Military on trial and constitutional reforms

Major transformations are occurring in the world, Latin America and even in Guatemala. While we’re dealing with the impunity of violators of thousands of peoples’ human rights, exemplified by some military who’re now on trial, we still have to confront the impunity of those violating most peoples’ economic and social rights. Our struggles of yesterday and today need to converge.

Juan Hernández Pico, SJ

Three retired Guatemalan generals have stood trial in 2012: Efraín Ríos Montt, Héctor Mario López Fuentes and José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez. Ríos Montt, 86, President between 1982 and 1983 through a coup, was bound over for trial in February. On August 30, the Fourth Court of Appeals denied the motion filed by his defense alleging that his crimes fell under the amnesty decreed by the 1996 Reconciliation Act. This law isn’t “the last word” because torture, forced disappearance, genocide and other crimes against humanity are exempt from amnesty. Héctor Mario López Fuentes, 81, was the defense chief of staff from 1983 to 1985. And José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez was head of G-2 (Army Intelligence) between 1983 and 1985.

Murders and massacres

Ríos Montt is accused of being behind the massacre in Dos Erres, a village in the department of Petén, as well as numerous other massacres considered acts of genocide in the Ixil Triangle—the Nebaj, Cotzal and Chajul municipalities in the department of El Quiché. López Fuentes and Rodríguez Sánchez are accused of organizing those in the Ixil triangle as part of the military plans Victory 82 and Firmness 83.

In 1995, a year before the Peace Accords were signed, an Army patrol entered a community of returnees called Aurora 8
de Octubre in the municipality of Chisec, department of Alta Verapaz and after tense verbal exchanges opened fire on several groups killing 11 people, including children, and wounding 28 more. The patrol members were tried and convicted, but the sentences were overturned on appeal, with the argument that the murders had been “common crimes” and as such fell under the amnesty of the National Reconciliation Act.

Only Army Sergeant-Major Noel de Jesús Beteta Alvarez was sentenced in 1993 to 30 years imprisonment for the September 11, 1990, political murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack. Ten years later, in 2003, Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio, former head of intelligence for the Presidential General Staff, was sentenced to 30 years as the intellectual author of that same crime, but when the National Civil Police went to his home to arrest him, he was gone. He’s still a fugitive today. General Edgar Godoy Gaitán, who headed the Presidential General Staff, and Lieutenant Colonel Juan Guillermo Oliva Carranza, Valencia Osorio’s second in command, were also accused of this crime, but both were acquitted in a Supreme Court reversal hearing—the last and unappealable step of Guatemala’s judicial system.

In 1999, Colonel Byron Lima Estrada and his son, Captain Byron Lima Oliva, were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for complicity in the April 26, 1998, murder of Bishop Juan José Gerardi. Colonel Lima has just been released through a reduction in his sentence for good behavior. On leaving prison he told reporters that he intends to leave Guatemala because his life is in danger. The court that sentenced the two Limas left open the case against other officers of the Presidential General Staff, but never pursued it.

In August 2011, three Guatemalan Army officers were sentenced to more than 6,000 years in prison as perpetrators of the Dos Erres massacre. Except for the Mack case, however, army generals had never been brought to trial before the three who were tried this year.

Three reasons for these trials

What has made it possible now? There are at least three reasons. First: the victims’ organizations have been doggedly working for years to make these officers criminally liable for unjustly killing thousands of citizens. Second: the government needs to demonstrate that justice is possible in Guatemala, despite the military’s privileged status and the setback their conviction would mean for the Army. Third: the courage and honesty of some judges, both male and female, in heading up such high-risk trials.

Despite this, it’s noteworthy that they still haven’t touched retired General Benedicto Lucas García, the prime suspect as the mastermind and planner of the massacres and scorched earth policy in Guatemala starting in 1981 and included in an indictment brought before the National Court of Spain by the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation. Army chief of staff during the presidency of the late General Fernando Romeo Lucas García, he studied in the Saint Cyr School for military officers and, according to his own statements, fought in the North African war against Algerian independence. Going after him would be going after the Army’s highest icon; the one the Guatemalan military thank for their victory over the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG).

Just scapegoats?

Can it be said that prosecuting Ríos Montt, López Fuentes and Rodríguez Sánchez would teach the Army an important lesson? Not exactly. These old soldiers could just be scapegoats. Especially now, when Efraín Ríos Montt, the politician of the three, has seen the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), a party he founded, shrunk to just one representative in Congress and his own political star waning without ever achieving his greatest ambition: to be democratically and incontrovertibly elected President of Guatemala. Nor has Zury Ríos Sosa, his daughter, acquired credibility as his heir apparent.

What can be said is that the Army’s meteoric rise during Alvaro Colom’s presidency (2008-2012) has been reinforced during these first eight months of Otto Pérez Molina’s term. Next year’s budget allocates 23% more to defense than last year and four new Army detachments have been sent to old locations (Playa Grande and Ixcán) and new ones, including San Juan Sacatepéquez, to defend the Novella family’s new cement factory. President Pérez Molina’s security rhetoric is laced with traditional military terms such as task forces.

35 constitutional reforms

Notebook No. 45 of the Latin American School of Social Sciences (FLACSO) includes a study by Edgar Balsells and Edgar Pape about the 35 proposed constitutional amendments President Pérez Molina has just submitted to Congress, which El Periódico reprinted on September 2. The four chapters containing articles to be amended are: Reinforcing the Justice and Security System, Transparency and Accountability, Policy Improvements, and Reinforcing Taxation and Finance.

The analysts point out that the title of the fourth chapter is misleading: the constitutional changes don’t “reinforce” anything because they don’t address the crucial problem: strengthening government through income tax revenue so it can become socially efficient and improve the lives of the excluded majority. The proposed amendments don’t even set
the tax revenue goal of 12% of the gross domestic product agreed to in the Peace Accords and constantly postponed. Balsells and Pape acknowledge the importance of increasing the budget of the judicial system from 2% to 4% of the total and of the Public Ministry (the prosecutor general’s office) from 1% to 2%. That same chapter also deals with other justice and security issues, which is very questionable, especially as security pertains to the executive branch and justice to the judicial branch.

The study concludes with this critique: “Sociological and political economic thought demonstrates that those who
want to vary results have to modify their causes… This is why we can’t accept the allure of a so-called reform that complies with the political and corporate elites’ lobby rather than preparing conditions for a new, democratic and inclusive Constitution that embraces the need to legitimate the social will for economic change, which will necessarily go through ‘fiscal reinforcement’ based on justice and social equity.”

Mining reforms

Another of the constitutional amendments proposed by President Pérez Molina concerns mining, a very hot topic in Latin America and many other regions of the world today. The amendment says: “The State may own or have equity of up to 40% in all companies that exploit natural resources.” Until now the State could simply receive 1% of the profits from all mining exploitation.

The Rafael Landívar University, consulted by the President along with the other national universities, noted that the proposed amendment should read: “The State should own or have equity in at least 40% of all companies exploiting non-renewable natural resources.” It’s probable that the minimalist wording of the final proposed amendment is due to the strong reaction by private enterprise, represented by the Committee on Agriculture, Commerce, Industry and Finance (CACIF).

In the crosshairs
of transnational greed

Intense conflicts—already kindled in Guatemala with the exploitation of the San Miguel Ixtahuacán gold mine in the department of San Marcos and mining concessions in San José el Golfo, very close to the capital city, in addition to the ones expected to multiply in the country through this kind of concession—pose a new scenario. Guatemala, like the rest of Central America, wasn’t a land of gold and silver mines during the Spanish colonial era. Here, the gold was the land. But today’s explorations by large Canadian and US mining companies and by the extractive industry for nonrenewable natural resources in general are discovering mines all over Central America. The mines plus water for hydroelectric projects and even drinking are the latest targets coveted by the big transnationals.

They also covet oil, of all kinds. What happened in the Aguán Valley in northern Honduras is happening today in Alta Verapaz in Guatemala: large tracts of land are being bought cheaply from thousands of indigenous peasant families to grow African palm and process the oil it produces. The highway known as the Great Northern Transversal Strip, neglected for decades since it was first marked out, is being paved and is already lined by the shacks of numerous families evicted from the land on which they subsisted.

Exploration for petroleum, currently mostly confined to small areas in southern Petén, will soon increase. This will seriously threaten the biosphere’s reserves, hugely important for Guatemala and the world. These problems and conflicts will become even more complicated because the lands containing the minerals intersect with lands inhabited by indigenous peoples, causing complaints and appeals based on violation of the International Labor Organization’s Convention 169, a legally binding instrument ratified by Guatemala in 1996 that deals specifically with the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples.

The struggles against large and small hydroelectric projects scattered through Huehuetenango and El Quiché are incited by the memory of what happened with the huge Río Chixoy hydroelectric plant. The scandal of that plant, which lights up large distant cities while leaving the villages surrounding without electricity for 30 years, causes many indigenous peoples to fight against all hydroelectric projects, even without rationally considering their pros and cons.

A hard struggle

The competitive struggle for water and wood, today a global struggle, is also affecting Central America. Since most Central American countries ratified ILO Convention 169, hydroelectric and mining projects, especially the major ones, have to deal with municipalities and indigenous territories demanding to be consulted before the projects are designed and built. Several Central American countries, notably El Salvador, are verging on a situation of water stress. This major problem looming in the near future is compounded by the privatization of spring water to companies that sell bottled water and, above all, by deforestation that isn’t counterbalanced by effective reforestation projects—except in Costa Rica.

New impunities

The impunity we were used to years ago was that of those violating people’s individual rights. It was a spectacular impunity, with horrors attested to by many thousands of people. We have to continue the struggle against it until it becomes a nightmare of the past.

But the impunity we’re facing today is that of those structurally violating the masses’ social, political and cultural rights, which depend on a healthy sociopolitical situation. It’s the impunity of those violating the economic rights of millions of unemployed people.

We need to react strongly. While we continue fighting the impunity of those violating personal human rights, we must wage a convergent struggle against this impunity of those systematically violating the social, political, cultural and economic rights of large sectors of humanity. It’s vital that we open a debate to discuss these projections and find ways to overcome today’s tremendous obstacles and lead us further into democracy.

Juan Hernández Pico, sj, is the envío correspondent in Guatemala

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