Democracy Uprising
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      Strategy is a Craft

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      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

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      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

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      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

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      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

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      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

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      War: The Wrong Jobs Program

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      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

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      Those Who Don’t Count

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      Six Essays About War and About Peace

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      The Dangerous Dignity of War

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      The Pan American

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      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

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      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

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      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

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      Come il movimento Occupiamo Wall Street si sta…

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      Economia tabù

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      ガンジーはどのように勝利したのか? (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Truth Versus Superpower (Japanese)

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      Japanese

      Revenge of the Combat Cartoonist (Japanese)

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      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

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      A vida na Nação Prisão

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      Outro pretexto?

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      Imigração tem efeito positivo sobre emprego e salários

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      O império hipotecado

      Arabic

      Abandoning the World Bank (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Return of Daniel Ortega (in Arabic)

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      Where’s The Jubilee? (in Arabic)

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      2006: A Global Justice Year in Review (In…

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Democracy Uprising

  • About
    • About Mark Engler
    • About Democracy Uprising
  • Books
    • This Is An Uprising
    • How To Rule the World
  • Topics
    • All Social Movements Religion U.S. Politics / Elections War / Militarism Book Reviews Environment Essays / First Person Global Economy Immigration Labor Latin America
      Social Movements

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Latest Articles

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      Social Movements

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      2023-2025

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

      Social Movements

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      Social Movements

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      Social Movements

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      Social Movements

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      Social Movements

      How to make sure your disruptive protest helps…

      Social Movements

      Why protests work, even when not everybody likes…

      Social Movements

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      Social Movements

      Strategy is a Craft

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      Reverend Billy’s Holiday Shopocalypse

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      Toward the “Rights of the Poor”

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      The Pope and the Poor

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      Will the Next Pope Embrace Liberation Theology?

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      Remembering Romero

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      John Paul II’s Economic Ethics

      Religion

      Against the God of Free Trade

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Could we be entering a ‘movement moment’ against…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Trump’s backpedaling shows he’s not invincible

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      It’s going to take multiple strategies to win…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      A new wave of movements against Trumpism is…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Harold Washington’s lessons for taking on a political…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Strategy is a Craft

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      Think #MeToo didn’t make a real difference? Think…

      U.S. Politics / Elections

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

      War / Militarism

      Does It Make Sense to Protest a President…

      War / Militarism

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      War / Militarism

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

      War / Militarism

      War: The Wrong Jobs Program

      War / Militarism

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      War / Militarism

      Those Who Don’t Count

      War / Militarism

      Six Essays About War and About Peace

      War / Militarism

      The Dangerous Dignity of War

      Book Reviews

      The Pan American

      Book Reviews

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Book Reviews

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Book Reviews

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Book Reviews

      The Ascent of Niall Ferguson

      Book Reviews

      Ordinary Outrages

      Book Reviews

      No Better Place

      Book Reviews

      In God’s Country

      Environment

      Why Wendell Matters

      Environment

      The Gulf at the Gas Station

      Environment

      Climate Disobedience

      Environment

      Farming the Everglades

      Environment

      The Winter of the Climate Denier

      Environment

      Climate of Change: An “Inside-Outside” Strategy Against Global…

      Environment

      Provoking an American Climate Crisis

      Environment

      The Real “Farmer” Story: So God Made High-Fructose…

      Essays / First Person

      Is Rambo Still A Republican?

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      On the Price is Right

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      The Last Porto Alegre

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      Six Essays About War and About Peace

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      Republicans Among Us

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      New York Says “No”

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      The Sideshow Rebels

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      A Week in New York

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      Meet the Bailout’s New Slush Fund for Corporate…

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      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Global Economy

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

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      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Global Economy

      The Godfather of Microcredit

      Global Economy

      Capitalism as Catastrophe

      Global Economy

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Global Economy

      The World Is Not Flat

      Immigration

      When Undocumented Activists Infiltrated ICE

      Immigration

      The Children of Intervention

      Immigration

      Immigration Economics: An Interview with Professor Giovanni Peri

      Immigration

      Science Fiction From Below

      Immigration

      Four Ways of Looking at an Aztec Eagle

      Immigration

      Treated Like a Criminal

      Immigration

      When Sanctuary is Resistance

      Immigration

      The Massive Immigrants Rights Protests of 2006 Are…

      Labor

      This new model for upholding labor law may…

      Labor

      Democrats Won Power in Several States. Will They…

      Labor

      The Case for a Social Distancing Wage

      Labor

      The Seattle Protests Showed That Another World Is…

      Labor

      Reviving the General Strike

      Labor

      Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a…

      Labor

      There’s Still Power in a Strike

      Labor

      The Amazon Effect: Sweat, Surveillance, Exploitation

      Latin America

      How movements can maintain their radical vision while winning…

      Latin America

      The Pan American

      Latin America

      Lessons from the Pledge of Resistance

      Latin America

      The Children of Intervention

      Latin America

      Against Shithole Nationalism

      Latin America

      The Last Porto Alegre

      Latin America

      Kissinger Is Not Our Friend

      Latin America

      Even If You Have Nothing to Hide

  • Translations
    • All Italiano Japanese Português Arabic Thai Chinese Deutsch Español Français
      Swedish

      Jordlösa kombinerar radikala visioner med praktiska reformer (Swedish)

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Italiano

      C’è più di un modo per colpire il…

      Italiano

      Richieste dei movimenti: sia pratiche che visionarie

      Italiano

      La strategia di Gandhi per il successo –…

      Italiano

      Le promesse infrante di Obama

      Italiano

      Guantanamo deve sparire

      Italiano

      IL BANK TRANSFER DAY: UN SUCCESSO

      Italiano

      Come il movimento Occupiamo Wall Street si sta…

      Italiano

      Economia tabù

      Japanese

      ガンジーはどのように勝利したのか? (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Truth Versus Superpower (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Bad Business Empire (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Revenge of the Combat Cartoonist (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Bush’s Uneasy Mexican Visita (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Mark Twain in Iraq (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Globalization’s “Lost Decade” (Japanese)

      Japanese

      Hawks Say the Damnedest Things (Japanese)

      Português

      As reformas não reformistas de André Gorz mostram…

      Português

      A vida na Nação Prisão

      Português

      Outro pretexto?

      Português

      Imigração tem efeito positivo sobre emprego e salários

      Português

      O império hipotecado

      Arabic

      Abandoning the World Bank (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Return of Daniel Ortega (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Where’s The Jubilee? (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      The Last Porto Alegre (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Seattle At Five (in Arabic)

      Arabic

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (in…

      Arabic

      Mexico’s Democratic Transition Still Incomplete (in Arabic)

      Thai

      Progressive Good Tidings of 2007 (in Thai)

      Thai

      2006: A Global Justice Year in Review (In…

      Thai

      WTO: Best Left For Dead? (In Thai)

      Thai

      Is Market Access the Answer to Poverty? (In…

      Thai

      Bush’s Bad Business Empire (In Thai)

      Thai

      The Last Porto Alegre [Thai]

      Thai

      Globalizers, Neocons, or… ? (in Thai)

      Chinese

      泛美洲人 爱德华多·加莱亚诺的世界 (Chinese)

      Chinese

      Why Wendell Matters (in Chinese)

      Chinese

      Globalization’s Watchdogs (in Chinese)

      Deutsch

      Die nicht-reformistischen Reformen von André Gorz

      Deutsch

      Als Martin Luther King seine Feuerwaffen aufgab

      Deutsch

      Mikrokredite: Die Entlassung eines Nobelpreisträgers

      Deutsch

      CAFTA – am besten stillschweigend beerdigen

      Deutsch

      Bush in Mexiko

      Deutsch

      Das globale Duell in Evian

      Deutsch

      Die Rückkehr des Daniel Ortega

      Español

      Hacer Que Nuestras Demandas Sean Tanto Orácticas Como…

      Español

      Las reformas no reformistas de André Gorz

      Español

      ¿Adoptará el nuevo papa la teología de la…

      Español

      Wall Street quiere que les estemos agradecidos

      Español

      Si Las Monjas Se Fueran a una Huelga,…

      Español

      ALEC retrocede; a la derecha le da un…

      Español

      ¿ALEC disgustado ante la pérdida de patrocinadores? Se…

      Español

      La vida en la nación prisión

      Français

      La révolution non-violente a-t-elle échoué en Egypte?

      Français

      Le pari risqué du populisme au Pérou

      Français

      Hong Kong Phooey

      Français

      Bush Nuit Même Aux Compagnies U.S.

      Français

      Le dynamisme du mouvement pour la paix

      Français

      La déroute de l’ALCA dans une Miami en…

      Français

      Ceux qui ne comptent pas

      Français

      La guerre en Irak : une expo des…

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Latin America1999-2002

Guatemala: Between Justice and Terror

by Mark Engler and Alexandra Durbin November 1, 2002
written by Mark Engler and Alexandra Durbin November 1, 2002
Guatemala: Between Justice and Terror

Resurgent death squads hamper genocide trials.

Published in the November 2002 issue of Z Magazine.


In the past year, a new wave of repression has swept through Guatemala. One of the many anonymous letters received by the country’s human rights activists reads, “In a war there are no guilty parties, and it is not your place to judge us.” Another simply warns: “You had better take care, you son of a bitch, we are going to shut you up.”

With several recent murders, Guatemala’s resurgent death squads proved that they are prepared carry out their threats: In late April, Guillermo Ovalle de León, from the prominent Rigoberta Menchú Foundation, was killed. On September 6, unknown assailants abducted and tortured Manuel García de la Cruz, a rural activist involved in exhuming clandestine wartime cemeteries. Journalists investigating his murder were followed and had their equipment stolen.

The renewed acts of violence and repression are designed to silence activists seeking to prosecute military officers for genocide and other war crimes. In May 2000 and June 2001, representatives of indigenous communities belonging to the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) filed two cases in the Guatemalan legal system. They charged former dictators Romeo Lucas García and Ríos Montt, along with members of their high commands, with genocide and crimes against humanity. Complementing these efforts, Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum previously filed charges in December 1999 in the Spanish courts against the two generals and six other Guatemalan officials.

The genocide cases and the attacks against human rights workers have brought mainstream attention back to a country that faded from international view following the passage of Peace Accords in 1996.

Since the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) came into power in 2000, human rights violations have increased dramatically, reaching their highest levels since the 1996 Accords. Examples of abuses abound: Anselmo Roldan Aguilar, president and legal representative of AJR, was stabbed in a murder attempt in July 2001 by a person with links to the army. This August Roberto Romero, a key lawyer in a trial attempting to prosecute three Guatemalan army officials for ordering the assassination of anthropologist Myrna Mack, received several threats on his life. Shots were fired at his home and, a few hours later, two anonymous callers warned him to abandon the case. Since the trial began on September 3, Romero and his family have been the targets of further death threats, surveillance, and intimidation.

Continuing violence has impeded efforts to take meaningful steps toward justice and reconciliation. The country has yet to collectively reckon with the 1.5 million people displaced and the 669 massacres which took place throughout the countryside – a situation that a 1999 UN-backed report acknowledged as genocidal. Two hundred thousand Guatemalans were killed or disappeared during the country’s 36-year-long war, when death squads linked to the U.S.-backed military targeted analysts, activists, and journalists who spoke out against state repression.

Recent human rights violations, while not directly committed by the government as they were during the war, are often carried out by clandestine groups with links to the State. Guatemalan civil society, the United Nations Mission in Guatemala, and the governmental Human Rights Procurator report the existence of “hidden” power structures parallel to the State. These Mafia-like power cells, linked to the economic elite and laced throughout the government and military, carry out surveillance, intimidation, threats, political assassinations, and extra-judicial executions. In a clear moment of double-speak, President Portillo’s spokesman Byron Barrera recently denied the existence of clandestine groups, yet admitted that such groups are responsible for some human rights violations.

Meanwhile, many wartime human rights violators continue to wield influence in Guatemalan politics. Former dictator Ríos Montt currently serves as Head of Congress. And according to a survey by the daily newspaper Prensa Libre, most Guatemalans consider him the most powerful person in the country. The government has failed to follow the Peace Accords’ mandate to abolish groups responsible for wartime atrocities, groups like the Presidential guard and military intelligence units. Congress has also elevated the army’s budget to levels that violate the Accords.

The social and economic problems at the root of Guatemala’s civil war also remain unaddressed. The government has abandoned Peace Accord mandates calling for wide-ranging reforms in social services and the judicial system — changes aimed at creating an inclusive and democratic society. As a result, injustices endure: 86 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty, including 69 percent in extreme poverty. Unequal land distribution plagues the rural population: while 96 percent of producers hold only 20 percent of the country’s arable land, a mere 0.15 percent control 70 percent of productive lands.

The United States regularly expresses concern when grave human rights abuses occur in Guatemala. But U.S. activists have reason to doubt the government’s sincerity. In 1999, President Clinton apologized for the U.S. role in the Guatemalan genocide. The Bush Administration, however, effectively rescinded the U.S. apology with its move to “unsign” the agreement assuring its participation in the International Criminal Court. And in a 2001 meeting with U.S.-based solidarity groups, U.S. Ambassador Prudence Bushnell rejected the suggestion that the U.S. government assist in providing reparations payments to Guatemalan war victims.

Moreover, the U.S. has shown little interest in pressuring the Guatemalan government to adopt the social service reforms of the Peace Accords, or in otherwise unsettling Guatemala’s economic elites. Human rights concern does not extend into the realm of labor rights. One egregious example involves the TECO power plant in Guatemala City, where union members were illegally fired in 1999. Although the Overseas Private Investment Company (OPIC) — a public agency — partially funds the plant, the U.S. government has done nothing to pressure the company to comply with a Guatemala Supreme Court ruling to reinstate the workers.

It would be a mistake to assume that the United States still favors the SOA (School of the Americas)-trained Generals that ruled over many of its client states in the 70s and 80s. Its Cold War motives of anti-Communist containment have been replaced by a desire to enforce a neoliberal hegemony. The new ideal for governance is provided by leaders like Mexico’s Vicente Fox — vigorous “free trade” advocates reared in the suites of U.S.-based multinationals.

But despite the shift from anti-communism to neoliberalism, the protection of its economic interests serves as the consistent force behind U.S. policy in Guatemala. Much has changed since the United States government orchestrated a coup in 1954 in order to protect U.S. agribusiness interests. Yet human rights still seem less important to the Bush Administration than having leaders in place who will support measures like the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), legislation that that regulates commerce on terms that favor corporate investors over indigenous peoples seeking self-determination.

* * * * *

Justice in the Courts?

Can the genocide trials effectively address these injustices? Ironically, many human rights activists risking their lives to prosecute the cases in Guatemalan and international courts don’t expect that they will succeed in convicting the country’s past dictators. Hinting at a much larger series of difficulties, the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), the non-governmental organization providing legal assistance to the AJR, acknowledges “the pressures that there will be against the investigation of this case.” Nevertheless, these groups believe the tactic can have important effects both inside and outside of the legal system.

Skeptics base their pessimism about actual convictions on the fact that most human rights cases in Guatemala languish in the courts. A recent criminal trial charging members of an army unit with the massacre of returned refugees in Xamßn has been riddled with delays, inconsistencies, and evidence of courtroom bias. In May, a related civil trial was suspended because the court had not provided the proper translators for indigenous witnesses. Then, the case was transferred to a nonfunctioning court in a remote part of the country. Both domestic genocide cases remain in the investigative phase, even though charges against Lucas García were filed over two years ago. CALDH estimated that the investigation should have been completed in eight months.

In spite of these impediments to legal victory, Guatemalans have hope. The attempts to prosecute Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet provided a powerful example of what high-profile trials can accomplish. While the Chilean General has thus far succeeded in avoiding jail time, the prosecution brought his war crimes to the fore of international discussion. Rather than travelling the world as an honored statesman, Pinochet must behave more like a wanted drug lord — always in fear of being detained for extradition.

Activists in Guatemala are working to raise dictators Montt and García to a similar level of infamy. Adriana Portillo-Bartow, a co-plaintiff in the Spanish case, says, “At the very least, we know these criminals will lose some sleep at night and will be afraid to leave the country.” Furthermore, they argue that new cases help to establish the precedent that war criminals will be prosecuted internationally, even if the perpetrators are powerful enough to avoid trial in their home countries. “I want this case to teach a lesson to other human rights violators around the world, that they can’t get away with crimes against humanity,” Portillo-Bartow adds.

High-profile lawsuits can serve not only to bolster international solidarity, but also to transform an ossified national judiciary. While Montt and García themselves may prove impossible to convict, the lawsuits make lower-ranking criminals increasingly vulnerable. In one important example, intense public pressure succeeded in bringing those responsible for the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi to justice. In 1998, barely two days after releasing a report attributing the majority of wartime violations to state agents, Gerardi was bludgeoned to death with a concrete block. Police posited a series of bogus theories, attributing the murder first to “common crime,” then to a “crime of passion,” and even took a priest’s decrepit dog into police custody, claiming it had played a key role in the murder.

Although observers initially despaired at the progress of the case, international outrage ultimately forced officials to conduct a serious investigation. The Guatemalan human rights community rejoiced in 2001 when Colonel Byron Disrael Lima and two other military officers were sentenced to thirty years in prison for Gerardi’s murder. This ruling dealt a remarkable blow to Guatemala’s long-standing culture of impunity for the army.

A second extraordinary blow fell even as this article was going to press. On October 3, a Guatemalan court sentenced Colonial Juan Valencia Osorio to thirty years in prison for ordering the murder of Myrna Mack. On September 11, 1990, not long after publishing a crucial study demonstrating that the army’s counter-insurgency campaign was responsible for the massive internal displacement of indigenous communities, Mack was stabbed 27 times outside her Guatemala City office. Although a low-ranking officer had previously been jailed for carrying out the murder, Mack’s sister and other campaigners pressed to convict those who ordered the execution. In the most recent trial, two other high-ranking officials were freed (with judges citing “lack of evidence”) even as Valencia was convicted. Nevertheless, by successfully prosecuting a senior military officer, the activists have paved the road for further legal victories.

* * * * *

A New Human Rights Movement

Human rights activists see the AJR’s demands for justice as key to broadening the political space for Guatemalan war survivors to speak out about not only about past atrocities, but also about on-going political and economic abuses. “At the very least we have publicly named the perpetrators of the massacres,” says a witness in the genocide case against García. “Our speaking up gives other victims, other survivors, the strength to stand up for their rights.”

Witnesses further explain that when survivors speak about their experiences during the war, they are empowered to strengthen their political participation and denounce current violations. Miguel Angel Albizurez of the human rights group Alliance Against Impunity argues that massacre trials allow those denied a voice in national politics for decades to “retake their right to demand justice” — creating the possibility for activists to highlight economic injustices that elites prefer to keep unmentioned.

Today, labor and farmworker organizers who fight for their social and economic rights, journalists and analysts who expose companies’ exploitative practices, and activists who question inequalities continue to be the targets of political violence. In April, journalist David Herrera was abducted while on an assignment with a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) reporter regarding human rights issues. Bishop Alvaro Ramazinni and other Catholic clergy who advocate peasants’ rights have received death threats. Union organizers at a Liz Claiborne factory were attacked with rocks and bottles. In a four-day period in June, three farmworker leaders were killed by paramilitaries.

Guatemalans in the human rights movement connect these current violations with the need to uncover and obtain justice for wartime atrocities, which were linked to the government’s desire to maintain the social system of privilege and inequality. Between 1980 and 1982 the army and local paramilitaries carried out five massacres in the Río Negro area because Achi Maya residents protested a World Bank-funded dam that flooded their ancestral lands. Having learned from such examples, Guatemalans who denounce wartime massacres see them as intimately connected with a whole system of abuse.

In the process of bringing the genocide case charges, spokespeople from indigenous communities gain power as political leaders. AJR leaders have gained skills in organizing workshops and rallies, giving press conferences, and rebutting critics’ comments. Roldan and others have participated in international speaking tours and conferences. Association members who had never been further than ten miles from their home have traveled through the country to share their stories. Many are learning about the judicial system for the first time. One witness proudly states that despite his lack of formal education, he is struggling to read the Constitution in order to understand “the commitments and duties that the State has to its people, and the rights and duties that we have as citizens.”

Because of the genocide trials, political crimes that have remained hidden from national scrutiny for years have been vigorously condemned in the national press. An increasingly critical media has been more willing to cover human-rights-related legal cases, union campaigns, ethnic discrimination, plantation occupations, and the government’s unwillingness to deal with the land crisis. Headlines in mainstream newspapers reading “Judge Named in Genocide Case” and “Government of the Rich in Country of the Poor” represent equally remarkably developments in Guatemala’s political culture.

As they assert their humanity in trials against past dictators, the Guatemalan people grow increasingly willing to resist neoliberal plans undemocratically designed to “develop” the country on the terms of transnational corporations and local elites. Tired of being ignored by authorities and large landowners, organized landless peasants have taken direct action. In February, farmers in San Marcos occupied the San Luis finca (plantation) to use for subsistence farming and to pressure the government for solutions to the two-year famine, historic land inequalities, and worsening poverty, unemployment, and malnutrition. Throughout the country, activists currently control lands taken in 53 such occupations.

On August 21, approximately 15,000 farmworkers occupied 10 major highways, blocking traffic for hours, to demand land reform and an end to repression against activists. “The killings, threats, and arrest warrants against farmworker leaders are meant to worsen our political, social, and economic situation even further,” noted the Committee of Peasant Unity. These acts “are done in response to the struggles that we are undertaking alongside peasant communities that lack even a bit of land to cultivate in order to survive.”

In March, 34 Guatemalan organizations and 64 groups from other countries held a forum in La Quetzal, Petén to discuss and plan actions against Plan Puebla-Panama (PPP). PPP is a series of proposed industrialization projects throughout Central America and Mexico that would displace hundreds of indigenous communities and destroy wetlands and rainforest ecosystems. The grassroots groups presented a series of demands that intertwine political and economic rights and denounce both past and current abuses. They call for “justice for those responsible for state genocide,” “an end to persecution, intimidation, forced disappearance, death threats” and “an end to the imposition of projects that do not emerge from communities and peoples themselves.”

An AJR witness who lost his wife, mother, and children in a 1982 massacre relates these campaigns to attempts to use the courts to challenge war criminals: “This country needs to change a lot. There is so much poverty, inequality, and lack of democracy. Governments are used to doing what they want and following their own economic and political interests. This legal process can make a huge difference by challenging the long-time impunity that governments have enjoyed, by proclaiming that we who have always been marginalized are not going to just let them do what they want. What we are doing serves as an example for other people.”

With finca occupations and claims to economic rights, survivors of the country’s civil war show that the process of healing and justice is incompatible at key points with a neoliberal economic agenda. The genocide cases are working both to speed the transformation of a still-entrenched judiciary and to further activist campaigns throughout the country. The survivors coming forward as witnesses insist that the powerful will someday be held responsible for the crimes. And, as they inspire wider acts of resistance, they envision a time when the tragic inequalities at the heart of conflict in Guatemala will finally disappear.

Mark Engler and Alexandra Durbin

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia, an editorial board member at Dissent, and co-author of "This Is An Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-first Century" (Nation Books). He can be reached via the website www.DemocracyUprising.com. Alexandra Durbin is the editor of the quarterly Report on Guatemala and co-coordinator of the Guatemala Accompaniment Project for the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA). She can be reached at rog@guate.net.

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The Author

Mark Engler is a writer based in Philadelphia and an editorial board member at Dissent magazine. His latest book, written with Paul Engler, is entitled This Is an Uprising: How Nonviolent Revolt Is Shaping the Twenty-First Century (Nation Books). Mark’s full bio is available here.

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