Guatemala Solidarity Network

We have received word from Jean-Marie Simon that her book Guatemala: Eternal Spring – Eternal Tyranny will be republished in Guatemala this year. Originally published in 1988 by WW Norton, the new version will be in Spanish - Guatemala: Eterna Primavera, Eterna Tiranía.

 

I first came across this book, in hard copy, while at the Mountain School, several years ago. It had the look and feel of a coffee table book until you took a closer look. The clue perhaps lies in ‘Eternal Tyranny’.

 

It contains pictures of stunning quality and bravery, especially considering the subject matter and the context within which the story was told. The photos relate to the author’s time in Guatemala in the 1980s and are placed within a narrative context. The photographs present a people visited by State brutality and have the quality and ability to show the terrible sadness, helplessness, and fear of the Guatemalan people confronted by this power.  The book’s cover notes state that the ’text and pictures tell the story of a people imprisoned, particularly the Mayan Indians, whose lives have been torn apart by political strife’. The book also takes us to the capital and features scenes from the struggle in the city. The photographs are accompanied by text and this sometimes adds another layer of horror.

 

There are many distressing images and they will elicit different responses. For me, there is a photograph of a young boy titled, Eleven year old mascot, military barracks, Acul, Quiché. His parents were killed by the army. He is dressed in army fatigues and has the saddest look. Looking at this photograph I often wonder what became of that child - what did they turn him into? In 1985, it was estimated that there were 100,000-200,000 of highland orphans (out of a population of 8.5 million).

 

This is a book I cannot recommend highly enough.

 

Follow Jean-Marie Simon’s blog as Guatemala: Eterna Primavera, Eterna Tiranía gets published in Guatemala.

'Guatemala means ‘Place of many trees’, but amongst the foliage are hidden the murderers, rapists and criminals. This country, known for the gentleness of its inhabitants, is home to hyenas. You count fifteen murders daily and the rapes multiply.'

 

The Mexican writer, Laura Esquivel (Como Agua para Chocolate), completed a series of articles for El País and Médicos sin Fronteras, entitled Testigo del Horror, in which writers have written about forgotten conflicts.

 

The writer meets women and girls, some very young (much too young to experience what happened to them), and tries to get an understanding about the effect on Guatemala’s future through its current collective assault on its women and young girls.

 

The title could be translated as Bastards’ Paradise.

 

You can read it here, in Spanish.

The 31^st January 2010 marks the 30^th anniversary of the Guatemalan state attack on the Spanish Embassy and the massacre of 37 people. As well as a memorial, this highlights the barbarity of the regimes in this era.

 

The following is a composite of two sources:

 

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

 

Organizing and Repression in the University of San Carlos, Guatemala, 1944 to 1996, The American Association for the Advancement of Science

 

In 1980, after years of selective repression in Guatemala City, the State initiated a campaign of indiscriminate mass violence throughout the country. The year began, symbolically, with the arrival in the capital of a delegation of peasants from Quiché demanding an end to state terror in their department. In August and September 1979, nine Indians from the villages of Uspantán had been kidnapped and murdered. For the Lucas government, the mere presence of Indian peasants in the capital demanding respect for their human rights was a subversive act, even more so considering that the protesters were being advised by the Peasant Unity Committee (CUC) and university students from the Robin García Revolutionary Student Front (FERG), groups with legal standing but whose leadership was tied to the EGP guerrillas.

 

First, the delegation attempted to gain an audience in Congress. In response, presumed government assassins killed their adviser, FUR activist and lawyer Abraham Rubén Ixcamparic, in front of the national police headquarters. Protesters wanted to call attention to the violence in Quiché, but given the climate of repression, a public march or an occupation was impossible.

 

CUC and FERG decided it would be more prudent to occupy an embassy, as the concept of diplomatic extra-territoriality would make it more difficult for the government to attack their protest. They chose the Spanish Embassy, less for historical or political reasons than for its location close to various bus routes, and for the building's design which made it easier to occupy. Some of the Quiché peasants agreed to go along during the operation. The result was one of the darkest moments of state terror in Guatemala.

 

On January 31, the protesters entered the building, locking the door to the street from the inside, trapping security guards outside in the street. Unexpectedly, two ex-functionaries of the Arana military government were visiting the Embassy and were taken hostage along with the staff and the Spanish diplomatic corps. The Spanish ambassador, Máximo Cajal y López, received the protesters, who asked him to intervene to help form an international commission to verify the repression in Quiché. The occupiers hung banners outside the building and carried a megaphone to the balcony to communicate with the press and security forces.

 

Lucas García met that morning with his interior minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz and police chief German Chupina Barahona in the national palace to discuss a response to the Spanish Embassy protest. Instead of trying to dialogue with protesters, they decided to send hundreds of agents to retake the Embassy.

 

Security forces surrounded the Embassy while the occupants took refuge in a room on the second floor. Without warning, police forces broke into the building and began to launch incendiary devices into their hideout which, together with combustible materials carried by the protesters, exploded into a massive fire. Both occupiers and hostages began to choke on the fumes. Instead of rescuing the trapped victims, the police prohibited firefighters from entering the burning building. Outside, the press and bystanders could hear the victims' cries for help, yet their pleas to the police were to no avail. Security forces held their ground. Thirty-seven people died in the inferno: hostages, peasants and four university students.

 

There were only two survivors: Ambassador Cajal López and campesino Gregorio Yula, who was seriously wounded. Both were put into the Herrera Llerandy Hospital.

 

On February 1, a group of heavily-armed civilians entered the hospital and abducted the survivor, Gregorio Yula. Subsequently his body was thrown from a car in front of the office of the Rector of San Carlos University. On his body was found: “Tried as a traitor, the Spanish Ambassador will run the same risk.” The Ambassador was transferred to the United States Embassy.

 

The next day, the Spanish Government broke diplomatic relations with Guatemala.

 

The tragedy at the Spanish Embassy marked the beginning of a new phase in the political struggle in Guatemala. The government had shown its complete disinterest in the rule of law. It had also sent a message to the opposition about how far it would go to shut down protest. The attack on the diplomatic mission brought Guatemala international isolation. But from the perspective of Lucas García, this was less an embarrassment than a necessary condition for the regime's survival, allowing it to wage an unlimited war on any and all signs of opposition.

 

The victims of these painful events were the following and we remember them again:

 

·         Luis Antonio Ramírez Pas              Student

·         Felipe Antonio García Rac                       Worker

·         Edgar Rodolfo Negreros Straub      Student

·         Vicente Menchu                            Catechist from Chimel Uspantan

·         Salomón Tavico Z.                       Campesino from Quiché

·         Gaspar Vi                                   Campesino from Chajul

·         Leopoldo Pineda                          Student

·         Mateo Sic Chen                           Catechist from Chimel

·         Gavina Morán Chupe                    Campesina, San Pablo El Baldío

·         José Angel Xona Gómez                Campesino, San Pablo El Baldío

·         Sonia Magaly Welchez Valdéz         Student

·         Regina Pol Cuy                            Chimel, Uspantan

·         María Ramírez Anay                    Chajul, Uspantan

·         María Ramírez Anay (sister)          Chajul, Uspantan

·         Juan Tomás Lux                           Chimel, Uspantan

·         María Pinula Lux                          Chimel, Uspantan

·         Trinidad Gómez Hernández             Townsperson

·         Mateo Sis                                   Campesino, San Pablo El Baldío

·         Víctor Gómez Zacarías                  Campesino from Santa Cruz

·         Francisco Tum Castro                   Villager of Los Plátanos, San Miguel

·         Juan Chic Hernández                    Macalahual, Uspantan

·         Mateo López Calvo                       Campesino from Santa Cruz

·         Francisco Chen                            Campesino, Rabinal, Baja Verapáz

·         Gregorio Yuja Xona                      San Pablo, El Baldío, Uspantan

·         Juan Us Chic                               Chimel, Uspantan

·         Juan López Yac                            Campesino from Macalajau

·         Juan José Yos                              Campesino, Santa Lucía

·         Eduardo Cáceres Lehnhoff              Former Vice President of Guatemala

·         Adolfo Molina Orantes                   Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala

·         Jaime Ruiz del Arbol                    Embassy of Spain

·         Luis Felipe Sáenz Martínez                      Embassy of Spain

·         Lucrecia de Aviles                        Embassy of Spain

·         Nora Mena Aceituno                     Embassy of Spain

·         María Teresa Villa de Santa Fé        Embassy of Spain

·         Miriam Rodríguez                                  Embassy of Spain

·         Lucrecia Anelu                             Embassy of Spain

·         Mary de Barillas                          Embassy of Spain

The writer, Aldous Huxley, famously wrote wrote of Lake Atitlán,"Lake Como, it seems to me, touches on the limit of permissibly picturesque, but Atitlán is Como with additional embellishments of several immense volcanoes. It really is too much of a good thing."

 

While, I’ve never been to Lake Como I have been to Lake Atitlán and it is stunning. However, there is a fear that the lake is dying and will become marshland through man-made interventions. These interventions include, for example, farming, tourism, and the lack and/or breakdown of public services to manage human waste.

 

This article by Danilo Valladares, on the Inter Press Service, is titled Environment-Guatemala: SOS from Lake Atitlán and begins, ‘a thick, chocolate-coloured scum floats on the normally clear blue waters of Lake Atitlán, in the southwestern Guatemalan province of Sololá, caused by agricultural fertilisers and untreated sewage from surrounding villages and farms’.

 

The always interesting series Entremosle a Guate features the challenges and possible responses to the current crisis currently facing the Lake, including a list of contacts. It is in Spanish.

Episodio 48 - Atitlán, El Clamor de Un Lago from Caminos del Asombro on Vimeo.

 

In a recent article on the Inter Press Service, a new study is noted which targets taxation and government spending that argues the government is failing in its fiscal commitments to food, health and education.

 

'Guatemala has one of the lowest tax burdens in Latin America, as well as one of the most generous regimes of exemptions and tax breaks. The study attributes the low tax collection and expenditure to the state's historic control by elite sectors of the economy.'

 

The report, attempts to tackle the difficult question of why Guatemala has experienced consistent levels of inequality and deprivation despite having the largest economy in Central America and suggests that focusing on government spending and taxation is a relatively new method of addressing human rights and development. Taxation as a human rights issue?

 

The article can be found here.

 ‘Rosenberg case takes bizarre twist’ – this is the understated headline in a news item from the InforPress CentroAmerica news service.

 

This follows on from the peculiar situation where a video was released following the murder of a lawyer showing that same lawyer blaming the President for his imminent murder. This caused uproar in Guatemala, especially among that particular class vehemently opposed to Colom’s presidency. The investigation was handed over to CICIG to inject some transparency into the proceedings. The results are stranger than fiction.

 

For a recap, Gillian tried to make sense of things and this was followed by an article from the Inforpress CentroAmerica news service. You can find it here:

http://www.guatemalasolidarity.org.uk/?q=content/art-creating-political-crises.

 

The findings from CICIG were recently released to great surprise and bewilderment.

 

The report from Inforpress CentroAmerica follows. There is also this from The Guatemalan Times.

 

 

 

Rosenberg case takes bizarre twist.

 

 

Rodrigo Rosenberg became a household name in Guatemala after he posthumously accused the President and First Lady of ordering his Mother’s Day murder last year. His words, left behind in video taped days before he was shot to death on a tree-lined boulevard, sent tens of thousands of protesters into the streets and sparked youth-led reform movements. But the case that once seemed powerful enough to topple a presi­dency came to a bizarre end on January 12 as investigators concluded that Rosenberg, distraught over the murder of his girlfriend and her father, ordered his own death.

 

An eight-month investigation found that Rosenberg asked two cousins of his ex-wife to arrange the killing of a man who was extorting and threatening him. The extor­tionist was fictitious, though, and Rosenberg was actually planning his own assassination. Unaware that the target was Rosenberg, the cousins contracted 11 hit men, more than half of whom are former or current military or police officers, to carry out the killing, investigators said.

              

The investigation cleared Presi­dent Alvaro Colom and his accused accomplices of any involvement. “This was the most serious crisis of my political career”, Colom told reporters. “Fortunately, I’m patient. My government has emerged streng­thened.”

             

In the days before his death, Rosenberg, a divorced corporate attorney, was depressed over the killings of one of his clients and his client’s daughter, with whom he was in a long-term relationship, a family member said. A Harvard- and Oxford-educated lawyer, Rosenberg represented coffee baron Khalil Musa. Musa and his daughter Mar­jorie were shot to death in front of a Guatemala City shopping center in April.

         

“It was Rodrigo Rosenberg him­self that requested the help of his ex-wife’s cousins... to whom he said, ‘I have an extortionist who is threa­tening me, and I want to kill him’”, said Carlos Castresana, the Spanish lawyer who heads the Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a UN-backed investigatory body. CICIG, which conducted the investigation with the help of the FBI and Guatemalan investiga­tors, presented its conclusions in a televised press conference.

          

Investigators said arrest warrants have been issued for the cousins, pharmaceutical-company owners and brothers José Estuardo and José Ramon Valdez Paiz. They are reportedly in hiding. The hit men, three of whom cooperated with the investigation, were arrested last year and are awaiting trial.

 

 

Colom restores tarnished reputation

 

Rosenberg believed that Colom was involved in the Musa killings, which remain unsolved. In the video, re­corded the week before his death, Rosenberg alleged that Colom, his wife and two associates were using the state-owned development bank Banrural for money laundering. The group then ordered the Musa killings to conceal the scheme, Rosenberg alleged.

 

“If you are watching this message, it is because I was assassinated by President Alvaro Colom, with help from [presidential secretary] Gusta­vo Alejos... I knew exactly how [they] were responsible for that cowardly murder [of Musa], and I told them so”, he said calmly in the video, dressed in a suit and tie. In leaving the recording, “he wanted to change the system, to change the culture of corruption and impunity that we live with in Guatemala”, says his nephew Rodrigo Rodas.

 

But if Rosenberg’s intent was to challenge Colom’s legitimacy, he appears to have done the opposite. “Colom’s position has been enor­mously strengthened. He comes out not only vindicated but looking like a statesman,” says Anita Isaacs, a Guatemala expert at Haverford Co­llege who has testified before the US Congress on peace building in the country.

 

Reform groups vow to carry on

 

Colom, a nominally left-of-center candidate, won office with the su­pport of indigenous, rural Mayans and has vowed to help alleviate wi­despread poverty in the countryside with programs that have angered the nation’s oligarchy, including cash rewards to poor parents who send their children to school regularly.

 

Colom says his vindication will enable him to restart stalled initia­tives, like a tax-reform package and fighting violent crime. “The issue of security is one of the most impor­tant reforms for my government,” he says. “It’s the issue that affects Guatemalans more than any other”. Indeed, the country has a murder rate more than 8 times that of the US. Only 3.5% of last year’s 6,451 slayings were solved, CICIG said.

 

Rosenberg’s videotaped calls for justice, which became an Internet sensation, resonated with tens of thousands of protesters – many of them students from the country’s conservative private universities and children of the country’s élite, who rallied in front of the presidential pa­lace demanding Colom’s resignation.

 

Using that momentum, protesters organized reform-minded groups pushing for more government trans­parency and accountability. The groups have vowed to continue even after learning that their martyr effec­tively killed himself. “We are not disappointed because of the case”, says Alejandro Quinteros, who foun­ded Movimiento Civico Nacional, the most prominent new reform group. “We are disappointed because our government is not doing anything to reduce crime in Guatemala”.

 

Media react cautiously to fin­dings

 

The country’s main papers have greeted CICIG’s findings with cau­tious acceptance – mainly because of Castresana’s ability to present concrete evidence regarding the case’s key questions. The media in general are congratulating CICIG for its professionalism. However, many analysts have pointed out that the case will not be solved entirely until the murders of Khalil Musa and his daughter have also been resolved.

 

Many editors and columnists argue that Rosenberg’s original ac­cusations against the government, including money laundering and wide-scale corruption, are still va­lid until proven otherwise. Few are prepared to separate the death of Rosenberg from those of the Musas; indeed, the two cases are considered one.

 

For example the Chamber of Industry publicly accepts CICIG’s verdict but is also calling for an investigation into the Musa mur­ders to finalize the Rosenberg case. The Chamber of Industry, along with other groups representing the country’s powerful private sector (the Chamber of Commerce (CA­CIF) and the Association of Agro-industries), invested massively in acquiring paid declarations for the case, as well as organizing public demonstrations against the govern­ment.

 

Meanwhile, comments by newspa­per readers on the Internet show that the vast majority are not impressed with CICIG’s findings. Such com­ments do not always reflect the wider public view, however, as only a very small proportion of the population have online access.

 

CICIG’s work involved close part­nership with the General Attorney’s Office, a state institution that has of­ten been accused of corruption. Ne­vertheless, many have congratulated Castrasena’s team of investigators for having withstood considerable pres­sure from the government’s political opponents and the media, Castresana to do the best job they could.

 

Castresena himself has said that “this is how all murder cases should be investigated in Guatemala”. Few other cases will have cost so much time and money though, and it remains to be seen whether similar levels of resources will be invested in the Musa murders, CICIG’s new priority. Unfor­tunately the disadvantage in this case is that CICIG was called in several weeks later, making the investigations that much more difficult.

 

Pre-election fodder

 

One of the reasons why the Musa murders and the Rosenberg case are so firmly linked is because they both seemed to implicate the current go­vernment. The cases have therefore become a political weapon, ahead of the 2011 election race. As a Social De­mocrat, President Colom’s relations­hip to the country’s private sector is becoming increasingly strained.

 

A Social Democrat in Guatemala is considered a leftist by the conserva­tive sectors of society; indeed, many US think tanks often refer to Colom as left-of-center. Being a leftist in Latin America today implies that you a close ally of Hugo Chavez, a terrible oversimplification of the regional political tendencies that can lead to grave consequences, as demonstrated already by the Honduran coup.

 

The murders of Rosenberg and the Musas, together with the country’s overall reaction, are symptomatic of Guatemala’s persisting class (and, some might say, caste) system.

Guatemala has essentially been divided between the powerful and the powerless since colonial times. So to understand the labyrinthine web of the Rosenberg case, yet alone today’s Guatemalan society as a whole, it is crucial to understand Guatemala’s past.

 

Wednesday 13th January saw the second murder in three months of a leader in the campaign for the nationalisation of electricity provision in the department of San Marcos.

The murder comes following recent heightened tensions in the department, which culminated last month in the order of an "estado de prevención", an emergency measure in which several constitutional rights are temporarily suspended.

Read more about this story in my blog entry.

Which Way Home

The film follows several unaccompanied child migrants as they journey through Mexico en route to the U.S. on a freight train they call “ The Beast ”.

Director Rebecca Cammisa (Sister Helen) tracks the stories of children like Olga and Freddy, nine-year old Hondurans who are desperately trying to reach their families in Minnesota, and Jose, a ten-year-old El Salvadoran who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention center, and focuses on Kevin, a canny, streetwise 14-year-old Honduran, whose mother hopes that he will reach New York City and send money back to his family.  

These are stories of hope and courage, disappointment and sorrow. They are the ones you never hear about – the invisible ones.

For more information click here.

Forwarded message from Kathy Dill:

I am seeking letters of recommendation for human rights defender Jesus
Tecú Osorio, whom I am nominating for the Roger N. Baldwin Medal of
Liberty Award. I am nominating him as an individual and speaking to his
work: exhumations, prime witness in war crime trials, Director of Bufete
Juridico Popular, Founder of New Hope Rio Negro Foundation, Founding member
and past president of ADIVIMA, etc.

The nomination is due no later than Jan 29th so there is not much time
left. All letters of recommendation must be submitted in ENGLISH. If you
are willing to recommend Jesus for this award, please send your letter to
Kathy Dill: kathyswebmail <at> mac <dot> com. I am very happy to provide any guidance
you might require.

Mil gracias, Maltiox

An urgent action has been posted on US organisation, NISGUA's, website concerning the violent eviction of trade unionists from the central square in Guatemala City last month.

For our post on the eviction (which includes links for further information) click here.

To go to the NISGUA website and see their background document and suggested letters, click here.

After fifteen years of waiting for justice to be done in Guatemala the survivors and relatives of victims of the Dos Erres massacre have however received a favourable verdict elsewhere: the Interamerican Court of Human Rights found the state of Guatemala failed to live up to its judicial obligations to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the massacre.

On the 10th - which happens to be International Human Rights Day - and 11th December members of the trade union SITRAPETÉN were violently evicted by the National Civil Police (PNC) from the makeshift huts in which they had for 15 months been staging their peaceful protest in front of Guatemala City's National Palace.

The workers of Distribuidora del Petén, part of the company Agua Salvavidas which is owned by Corporación Castillo Hermanos, formed their trade union SITRAPETÉN in February 2007 but had their attempts to register with the Ministry of Labour rejected five times. According to those affiliated to the trade union, the delay was due to pressure put on the Ministry by the company. Just days before the trade union was finally recognised by the Ministry of Labour in May 2008, the company was declared bankrupt. Workers were transferred and offered new contracts. However, no such offer was extended to the trade unionists who were effectively fired.

The members of SITRAPETÉN protested first outside the company's premises but were later evicted. Fifteen months ago they moved to the Parque Central in Guatemala City, where they have been staying in makeshift huts in front of the National Palace ever since, in a peaceful protest demonstration in which they demand the resolution of their labour case.

They have been subject to a series of threats and intimidations, as well as offers of money on the condition that they abandon their campaign. On the night of the 9th December the municipal judge, who according to the Convergencia de Derechos Humanos (a collective of human rights organisations) did not have jurisdiction in the case, gave a "verbal notification" of the eviction. An eviction notice was not presented.

On the 10th and 11th December the trade unionists were violently evicted.  Riot police from the PNC carried out the eviction and they, supported by members of the Policía Municipal de Tránsito (Municipal Transit Police), violently removed the possessions of the workers and attacked them with irritant gases to force them to retreat.

As well as causing grave concern due to the excessive police mobilisation, the eviction highlights the lack of a definitive resolution in this case... nineteen months on and the trade unionists are still awaiting a ruling.

 ...

To watch video footage of the eviction, follow this You Tube link.

For the Coordination of International Accompaniment in Guatemala article on the eviction (in Spanish), click here.

For a recent Upside Down World article (in English), click here.

On Monday 4^th January, The Frontline Club is screening the film ‘In the Shadow of the Raid'. Viewing the trailer, this looks like a powerful indictment of US immigration policy.

"On May 12, 2008, immigration officials stormed a kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 undocumented workers in one of the biggest roundups in U.S. history.

Supporters of the raid celebrated it as a law enforcement victory while immigrant rights groups slammed it as draconian.

Meanwhile up a winding dirt road, a poor Guatemalan village was dying, and so was Postville itself.

The raid severed an economic lifeline linking the heart of the United States to one of the poorest corners of the Western Hemisphere, with an impact as far-reaching and catastrophic as any earthquake or hurricane.

However, this is not just another tale of misery in a far-off land. Postville itself was a boomtown before the raid - a rare exception in a part of rural America that has been emptying out as the changing economics of agriculture alter the social landscape. Now it is on the brink of economic collapse after losing much of its population and its main employer - all in the middle of the worst recession in decades."

Directed by Greg Brosnan and Jennifer Szymaszek

Translated from the Prensa Libre article by Olga López Ovando. The handing over of Plan Sofia in Guatemala earlier this month came shortly after expert testimonies in the genocide case were heard in Madrid by Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz. For more information on the hearing of these expert testimonies see this communiqué.

 11/12/2009

The Asociación de Justicia y Reconciliación (AJR - English: Association for Justice and Reconciliation) yesterday presented the Ministerio Público (MP - English: Public Prosecutor) with an authenticated copy of Plan Sofía 82, so that it may be added to the dossier for the investigation of the genocide.

The document was received by the fiscal general (attorney general) Amílcar Velásquez Zárate, in the public prosecutor's offices.

Julia Cortés, the president of AJR told the attorney general that she hoped that evidence would be found in this document against those responsible for having massacred the Mayan population during the internal armed conflict.

Plan Sofía is the third document to be part of the proceedings for genocide, the Defence Minister Abraham Valenzuela having received plans Victoria 82 and Firmeza 82 last February.

Plan Sofía is a ramification of Plan Victoria 82, created in July 1982 - four months after general Efraín Ríos Montt came to power - and which may have been created to carry out military operations in the North of Quiché.

The document details the army's manoeuvres to eliminate the guerrilla and those who collaborated with them, and was written by the then jefe del Estado Mayor de la Defensa (chief responsible for planning and executing military operations), Héctor López Fuentes who in February 2002 declared at the public prosecutor's offices that he had received direct orders from Ríos Montt and the Vice Defence Minister, Humberto Mejía Víctores.

On the dome of the Old Bailey, England's Central Criminal Court, stands the statue of Justice, with her sword and scales, above an inscription which exhorts us to “Defend the children of the poor and punish the wrongdoer.” There is no command that the latter aspirations should be limited only to those lacking influence, power and money: it should be applied equally.