Journalists are now getting a chance to see some of the staggering amount of documentation that has survived intact from the darkest days of military and police rule.

Source

quote:

---

A trove of newly discovered police documents confirms Guatemala's infamous National Police helped identify and kill leftists during the country's 36-year civil war.

Amid the piles of molding files - 48 million in all - investigators found lists of thousands of people, classified under the labels "disappeared," "assassinated" and "political detainee."

Some files hold fingerprints of the dead. Many include pictures of corpses - some showing signs of torture, with their hands tied behind their backs or bullet holes in their heads.

Investigator Gustavo Meono said the evidence so far supports a U.N. truth commission's finding that the National Police helped the military track down leftist activists and, in some cases, aided in their killing.

---

From a Nov. 21 article:

quote:

---

The 14 photos released Monday show part of the treasure-trove of information about Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war, a hoard of some 75 million documents discovered last summer in five buildings at a police compound in Guatemala City.

Kate Doyle, who heads NSA’s Guatemala Project and visited the Central American country in August to aid in the review of the files, said the cache “promises to be one of the most revealing collections of military or police records ever discovered in Latin America.”

Covering a century’s worth of activity, the documents belonged to the National Police, whose involvement in kidnapping, torture and murder was so extensive that the force’s abolition and replacement with a new entity was mandated in the 1996 peace accords.

The cache includes thousands of photographs, audio recordings, individuals’s criminal records, internal police memos, fingerprint sheets and accounting ledgers, among other items.

Guatemalan human rights activists, as well as the government office responsible for protecting basic freedoms, the PDH, are hopeful the files will yield information leading to prosecution of at least some of those who perpetrated atrocious crimes.

“There were hundreds of rolls of still photography, which the PDH is developing now,” said NSA’s Doyle.

“There were pictures of bodies and of detainees, there were lists of police informants with names and photos, there were vehicle license plates, video tapes and computer disks.”

---

[ 09 December 2005: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

[ 01 June 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

General Rios Montt was running around free as a fucking bird and even held a seat in Guatemalan Congress as recently as 2004. He is a graduate of the infamous U.S.-based School of the Americas, now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. This son of a bitch has no soul. May his blood scream for all eternity, the rotten bastard.

I'd bet that half the anti-Castro trolls here couldn't rattle off the name of the leader of that shithole just a few days drive from Texas.

[ 09 December 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

So many of those murdering bastards are still in power, and I mean in Washington. This was written in 1968, and that was only the beginning:

quote:

---

“The official squads are guilty of atrocities. Interrogations are brutal, torture is used and bodies are mutilated,” Vaky wrote. “In the minds of many in Latin America, and, tragically, especially in the sensitive, articulate youth, we are believed to have condoned these tactics, if not actually encouraged them. Therefore our image is being tarnished and the credibility of our claims to want a better and more just world are increasingly placed in doubt.”

Vaky also noted the deceptions within the U.S. government that resulted from its complicity in state-sponsored terror. “This leads to an aspect I personally find the most disturbing of all -- that we have not been honest with ourselves,” Vaky said. “We have condoned counter-terror; we may even in effect have encouraged or blessed it. We have been so obsessed with the fear of insurgency that we have rationalized away our qualms and uneasiness.

“This is not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as long as Communists are being killed it is alright. Murder, torture and mutilation are alright if our side is doing it and the victims are Communists. After all hasn't man been a savage from the beginning of time so let us not be too queasy about terror. I have literally heard these arguments from our people.”

Though kept secret from the American public for three decades, the Vaky memo obliterated any claim that Washington simply didn't know the reality in Guatemala. Still, with Vaky's memo squirreled away in State Department files, the killing went on. The repression was noted almost routinely in reports from the field.

---

Part of the work they were doing, as it says in the link, was trying to get access to the official documents that would prove beyond any doubt what happened to their families and the other people in their communities. Most of the people in the group that spoke with me were about the age I am now, and have been working on this since the late 90s, despite threats from officials.

Write/fax letters to the most excellent Guatemalan ministries and ...

Here are some updated email addresses and fax numbers for Guatemalan ministries(cc to H.I.J.O.S.):

President of the Republic of Guatemala
Presidente de la Republica de Guatemala
Licenciado Oscar Berger Perdomo
Casa Presidencial, 6 a. Avenida, 4-18 zona 1.
Ciudad de Guatemala
GUATEMALA
Fax: 011 502 2221 4423 / 2239-0090
Salutation: Excelentisimo Sr. Presidente/Dear President Berger

Attorney General
Fiscal General de la Republica y jefe del Ministerio Publico
Juan Luis Florido
8a. Avenida 10-67, Zona 1
Antiguo Edificio del Banco de los Trabajadores,
Ciudad de Guatemala
GUATEMALA
Fax: 011 502 2251 2218
Salutation: Estimado Fiscal General/Dear Sir

Minister of the Interior
Ministro de Gobernacion
Carlos Vielman
6a.Avenida 4-64, zona 4, nivel 3.Ciudad de Guatemala.
GUATEMALA
Fax: 011 502 2362-02 37
Email: [email protected]
Salutation: Senor Ministro/ Dear Minister

COPIES TO:
Mutual Support Group
Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo
8a Calle 3-11 Zona 1
Ciudad de Guatemala
Guatemala
Fax: 011 502 2220 0606

President of the Congress
Presidente del Congreso
Francisco Rolando Morales Chavez
Palacio Legislativo
9ª Avenida 9-44, Zona 1
Ciudad de Guatemala
GUATEMALA
Fax: 011 502 2220 4024
Email: [email protected]

Ambassador Jose Guillermo Castillo
Embassy of Guatemala
2220 R St. NW
Washington DC 20008
Fax: 1 202 745 1908
Email: [email protected]

And don't forget to address El Presidente as:
Excelentisimo Sr. Presidente/Dear President Berger

General Romeo Lucas Garcia, military ruler of Guatemala from 1978 to 1982, has died in a hospital in Venezuela. He sought refuge a few years ago in that country to escape prosecution for war crimes and genocide in Guatemala. Apparently he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

The Guardian obituary outlines the brief but deadly career of this butcher who ruled Guatemala with the support of the Carter and Reagan administrations and the CIA:

quote:

---

"Elected" president in 1978, in a typically fraudulent poll, Lucas was allegedly responsible for an average of 200 murders and "disappearances" a month during the four years he held power.

He obliterated the urban political opposition with a policy of selective assassination, which included the murder of prominent social democrats Manuel Colom Argueta and Alberto Fuentes Mohr. Trade unionists met the same fate: 27 leaders of the National Workers' Confederation (CNT) were kidnapped not far from the presidential palace in June 1980. They were never seen again.

Lucas also sought to wipe out the rural base of the country's leftist guerrilla organisations by slaughtering the mainly indigenous Mayan peasantry, a policy Ríos enthusiastically maintained and extended.

Between January 1980 and Lucas's overthrow two years later, human rights groups listed no fewer than 344 massacres. Few were reported internationally: the gruesome war against civilians was largely ignored by the outside world, while neighbouring El Salvador and Nicaragua grabbed the headlines largely because of heavy United States involvement in their internal conflicts.

But the apparently deliberate burning down in 1980 of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City, with diplomats and protesters inside, was an exception. A quarter-century later, this atrocity would help persuade a Spanish court to issue an arrest warrant for the ex-dictator, who by that stage was terminally ill and living in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela.

---

Our host family, conservative evangalicals, had lost family members. Later we stayed in the countryside with some former guerrillas, who had of course lost many friends. Bandits were everywhere - taking a bus at night was tantamount to suicide in the country. Stepping outside in the city after 10 pm was much the same, though not as bad.

The school I studied spanish at had a bunch of teachers, all of whom had experienced the war in different ways. One of them had grown up in the Iron Triangle, and had narrowly dodged death squads on several occasions. Later he'd been forced to participate in paramilitary activity, though he refused to go into detail.

His friend and fellow teacher had been a guerrilla with the URNG. One day he, and the local (former) commandante took us on a hike into the jungle near the school to their former hideout. Throughout the long hike, the two former guerrillas were in the front, and clearly paranoid. Anything suspicious on the ground was either avoided, or approached very carefully. PErsonally, I was scared utterly shitless. The terror involved in jungle warfare came home to me on that hike - you have no idea what might happen in the next minute.

The commandante of the local guerrillas had been given a finca (coffee plantation) as part of their re-integration plan. They were busy working to develop it into a healthy community, fish farms and other expansions in the works. They had reportedly handed over their weapons in favour of a political approach, though they hadn't turned in many (the implication being that there were plenty stashed away somewhere).

On thing that stuck with me when the commandante was talking to us was his understanding of how they had forced an end to the war. Apparently, a couple of years earlier the finceros (plantation owners) had admitted that the war could go on forever - it had little to do with them. They intended to keep growing coffee (paying next to nothing, and sometimes nothing for years) for export. So the guerrillas decided to make it matter to the finceros, and started visiting them regularly. Support ending the war soon, or we come back with torches and burn the plantation to the ground. Miraculously, the war ended soon afterwards. (note - this was a one-sided version of events).

While we were staying in a place called Nuevo San Jose, the local fincero and his bodyguards were robbed by some bandits (mostly ex-army thugs) in a store. The novel approach that the bandits took to ensure no pursuit was to force the fincero and his guards was to force them all, at gunpoint, to drink themselves into a stupor.

While we were staying in San Jose, a girl in the family that arborwoman was staying with got very sick, very fast. (Dirt floors, extreme poverty). It created a difficult dilemma - we had the money ($12)to pay for her care, and very much wanted to do so. The school, locally owned and operated, did not want to create a dependency in the community. They didn't want to feel like they had to turn to the gringos every time something happened.

Eventually, the nurses (who were also sudying spanish there) prevailed, saying that the girl would die without medical care. We all (happily) threw in our few bucks, and they went off to the doctor in the middle of the night. Several men from the village went with the truck, armed, to help ensure the money got to the doctor.

quote:

---

In October, the General Assembly of the United Nations must choose the five new rotating members who will join the Security Council on Jan. 1, 2007. The Council, which oversees global stability, is composed of 15 countries. Five of them (the U.S., Russia, China, France and Britain) are permanent members; the other 10 are elected for two years but change alternately, in groups of five.

Latin America is entitled to two seats, now occupied by Peru and Argentina, but the latter must abandon its seat on Dec. 29. Venezuela wishes to occupy the vacant seat, but is challenged by Guatemala, the United States' unofficial candidate.

Traditionally, the selection is made by the members of GRULAC (the group of Latin American and Caribbean nations) and that makes the vote at the General Assembly a mere formality, because the other countries respect the regional consensus. Therein lies the importance of Chile's vote.

The rules also establish that if two or more nations from a region insist on their candidacy until the end, the dispute must be settled by the United Nations' 191 member countries.

In her conversation with the Chilean foreign minister, [Condoleezza] Rice warned that, if Chile supports Venezuela, "Chile could fall into a group of losers," against the feelings of the United States, Mexico, part of Central America and almost all of Europe. Rice referred to the decisions the Security Council might have to adopt regarding Iran and stressed the "provocative" friendship [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chávez has developed with the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... who now challenges the White House with a continuation of his nuclear program.

---

Things are a lot safer there now, at least for tourists. There is an increasing amount of gang activity in guatemala city and even in some parts of Xela, but overall taking buses at night seemed pretty safe and i didn't hear any first hand horrow stories.

Also around Colomba there are many fincas now being run by the campsinos. They have huge loans to pay back to the banks but they have a place to live and work the land.

quote:

---

Originally posted by M. Spector:
Meanwhile, the USA is backing Guatemala for election to the UN Security Council, and putting pressure on Chile to back Guatemala instead of Venezuela:

---