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

---

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