I came across this really interesting and moving interview with Emilio Tojin Lopez of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR). He's translated by Chris Benoit from NISGUA. This interview was produced by Talking Stick TV. Emilio Tojin Lopez talks about his experiences during the civil war in Guatemala and as a member of the community of Santa Maria Tzeja.



You can see in this video from about 8 years ago some more of the context to what Emilio Tojin was explaining. It shows the work and human cost of exhumations, part of the process of bringing those responsible to justice. This video was recently uploaded by CinimatecaOnline.

It includes an interview with Byron Lima Estrada who was later convicted of the assassination of Bishop Juan Gerardi.

Written by Kimberley Kern

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This month, the national genocide case against Rios Montt and his high command had an exciting move forward.

“Plan Sofia,” is an old military document that outlines the plans for the eradication of indigenous communities in the Quiché region of Guatemala in the years 1981-82. It reveals that Ríos Montt signed the orders for the massacres of the towns of El Quetzal, Huehuetenango and Chicamán, Quiché. More than 300 died in El Quetzal, and 92 people died in Chicamán.  After these documents were leaked to the public in March, Rios Montt´s lawyers filed a motion in April arguing to keep them classified so they could not be used as evidence in the case.

"The documents detailing Plan Sofia clearly illustrate an explicit chain of command, with Rios Montt at its head, through which orders of mass extermination were communicated at the height of the conflict" said Catherine Norris, an organizer with the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) in Washington D.C.

On July 16th, many co-workers and I, attended a public hearing of the genocide case, solicited by the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR). Arguments were heard from the legal representatives of the AJR and the lawyer representing the Ministry of Defense, who argued that the 25-year old documents should be kept secret for national security purposes. During the hearing, the judge asked lawyer for the Ministry of Defense, "If the acts were committed in 1982, why do they continue to be classified as state secrets?”

On July 19th, the First Court of Appeals in Guatemala denied the motion filed by Ríos Montt and said that archived military documents must be submitted as evidence in the national genocide case against him. According to the judge, the argument that “Plan Sofia” is a state secret is invalid because releasing them would not compromise the current security of the state and the crimes have already been committed.

Honestly, this news came as a shock to many of us. The level of impunity in the government and disorganization in the judicial system is a sad reality in Guatemala. There are no legal limits to appeals filed against these cases, which makes the judicial process very slow and long. But, with these documents in the hands of the prosecution, the case is more likely to be successful in the end. With this turn of events, the members of the AJR have been re-inspired to keep fighting for justice.

THE COMMUNITIES OF SAN JOSE RIO NEGRO (SJRN)

In addition to living and working in Santa Maria Tzejá (SMT), every 3-4 weeks my partner and I embark on a hike to visit survivors and witnesses of the AJR who live in five different Q’eqchi’ communities. This excursion is an incredible opportunity to observe the spectacular rolling hills and extraordinary views of the Ixcán, full of trees and miles upon miles of cornfields, set on steep slopes. The rainy season is beginning here and traveling through the mud is also always an adventure. We have the good fortune to visit and spend time with families and communities whose lives and stories are so different from SMT. For example, in contrast to living with one hundred families in SMT, these tiny villages consist of 20-30 families each.

Since the communities of SJRN have little exposure to outsiders, they have fewer resources and their homes and lifestyles are much more humble. The survivors of the SJRN massacre and their communities did not flee to Mexico during the conflict; rather they were internally displaced. Community members hid in the mountains or were resettled in model villages. The homes are smaller, the communities less organized and education is not a priority like it is in SMT. Many young men and some of the younger children who have had the opportunity to attend elementary or middle school are able to speak Spanish, but most of the women only speak the native language, Q’eqchi’. This makes them very different from the returnee communities of the Ixcán, which are often multi-lingual with many Spanish-speaking members and an acceptance of the accompaniers’ presence as a fact of the Return Accords. This language barrier has been an enormous challenge and many daily interactions between the women and me are through broken Q’eqchiand sign language…. lots of smiling and nodding as well. When I first arrived, I studied two weeks of Q’eqchi’ and have since learned more from the families that we visit. It is interesting to compare this language with the one spoken in SMT, K’iche’, because many words are the same, or similar. I feel the most out of my element when we are visiting these communities, but I have also enjoyed the opportunity to step completely out of my comfort zone and challenge myself to try to communicate. Even though I mostly receive smirks and laughter when I struggle to speak Q’eqchi’, I know that the families also really appreciate that I try. They are among the warmest people I have ever encountered.

This is a brief summery of their story:

In 1982, the victims of the massacre of San José Rio Negro (SJRN) were working and living on two farms: El Remolíno and SJRN. In March of that year, members of the Guerilla Army of the Poor (EGP) arrived on the Romolíno farm and held a meeting in which they demanded that the workers collaborate with them. After the meeting they burned the farm’s cardamom dryer as well as supplies of rice and beans, and returned to the jungle. The workers were afraid that the army would blame them for the burning of the dryer and decided to flee to another farm, San Isidro. The men boarded canoes that they found by the river without noticing that “EPG” was painted on their sides. Shortly before arriving at San Isidro, they were apprehended by soldiers on the riverbank of the SJRN farm.

The workers on the SJRN farm were peasants who were already displaced by the internal conflict and who were assured by the owner that they would be safe there. However, in 1982 guerillas arrived to warn the workers that the army was coming to massacre them. Unfortunately, many workers were under the impression that only Catholics (often suspected of being guerillas or guerilla sympathizers) would be targeted and killed. Some workers fled but most decided to stay. Later, the army arrived by helicopter and stayed for a week. On the third day they began to kill the workers they had captured from El Romolíno and SJRN.

An ex-soldier who claims to have participated in the massacre says that some people were decapitated, some shot with bullets and others chopped to death. Survivors report to have heard machine guns, bombs and screams and seen smoke coming from the site of the massacre. When family members returned after the soldiers left, they found that their houses had been completely destroyed and discovered a freshly-dug grave, encircled by vultures and women’s clothes.

COMMEMORATION OF THE MASSACRE OF SAN JOSE RIO NEGRO

“It is important to continue remembering what happened to us in the past. Every year we gather so our children will know what happened here. If we choose to forget, they will never know our history”.
-Mario-

In addition to accompanying witnesses of the AJR, we also accompany and visit community members engaged in their locally organized human rights organization. ADEREMCO stands for the Association of Development of the Uprooted and Re-established Communities of the Micro-regions of Q’iche and Alta Verapaz. Formed in 1999 during the exhumations of the victims of the massacre, its mandate is to seek justice for the victims of the massacre, exhume the bodies of the victims who have not yet been found, demand reparations, seek to restore their communities social fabric damaged by the civil war and promote development and land ownership in the affected communities.

Every year, these communities gather together to commemorate and remember the family members and friends who were killed during the conflict. As in SMT and the many other communities who suffered, this is an important occasion not only to remember the dead, but to reignite the ongoing fight for justice.

Mario, a member of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) and a resident of SMT, spoke at the ceremony which consisted of a Catholic Mass, a community dinner and a dance featuring a live marimba band. “We cannot stay silent. We are not animals. We are human beings!” He was speaking about the fact that 200,000 Mayan people were killed in a bloody war in which the heads of State at that time have still not been punished.

ELECTIONS 2007

In September, the 2007 presidential and regional elections will take place in Guatemala. It’s an interesting time to be in the country because, although some people have written off the government as corrupt and not worth their time to vote, many people are still talking about politics.

There are about 16 major political parties running in the presidential and municipal elections. Each one is differentiated by a different symbol, and when arriving at the polling stations, the symbol is what the population will actually vote for. Of course, this means that most uniformed or illiterate voters will simply check the symbol they have seen the most… which are everywhere… on posters in stores, gigantic billboards and even painted on trees and rocks along the highways.

I have recently attended several talks about the current political situation in Guatemala in relation to the upcoming elections. One conversation that keeps resurfacing in discussions, and which I find very interesting, is the question: “Who funds the political parties?”

Guatemala has a very high concentration of income and wealth in a few hands, which makes it one of the most unequal in the world. With no effective distribution mechanisms, and with low wages and low employment, the majority of Guatemala’s population lives in extreme poverty and exclusion from resources like education. This concentration of wealth has produced increasingly powerful economic groups that use their power to influence the political scene and exercise control over the State. These groups are owned and run by a few families; the two main families are Gutierrez and Bosch.

Together, these businessmen allied with foreign interests, own the 30 largest companies in Guatemala. The two front-running parties, Unidad Nacional de Esperanza (UNE), National Unity for Hope, and Partido Patriota (PP), Patriots Party, have each received around $5 million from these two families. Encuentro por Guatemala, (EG), Gathering for Guatemala, the party of Rigoberta Menchú, has also received a large sum of money from these two families. This very basic look at the financial foundation of the elections implies that no matter who wins, these parties continue to be controlled by the same big-business interests.

I hope that all of you are happy and healthy in your lives.

Peace,
kimika

BECOME A HUMAN RIGHTS ACCOMPANIER

In the UK

You can find out more information here:
http://www.guatemalasolidarity.org.uk

In the USA

NISGUA is one of many organizations around the world that employs accompaniment as a vital tool in the global struggle for the respect of human rights. In the Guatemalan context, accompaniment creates a non-violent response to the threats, harassment, and violence faced by survivors of Guatemala’s 36-year-long civil war and grassroots organizations working for justice and human rights. To this end, NISGUA’s Guatemala Accompaniment Project (G.A.P.) places long-term volunteer’s side-by-side with people in rural communities and with organizations in an effort to deter human rights violations. The dissuasive physical presence of accompaniers provides a measure of security and creates space for Guatemalan communities and groups to organize in defense of their rights. Accompaniers also monitor and report on the human rights situation and alert the international community to abuses.

If you yourself, or someone you know, may be interested in becoming a human rights accompanier for the AJR, please see this link for more information on the application process and details of G.A.P:
http://www.nisgua.org/get_involved/join_gap/human_rights_accompanier/

The application deadline to attend the next training (October 14-21st) is August 17th.

We received the following press release from CALDH in Spanish 16-07-2007 about the current status of the case against Rios Montt:

Written by Kimberly Kern

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Dear friends and family,

These last four months living in Guatemala and working as a human rights accompanier with the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) has already been an amazing experience. The relationships I have formed, with other accompaniers from around the world and especially the families of Santa Maria Tzejá (SMT) have opened my eyes and my heart. I hope that the stories, history and current political information that I send in these letters inspires y’all to action in the fight for justice, not just globally, but in your own communities where you see blatant injustice.

The Story of Marta

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with Marta about children and childbirth. The average age for a woman to become a mother here is 15, so obviously, a 27 year-old woman with no husband or children is very strange. Nine times she has experienced the excruciating pain of giving life, but today she only has seven children. When I asked what happened to them she told me her story…one of many similar stories:

“When the army came that day in 1982, we ran for our lives though the jungle… some people had no shoes… we couldn’t see anything in the dark… the branches tore our skin… but we couldn’t stop, it was life or death so we kept moving,” she remembers.

For months and months, Marta and the group she travelled with roamed blindly through the mountains of northern Guatemala, escaping many close encounters with the army which was constantly hunting them. Most of the time, they had no idea which direction they were going.

After wandering for weeks and months, she remembers being at an encampment of people who saw the army coming and they decided to move the group, yet again. She was so weak, she couldn’t go.

“I decided that I wouldn’t walk anymore… I couldn’t walk anymore… I was starving. I sat down on the ground with my two babies and said this is where I’m going to die, me and my babies.”

She doesn’t know exactly what it was that made her lift herself up and keep moving, but she suddenly found the strength to keep going. The decision to flee to Mexico was a point of conflict among the wandering group. Many people thought the war would end soon or the army would give up searching for them. Many people suffered terribly and two of Marta’s children died in the mountains of malnutrition during those months of indecision.

Her strength to move forward, not just that day in the mountains, but her constant positive activity in her community, is an inspiration to me. She is a woman who was never given the opportunity to receive an education, so she cannot read or write. But she broke away from her expected role as a soft-spoken woman and mother and became a leader in her community. She says, “I have a lot of opinions and think they should be heard.” She is inspiring to other women in the community as well because she isn’t afraid to stand up and speak, something which she, as in indigenous woman, has worked to overcome her whole life.

Before the massacre, she was married to a man who was physically abusive and never let her get involved outside of their house. He was killed the day of the massacre and as a refugee in Mexico, Marta was introduced to a woman’s organization called Mama Maquin. From this experience, she brought back a wealth of knowledge to SMT and is a strong force in the woman’s union there. In Mexico, she also found a man who is extremely supportive of her community activity and she created a new life and a new family with him.

Rios Montt runs for Congress…again

Unfortunately Rios Montt, a man who currently has an international genocide case against him in the Spanish Courts, registered to run for the Guatemalan Congress on May 18th. This, of course, is major news here on the ground and work will continue around the national cases against Rios Montt and his military high command. If you have not signed this letter to move the case forward, please take a moment of your time and sign it here.

If you have already signed, it would be helpful to send this link to five people that you think would like to support the people who suffered terribly during a brutal civil war and are fighting for justice.

Another interesting piece of news came out in the national newspaper, “Prensa Libre,” which undeniably links Rios Montt to several massacres that took place in 1982. This link, called “Plan Sofia,” is a military document that outlines the plans for the eradication of indigenous communities in the Quiché region of Guatemala. "The documents detailing Plan Sofia clearly illustrate an explicit chain of command, with Rios Montt at its head, through which orders of mass extermination were communicated at the height of the conflict" said Catherine Norris, an organizer with the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) in Washington D.C.

"Since the demands for justice from survivors have yet to compel the Guatemalan judicial system to prosecute those responsible for genocide, we hope such brazen documentation of planning and responsibility for atrocities will prove impossible to ignore and bolster the survivors' case," Norris told Upside Down World. Another accompanier wrote a detailed article about this plan and the effects of this news on the case.

Consulta Comunitaria (Community Referendum)

On April 20th, a very interesting and exciting action took place here in the Ixcan region of Guatemala: a vote concerning the construction of new hydro-electric dams (namely the Xalala Dam) and the exploration and exploitation of oil by foreign interests. Since a majority of land is owned and utilized by indigenous communities in the Ixcan, a popular vote was taken to see if the people that would be most directly affected by these projects were in favor of them or not. After many information sessions and talk throughout the region, a vote was taken and 91% of the region said “NO” to the projects.

The day of the Consulta was an inspiring day for SMT. Everyone was very excited to be part of this historical process and have their voice heard. In Guatemala, the government never asks their opinion on anything, so this vote made them feel very empowered.  I felt privileged to be present as an observer.

Semana Santa (Holy Week)

Semana Santa is extremely important here in Guatemala. In SMT, the students that are usually away studying high school or college all return for this one week festival extraordinaire. At first, when everyone was talking about Semana Santa, I thought it was going to be more of a party, but with religion so deeply intertwined in the local culture, I should have known better. I went to Catholic mass more times in the last month than in the last ten years. Other than going to mass and participating in processions of the Stations of the Cross, the two main traditions here in SMT are making bread and spending a day at the river. These two traditions also mirror the traditions of the church. Bread is made early in the week to eat during the time between Good Friday and Easter (many people in the states fast during this time). On Thursday (the Last Supper), everyone goes to the Tzeja River all day with their families and cooks enormous amounts of food.

On the Tuesday of Semana Santa, I was invited to make bread with a family. The bread is prepared in small portions with unique swirls or other decorations. At 7am we stared a fire inside a huge cob oven. It is about 10 feet high with a diameter of about 6 feet. While the oven heated, we mixed large amounts of flour and sugar in a wooden box about 8 feet long. The process, as many of you know, is a long one… the dough rises and gets kneaded again and again.

At 8am we started making little balls of dough that eventually turned into little decorative creations with the help of many women. By 10am the wood had become ash and coals inside the oven which was swept to the side to keep the heat in. The bread was put on metal pans and placed into the oven for about ten minutes. From the batch, we produced about 200 portions. The smell of fresh bread is only slightly beat by the taste. While we were outside baking the bread, another family had come to mix their own batch. Only three families have cob ovens, so they are shared with the neighbors.

The tradition is to eat the bread with honey, but there is also another topping called panela which is derived from sugar cane. I prefer the honey, myself.

On Thursday, we packed three horses with pots, pans, watermelons, food and hammocks and headed to the river to relax. When we got there around 8am, we gathered firewood and started making soup which cooked slowly all day. Until then, people ate bread and watermelon, fished in the river, swam and bathed, played games, listened to music and caught up with family member’s home for the holiday. I definitely missed my family a lot during this week, seeing all the smiling, laughing families together. But I am feeling more and more comfortable in SMT and have found people I consider friends to talk to about anything. I miss you all very much and talk about home considerably more than I should. Everyone just loves to hear about Texas… which they say, “casi es Mexico”(“it’s basically Mexico.”)

Peace,
Kimika

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Background information

-Listen to Central America After The Wars - "Tale of One Village - Santa Maria Tzeja"
-Read more about the history of Santa Maria Tzeja in the book by Beatriz Manz, "Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror and Hope", published by Berkeley 2004.

Hello Friends, Family & Allies,

So, this is my final dispatch; my days of accompanying genocide case witnesses in two Guatemalan highland villages have come to an end.

As I prepare to return home after nearly 11 months here, yesterday’s cover story in the nation’s largest newspaper reiterates once again that my
solidarity work with the AJR is far from finished, however:  Immunity for Rios Montt: Congressional Candidacy Makes even more Difficult the Judicial Process against him.

The most murderous dictator in our hemisphere’s recent history has almost positively secured four more years of impunity for overseeing the army-led killing of some 70,000 Mayans. The courts have okayed his candidacy forSeptember’s elections, thereby granting him immunity from prosecution (as hiswealth, fame and evangelical connections render him a shoo-in).

“TELL THEM HOW POOR WE ARE & WHAT WE’VE SUFFERED”

Repeatedly in saying goodbyes, Mayan friends and colleagues have either pled or demanded that I relay what I’ve lived and witnessed firsthand back to those in my homeland: the fabled Norte, the land of plenty, the veritable empire that overthrew their democracy in 1954 and propped up genocidal military dictatorships throughout the 1980s.

“Tell them how poor we are. Let them know what we’ve suffered. Share our stories with them.” All a formidable challenge when most people in the U.S. still don’t know that Guatemala endured a recent genocide and its perpetrators remain free and powerful (not to mention the unspeakably horrific role that otherwise occupied U.S. citizens allowed our government to play here).

FREE DRINKS FOR A GRINGO CEROTE

Earlier this month in Nebaj, my partner Josué and I went to a restaurant/bar for tea before retiring to bed. A somewhat inebriated Ixil man zipped by, cursing us under his breath: “gringos cerotes.” I called him out, not particularly happy that he had called us “big gringo zeroes” for seemingly no reason, and told him to repeat it. The room grew silent, all eyes fixed on us, and the tension soared. Immediately, another man slung his arm around my shoulder, apologizing for hisfriend and ordering us drinks on his tab, effectively defusing the potentiallyvolatile moment. The man who insulted us, I soon learned, had recently resignedas governor of the Quiche province where I work and is gunning for Congress withthe FRG party, which is led by none other than Rios Montt.

Later that night, I contemplated how horribly wrong that evening might have turned out and tried to envision the converse of the situation, with a Guatemalan in a U.S. restaurant/bar being insulted. Then I considered an article I had recently read. A few weeks ago, a Republican county official in Utah submitted a resolution labelling immigrants “Satan’s minions” that hate the U.S.

This was not a bar, it was an official document and, while extreme, folks in the U.S. routinely use vocabulary that insults the human dignity of immigrants and ignores the very real factors that transform these individuals from Guatemalans to immigrants in the first place (many of which are, in fact, undeniably rooted in U.S. policy).

RONALD REAGAN & THE U.S. ARMY ARE ILLEGALS

Take, for example, the term “illegals.” Unsanctioned immigration is the only crime in the U.S. which saddles its violators with the identity of an “illegal.” No one calls Enron executives, habitually drunk drivers, tax evaders, or Fundamentalist Mormon polygamists “illegals.” Meanwhile, the U.S. knowingly funded and trained Guatemalan military dictatorships which were carrying out genocide against the Maya in the 1980s:

* In terms of training, between 1947 and 1991, at least 1,598 members of the Guatemalan Army were trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) and 13 Guatemalan Army officials served there as instructors. Following the 1996 Peace Accords, which largely ended the state-led massacring of Mayacommunities, a U.N.-led truth commission singled out the role of the SOA, reporting that its counter-insurgency instruction "had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed conflict."
* Of the three ex-dictators sought in the genocide case, SOA graduates comprised four of eight military officials in the cabinet of Romeo Lucas Garcia, six out of nine under Efrain Rios Montt and five out of 10 under Oscar Mejia Victores. General Benedicto Lucas Garcia, who designed the Scorched Earth campaign that led the army to burn at least 440 Mayan villages to the ground and is also sought in the genocide case, was trained by the SOA in high military command.
* Regarding the Ixil region, where I have lived since July, two declassified CIA documents from February 1982 state that General Lucas Garcia "acknowledged that because most Indians in the area support the guerrillas it probably will be necessary to destroy a number of villages" and that "the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike." One month later, 96 people from Ilom were mass-executed in the plaza beside our current room.
* That summer, the Reagan administration declared that Guatemala was "not a gross violator of human rights." In December 1982 - the same month the U.N. passed a resolution condemning the human rights situation in Guatemala - Reagan met with Rios Montt and told The New York Times he was "inclined to believe" that the coup-launching SOA graduate "had been given a bad rap." A few weeks later, the U.S. State Department granted Rios Montt another $6 million in military assistance.

POVERTY: A SOMETIMES BLOODLESS VIOLENCE

Based on months of conversations with ex-immigrants here, the explanation for their dangerous journey through Mexico and across a treacherous desert, sacrificing years away from their family and loved ones, in a place where people act racist and hateful toward them and ignore their humanity, can be summed up as this: poverty.

At times I wonder if every time someone in Guatemala suffered a hunger pang a droplet of blood were to seep out their navel, would we non-hungry Earth dwellers (that fortunate one-third of the same species) ultimately recognize poverty as violence? Would the crimson stain marking the stomach of every shirt they own (all two or three of them, often enough) flag them as casualties of an invisible, ongoing war?

Is our callousness in denying these individuals a way to feed their families – by funding army-led massacres with our taxes, championing “free trade” policies that increase their poverty, or constructing a wall to keep them from doing work that sustains both our nation’s and their family’s well being – a de facto extension of genocide?

While countless U.S. citizens may pontificate from air conditioned offices about how Guatemalans need to learn to work harder to emerge from their poverty, I can attest that folks in Ilom do extremely physical work virtually everyday from sun-up to sun-down and the problem is not their deficient industriousness, its about who holds the resources, how they got them and how they kept them.

Following the massacre of 1982, the neighboring plantation La Perla, which voluntarily housed the army during the genocide, stole massive amounts of Ilom’s land. They recently sold much of it to transnational companies who are plundering what they can from it – creating a profitable dam, leveling forests, looking for oil, while their shotgun-wielding guards keep them safe from locals.

Everyone in Ilom had to start from nothing when the army burned down their village, only that afterward they had even less land to work (and, accordingly, food to eat and sell).

Massive immigration is a consequence of the violence of poverty – a poverty the U.S. has brutally exacerbated by funding a genocide and pushing free trade. Neither the Democrats and Republicans understand this; both appear intent on stripping immigrants of their labor rights in order to create a permanent underclass via their worker programs.

I’LL BE HOME TOMORROW

I arrive in Austin tomorrow night and will be there until June 16th when my partner Rebeca and I will embark on a tour to California. We will be giving presentations along the road about the anti-genocide struggle in Guatemala. If you have any friends/contacts in Corpus Christi, TX; Wichita, KS; Lawrence, KS; Kansas City, MO; Denver, CO; Boulder, CO; Albuquerque, NM or San Diego, CA that would be interested, please let me know and I’ll pass them details about the presentation.

While in Austin, I’ll be preparing for the tour up until its launch. If anyone has access to a copy machine, please let me know as I would be forever grateful. (I hope to make a bunch of informative zines - homemade publications - from interviews with AJR members, other stories, photographs, and journal entries to distribute along the tour.)

Thank you for all your support this last year, and I look forward to seeing many of you face-to-face soon!

Jordan

P.S. To receive updates related to Guatemala’s human rights struggles, sign up here: http://lists.riseup.net/www/arc/nisgua

Post by Jordan Buckley

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Hello Friends, Family and Allies,

This is my next-to-last report from Guatemala about accompanying witnesses in the national genocide case.

Since my last bi-monthly dispatch, activists with whom we work have been threatened, followed home, received alarming anonymous phone calls, had their offices raided and one organizer was even briefly kidnapped. Perhaps because the Ixil - the region where I live - has become the main focus of the genocide case, we have also had our share of local intimidations in the last weeks (see further down).

A GLIMPSE OF GENOCIDE: PLAYING SOCCER, BUT NOT WITH MY PEERS

Recently, friends in Ilom - the resplendent highlands village believed by the Ixil Maya to be the birthplace of their people – invited me to join their soccer team Sociedad Juvenil (Juvenile Society) in a regional tournament about an hour and a half hike away. (I’ve played off-and-on with them for the last 8 months).

While I certainly prefer our squad’s name to that of Ilom’s other team, Los Chiqueros (The Pig Sty Boys), I have always been intrigued by their choice; we range broadly in ages – mostly either teens or late twenties and up - and I often joke with my friend Mu’s that since he’s already a grandfather and pushing 40, perhaps they should contemplate renaming the crew.

As our tiresome, uphill trek to the soccer match snaked past the Santa Delfina plantation, my pal Chato broke the silence by shyly pointing out that he was born there. Chato will soon share something in common with me that is truly rare among Ilom residents, a community of some 450 families: he will be 25 years old.

Last Friday not only marked the 25th anniversary of the military coup that put Efraìn Rìos Montt - the deadliest dictator in Latin America’s modern times – into power. It also marked a short quarter-century since the Guatemalan army rounded up 96 of Ilom`s men into the plaza and gorily ended their lives. The army then set fire to the entire village (as they would do to at least another 625 Mayan villages before their genocidal campaign ended), forcing survivors to flee to nearby Santa Delfina.

In an interview (see link below), Antonio Caba - president of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, the coalition of witnesses that we accompany – related that refugees from Ilom were virtually enslaved on the Santa Delfina plantation following the massacre of March 23, 1982, and, given the extreme circumstances, children that had fled from Ilom died there on the plantation, every day for months and months.

Chato, our midfielder for Sociedad Juvenil, was one of the lucky ones.

A LITTLE BOMB NAMED SOFÌA

Sunday before last, a shocking three-page cover story in Guatemala’s leading daily newspaper directly linked Ríos Montt to massacres perpetrated in the Ixil region during 1982 and 1983! The article reports that in August the Attorney General acquired a copy of secret military documents outlining Plan Sofìa - an extensive army campaign ordered by then president and commander-in-chief Rios Montt against "subversives" in the area - but he has still refused to formally initiate the genocide case proceedings.

In February, I had the opportunity to switch spots with another accompanier and visit 5 villages in a different area of the Ixil. Apparently while I was visiting witnesses in those communities, Guatemala’s Minister of Defense was claiming to the presiding judge in the genocide case that Plan Sofia does not exist. However, the exposé article from March 18 asserts that not only does Plan Sofìa exist, two of the communities I had been accompanying were likely massacred as a result of Plan Sofia in the summer of 1982.

RÌOS MONTT’S ESCAPE ROUTE: CONGRESS

The next five weeks will determine if Ríos Montt - who ruled over the estimated murder of 70,000 predominantly Mayan people - will evade justice for at least another four years (or feasibly forever, given that he is 81 years old).

If Ríos Montt is able to register as a candidate on May 3 for this year’s congressional elections, his possible win will provide him parliamentary immunity from prosecution. However, if the Attorney General takes an initial declaration from Ríos Montt regarding the accusations cited against him in the genocide case, it would disqualify his candidacy.

Accordingly, please e-mail the Attorney General to urge him to move the case along!

If only half of you reading this e-mail were to devote the 10 seconds required to click a box to send him an e-mail, the Attorney General would have to wade through some 150 e-mails from foreigners upset with his stalling on the
genocide case.

LOCAL INTIMIDATIONS IN THE IXIL

Last month, my accompaniment partner received a phone call from an unknown person who creepily asked her how she was doing, and, when asked to identify himself, only told her that he was "a man." She hung up. The Caller ID indicated that another fellow accompanier had called her but we knew that he was in a village where there is no service. He later confirmed that, of course, he had not called her, signifying that someone seems to be showing us that they are watching us and able to infiltrate the phone system.

Twice since December, unidentified men have approached my accompaniment partner and me and, without a word, taken our picture on a digital camera, then quickly walked off. And just a few weeks ago, as fellow accompaniers and I met up in a public park (as arranged by phone), a woman maybe 50 meters away stood quietly filming us for minutes on end until we confronted her.

This is by no means all of the suspicious behavior or incidents we’ve been encountering recently, just a sampling to provide some idea.

PRESIDENT BUSH IN GUATEMALA: HE KILLS ?

Lastly, President Bush came to Guatemala a few weeks ago. While he managed to devote a large chunk of time pitching neo-liberal reforms to Guatemalan officials, and other measures that would benefit the U.S. economy, it appears he never once mentioned the recent, unpunished state-led military campaign which claimed upwards of 200,000 lives.

(Makes one wonder what consequences might have sprung from Bush having expressed even one sentence’s worth of concern over the absence of prosecution for the bloodiest genocide in our hemisphere’s recent history.)

After the Guatemalan government strong-armed Bush’s way into Iximchè - a sacred site to indigenous Kaqchikel people - to entertain him for the day (despite the massive protests of local community members kept behind the Secret Service and police blockades), Mayan priests returned en masse, performing rituals to cleanse the area of the evil spirits they say Bush brought in.

Many expressed pain and anger over Bush - a man whose war in Iraq has resulted in a staggering number of innocent deaths (the British government recently conceded that a study pegging the death toll around 655,000 is credible) - desecrating such a special, holy place to them, and their powerlessness, in the face of state repression, to prevent it.

It might be worth observing that the word for "bush" in Spanish is "mata," which curiously also translates as "he kills" or functions as the command form of the order "to kill."

HOMEWARD BOUND

In 7 weeks I will be back home in Austin. Many thanks again for all the support you all have provided me during my time here – from e-mails to music to homemade cookies to literature to money to art and so on. You have enabled me to feel a sustained sense of loving community despite living tucked away in the western highlands of Guatemala, and I really appreciate that.

Again, if you haven’t already, please send an e-mail to the Attorney General calling on him to let the survivors testify, thereby also preventing Ríos Montt from retaking Congress.

With love and solidarity,

Jordan

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New articles detailing the battle against impunity for genocide in Guatemala:

A Dictator’s Reprise in Guatemala, The Daily Texan (by me)

Guatemala’s Anti-Genocide Activists Under Threat (by Elias Lawless)

The Maya Survivors vs Los Genocidios: interview with Antonio of the AJR (by E.Lawless)

By Lorena Seijo, Prensa Libre, March 18, 2007

(translation by P. Harris and E. Lawless)

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Secret military document, in possession of the Attorney General, directly links Rìos Montt in Quichè massacres

Not one district attorney has had access, until now, to a classified Guatemalan Army document which tells of military operations executed during the internal armed conflict, against subversive cells or elements.

Delia Dàvila, head of the prosecutor’s department of human rights, within the Attorney General’s office, has been the first to receive a copy of one of those plans, protected by State secrecy and which was partially obtained in a clandestine manner by plaintiffs in the genocide case pursued within Guatemala.

Despite having in her possession documents which record the existence of the Sofìa Pan of operations, that, together with declarations of the witnesses, directly link the Army high command and their commander-in-chief, Efraìn Rìos Montt, with massacres committed predominantly within the Western region of the country, from 1982 to 1983, Dàvila has roundly refused to make an appointment with the former head of State and his leadership, to interrogate them.

The reason is, according to what the prosecutor (Dàvila) told the presiding judge in the case, Roberto Peñate, that she is not certain that those documents are authentic. To verify her doubts, the judge ordered that on January 31 the Minster of Defense, before an open court, present the original documents of Plan Sofia and Victory 82, due to their relation to each other, since the former derived from the latter.

In response, Ronaldo Cecilio Leiva, Minister of Defense, mailed a letter to the judge on February 8 in which he protests his disagreement with the judicial resolution, because “it violates article 30 of the constitution, which protects the confidentiality of military affairs.”

In the missive, Leiva affirms that Plan Victory 82 is a military affair of national security, classified as secret and that Plan Sofìa does not exist.

To avoid that the documents become public, he presented an appeal and claimed that these records, along with others that contain Operation Ixil Civil Affairs and Firmeza 83 plans, are off-limits.

The appeal was rejected by the judge who reminded the Minister of Defense that the accusation is not against him and summoned him for next March 26, so that he may show before the court the entirety of the plans and the original documents, to which Prensa Libre had partial access. Coincidentally, the meeting will be held 3 days after the 25th anniversary of the coup d’etat, in 1982, which brought Rìos Montt to power.

Post by Jordan Buckley

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Friends, Family and Allies,

One of the lawyers working on the national Guatemalan genocide case was recently kidnapped, while other members of the legal team have received a written threat, been tailed by unknown men and incurred other forms of grave intimidation; I typically only send out updates every two months, but I hope you will agree that these alarming circumstances require this plea for your urgent solidarity!

As many know, I am working as an accompanier to the Association for Justice & Reconciliation (AJR), a coalition of Maya survivors volunteering to be witnesses in the national genocide case. It is hoped that by placing international observers in the communities where AJR members live, the threat posed to them is reduced - namely because if anything happens to them, our friends, family and allies (this is you!) will rise up in outrage and demand justice of the Guatemalan authorities.

Please pardon the slight delay in relaying this information; I wanted to hear directly from the aforementioned legal team, the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), before writing you all.

On Feb. 2, Otto Navarro, a CALDH lawyer, found the tire of his car slashed. Later that day, Josè Roberto Morales, CALDH’s indigenous rights coordinator, was kidnapped by two armed men in a carjacking in front of his house. They released him in another neigborhood, telling him that if he activated the vehicle’s alarm they would return to his home and murder him. His vehicle was later found with all of his belongings (including a laptop computer) seemingly untouched.

Between Feb. 3-5, the offices of three other human rights organizations were broken into: their files were searched, and computers and film equipment were stolen. On Feb. 5, as members of these groups waited for the authorities to arrive, a red Toyota Corolla drove by and filmed the group.

Also on Feb. 5, a note was left on the windshield of CALDH lawyer Angèlica Gonzàlez, saying:


According to CALDH, these threats spring directly from their pursuit of the genocide case. The most important figure that the AJR and CALDH seek to charge with genocide, Efraìn Rìos Montt (who ruled over the killing of some 70,000 predominately Maya people during the 1980s), announced on Jan. 17 his plan for this year’s elections:


The threats to CALDH and Rìos Montt’s political ambitions are hardly a casual
coincidence.

On Feb. 7 - as had been planned before the intriguingly-timed threats and kidnapping- CALDH & the AJR presented a formal complaint to the courts, voicing their discontent with the Attorney General’s unwillingness to advance the genocide case past the investigative stage, where it has stalled since its original filing in 2001. CALDH & the AJR also requested that the judge proceed with collecting Ríos Montt’s initial statement in order to formally accuse him of genocide against the Maya Ixil people.

If the judge does not act, Rìos Montt may quite feasibly become the head of Congress in November, dramatically complicating any attempts to hold him accountable for his horrific crimes.

One of the most potent weapons we, individuals who believe in justice and universal human dignity, possess is the ability to exert pressure on the authorities to confront Guatemala’s recent, yet unpunished genocide.

As the AJR, the indigenous survivors of the genocide, and the CALDH legal team,
their allies in struggle, are literally placing their lives on the line to demand justice, I would ask that you please devote a single minute of your time (or less) to send an e-mail via NISGUA to the Guatemalan authorities urging them to advance the genocide case.

Or, better yet, challenge yourself and those you love to craft a creative act of resistance to Guatemalan authorities’ refusal to address the state-led campaign which killed upwards of 200,000 people largely during my (and perhaps your) lifetime…send them a drawing, a poem, a photograph - however you feel most able to express whatever repugnance or pain or fury their inaction and indifference might generate within you.

Mailing addresses for the authorities, as well as more information about the kidnapping, threats and genocide case, can be found here at NISGUA.

Background

See our post tracking the development of the above mentioned urgent action.

Here is the second half of Elias Lawless's interview with Antonio Caba of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation for WireTap Magazine. For an intro and call to action see the original article [part one and part two].

WireTap: Who is the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), and what are its objectives in fighting?

Antonio Caba: Well, we who became the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, after all that, had no idea how to struggle or continue on. But we knew what we would become. There was no one on our side, but after a little while we came to know how to organize, how to fight.

Then came the exhumation in Ilom (Antonio's village), then came CALDH (Center for Legal Action in Human Rights). I think it was 1998 or 1999. We met there and they asked me questions such as what the massacre was like, how the army arrived. I told them all about the situation that happened here in the community.

Later, we arrived at an agreement among various communities: Baja Verapaz, Alta Verapaz, Chimaltenango, Quiche, Huehuetenango, the Ixcan region. So it was from there that we came to know one another: other people from places where the same situation occurred. There we decided to found what became the AJR, that it was necessary to form a coalition that would be called the Association for Justice and Reconciliation, that we as survivors must demand justice for all the deaths we had seen. "We have to demand justice so that there may be justice," we said.

Well, that was an interest of ours, that the high military commands be tried for their crimes of genocide against the Maya peoples. As far as those of us in the Ixil region, we are the Ixil Maya -- people that were affected, were massacred, had our rights violated. For all those reasons the AJR was sprouted.

WT: What is Efrain Rios Montt's significance in this struggle?

AC: Rios Montt, as we have always mentioned, is a sickness for us. He is a disease that is very infectious for Guatemala because he has committed those grave errors, those tremendous crimes against the Maya peoples. And not only Rios Montt but also his high military command as well as Lucas Garcia (Guatemalan dictator from 1978-1982) and his high military command -- they are the ones who committed these offenses of genocide, so Rios Montt is an illness here in Guatemala on account of being a genocidio, a murderer, a criminal.

And we have discussed with many companions that if it were us, the Maya, who were guilty of genocide what would they, the authorities, do? Rapidly they would place us in prison, if we were the guilty ones. But since Rios Montt has money -- he has funds and he also has his power and they help him -- he intimidates the authorities, or it could be that he convinces them with money. For that reason we have seen that there exists much backwardness in the pursuit of justice here in Guatemala.

Because Rios Montt, living as a criminal, he walks around freely! And he should be already imprisoned. He should not still be on the loose. He should not still be appearing on television, appearing in the media and saying this or that. Rios Montt should already be in prison for the crimes he has committed, like those against the children in the Santa Delfina plantation, no? He was the government at that time, so he should have dispatched doctors for the children that died. So, what happened? It didn't bother him that children died. It did not matter to him.

Rios Montt delights in the impunity, and it is not only Rios Montt who is the wound for Guatemala, but also the authorities that presently do not act to judge this genocidio. Therefore, Rios Montt is the wound and also the authorities are the wound because they do not enforce the law.

WT: Can you discuss Rios Montt's plan, and accordingly the strategy of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), regarding compensation payments to former Self Defense Civil Patrollers (ex-PAC)?

AC: Rios Montt is always very crafty in his form, and he has always tried to conquer the people. Because if you remember the past, of what has been called Black Thursday, Rios Montt displayed his style of being on Black Thursday when he forcibly inscribed [as presidential candidate]. He revealed his nature on this day because all of his supporters wore masks, wielded sticks and carried guns violently. But who planned it? Rios Montt planned it! It was in this form that he also planned the massacres in the communities.

The Guatemalan authorities should act and not allow him to participate in elections. Not as a candidate for president, nor Congress, nor anything. Rios Montt has demonstrated his style before Guatemala and before the entire world. Rios Montt is a genocidio.

Rios Montt has always found support in the Quiche department. Do you know why people vote for him? They know he is a genocidio and that if he does not win perhaps 1982 might return again. So, for fear, the people vote to not re-experience the past.

The ex-PAC payments were planned by Rios Montt in order to not lose his power. First, a general began to convince people to attend protests under Portillo, but it was all already planned out. Portillo approved. We saw that it was not to lose his power, his party. Why do I say that? Because only his supporters received the payment. And those former patrollers affiliated with another party? They gave them nothing.

It is better to send more money to reparations for victims because there are people who lost their houses, lost their family members. Clearly former patrollers have a right because they were obligated to patrol. Well, since we know the military has grand quantities of money allocated from the government, this is what we should reduce and use to pay former patrollers. Because it was the military that forced them into patrols. And money received from other countries should not be given to ex-PACs but as reparations for victims.

Because what function, what benefit does the military bring? What the military brings us is poverty. The world knows that Guatemala is poor, but why? The military has brought the poverty. The weapons have brought the poverty. And who are the richest? The military, the generals. And the guerrilla? I have never heard of a guerrilla fighter who is also a millionaire.

WT: What should the international community do to support the struggle of the AJR and survivors in general?

AC: What they should do, or what we have always requested, and what I have asked for as AJR's president is that they pressure Guatemalan authorities to take these genocidios to a tribunal. And if they, these authorities, do not want to do it, do not attempt to do it, nor even wish to try these criminals, then what I would ask is that it would be good to extradite Rios Montt so that he may be judged in another country.

That is one thing, but also if there is no justice in Guatemala, then it would be good that Guatemalan authorities be tried as well. Because to me it would be proper that they be judged first -- before the genocidios -- because they are guilty, the Guatemalan authorities, of why these genocidios have not been tried, why they are not imprisoned.

And why do I tell you that? Because the authorities, we entrust them. For that reason they are there, to try these genocidios, to judge those who commit crimes. And another thing, we pay taxes, and these authorities are who we fund, so they must comply with their obligations, no?

Guatemala, 25 de Enero del 2007

El Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial[1] – ECAP-denuncia que:

Iniciando el año, han continuado los incidentes de seguridad en contra de los trabajadores y trabajadoras de ECAP. En los meses de octubre y noviembre del año pasado denunciamos las intimidaciones y agresiones hacia ECAP por el trabajo psicosocial, que realiza la organización, en las exhumaciones y con los beneficiarios de las medidas de reparación de la sentencia de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en la comunidad de Plan de Sánchez. Se denunciaron las persecuciones a dos personas de la organización, una amenaza escrita recibida en Rabinal y el ataque contra uno de los promotores en la región de Rabinal.

El miércoles 10 de enero 2007, se recibió en el correo institucional de ECAP un mensaje con nombre emisor "simón chimón; asoc_shimon@hotmail.com", que vincula el trabajo de nuestra organización en alianza con otras organizaciones locales de Rabinal, al trabajo del alcalde municipal del FRG. Al final del mensaje se dice: "Se cayó en la trampa del FRG, las amenazas que reciben ECAP vienen del FRG, el FRG sabe la lógica que tiene el ECAP, sabe como trabajan, como es una organización de psicolocos entoces buscan como asustarlos. Esto va a seguir durante este año. El FRG no se queda cayado con la gota de sangre que dejo Rio de Sangre en Rabinal, muy pronto se van a bengar. Asi que tenga muchos cuidados"

El lunes 23 de enero 2007, hacia las 8:30 h, una de las personas que labora en la institución, y que ya había sufrido una persecución con un vehículo en la capital, se encontraba en un autobús extraurbano de  Chimaltenango a la capital, cuando un hombre se sentó a su lado y le dijo "Usted es ……, entienda, no viajen. Yo se que van para Rabinal, entiendan, dejen de estar chingando a la mara!, que algo les puede pasar como se les dijo en la nota, esto va a seguir, hijos de la gran madre o quieren que les pase algo más". El hombre continuó insultando, hasta un momento en el que se cambió de asiento, y posteriormente se bajó en la parada de Sumpango.

El mismo día 23, alrededor de las 5 de la tarde, una de las compañeras que reside en Rabinal recibió varias llamadas de teléfono donde se le insultaba e intimidaba por el trabajo que se realiza en la región.

ECAP se muestra profundamente preocupado por todos estos incidentes de seguridad en su contra, fundamentalmente teniendo en cuenta que el Estado, a través de la COPREDEH y del Ministerio de Gobernación en reunión de 24 de noviembre 2006, en el marco de las medidas provisionales emitidas por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos en el contexto de la ejecución de sentencia de reparaciones del caso Plan de Sánchez vs el Estado de Guatemala, se comprometió a poner las medidas de seguridad necesarias para proteger la integridad de las personas y de la organización, y a investigar sobre los hechos que habían sido denunciados hasta la fecha.

Esta situación vulnera el trabajo de atención psicosocial que realizamos con las víctimas y sobrevivientes de la violencia política.

Por todo ello, exigimos a las autoridades que investiguen, esclarezcan y sancionen este tipo de hechos intimidatorios tal como ha sido solicitado por ECAP y ordenado por la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos.

A nivel nacional e internacional solicitamos su apoyo para la denuncia, presión para la efectiva investigación de las autoridades correspondientes y el cese de los ataques; su solidaridad ante esta grave situación, que se suma a otros ataques a defensores de derechos humanos, que afecta derechos individuales y garantías fundamentales de ciudadanos y ciudadanas guatemaltecas.

ECAP
2da. Avenida 1-11, zona 3
Colonia Bran
Ciudad de Guatemala
Telefax: (502) 2332-1430 Tel. 2253-6071
E-mail: ecap [at] guate.net.gt y ecap [at] itelgua.com
www.ecapguatemala.org

[1]La organización Equipo de Estudios Comunitarios y Acción Psicosocial,
ECAP, es una organización no gubernamental guatemalteca que trabaja con sobrevivientes del Conflicto Armado Interno. Desarrolla proyectos de apoyo psicosocial de carácter multidisciplinario e integral, que propician la recuperación y restablecimiento de individuos, grupos sociales y comunidades de los daños psíquicos, sociales y culturales provocados por la violencia política en Guatemala.

Dentro de su quehacer institucional desarrolla acompañamiento psicosocial en procesos de exhumaciones y, entre otros, apoyo psicosocial con sobrevivientes de la masacre de la comunidad indígena de Plan de Sánchez, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, en el marco de la sentencia de reparaciones de la Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos de 19 noviembre 2004. En esa ocasión, se presentó un peritaje sobre el daño a la integridad mental para la audiencia en Costa Rica en abril 2004, posteriormente a la sentencia, se ha venido desarrollando un trabajo con los beneficiarios de las medidas de reparación en las diferentes comunidades afectadas de esa región, y por último, ECAP forma parte de un Comité ordenado en las medidas de reparación del caso con el fin de dar un seguimiento a las mismas.

Post by Jordan Buckley

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Hello friends, families and allies,

This is my third update from Guatemala: I am working as a human rights accompanier with the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), a coalition of Maya genocide survivors organizing to charge ex-military and political leaders for the state-led violence that wiped out more than 200,000, largely indigenous, people in the 1980s.

A few weeks ago, a boy who lived near us in Ilom suddenly passed away one morning. His mother and neighbors calmly explained that he had died of sadness. His father had left the day before to the United States out of economic desperation, and his departure had been absolutely devastating for the boy – to the extent that he never woke up.

Death by emotion is not uncommon here. In listening to friends` recounting of the genocide, "susto" - fright - is often given as an explanation of loved ones' deaths following the actual army-led massacres: when they either lived enslaved on a nearby plantation or in their village under violent military occupation (as in the case of those from Ilom), and when they fled into the wilderness for the next 14 years, foraging for food, struggling to elude army search squads and taking cover from aerial bombardments (as in the case of those from Xix).

Last month marked the ten-year anniversary of the Peace Accords, the ceasefire agreement which ended army attacks on Maya villages - supposedly to hunt down guerrilla fighters - as official state policy.

A decade later and still none of the major players (photo: low prophyle)  responsible for the 626 army-led massacres have been charged with anything. That status has not changed since my last update, and most certainly will not change until a formidable popular movement – both nationally and globally – compels Guatemalan officials to take seriously the AJR's willingness to risk their lives by serving as witnesses in the stalled genocide cases here against these men who still retain substantial influence.

A small but important way to support the AJR is by e-mailing Guatemalan officials and urging them to advance the genocide case.

ANOTHER FRONT OF MAYAN RESISTANCE: THE ZAPTISTAS

I was in Chiapas, Mexico for the New Year - and incidentally my 25th birthday - at the Encounter of the Zapatista Peoples with the Peoples of the World. (As many of you know, the Zapatistas first made headlines on January 1, 1994 when an armed uprising enabled them to liberate indigenous communities from the rule of Mexican authorities. Across Chiapas, signs marking the entrance to Zapatista territory inform passersby that "Here the people give the orders and the government obeys.")

Having lived and worked intimately with folks from the AJR since July, it was fascinating to learn from other Maya communities, situated just a little northwest (across that militarized invisible line which only shows up on maps), of how they are likewise rebelling against the government's wishes – although clearly with different tactics and aims; embracing women's rights and participation; amplifying indigenous voices and decision-making, all the while cultivating a huge, dynamic base of international support (something the AJR comparatively does not possess).

The revolutionary fervor and cultural pride of our Zapatista hosts there in autonomously-governed Oventic stand in stark contrast to much of the evangelical fanaticism which has enveloped the villages where I live in the Guatemalan highlands.

Many, if not most, Zapatistas wore traditional clothing, spoke only in their indigenous languages, shared their customary music and dance with us out-of-towners during several of the planned cultural events, and spoke spiritedly about their commitment to preserving their culture. Back in Guatemala, a friend in Ilom (who is evangelical) recently lamented that evangelical Christianity crushed his people's indigenous practices and beliefs, which, I am told, strikingly swept through in concert with the genocide.

EVANGELISM, GENOCIDE & RIOS MONTT

Efraín Ríos Montt, the evangelical minister/military general who rose to power in 1982 from a military coup, remains the veritable face of the genocide. According to a UN-led commission, Ríos Montt's short-lived regime was responsible for the deaths of some 70,000 (overwhelmingly Maya) people. He is credited with crafting the following domestic policy: "If you are with us, we'll feed you. If not, we'll kill you."

Even before Ríos Montt's reign, evangelical Christianity had begun to take root in Guatemala. Ruling elites favored evangelism to the liberation theology-inspired brand of Catholicism which was offering impoverished Guatemalans more than charity and sympathy, but indeed solidarity in organizing against the structural causes of their poverty.

By the 1980s, televangelist Pat Robertson's show "The 700 Club" (Photo: holtocw) enjoyed more than 3 million viewers here. Within a week of the military overthrowing the government and Ríos Montt seizing the nation's helm, Robertson had hopped a plane to Guatemala City to meet with and exalt the new leader to his enormous TV audience. Robertson soon wrote of the man whose immediate capture is now demanded by Spanish courts on charges of genocide, "I found [Ríos Montt] to be a man of humility, impeccable personal integrity, and a deep faith in Jesus Christ."

While Ríos Montt was attempting to effectively exterminate the Maya, Robertson was raising funds for the Guatemalan military through a telethon; he convinced numerous U.S. Christians to donate to International Love Lift – revealingly abbreviated "ILL" - Rios Montt's so-called relief program: funding and supplies used to support the army in its genocidal campaign.

The Christian Broadcasting Network also reportedly provided agricultural and medical technicians as well as money to aid in the design of Rios Montt's first "model villages": barbed wire-enclosed, military-controlled townships, often rebuilt upon the same land as the original Maya villages scorched to the ground by the army, where massacre survivors were forcibly "re-educated." Theological re-education was routinely administered by evangelical missionaries.

EVANGELISM TODAY, IMPUNITY & MY GRINGO BEWILDERMENT

Nowadays, dancing in the highlands is pervasively a sin; our radio is clogged with evangelical rock; I dined at God with Us Emmanuel Pizzeria last week, and the gas station where our ride to Ilom usually fills up at is coated in the slogan "To God be the Glory." We are engrossed in evangelism, and its political consequences can be bewildering: on Jan. 17, for instance, one of the nation's most famous evangelicals – Rìos Montt (photo: Wrath of god)– announced that he is running for the presidency of the National Congress in September's elections – a post that he has a considerable shot at winning and which he previously held as recently as
November 2003.

A few hours after the boy in Ilom died of sadness, the 10-year-old son of one of the witnesses we accompany there also passed away. A couple days later we visited him to express our condolences. He soon asked us if it were true that in the U.S. some people cremate their loved ones. We told him it is indeed common. He remarked that given the absence of rule of law in Guatemala, if a community wills it they will often capture a local criminal and burn him alive to set an example for others…but to burn a corpse  (i.e. a person who is already dead) is simply a sin against God.

Perhaps needless to say, making sense of the reality of the highlands continues to be complicated for me. One revelation that has kept me somewhat grounded is that while I admire and am inspired by the radical resistance of the Zapatistas, for my fellow evangelical colleagues who outlived a horrific genocide targeted at them, basic survival was, and remains, its own form of radical resistance.

And acting in a way that shuns the often evangelical expectation that they quietly endure their extreme poverty and suffering (and instead wait indifferently for afterlife), by demanding justice and publicly naming those responsible for the genocide despite the terrifying consequences, reflects remarkable bravery and commitment.

I know I have a lot to learn from the AJR before I leave in May, and I am extremely grateful to be working with them. Again, I would ask you to honor their courage by e-mailing Guatemalan officials to urge them to advance the genocide case and finally allow the AJR to testify, to speak their truth to power.

Lastly, thanks to everyone who has been e-mailing me, writing me letters, donating to the struggle and sending me food, art and literature. Your kindness, friendship and solidarity has been wonderful and deeply appreciated.

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To receive updates every two months and for more information, you can contact Jordan at: jordan [at] sfalliance [dot] org

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Background: Ways You Can Support the Struggle

Join the NISGUA list or GSN Blog for updates on notable news in Guatemala:

Contact the Guatemala Govt- tell them to move on the genocide case! Great activity for church groups, human rights groups, or alone (English is fine):


Become an Accompanier in the Genocide Case 

You can hear interviews with people who have worked as accompaniers (broadcast by Democracy Now! and the BBC) and read articles and more information from a variety of sources here.

If you're in the US you can support Jordan financially- write a tax-deductible check to "DJPC Education Fund" and add "Jordan Buckley-CAMINOS" to the memo line. They can be mailed to: Denver Justice & Peace Committee, 901 W. 14th Avenue Suite 7, Denver, CO  80204. If you are in the UK you can support GSN by contacting us on gsn_mail [at] yahoo [dot] com

A couple of days ago (16-01-2007) the Guatemalan press first hinted at Gen Efrain Ríos Montt's decision to go for Congress and forget about another presidential bid. Now Reuters are reporting it as well and there's more in today's Prensa Libre.

Perhaps it was the Constitutional Court's recent ruling (Petición de Nulidad (2395-2006)) upholding his being barred from running for president. Perhaps it was his incredibly low support in recent opinion polls (on 15-01-07 it was 1.8%). Or perhaps it was a nagging fear that his day in court on counts of genocide and crimes against humanity might just be a very real possibility.

By declaring that he's running for Congress, Rios Montt will once again get immunity from prosecution from April when he'll be able to register his candidacy formally with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). It's timely then, to read Elias Lawless's interview in WireTap Magazine with Antonio Caba, an Ixil Maya activist who currently serves as president of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR). Here's an excerpt:

Update (19-01-07)

Amnesty USA has made the following appeal with Rios Montt's announcement: "Amnesty International Again Calls for Ríos Montt to Either Be Tried in Guatemala or Extradited to Spain to Face the Charges Against Him". In Guatemala, Siglo XXI covered the story with an interview of Rigoberta Menchu: "Menchú pide repudiar posible candidatura de Ríos".

This is a really interesting interview with Ann Wright on Radio 4's Saturday Live programme, who accompanied in Colombia with Peace Brigades International. She gives a really great explanation about what accompaniment is and what you can get out of it as a volunteer. She's taking in the context of Colombia, but it's equally applicable to accompaniment in Guatemala. You can listen to it here.  Here's the intro from the BBC Saturday Live blog (shame they couldn't spell Colombia :-)).

You can find more information about accompaniment in general here, and how to become an accompanier with GSN specifically here.

This is a new documentary 'En Toute Solidarité' just out on international accompaniment in Guatemala in French and Spanish. It's produced by Les Productions Réalités Cachées in association with the Projet Accompagnement Québec-Guatemala (PAQG) in Canada and the Coordination of International Accompaniment in Guatemala. It directed by Nicolas Bergeron. Nicolas worked as an accompanier in 2005 and 2006 with PAQG and NISGUA. Here's an excerpt in French from a piece he wrote about accompaniment on the PAQG website:

Post by Jordan Buckley

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Hello friends, family and others,

This is my second update from Guatemala. Every few months I am sending out news regarding the struggle led by indigenous survivors of state-led violence here to demand justice for the top military officers and government leaders who ordered the massacring of their loved ones, the physical torture they endured and the scorching of their houses, crops, livestock, even family members – indeed, often their entire community.

My life in Ilom is filled with numerous sorts of butterflies, afternoon rainbows, wildflowers galore, untamed fruit growing throughout the surrounding jungle, and I routinely bathe beneath a waterfall. As close to paradise (or perhaps a Care Bear movie) this all may seem, a horrendous history and complicated community dynamic lurk beneath the surface: there is no electricity, extreme poverty is rampant, illness is prevalent, likewise malnutrition, and several of the village's residents live under constant threat for their willingness to hold powerful men accountable for abhorrent acts perpetrated in 1982 that changed the community forever.

REMNANTS OF GENOCIDE ABOUND

While the unconscionable military campaign officially ended in 1996 (during which the state's self-titled "scorched earth" tactics burnt no less than 440 Maya communities completely to the ground, erasing them from the map), its intellectual architects have continued to enjoy a leisurely existence and substantial power within the political system. In the Ixil, the region where I am accompanying witnesses pursuing the national legal case charging eight former militarymen and officials with genocide, a man named Otto Perez Molina (pictured below) hovers larger-than-life on billboards above homes and roadways.

While much of the country knows him as a presidential contender in next year's elections - whose slogan "Urge Mano Dura" (A Firm Hand is Urgently Needed) is splayed beneath a pic of him scowling, a fist anchored at his chin, looking eager to hurt someone – many folks in the Ixil tell me they simply remember him as the military general who presided over the genocide in their communities. The Ixil Maya (who constitute the overwhelming majority in the region) were particularly hard hit by the state's so-called "counterinsurgency" campaign – an estimated 14.5% of the population was killed.

However the military ceasefire by no means signifies that the violence has altogether disappeared – arguably, given the prevalence of impunity and a shift in the concentration of power, the violence may have simply lessened marginally (if at all) and become relatively decentralized:

For example, Guatemala, despite posting a national population about 3 million people LESS than the state of Florida, nonetheless averages 17 murders per day this year. And according to an article in Le Monde Diplomatique last month, only about 3% - three percent! – of these cases have been prosecuted. Prensa Libre, Guatemala's leading daily newspaper, recently calculated that 83% of the murders are perpetrated by organized crime groups. It's worth mentioning that a Swedish scholar investigating such groups told me that Molina, the "firm-handed" general gunning for the nation's top post, directs El Sindicato, a network of current and retired military officers widely thought to be implicated in illicit and criminal activity. [See WOLA's report on 'Hidden Powers' in Guatemala]

What will it require for Guatemala to start punishing a murderer for killing someone, or even an organized crime ring for killing multiple some ones, when dictators and military heads are allowed to get away with killing upwards of 200,000 people?

THINKING ABOUT TERROR  

And what is terror, a truly everyday terror? Can governments be terroristic (like during a genocide) or is that a term solely reserved for groups operating outside of a state framework (like organized crime or cells of violent extremists)?

Phrased another way that hits closer to home, given the United States` planet-wide commitment to battling "terror" - a campaign that invests over $1,000,000,000.00 a week in civil war-torn Iraq alone - is it more contradictory to our government's stated aims to have funded and trained the Guatemalan military leaders that the CIA then reported were carrying out these unthinkably reprehensible deeds, OR their recent extensive lobbying effort to place Guatemala, its obvious puppet, in a prominent post within the United Nations - proposing that a government overseeing 17 unpunished murders a day and a yet unpunished genocide somehow qualifies to serve on a so-called Security Council? (see story below: 1)

UPDATES ON THE GENOCIDE CASE FRONT

Thankfully, the courage of survivors is pushing crucial boundaries, among them the right to talk publicly about the genocide and name its implementers. Although the genocide case has languished in the supposed "investigative stage" since its first filing in national courts in 2000, on October 4 the Asociación para Justicia y Reconciliación (the AJR is the coalition of survivors that request our accompaniment) made an important legal move, formally urging the District Attorney to initiate the next stage of the legal process. The AJR also decided to focus the case on the Ixil region (coincidentally the communities I will be accompanying until summer) and former dictator Efraìn Rìos Montt, who reigned over the grisliest chapters of the genocide. The AJR symbolically filed the legal demand on B´elejeb´ Tz´i´, the Day of Justice in the ceremonial Mayan calendar (see story below: 2).

On October 15, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) – the political party Rìos Montt directs as secretary general - announced that he would be their "natural candidate" for the presidential elections next year. The FRG constitutes the largest faction in Congress, and continues to be one of the most powerful forces in Guatemala. If elected, or even accepted by courts as a candidate, Rìos Montt would qualify for "antijuicio" – a bizarre type of amnesty law for elected officials and candidates (at least as I understand it) that ostensibly protects them from pending courts cases. Importantly, this allegedly would include charges of genocide.

The FRG`s declaration of backing Rìos Montt's presidential bid in part stems from an announcement on October 10 by the Guatemalan Constitutional Court that Rìos Montt should have been legally disqualified from running last election (when he mobilized riots of machete-brandishing FRGistas to scare the Court into allowing him to run, resulting in the death of a journalist), nor can he in 2007. Oddly, the court stated that in 2003 they erred by failing to heed grammatical rules of tense for the verb "to be." Yep, that's right.

All this was eclipsed by the arrest of two of those sought in the genocide case on November 5. The Guatemalan justice system conceded to arrest warrants sent by Spanish courts charging these men with various crimes, including genocide; Spain argues if Guatemala can't or won't prosecute these men, then they will under "universal jurisdiction."  

Strikingly exempt from the Guatemalan arrests was, you guessed it, Rìos Montt. I was lucky to observe hundreds of fired-up rural Maya genocide survivors and their radical capitol city allies march on the Supreme Court demanding Rios Montt`s capture, transforming it with political theatre, speeches in several different Maya languages and a spirited installation of graffiti on the high court`s plaza. (see below for story & photos: 3)

PASSING TIME IN THE HIGHLANDS

I've mostly been chatting with witnesses about their stories and ideas on a number of subjects including governance, survival, gender, political autonomy and multi-national mega-projects. I also read a lot, perhaps 4-5 hours a day – most recently biographies on Harriet Tubman, Ella Baker and Malcolm X. I am also translating some of the works of Oaxacan journalist-philosopher Ricardo Flores Magòn into English. My spoken Ixil (the only language most women and many men use in Ilom) is proceeding slowly, far slower than I`d like. Besides that, it's primarily soccer, Frisbee and hacky sack with children. I feel very comfortable and adjusted here but acknowledge that, along with the witnesses, we must heighten our diligence to security given the shift in focus on Rìos Montt, the Ixil region as well as the quickly approaching elections.

I would love to hear from any of you, and learn what you are up to, thinking about, working on. It may take me a while to respond due to infrequent internet access, but it`d be great to collapse geography some by catching up with an e-mail. Many thanks to those of you who have mailed me magazines, zines, food, cowboy-themed bandanas and the like. Also, I very much appreciate the financial help from those who have been so kind to share their money and support our volunteer accompaniment project.  

It is an honor to be working toward justice with the inspiring survivors of the Ixil and to rely on the solidarity of friends and allies (via circulating news & our updates, donations, etc) to collaborate in holding these powerful, genocidal men accountable for their crimes, particularly by amplifying the voices and struggles of those who endured, and still endure, their terror.

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To receive updates every two months and for more information, you can contact Jordan at: jordan [at] sfalliance [dot] org

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Background: Ways You Can Support the Struggle

Join the NISGUA list or GSN Blog for updates on notable news in Guatemala:

Contact the Guatemala Govt- tell them to move on the genocide case! Great activity for church groups, human rights groups, or alone (English is fine):


Become an Accompanier in the Genocide Case 

You can hear interviews with people who have worked as accompaniers (broadcast by Democracy Now! and the BBC) and read articles and more information from a variety of sources here.

If you're in the US you can support Jordan financially- write a tax-deductible check to "DJPC Education Fund" and add "Jordan Buckley-CAMINOS" to the memo line. They can be mailed to: Denver Justice & Peace Committee, 901 W. 14th Avenue Suite 7, Denver, CO  80204. If you are in the UK you can support GSN by contacting us on gsn_mail [at] yahoo [dot] com

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Independent Journalism by Austinite Elias Lawless referenced above:

(1) INDIGENOUS SURVIVORS IN GUATEMALA FILE DEMAND FOR ACCUSATION IN GENOCIDE CASE AGAINST EX-DICTATOR RÍOS MONTT:

(2) DISCOVERING CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

(3) GUATEMALAN GENOCIDE SURVIVORS CLAMOR FOR RIOS MONTT`S CAPTURE

The story made the top story on the homepage of BBC Mundo. According to the report filed by the BBC, the Spanish Government is redoubling efforts for the extradition request of Gen Efrain Rios Montt (amongst others) made by Spain highest court, the Audiencia Nacional Española. The proposal made by Juan Fernando López Aguilar, Spanish Justice Minister, was agreed in cabinet.

In other news, reports in Guatemala now seem to suggest that the man detained by police in Panama was not Donaldo Alvarez after all. This from Siglo XXI:

The BBC has the same story in English now- and have transmitted the story via the BBC World Service. It's been covered now by all the Guatemalan daily newspapers. Rigoberta Menchú was quoted in Prensa Libre (23-12-2006):

Just spotted this really great interview of Helen Woodcock, volunteer accompanier with Peace Brigades International and Dominga Vasquez, Mayoress of Solola. The interview (broadcast 13-12-2006) was as part of the BBC Radio 4's Women's Hour programme.

See more on this in a previous post on this blog.

This just in from our compañer@s in Guatemala with an update on the extradition order for Gen Efrain Rios Montt et al... looks like there could be some movement in the next few days. Watch this space...

Here's the news as reported in Prensa Libre and Siglo XXI (01-12-2006). Or CERIGUA (02-12-2006). The Spanish authorities have corrected the mistake about missing out reference to Rios Montt:

Also in the news was the revelation that Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz recently visited Guatemala (El Periodico):


Perhaps we may even have news on the case before Guatemalans 'burn the devil' (Quema del Diablo) on 7th December - a day reserved, according to tradition, for the burning of the old and bad to make way for the new.

By Michael Fernandez

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As we approach the ten year anniversary of the signing of the peace accords in Guatemala, the question of what has actually changed since then has obviously arisen. From reading articles, opinion pages, and indeed talking to countless people who have lived their entire lives in the country, the general consensus seems to be 'very little,' and most would agree that the Guatemalan government has completely failed to implement the agreements reached back in December 1996. Evidence of this failure is everywhere: the scourge of impunity that continues to prevail in Guatemala – nowhere more evident than in the lack of progress in the genocide case against Ríos Montt and his high command; the glaring inequalities and extreme poverty in a country where an estimated 75% of the population live below the poverty line; and the continuing violence and intimidation against those struggling to improve the human rights situation and bring social justice to Guatemala.  

My time working as an international accompanier in Guatemala with ACOGUATE has given me the opportunity to see first hand the lack of progress since 1996, and indeed how many of the original causes for the outbreak of the internal conflict back in 1960 are still prevalent to this day. While many accompaniers spend their time living in communities and accompanying witnesses involved in the genocide case, I was asked to form part of the so-called 'short term' team, which accompanies other individuals, communities and organisations that are under threat due to their work or their struggle for justice. The main case I have been involved in, that of the sacked farm workers of the Finca Nueva Florencia, is clear evidence of how land and labour rights are continuously denied to the campesinos of Guatemala, and how the power of the large landowners in the country continues unabated.  

In March of 1997, less than three months after the signing of the peace accords, 38 families of the Finca Nueva Florencia formed a union to negotiate with the landowners for better pay and working conditions. This was in large part due to the fact that, despite the wealth of OTTMAR SA, the company that owns this mainly coffee producing plantation, workers received less than ₤2 per day. Just one week later, in violation of article 209 of the Code of Work, all members of the union were sacked. Ever since then members of the union have been fighting for compensation for salaries not paid since that date and for their reinstatement. Despite 13 decisions in the courts in favour of the sacked workers, including two the Constitutional Court, the conflict is yet to be resolved, and the landowners have been able to continually delay and block any court rulings with countless appeals and motions.  

Many of the union members have left, simply unable to fight for so many years, while a systematic campaign of intimidation and reprisals from the landowners has been waged in an attempt to force the remaining eleven members to give up. For the four families who continued living in their houses on the plantation in particular, the hardships have been devastating: their electricity and water have been cut off; their children have not been allowed to attend the school on the plantation or use the playground; they have been denied access to the farm's health clinic, with children being refused vaccinations despite the fact that the vaccinations were a government programme; they are not allowed to cut firewood on the plantation; letters have been sent to all the landowners in the area urging them not to give the sacked workers employment; and security guards have been installed to harass and intimidate them.

Since May of this year the intimidation has been particularly severe. On the 11th May, with OTTMAR claiming not to have the funds available to pay the sacked workers their compensation, the courts awarded two parts of the plantation to the union. Faced with the prospect of losing very profitable land, the landowners stepped up their campaign of intimidation, with a massive increase in the number of armed guards, dressed in military uniform. Shots were fired outside the houses of the families living on the plantation, a particularly horrific experience for their very young children, and the brother of the main union organiser was held with rifles pointed at him for simply cutting weeds. The workers also received notice that the guards had been ordered to shoot them if they entered the coffee plantations on the farm. Accusations have been made to the Office of Public Prosecution (Ministerio Público), but as yet, no investigation has been made into these intimidations.  

In the face of all this, the union members approached ACOGUATE about the prospect of international accompaniment. Since then we have been visiting them at least every two weeks in an attempt to show the landowners that there is international attention on this case, in an effort to dissuade them from further intimidation, and as an act of solidarity, offering the union members vital moral support. The effects of our presence have been noted, and according to the union members the level of intimidation, in particularly the gunshots in front of their houses at night has diminished. However, the intimidation does continue, and while shots being fired at your house once a week is better than every night, it is still an unacceptable situation.

I feel extremely privileged to have been able to visit and get to know the sacked workers of Finca Nueva Florencia. Their stories of hardship and tales of injustice have been truly eye-opening, and reflect many of the wider problems of Guatemala. I have been continually amazed, however, by their courage, conviction and determination to see this struggle through to the end, and this too is a reflection of the efforts of countless numbers of people and organizations throughout Guatemala. They retain hope and are now at a critical stage in their case. With the landowners running out of motions and appeals to block the case, the workers may soon get the land they are owed. The process is far from complete, however, and many obstacles remain, but the hope that is now there shows that through the efforts and sacrifices of courageous individuals and the hard work of numerous organisations and civil society working together, changes can be made.  

The fact of the matter, however, is that it should not require so much suffering and so many years of struggle to achieve justice. In a clear demonstration of how the peace accords have not been implemented, the Guatemalan state, by allowing the case to last for nearly 10 years, has completely failed in its duty to uphold its own laws, and to ensure the economic security of its people. Ten years is far too long to wait for justice, and it is too long to wait for the implementation of the peace accords, which once provided Guatemalans with real hope. It is time now for the Guatemalan government to bring about serious changes in the country, end the culture of impunity and ensure that land and labour rights are respected in accordance with the law.

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Background Information

Amnesty International USA has really informative section on its website about the land rights issue in Guatemala. The section includes video testimony from many of the key actors on the issue in Guatemala.

Including: researcher Sebastian Elgueta who explains AI's main concerns regarding Guatemalan land rights; Juan Tzib who talks about how the current Guatemalan laws affect campesinos (rural workers); Ingrid Urizar who talks about the difficulties campesinos face accessing the courts; and Daniel Pascual who talks about the current government's policy of evictions.

When General Efrain Rios Montt decided to run for President of Guatemala in the 2003 election, who took a calculated risk. To pursue his controversial candidacy, he knew he would need to sacrifice his immunity from prosecution as a sitting deputy in the Guatemalan Congress. In March 2004, Rios Montt's new life without immunity from prosecution resulted in his nominal house arrest pending trial in connection with the death of a journalist in the run up to the 2003 elections. The charges in this case were quashed in January 2006.

However, the trial was a sideshow in the scheme of things for Rios Montt. For the last six years the public prosecution service (MP) have been dragging their feet in another case that involves Rios Montt's role in genocidal massacres in Guatemala while Minister of Defence, Chief of the Armed Forces and President during the early 1980's.In October 2006, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) and the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) formally urged the public prosecution service (MP) to take the genocide case involving Rios Montt to the next stage in the legal process.

The timing of this demand went beyond coinciding with B'elejeb' Tz'i' (the Mayan Day of Justice, 5th October). If Rios Montt should be formally charged, he would not be able to register as a candidate in the 2007 elections. From 1st April 2007, Rios Montt will be able to formally present himself as a candidate to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and once he has formally registered as a candidate, he will again be immune from prosecution. The fear, shared by the AJR and CALDH, has been that public prosecutors will be leant on to run out the clock, allowing Rios Montt to present his candidacy and recover his immunity from prosecution. For this reason, both organisations have begun a campaign to focus minds in the MP and raise awareness of this critical time in the progression of the 'genocide cases'.

Then later in October this year events took a dramatic twist. It began with the Constitutional Court (CC) quashed an earlier ruling by the CC to allow Rios Montt to stand for the Presidency in 2003. Rios Montt was previously barred, in accordance with the Guatemalan constitution, from running for the Guatemalan Presidency for his participation in a coup d'etat in 1982. Rios Montt's legal team vowed to challenge this, but worse was to come for them.

On 26th October the European Parliament debated and passed a resolution on the legal proceedings against Rios Montt. Part of the motion urged: "the Guatemalan institutions fully to cooperate and do everything in their power to shed light on the human rights violations and to ensure that those responsible are brought to justice and that the findings of the investigations are made public, as called for in the international arrest warrant issued by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional on 7 July 2006 against Jose Efraín Rios Montt, Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, Angel Anibal Guevara Rodriguez, German Chupina Barahona, Pedro Garcia Arredondo and Benedicto Lucas Garcia, all of whom are accused of crimes of genocide, torture, terrorism and illegal detention."

On 27th October, the Guatemalan Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) received the arrest warrant issued by the Spanish Audiencia Naciónal via the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry. On 31st October the CSJ sent it to a lower court (Tribunal Quinto de Sentencia). The stage was set for Rios Montt to face justice.

In a seemingly inexplicable yet momentous decision all the same, on 6th November the Guatemalan Court (Tribunal Quinto de Sentencia) ruled that although six of the accused by the Spanish Audiencia Nacional under judge Santiago Pedraz should be detained with a view to extraditing them, Rios Montt should not be. According to recent press reports, the reason that certain Guatemalan authorities are suggesting to explain Rios Montt's latest escape from justice, is down to some sort of clerical error on the part of the Spanish. Supposedly, goes the explanation, only the part of the arrest warrant on the fire in the Spanish Embassy in 1985 has been submitted and not that relating to the cases of genocide in 1981-3 that concerns Rios Montt.

While this latest episode has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, there is now a definite sense that the net seems to be slowly tightening around the intellectual authors of genocide in Guatemala. Whether Rios Montt will finally be netted is yet to be seen.

UPDATE: 15-11-2006

The inconsistent treatment of the accused still continues without being satisfactorily explained. Today's Prensa Libre ran an article explaining how not only has Rios Montt escaped any court order for his arrest in Guatemala, but now the order for the arrest of former President Mejia Victores has also been revoked.

In a seemingly inexplicable decision, a Guatemalan Court (Tribunal Quinto de Sentencia) has ruled that although six accused by the Spanish investigation (Audiencia Nacional de España) under judge Santiago Pedraz (7th July 2006) should be detained with a view to extraditing them, Rios Montt should not be. The Spanish investigation was into the deaths of six Spanish citizens in Guatemala in the 1980's. You can read more on this breaking story in Spanish from the Guatemalan press: [El Periodico] [Prensa Libre] [SigloXXi].

The six accused are: Benedicto Lucas García, Oscar Mejía Víctores, Ángel Guevara Rodríguez, Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz, Pedro García Arredondo y Germán Chupina Barahona.

From Prensa Libre today- "the black hand" and important legal documents that get "lost"- doing whatever it takes to avoid justice:
The Center for Justice and Accountability in San Francisco, US, has released the following press release.

The Guatemalan press are covering the follow-up arrests (or non-arrests). [El Periodico]

Next Installment: Spain forgot to mention that Rios Montt was wanted for genocide... Are they really expecting us to believe that this can be put down to a clerical error? See the following from Prensa Libre 09-11-2006 today:

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Background information



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Dennis Bernstein interviews atttorney Almudena Bernabeu, private prosecutor Center for Justice and Accountability, and Matt Eisenbrant, Director of the Center for Justice and Accountability, about the progress in the genocide cases in Guatemala (July 10, 2006) on San Francisco-based radio show, 'Flashpoints'.

European Parliament debated this afternoon (26-10-2006) a resolution on the proceedings against Rios Montt. There were a whole series of separate points to the motion put forward- one of which was:


The motion for the resolution had be put forward by the following MEPs:

       –    Charles Tannock and Bernd Posselt, on behalf of the PPE-DE Group
       –    Pasqualina Napoletano and Luis Yañez-Barnuevo García, on behalf of the PSE Group
       –    Marios Matsakis, on behalf of the ALDE Group
       –    Raül Romeva i Rueda and Alain Lipietz, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group
       –    Willy Meyer Pleite and Marco Rizzo, on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group

You can watch the debate on a video from this page. You need to click on the time next to where the debate on Rios Montt is mentioned about half way down.

You can read this official EU overview of the EU's relations with Guatemala here.

The International Federation for Human Rights has just put out the following press release about the debate (in Spanish).

The following is a press release from the Greens about the debate:

COMUNICADO DE PRENSA - Estrasburgo, 26 de octubre 2006

Extradición de Rios Montt (Guatemala)

VERDES/ALE EXIGEN FIN A LA IMPUNIDAD EN GUATEMALA
Hoy se adoptó en la plenaria del PE una resolución de urgencia sobre la orden internacional de extradición a ex-dictadores y ex-militares guatemaltecos. Sigue la intervención de Raul Romeva, MEP de la IC-V.
 
Diez años después de firmarse los Acuerdos de Paz en Guatemala, país con el que la UE está negociando un acuerdo de asociación y que pretende conseguir un puesto en el Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, el Acuerdo global sobre Derechos Humanos sigue sin implementarse. Y ello es preocupante en uno de los países que más ha sufrido en términos de dictaduras, genocidios y crímenes de lesa humanidad. Pero más preocupante aún es la impunidad casi absoluta de la que gozan quienes fueron los principales responsables de estos hechos, algunos de los cuales siguen ostentando cargos de alta responsabilidad en las instituciones guatemaltecas.

Sin embargo, cuando el pasado 7 de julio de 2006 el Juzgado Central de Instrucción Número 1 de la Audiencia Española decretó una orden internacional de detención contra varios ex-dictadores y ex-militares guatemaltecos, se reabrió la esperanza de que se hiciera finalmente justicia.

Así, ante la total inhibición del sistema judicial guatemalteco, la Audiencia Española asumió, en base al principio de justicia universal, la responsabilidad de contribuir a acabar con la impunidad.

Ante esta iniciativa, por tanto, cabe reclamar a las autoridades guatemaltecas que cooperen plenamente haciendo todo lo posible para la clarificación de las violaciones de los Derechos Humanos que tuvieron lugar en Guatemala y para que quienes son explícitamente mencionados en la orden internacional de detención, así como en la presente resolución, sean detenidos y entregados a la justicia para ser adecuadamente juzgados.

Así mismo, teniendo en cuenta que muchos de los responsables de estos hechos gravísimos en la historia de Guatemala han estado enriqueciéndose y acumulando bienes y capital en bancos locales e internacionales, es necesario también que las entidades bancarias concernidas colaboren en el retorno de dichos bienes con objeto de que estas personas asuman también sus responsabilidades civiles y financieras.

Finalmente, Europol e Interpol deberían poner todos los medios necesarios para proceder a la detención y extradición a España de las personas mencionadas con objeto de ser adecuadamente juzgadas.

A brief article from Reuters yesterday (06-10-2006) reported that:

None of the daily newspapers in Guatemala have covered this story. There's an article on Austin IndyMedia that has more information on this latest initiative from AJR/CALDH.

Rios Montt can't stand for the Presidency says Constitutional Court - 11th October

In a new twist to this story, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court has just (11-10-2006) declared that a previous ruling allowing Rios Montt to stand for President was wrong.


Earlier last week, we received the following message from CALDH.


COMUNICADO DE PRENSA: JUSTICIA POR GENOCIDIO

La Asociación para la Justicia y Reconciliación (AJR), con la asesoría legal del Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH), presentó ayer al Ministerio Público la solicitud de la primera declaración del general Efraín Ríos Montt, quien es sindicado del delito de genocidio, y le solicitó darle trámite ante el Organismo Judicial con base en las pruebas que posee.

La sindicación que pesa sobre José Efraín Ríos Montt se fundamenta en sus actuaciones como Jefe de la Junta Militar de Gobierno, Ministro de Defensa, Presidente de la República y Jefe del Estado Mayor del Ejército en el periodo del 23 de marzo de 1982 al 8 de agosto de 1983, cuando planificó y ordenó a sus subordinados la ejecución de un gran número de masacres en contra del pueblo maya, documentadas por la Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico.

Los actos perpetrados por el Ejército bajo el mando del general Ríos Montt constituyen delito de genocidio porque causaron lesiones físicas y mentales, desplazamiento forzado y la matanza de diferentes miembros del pueblo maya, con la intención de destruirlos total o parcialmente.

Miles de guatemaltecas y guatemaltecos, cientos de comunidades mayas, fueron víctimas del horror y el terror sembrado por el general genocida. Por ello, para que nunca más se repita esa historia de dolor que la impunidad en que aún se encuentra uno de sus causantes todavía la hace pervivir, oler y doler en el cuerpo y la mente de sus víctimas, la AJR ha presentado la solicitud apuntada, confiando, como lo hace su asesor legal, CALDH, en que el Ministerio Público tendrá la sabiduría y el valor de acceder y facilitar el avance del proceso que estamos iniciando, en aras de que la justicia nacional y el Estado de derecho sean una realidad.

Y presentamos esta solicitud en el día B’elejeb’ Tz’i’ (Día de la Justicia) del calendario ceremonial maya, en homenaje a aquellas miles de víctimas del genocidio.

Guatemala, 5 de octubre de 2006

Asociación para la Justicia y Reconciliación (AJR)
Centro para la Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos (CALDH)

The recent brush with justice for all those in the military accused of playing their part in Guatemala's genocide, has smoked out their supporters out from under their rocks (not that they needed much smoking out!).

Jorge Palmieri in El Periodico is one who, practically on a daily basis, has dribbled the kind of bile you associate with the Guatemala of the past. Whether it's defending Lucas Garcia for saving Guatemala from communism or recommending that you read the accounts of Generals such as Hector Alejandro Gramajo for a balanced picture of the civil war, Palmieri has hardly paused to breathe.

Today (03-07-06) Jose Ruben Zamora (Editor-in-Chief of El Periodico) has published what has to be a great 'put up, or shut up' riposte to those weasel worded supporters of the military and the use of violence, before the rule of law (in Spanish):

Ultimately, those defending human rights abuses in the past, should wake up to the logical conclusion of past violence: a continuing litany of further violence. And with virtually no legal recourse to stop it- apologists like Palmieri and his like are saving no-one.

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The following is just a selection of the threats, intimidations and abuses against those standing up for their rights in Guatemala in the last three months (SOURCE: ACOGUATE):

20.03.2006   
Intento de asesinato a Claudia Jeannette Rivas Rosil, Secretaria Departamental de Jutiapa del Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Educación de Guatemala (STEG).

26.03.2006   
Allanamiento de la oficina del Comité Campesino del Altiplano (CCDA) en San Lucas Tolimán, Sololá.

27.03.2006   
Allanamiento de la oficina de la Fundación para el Desarrollo Comunitario (FUNDESCO) y de la Asociación Unidad de Desarrollo Integral La Novena (UDINOV).

02.04.2006   
Asesinato de Meregilda Suchite, integrante del Observatorio de DDHH de Caldh y de la Red de Mujeres, Olopa, Chiquimula.

05.04.2006   
Asesinato de Antonio Ixbalán Cali, Presidente de la Asociación de Agricultores de Santiago Atitlán, y su esposa, Maria Petzey Coo, ambos miembros de la Coordinadora Nacional Indígena y Campesina (CONIC).

06.04.2006   
Allanamiento de la sede de CUSG en Guatemala Ciudad.

20.04.2006   
El levantamiento campesino de este día provocó fuertes reacciones de la Policia Nacional Civil y las fuerzas armadas, dejando un saldo de varias/os heridas/os y detenidas/os en los departamentos de Esquintla, Quetzaltenango y Alta Verapaz.

22.04.2006   
Allanamiento de la oficina de Coordinadora de Organizaciones Campesinas e Indígenas de Petén (COCIP). La oficina de COCIP ya fue allanada el 04.03.2006.

7.04.2006   
Disparos en contra de las/os integrantes del Movimiento Campesino en Resistencia Pro Justicia Finca Nueva Linda y amenazas directas en contra de sus líderes por miembros de la seguridad privada de la Finca Nueva Linda.

07.05.2006   
Allanamiento de la oficina de la Coordinadora Nacional Indígena y Campesina (CONIC) en la Capital de Guatemala.

11.05.2006 12.05.2006
Amenazas telefónicas al Movimiento Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Ciudad de Guatemala.

14.05.2006   
Disparos en contra de las/os integrantes del Movimiento Campesino en Resistencia Pro Justicia Finca Nueva Linda por miembros de la seguridad privada de la Finca Nueva Linda.

20.05.2006   
Asesinato de Sandra Teresa Coc Xol, de 14 años, en la comunidad Plan Grande Tatín, Livingston, Izabal. Sus padres Carlos Coc y Celia Xol laboran en la asociación Ak´ Tenamit, donde trabajan en defensa de los derechos de las comunidades q’eqchies de esa área. El hecho de que los objetos de valor que portaba fueron encontrados a la par de ella sugiere descartar el robo como motivo de este crimen.

24.05.2006   
Secuestro de Óscar Humberto Duarte Paíz, miembro de la junta directiva de la Asociación Integral de Desarrollo Comunitario de Ciudad Quetzal (ASIDECQ).

28.05.2006   
Allanamiento a la sede del Sector de Mujeres en la Ciudad de Guatemala.

29.05.2006   
Allanamiento a las instalaciones que anteriormente ocupaba FUNDESCO. Este nuevo allanamiento se produjo dos días después de que FUNDESCO ha cambiado su sede.

30.05.2006   
Asesinato de Víctor Regino, miembro de la URNG, en la comunidad Santa Maria Cotzumalguapa, Escuintla.

30.05.2006   
Asesinato de Rosa Dolores Rodríguez, maestra del colegio fundado por Florentín Gudiel (asesinado el 20.12.2004) y simpatizante de la URNG en Santa Maria Cotzumalguapa, Escuintla.

05.06.2006   
Allanamiento de la sede de la Unión Nacional de Mujeres Guatemaltecas en Chimaltenango.

05.06.2006   
Nuevo allanamiento de la oficina del Sector de Mujeres en la Ciudad de Guatemala.

05.06.2006   
Miembros de la seguridad privada de la Finca Nueva Linda se presentaron en la aldea Santa Rosa, Municipio de Champerico, preguntando por dos de los líderes del Movimiento Campesino en Resistencia Pro Justicia Finca Nueva Linda. Este hecho fue interpretado por ellos como una nueva amenaza hacia el Movimiento.

Is there room for any more irony in Guatemalan justice? As the Guatemalan military performs its latest escape from legal scrutiny, the country celebrates Army Day. Santiago Pedraz (left), Spanish judge in Guatemala to hear testimony from military leaders accused of genocide (amongst others) is on his way home. The news made a tiny article in Prensa Libre (30-06-2006).

So why has this latest attempt to challenge Guatemalan impunity failed?

The Guatemalan Constitutional Court upheld Rios Montt's last minute legal delaying tactic. No great legal principle has been decided- but it was enough to block progress for the time being (at least until after 4th July when Pedraz was scheduled to leave Guatemala).

You can follow the story in more detail in Spanish in ACOGUATE's brilliant blog they started a few weeks ago.

But why the suspension of the process to interview those accused of genocide?

According to Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre, President of the Constitutional Court:

The reason Rios Montt doesn't have to defend his genocidal actions before a court of law:  the Guatemalan Supreme Court didn't send the Constitutional Court all the necessary papers...

Happy Army Day Rios Montt! (ironical)

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This latest episode has again brought to the fore the forces of threats and intimidation against human rights defenders. AVEMILGUA (Association of Military Veterans) paid for an advert (left) in the Guatemalan press which described the presence of Santiago Pedraz as an "attempt by terrorist groups to persecute the military".

José Luis Quilo Ayuso, AVEMILGUA chief, went on public record as saying (threatening) that there would be "tragic consequences" if any of the military had to go to court with the Spanish judge. These threats were denounced by Rigoberta Menchu and Edda Gaviola of CALDH.

UPDATE: Amnesty International have issued an urgent action about the fear for the safety of the human rights defenders affected by AVEMILGUA's threat.

CAIG, the organisation that coordinates international accompaniment in Guatemala has just published (May 2006) a report on issues in human rights that make up the heart of its current work. The report focuses on two cases in particular, on the Plan de Sanchez massacre and the genocide case presented in Spain by Nobel laureate, Rigoberta Menchu.

The report underlines the current concern that in a climate where threats and intimidation against human rights defenders are on the increase in Guatemala, impunity for those responsible for human rights abuses now and in the past continues.

However, the report also looks to the future, and in particular points to two opportunities for Guatemala and especially its government, to demonstrate its will to begin to reddress the imbalance. First, is by implementing the international ruling granting compensation to the victims of the Plan de Sanchez massacre. And second, is by cooperating with the Spanish investigation into Rigoberta Menchu's case of genocide, terrorism and torture in Guatemala in the 1980's.

The report is summarised in Spanish below:

You can see the full report in Spanish here. This report is currently being translated into English. As soon as it's published we will post it here.

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UPDATE: Here is the English introduction to the report provided by NISGUA:

Coordination of International Accompaniment in Guatemala Observation Report, May 2006

Accompanying Human Rights Defenders in the Struggle Against Impunity in Guatemala

The Coordination of International Accompaniment in Guatemala (CAIG) is a collaboration between ten accompaniment groups from nine countries:

- Acompañamiento de Austria (ADA), Austria;
- Cadena para un Retorno Acompañado (CAREA e.V.), Germany;
- Collectif Guatemala, France;
- Guatemala Solidarity Network (GSN), Great Britain;
- Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network (BtS), Canada;
- Mellemamerika Komiteen (MAK), Denmark;
- Movimiento Sueco por la Reconciliació n (Swefor), Sweden;
- Peace Watch Switzerland (PWS), Switzerland;
- Projet Accompagnement Québec-Guatemala (PAQG), Canada;
- Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA), USA.

Our mission is to improve the human rights situation in Guatemala by providing a dissuasive, international presence and impartial observation to at-risk human rights defenders.

Since 2000, over 275 of our volunteers have accompanied human rights defenders working to end impunity in Guatemala. In recent years, we have observed that while the Guatemalan government has publicly accepted responsibility for the human rights violations committed during the internal armed conflict, and thus improved its image in the eyes of the international community, the level of impunity in Guatemala nonetheless remains alarmingly high.

This impunity is not only the result of institutional inefficiency in the judicial system, but is perpetuated by systematic attacks on individuals fighting to end impunity by presenting testimony, providing legal aid and/or carrying out other forms of support to witnesses in legal cases. Furthermore, Guatemala's official response to these attacks has been insufficient: of the 260 attacks reported by anti-impunity activists between 1997 and 2005, the Guatemalan authorities have failed to identify or prosecute any of the perpetrators.

CAIG has observed that advances made to end impunity in Guatemala have been a result of the courage and determination of those struggling against impunity and not a result of local authorities upholding the Rule of Law. This is significant given that the majority of such activists are farmers from isolated and impoverished indigenous communities with little or no access to State institutions such as the judicial system.

In this context, two new opportunities exist for the Guatemalan government to demonstrate its political will to end impunity:

1. To comply with the reparation sentence passed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to the survivors of the massacre in Plan de Sanchez, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz. This case was first presented to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in 1996 and was later included in the cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity presented by the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR).

2. To collaborate with the Spanish Commission as it investigates, according to Universal Jurisdiction, charges of genocide, terrorism and torture originally presented by Rigoberta Menchu Tum before the Spanish Judicial System in 1999. The Spanish Commission will be visiting Guatemala between June and July 2006.

Given the political and moral importance of these legal cases, and considering the longstanding history of impunity in Guatemala, CAIG is greatly concerned for the safety of individuals and groups involved in the struggle for justice in Guatemala. We are particularly concerned for the safety of individuals testifying before the Spanish Investigative Commission in June and July.

As CAIG, we reaffirm our commitment to provide international accompaniment to human rights defenders in the struggle against impunity in Guatemala and will continue to report on their situation throughout the coming months.

You can now hear Rosemary Burnett's interview that was broadcast on Radio Scotland a few weeks ago as part of the 'A Journey' series. Rosemary talks about her experiences as an accompanier in Guatemala supporting human rights defenders.

GSN member Rosemary Burnett, talks her about her work as an international accompanier in Guatemala on Radio Scotland. She describes how she got involved, the plight of the witnesses to the genocide in Guatemala in the 1980s and everyday life volunteering in ACOGUATE, the Guatemala Accompaniment Programme. Rosemary has written about her experiences in a book Disent angling the Knots, you can get a copy from here.

GSN member Rosemary Burnett, talks her about her work as an international accompanier in Guatemala on Radio Scotland. She describes how she got involved, the plight of the witnesses to the genocide in Guatemala in the 1980s and everyday life volunteering in ACOGUATE, the Guatemala Accompaniment Programme. Rosemary has written about her experiences in a book Disentangling the Knots, you can get a copy from here.


You can listen to Rosemary's interview on Radio Scotland here.  Unfortunately the BBC takes most of its programmes offline after seven days.

In early February, over 300 survivors of the 1982 Plan de Sánchez massacre in Rabinal finally began receiving the first of three reparations payments from the Guatemalan government as ordered by an Inter-American Court of Human Rights sentence in 2004.  The community had accepted a proposal from the state to make the three payments of approximately $8,000 each in February 2006, December 2006 and December 2007. While the original sentence mandates that the total amount of approximately $25,000 per beneficiary be paid in December 2005, the government proposed otherwise.
 
The survivors’ receipts of these payments are definitely a victory for a community that has struggled for justice over the course of 20-plus years, but this process MUST not be considered complete now that the first payment has been made.  The sentence also requires the government to provide the community with health care, mental health services, multicultural education, water systems, roads and a dignified housing. It also requires that the intellectual and material authors be investigated, tried and convicted.  This last point provides further impetus for bringing to trial the genocide cases against former dictators Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt, which have been stuck in the investigative phase within the Guatemalan Attorney General’s office (Ministerio Público) for more than five years, due in large part to a lack of political will to see the cases move forward.  NISGUA has been providing human rights accompaniment to the witnesses of these cases throughout Guatemala since the charges were first filed in 2000 and 2001.  For more information about accompaniment work or how to become an accompanier, visit Guatemala Solidarity Network in the UK or www.nisgua.org in the U.S. 
 
NISGUA is committed to ongoing monitoring of this historic process in Plan de Sánchez and will continue to keep you updated on the situation. Please read the below testimony from one of our accompaniers on the ground in Guatemala, Ellen Moore, who has witnessed first-hand the deceit and manipulation surrounding the government’s payments.

  
Eye Witness: Ellen Moore

A fierce mountain sun beats down on Gloria and me as we make our way up the hill to the Plan de Sánchez chapel.  I look over to the 78 year-old woman and see that she is equally swept up in the excitement and anticipation of the day.  Gloria is on her way to the public ceremony to commemorate the first of three payments to be issued to survivors of the Plan de Sánchez massacre by the Guatemalan State as mandated by an Inter-American Court sentence.  The government has brought in clowns, jugglers and at least 40 members of its staff for the event.  We sit on the ground as other members of the Plan de Sánchez community join us and wait for the ceremony to begin. Frank La Rue, the director of COPREDEH (the Presidential Commission for Human Rights) stands in front of the crowd, microphone in hand and begins to speak. His voice echoes throughout the mountains, as he exclaims that "this is a victorious day won by the truth."
 
As he continues his speech, the soft chatter of the crowd, which had been constant up until this point, ceases so as to produce unusual silence. The 300-plus beneficiaries of the Inter-American Court case have gathered at the chapel in Plan de Sánchez, the site of the massacre that occurred there twenty-four years ago. As the former director of CALDH (the Center for Legal Action on Human Rights), the legal organisation responsible for bringing the Plan de Sánchez case before the Inter-American system, La Rue played a key role in the birth of the Plan de Sánchez case before leaving his position to work for the Guatemalan government. Despite this change in affiliation, community members know and continue to respect La Rue. He claims that he has been with the community from the start, and now he has come to finish the job. Today La Rue stands before the survivors and tells them what they have been waiting to hear. This is their victory. Today they will receive the first fruit of their fourteen year battle.  Unfortunately, the words that La Rue proceeds to voice reflect a strategy of deception and manipulation that has consistently characterized the work of COPREDEH regarding the Government of Guatemala’s compliance with the Inter-American Court sentence.
 
I scribble notes throughout La Rue’s speech. The final victory…transaction has been completed…must sign today to get out money tomorrow…he has been with them for years…must have trust. It becomes disturbingly clear that Frank La Rue has an agenda. First, he reminds the community of his previous affiliation with CALDH and his continued, personal commitment to their struggle. He then launches into an attack of the very organisation that he just finished exalting, discretely but openly criticising CALDH’s commitment to the case and to the community.
 
Next Frank La Rue reveals the driving political force behind the completion of the first payment. He makes sure to mention at least three times that the Berger administration was not responsible for the horror that occurred on July 18, 1982, but it should be given credit for the completion of the first payment to the survivors.  He assures the beneficiaries that the deposits have been completed and that the money has been distributed to the individual accounts.  La Rue concludes by stating that the final step is for the beneficiaries to sign the paperwork that will allow them to withdraw their money the following day.     
 
Because COPREDEH only notified CALDH of the ceremony less than 24 hours in advance, and in order to make a public statement about the illegitimacy of the event, the legal organisation chose not to attend. Instead, two CALDH representatives went to the bank with a number of beneficiaries to see for themselves if what Frank La Rue and the director of the bank said was true. What they encountered were completely empty accounts and a growing list of lies. CALDH and the beneficiaries returned to Plan de Sánchez to relay the bad news. I watch as looks of confusion and panic sweep across the community member’s faces, as they realize that they have been deceived.
 
After a community member states that he is not going to sign paperwork if the money is not in the bank, the man is pulled into the chapel to face Frank La Rue. "What do you mean the money is not there?!" La Rue yells at the community member. La Rue then tells the man that if he does not complete the paperwork today, he will lose his money. The community leader does not believe him. La Rue tries another, softer tactic, explaining that folks must sign in order for the money to be deposited in their accounts, a direct contradiction to what he had stated less than an hour before. This pitch works, and La Rue convinces the community member that he has no alternative but to sign.  The man later tells me that he felt bad questioning the word of La Rue and did not want to offend him by not complying. The same reluctance but eventual resignation is evident throughout the crowd, as one by one, the members of the Plan de Sánchez community sign. The survivors know that their money is not there and that they have been lied to, but with more than forty COPREDEH representatives swarming, they feel as though they have no choice. Community members succumb to the pressure and sign paperwork acknowledging receipt of payment when their bank accounts are, in fact, empty.

The following afternoon, I visit Gloria at her home. She brings me a steaming cup of coffee and sits down heavily on the bench. I ask her if she is feeling alright and she says no. Gloria had gotten up early that morning to make the hour trip in the back of a large cargo truck down the mountain to the bank in Rabinal. She waited in line for another hour to check her account balance. Gloria was informed by the bank attendant that her account was empty. Nobody explained why the money had not
arrived or when it would be coming. With COPREDEH long gone and no other alternatives, Gloria returned home feeling worried, confused and helpless. By the time I arrived, she had a headache and had thrown up the small amount of tortilla that she had been able to eat for lunch.
 
After days of travel and worry, the money promised by COPREDEH finally began to arrive. It is not enough, however, to complete payments if the people involved are not treated with respect and if the recognition for the wrongs committed is not sincere.  COPREDEH believed that it could lie to people, not just on February 2nd, but throughout the process. Because those involved are poor indigenous people, COPREDEH decided it could cut corners and do away with legal formalities.  It is doubtful that such laxity would be acceptable in dealing with other high-profile ladino cases based out of Guatemala City.  Would Helen Mack, for example, have been asked to sign paperwork indicating receipt of payment before she ever saw a cent of government reparations?
 
Frank La Rue, a supposed ally of the community, did not take the time to have his speech translated into Achi, even though he knows that Spanish is not the first language of the majority of the beneficiaries. Likewise, La Rue seemed to think it too time consuming to make sure that each beneficiary had read or had read to them the document they were to sign.  Witnessing such blatant disrespect, one feels that not much has changed since the time of the conflict, as government lies are once again undermining trust and organisation within the community.
 
The fulfilment of portions of the Inter-American Court sentence in Plan de Sánchez is a painful reminder of the work that remains to be done in the search for justice throughout Guatemala.  While the survivors of one massacre have won an important victory, there are hundreds of communities that are still fighting for recognition and even hundreds more for which exhumations remain to be done.  Therefore, it is vitally important that Plan de Sánchez serve as an example of what can be accomplished, as well as a reminder of the struggles that remain.  The first payment has shown that, for the government, paying people is easy. What is not easy, and what the government has yet to comply with in the Plan de Sánchez sentence, is justice for the victims of genocide.  
 
It is easily forgotten or conveniently overlooked that the sentence dictates numerous other essential steps that the government must complete, including providing the community with health care, mental health services, multicultural education, water systems, roads and dignified housing.  The ruling also mandates that the intellectual and material authors of the Plan de Sánchez massacre be investigated, tried, and convicted, which would be concrete steps towards real justice.
 
Instead of investing resources in the above measures, the State of Guatemala is hoping that the beneficiaries of the Plan de Sánchez case will take their money and fade into the background.  It hopes that the survivors will forget that Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia continue to walk free, unpunished for the crimes they committed.  Fortunately, the beneficiaries of Plan de Sánchez have not forgotten.  Just yesterday the community gathered once again at the chapel. The community members did something that COPREDEH has not done – they cast blame and named names. Monetary reparations may pay back that which was stolen during the war, but the community of Plan de Sánchez stands firm in its belief that money does not equal justice.

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Further Information

You can read a recent article (26-02-06) on the first compensation payment to be made to victims in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz that appeared in Prensa Libre. More...

CERIGUA (Centro de Reportes Informativos de Guatemala) also has a section dedicated to news on compensation and reparations which is regularly updated. More...

If you are interested in volunteering as an international accompanier, we have more information on volunteering and links to different accompaniment programmes.

UPDATE: Ellen Moore has done an interview with her local paper in the US, the Daily Citizen WISC News. "It blew my mind, in the beginning, that people felt safer because I was there. To me, that was ridiculous," Moore said in April, while at home in Juneau.

"I'm a dissuasive presence," she said, referring to supporters of former Guatemalen dictators Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia who still threaten survivors of massacres investigated by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.