudsman's office (PDH), could help to reveal the perpetrators of abuses committed during the period of repression in Guatemala.

To piece together hundreds of the as yet unresolved human rights violations committed by the Police from 1975 to 1985, it has taken a large dose of patience and many critical eyes.  The PDH investigators have had to scour each name and fact, as insignificant as they seem, in order to prove the counterinsurgency role played by the PN.  The evidence found implicates the recently deceased ex-director of the PN, German Chupina Barahona, and the fugitive ex-director of the Department of the Interior, Donaldo Alvarez.

One Hundred Sixty PDH investigators have been piecing together this puzzle, rescuing and analyzing the PN Archives over the last two years.  The accumulated data could serve as documentary proof in court cases of some of the 45,000 people forcibly disappeared; this is the primary objective of the PDH in investigating the Archives discovered by an Investigative Commission directed by historian Edilberto Cifuentes in July of 2005

Of the 80 million documents in the Archive, 5 million have been examined and digitized.  The examination of these documents has uncovered PN operations such as the chain of command, operative policies of repression, and methods used to aid the Army counterinsurgency plan.

Spies Everywhere

The most substantial documents are those sent by informers and those classified as "confidential."  According to the data found, the PN placed spies in factories, churches, universities, unions, and even public offices.  One of the most interesting reports discovered by the investigators was one sent daily by an informer in the Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology, and Hydrology (Insivumeh) whose only function was to closely monitor his co-workers.

"These documents demonstrate that the Police had infiltrated absolutely every sector.  Who would have imagined that they would even infiltrate Insivumeh?" says a surprised Gustavo Meoño, director of the Archive.  Informers reported to the PN on the conversations and relationships had, as well as books read by co-workers.  In fact, some informers' actual names are identified in the reports.

The reports considered relevant were: type-written in a standard format in which the person neither sending nor receiving was identified; sealed "confidential"; and always sent to the PN director.  On many of the rescued documents, Chupina Barahona's handwriting appears in the left margin directing, "To the 6th Command.  Investigate and Proceed."  Due to a prohibition on the reproduction of these reports, a sample document cannot be published here

The 6th Command

The feared 6th Command, directed by Pedro Garcia Arredondo, and the old Division of Criminal Investigation (DIC) were in charge of verifying the information contained in the reports and deciding what should be done with a "suspicious" person.  The work of the PDH investigators is precisely to verify what happened with these people.  In some cases, they have found documentation of the registration and admittance into prison of individuals.  They have also found reports of disappearances filed by family members.

The PN documentation ends here, but if the individual later appeared dead with signs of torture, it is not hard to deduce what the order "Investigate and Proceed" meant, even if no document explicitly states it.  Investigators have also found lists of people who were detained during searches, on special operations, or on routine raids; these apparently legal apprehensions result in forced disappearances since it is still unknown what happened to these people.

The archive has revealed information about various security strategies elaborated by the Guatemalan State between 1954 and 1985.  The PN, founded in September of 1881, did not take on a repressive role until the overthrow of the Arbenz government in 1954.  It reached its most brutal period from 1975-85 during the governments of Romeo Lucas García, Efraín Ríos Montt and Humberto Mejía Víctores.

Between 1954 and 1964, the strategy of the Guatemalan State was anti-communist, aimed at impeding communist political movements.  This policy sought to strike all sectors of society, generating terror in the citizenry.  The Police were designated to create black-lists and jail people denounced by anti-communist committees.

An order found among the documents solicited the location, arrest and "preventative detention" of a list of people to avert a possible protest during the 1955 visit of the then Vice-President of the United States, Richard Nixon

The Bodies

In the 1960s the number of dead bodies with signs of torture that appeared around Guatemala City was relatively low, and the cause of death listed in police reports was quite specific.  In the 1970s, however, things began to change; assassinations increased and the cause of death for hundreds of young people was now registered simply as "cardiac arrest".

After the rise of the guerrilla movement, the Guatemalan State assigned the PN a counterinsurgency role subordinate to the army command.  The police acted only in urban areas, creating webs of informants that allowed it to quash intellectual, trade-union, or political movements that could support the guerrilla insurgency, directly or indirectly.

The Internal Investigations Section of the DIC was in charge of processing the majority of intelligence gathered through informants.  Although the DIC changed names several times in its history, its basic structure remained the same.  In fact, according to documental evidence there was a strategy to keep key figures directing the repression in charge of the institution.

Various public faces were assigned to head the PN during the 20 years coinciding with the height of its repressive role.  "Each time that there was a scandal involving the institution these public faces were put on the chopping block as scapegoats while the people with real power within the institution remained hidden and unaffected," affirms Meoño.  These were not clandestine positions but figures within the official organizational makeup of the PN—yet they were always behind the scenes.  From 1975-85 the PN was composed of a General Director, a Sub-Director, an Inspector General, and six Operating Bodies, in addition to the Departmental Delegations.

Method of Investigation

In order to make the investigation of the Archive more efficient the PDH selected the units of the PN considered to have committed the worst excesses.  These units would also serve as a model to analyze the remaining PN units.  Likewise, based on the police units the PDH investigators divided into working groups to study the documents. The units of the PN included: General Direction, Internal Inspections, Segundo Cuerpo, Quetzaltenango Headquarters, Criminal Investigation Division, Identification Cabinet, and Committee of Joint Operations.

Clearly, the investigators placed special attention on the 6th Command, the operational arm of the Segundo Cuerpo, which generally received orders from the director of the PN.  The 6th Command operated during the government of Lucas Garcia and continued throughout that of Rios Montt, though operating under the new name of the 6th Cuerpo

Key Words

The PDH working groups are searching for key words among the documents such as disappearance, kidnapping, torture, cadaver XX or names of people whose family members have reported their disappearance or execution to the PDH.  They have already identified 30,000 key documents that have been scanned and systematized into a digital data base to be used as evidence in court.

The documents serve as valuable proof in establishing the chain of command and the degree of control the directors had over subordinate officers.  Nothing happened within the PN without the knowledge of superior authorities.  To keep the director informed, each PN unit filed frequent reports that were reviewed by Internal Inspections.  The General Inspector also assumed internal control of agents, imposing harsh punishments on those who did not follow the rules.  PDH investigators have found cases in which officers were put in 30-day confinement for speaking about personal matters on the patrol radio.

The Committee of Joint Operations, a task group composed of both police and army officials, generated operating plans.  This group also received a great deal of confidential correspondence from informers.  The army would ultimately take charge of and interrogate most of those detained by the police in order to extract information or to send them to military prisons.  This Committee illustrates the subordination of the PN to the military.

At this point, the PDH has only been able to analyze 6% of the documents contained in the Archive.  A statistical analysis that takes a random sample from all the documents has established that at least 15% contain evidence of human rights violations.  If this is true, as it seems, why hasn't the Archive ever been destroyed?  According to Alberto Fuentes, one of the heads of the project, the Archive was conserved because, "It is the proof of their (the Guatemalan State's) triumph." What they didn't know is that it could also be used as the evidence for their condemnation.

Gustavo Meoño, director of the PN Historical Archives, believes that the facts about how the structures operated in the past can help the CICIG (International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala) to investigate present operations of organized crime.

Gustavo Meoño evaluates the results of the recovery and investigation of the PN Historical Archive documents.

Q. Have your expectations with respect to the recuperation of the Archives been met?

A. We have reached the basic objectives of the first phase, keeping in mind that this was a huge deposit of deteriorating paperwork.  From an archivist point of view, we stopped the deterioration process. What's more, we've concluded the process of preservation, organization and description of close to six million documents.  At the same time, we have investigated the key years from 1975 to 1985.

Q. There are those that thought the Archives were going to be nothing but a compilation of historic documents, and would not be investigated for human rights violations.

A.  We cannot forget that the mission of the Human Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDH) is not just to save and preserve Archives; its objective, in this case, is to find documents that prove human rights violations.

Q.  Can you assert that you have found proof that could serve as evidence to take cases to trial?

A.  Definitely, yes.  But it's important to understand the reality of an administrative archive; we're not going to find a smoking gun.  The documents won't contain explicit orders to kidnap, torture, or assassinate...In administrative documentation, things appear expressed in a different way, but they appear

Q.  The Cicig is interested in understanding how organized crime operates today.  But to understand today, it is necessary to know how it operated in the past.  The information of the Archives could be very valuable to them.  Would you be willing to share the information with the Cicig?

A.  To me, this is one of the most important and urgent contributions that can be made by the PDH Archive project because the strategies, structures, operative policies, patterns of action, chains of command, and the flow of information do not differ much from what occurs today.

On March 2nd, Guatemalan banana union leader, Miguel Angel Ramirez of SITRABANSUR, was shot dead. SITRABANSUR, which is affiliated to Banana Links Guatemala partner union UNSITRAGUA, was founded by Miguel Ramirez and his fellow workers at the 'Olga Maria' plantation in the Pacific South of Guatemala in July 2007. Since then SITRABANSUR members have been harassed and threatened by private security hired by the company -Frutera Internacional Sociedad Anónima, supplier to Chiquita Brands- and 24 union members have been sacked. UNSITRAGUA has been working with SITRABANSUR to support these sacked workers and strengthen union organisation on the Olga Maria plantation.

The murder of Miguel Angel Ramirez is just one of the many recent cases of violence against banana union leaders in Guatemala. In September 2007 SITRABI union leader, Marco Tulio Ramirez Portelo was also shot dead and just four weeks ago the daughter of the General Secretary of SITRABANSUR was raped by armed men.

Pressure must be put on the Guatemalan government to ensure that the people responsible for these killings are brought to justice and the systematic violations of labour rights are put to a stop. As a result of a previous international campaign led by the IUF, EUROBAN and COLSIBA, the new Guatemalan president, Alvaro Colom, promised to take action so that the previous murder of SITRABI union leader Marco Tulio Ramirez is investigated by the authorities. Political pressure is needed to get EU governments to criticise the Guatemalan government for their lack of action on these violent and shocking cases of trade union repression and ensure that Alvaro Colom sticks to his commitments to end impunity and violence in Guatemala.

ACTION: Write to Sr Mario Mena, representative of Chiquita subsidiary COBIGUA, asking him - in the face of a rapidly deteriorating security situation and in the framework of the regional trade union rights agreement between Chiquita, COLSIBA and UITA/IUF - to transmit to the company's supplier that it is completely unacceptabl