Guatemala Solidarity Network

A powerful, personal story of state-sponsored terror in Guatemala and the lasting effects it has had on families, “The Echo of Pain of the Many” is a timely testament to the brave, untiring efforts of Guatemalans to demand justice and dent the country’s long-standing veil of impunity.

Introducing the film at a London screening on Wednesday, director Ana Lucia Cuevas explained that the title derives from the fact that her own story reflects the painful experience of many thousands of Guatemalans during the country's decades-long civil war. In 1984, her activist student brother Carlos was abducted at the hands of the state. His forced disappearance (and subsequent torture and murder), like that of countless other Guatemalan civilians classed as sympathetic to leftist guerrillas, or anyone seeking change, was the product of a deliberate governmental policy of terrorising the population—a policy supported with money, arms and training from the Reagan administration.

Living abroad in exile for over a decade, it was only in 1999 that Cuevas found out her brother had in fact been killed three months after he was kidnapped. She learned this through the release of an astonishing document—the so-called "death squad dossier" listing with cold bureaucratic precision all the alleged subversives whom the military had abducted, with cryptic annotations marking those who had been killed. “Until then, I’d thought he might still be alive”, Cuevas said in an interview.

The trial ended on Friday with the conviction of Rios Montt of genocide and crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison by the three judge panel.

The charges against Rios Montt former dictator and his co-accused Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, then head of military intelligence, were based on massacres, forced displacement, torture, rape and sexual assault perpetrated against Guatemala’s Mayan Ixil communities in 1982 and 1983, at the height of the country’s bloody internal armed conflict when Rios Montt was president as a result of a coup.
The trial marks the first time a former head of state has been prosecuted for genocide in a domestic, rather than an international, court. The co-accused Sanchez was acquitted on the grounds that he did not have command responsibility.

Although the crimes had been committed over 30 years ago, the court heard testimony from dozens of massacre survivors, some of whom were young children when Guatemalan forces attacked and razed their villages. Their stories helped show that the military considered all Ixil civilians, including children, to be legitimate military targets. The trial also heard particularly horrendous evidence of the widespread practice of rape that occurred during massacres and as part of the military occupation.

“Judge Barrios said today that all of Guatemala was harmed by these crimes. Today, all of Guatemala should now be proud of the capacity of its institutions and the courage of the authorities who prosecuted and tried this case,” explained Marcie Mersky, ICTJ Program Director. “Despite the many difficulties and remaining legal challenges, Guatemala has set an example for the region and the rest of the world in the struggle for accountability.

Miles O'Brien and Xeni Jardin report on the role of science and forensics in the Ríos Montt genocide trial in Guatemala.

Here is a very good piece from PBS Newshour - "In Guatemala, investigators using forensic science have compelling evidence that thousands of innocent indigenous Ixil Mayans were the target of extermination in the 1980s. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on how murder, politics and science intersect in the genocide trial of former leader Efrain Rios Montt."

You can read more here.

“Fifty miles southeast of the capital, private security guards working for Vancouver-based mining firm Tahoe Resources shot and wounded several local residents on Saturday in San Rafael Las Flores, on the road in front of Tahoe’s El Escobal silver mine. The mining company’s head of security was arrested while attempting to flee the country. A police officer and a campesino were killed during conflicts earlier this week. Through it all, demonstrations against the mining project have continued amid conflicting reports and government misinformation.”

As Sandra Cuffe notes in her excellent article, the genocide trial of Efraín Ríos Montt has been diverting attention from the escalating conflicts involving rural communities and foreign mining companies.

It seems inevitable that the State favours the latter.

You can read the article here on Upside Down World and view some photoreportage on the State of Siege San Rafael Las Flores from James Rodríguez on MiMundo here.

“In Guatemala, the trial against former General Efraín Ríos Montt, who terrorized the country during his brief dictatorship in the early 1980s, continues. The general has been accused of killing hundreds of indigenous Guatemalans, and he is being tried on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Yet, even as the country seeks justice for some of those murdered during Guatemala’s decades-long genocide against the indigenous Mayans, repression and violence continues — particularly against indigenous communities that are trying to stop resource extraction and environmental degradation.

For years, the Q’anjob’al community has been organizing in Santa Cruz Barillas, a region in western Guatemala, to defend its territory against a hydroelectric dam project. In spite of repression, harassment, detentions and a 17-day stretch of martial law imposed on the neighborhood, the community continues fighting to stop a Spanish transnational company from profiting off the region’s river.

In recent months, the organizers have made significant gains, particularly in the campaign against political repression. On January 9, organizers who had been imprisoned for almost a year were released. Meanwhile, the community is building ties with Guatemala’s other anti-extractive movements, and under the slogan “We Are All Barillas,” the struggle has gained international attention.”

You can read more of this article by Marta Molina in Waging Nonviolence here.

On March 3rd, this year, La Comunidad en Resistencia celebrated its first anniversary of non-violent resistance to the attempt to start mining for gold between the municipalities of San Pedro Ayampuc and San José Del Golfo, on the road between the latter town and the village of El Carrizal. This area is situated some 20-25km from Guatemala City.

This mining project is owned by the U.S. engineering firm of Kappes, Cassiday and Associates (KCA), who purchased it from the Canadian company Radius Gold. This particular project has received sufficient licenses to explore and extract minerals in an area of some 20 square kilometres. It should be noted here that the water requirements alone in this ‘dry corridor’, some 40,000 gallons per day, will affect a far wider area as the water table is exploited, as indeed will the water contamination leaching back into the soil from tailings etc. The extraction licenses were approved by the then Government’s National Director of Mines shortly before the change of Government at the end of 2011. This person is now the General Manager of KCA’s Guatemala subsidiary, EXMINGUA. This is how politics and business function all over.

On Friday, April 19, the genocide trial of Rios Montt former dictator and Mauricio Rodgriquez Sanchez former head of military intelligence was suspended following the unexpected ruling of Judge Carol Patricia Flores on Thursday, annulling the proceedings. Judge Flores, who presided over preliminary hearings at an earlier stage, prior to her November 2011 recusal, asserted that the annulment of proceedings was required pursuant to an order of the Constitutional Court (requiring the admissibility of some defense evidence previously ordered excluded, but nonetheless admitted by the trial court) and a separate order of the Supreme Court (rejecting as illegal her recusal from the earlier proceedings, and reinstating her).

The tribunal overseeing the trial rejected Judge Flores’ order as illegal, insisted that the tribunal and the judges were not subject to illegal orders, and suspended the proceedings pending review by the Constitutional Court. Judge Yassmin Barrios, President of the trial court, asserted that the tribunal would contest the legality of Judge Flores’ decision and seek review by the Constitutional Court.

In the intervening days, the Public Ministry and civil parties filed various amparos and other legal actions against Judge Flores’ ruling annulling the proceedings, and against other related actions. The defendants, for their part, also filed legal actions related to other aspects of the trial.

On Monday night, after an extraordinary session, the Constitutional Court announced that it had not yet made any decisions concerning the legal challenges filed in connection with the trial, and that its deliberations continue. Article 361 of the Guatemalan Criminal Procedure Code requires that a trial be declared null if suspended for more than 10 days, suggesting a temporal limit for the Constitutional Court’s review of the legality of Judge Flores’ decision.

Judge Carol Flores sparks row after voiding all actions taken in former dictator's war crimes case since November 2011

Associated Press in Guatemala City
guardian.co.uk, Friday 19 April 2013 09.24 BST

A judge in Guatemala has ordered the suspension of the genocide trial of the former US-backed dictator Efrain Rios Montt, angering prosecutors who vowed that proceedings would continue as planned.

In November 2011 his lawyers filed a complaint to remove Flores from the case, alleging that she was biased. In January 2012 she charged Rios Montt with genocide and war crimes. Another judge took over in February and the case went to a three-judge panel.

By setting back the legal process to November 2011, before she filed the charges, Flores has forced prosecutors to start over.

The attorney general, Claudia Paz y Paz, called Flores's decision illegal and said prosecutors would use all available resources to stop her interfering in the trial. "We have been asked to be in the courtroom tomorrow at 8.30am and we will be there to continue the trial," she said.

Rios Montt ruled Guatemala in 1982-83 after a military coup in one of the bloodiest periods of the civil war. He has been accused of presiding over the killing of 1,771 indigenous Ixils in a "scorched earth" campaign aimed at wiping out support for leftist guerrillas.

A Guatemalan human rights activist has accused Rios Montt's legal team of attempting to delay the trial. "The defence is intent in stopping the trial and denying Guatemalans their right to know the truth," Helen Mack s

Judge Carol Patricia Flores was recently reinstated to the case after being recused from it in February 2012. She ruled that all actions taken in the case since she was asked to step down were null, in effect sending the trial back to square one.

The Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) represents the witnesses and survivors of Guatemala’s genocide and are co-plaintiffs in the case against Efraín Ríos Montt and José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez. For more than a decade the survivors have struggled for the opportunity to have their case heard in a court of law. The last 20 days of public oral debate in the genocide trial have demonstrated to the world their unwavering commitment to truth and justice. With more than 100 witnesses from Ixil communities, echoed details in the survivors' stories made clear the systematic nature of the Guatemalan military's scorched earth campaigns, as one after another witness told of the soldiers' extreme and indiscriminate cruelty; of the deliberate destruction of food, crops, animals, homes, and everything necessary for survival; of the violation of women's bodies and traditional clothing. Expert witnesses included 33 forensic experts from FAFG (Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Association), psychologist Nieves Gomez, historian Ángel Valdez Estrada, statistician Patrick Ball and specialist in woman's law Paloma Soria. Rodolfo Robles Espina – a retired Peruvian army general, and for many years a consultant on national security and defense issues testified that everthing that took place during the regime’s military operations against the guerrillas in the Ixil region during 1982-83 was a result of the strategies and tactics promulgated by military chain of command. The defense of Montt in this trial has focused largely on the argument that while he was in power, he could not and did not have control of everything the Army did; he could not know everything that was going on in the remote, rural Ixil region, and cannot be held responsible for any atrocities committed by rogue soldiers.

The Invisible Genocide of Women. by (Ofelia&Zurita) from Ofelia de Pablo & Javier Zurita on Vimeo.

"More than 100,000 women were raped in the 36 years of the Guatemalan genocide in which at least 200,000 people died.

In this video, photojournalists Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita interview survivors and document the ongoing forensic and legal investigation that has just indicted former Guatemalan President Efraín Ríos Montt."

I just came across this really powerful short film which resonates strongly with the current trial against Ríos Montt.

Xeni Jardin featured it on Boing Boing for the Women Under Siege website.

You can find more here.

A piece in the Guatemala Times by Ingrid Nanne presents an interesting reflection on the trial of Ríos Montt.

The racism that provided the space and motive for the brutality meted out to the indigenous since the Spanish first arrived is alive and well in the country’s media. It will take more than a court case to reverse this.

“What can this trial accomplish? Its main achievement may be to reduce the taboo to discuss this era of Guatemala's history. After years of repressive dictatorships, Guatemalans watch their words because they know the walls have ears and outspokenness has serious consequences. If people begin talking freely then I hope that those who suffered from the war can benefit from articulating the traumas endured. For too long indigenous people's opinions have been undermined and ignored; an attitude that continues during the court case, as can be read in the snide commentary in many local papers when describing the trial's witnesses and victims.”

You can read the full piece here.

“While Guatemala attempts to bring former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to justice in a landmark genocide trial, deadly violence elsewhere in the country continues unpunished. In less than one month, five activists and human right defenders struggling against mining companies and fighting for land and labor rights have been murdered in rural areas.

Tomas Quej, a young indigenous leader from Baja Verapaz, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the heart on February 26, 2013, as Comunicarte [es] reported. Quej had just won a long struggle in court for the lands of his community. He had seven children, including a newborn.

Right after Quej's murder, indigenous union and campesino leader Carlos Hernández Medoza was murdered on his way back from Honduras on March 8. Hernández was a prominent leader who rallied various sectors in his community and region.”

Renata Avila writes on Global Voices that “the recent repression resembles the death squad operations that once left thousands of leaders killed in Guatemala.” You can read the full article here.

Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, made the following remarks today (March 19th 2013) as the trial of former generals Efrain Rios Montt and Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez began in Guatemala City:

The judges, public prosecutors, and defense attorneys of Guatemala have an enormous responsibility to guarantee a fair trial: fair for the victims and fair for the accused. A fair trial is a necessary condition of, but not alone sufficient for a successful experience: the impact of the trial on Guatemala and on the world will depend on the actions of others. Journalists, politicians, movie directors, writers, and concerned citizens are the ones who can make this trial a turning point in history.

The trial can help us understand the impact of the Cold War, a difficult period in Latin American history, when the massacre of civilians became a political tool for obtaining or maintaining power. Trained guerrilla fighters hid among the civilian populations while military and political forces developed plans for control that included the torture and murder of Guatemalan citizens.

In 1985 I had the privilege of serving as an assistant prosecutor in the trial of the military juntas that had governed Argentina. We had proof that intelligence officials from our army, educated by French and American officials, had trained Guatemalan officials in the use of torture and extrajudicial executions. Both in Argentina and in Guatemala, these murders were not isolated or spontaneous actions by members of security and armed forces. These crimes were the result of carrying out plans and orders. For this reason it is so important that the trial concentrates on those who gave the orders. In an army, the commander is responsible for the actions of his troops. If the commanding officers order and cover up the crimes, then they are responsible. This is the kind of conduct that must be avoided in future.