Ronald Reagan’s genocidal secret: A true story of right-wing impunity in Guatemala
Tuesday, Mar 24, 2015 11:13 AM CDT
Ronald Reagan’s genocidal secret: A true story of right-wing impunity in Guatemala
Here's the real story of how a genocide trial against former Guatemalan head of state Efraín Ríos Montt fell apart
Miles Culpepper
On Jan. 5 of this year, the Associated Press issued two short reports on a trial against aging former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt that by and large went unnoticed in the United States. The first announced that the genocide trial, suspended in 2013, would finally resume. The second, hours later, updated the story by informing readers of a delay along the lines of what happened in 2013, preventing one of the world’s most notorious living war criminals from facing justice.
In the early 1980s, Ríos Montt presided over the most ruthless and violent military regime of the Guatemalan Civil War. This distinction is no small feat, given the brevity of his time in office (16 months) and the competition—namely, the succession of tyrants who led the military government in the aftermath of the 1954 CIA coup which removed Jacobo Arbenz from power at the behest of the United Fruit Company. Of the roughly 200,000 deaths that occurred during the war, researchers estimate that 86,000 took place during Ríos Montt’s savage counterinsurgency campaign in the Maya majority Altiplano of Guatemala.
Lost in the short AP reports issued earlier this month is the fact that Ríos Montt was not without his allies in the United States. The Reagan Administration lost its bids to restore military aid to Guatemala until 1985, but not for want of trying. Following a meeting with the dictator in December 1982, President Reagan opined that Ríos Montt had simply gotten a “bum rap” in the United States, and in fact was fully committed to restoring democracy and “promoting social justice.” Under the General’s stewardship, Reagan assured, Guatemala deserved the resumption of military aid immediately. When a liberal Congress, mindful of a growing anti-war movement and the memory of the Vietnam War, denied the request in March of 1983, the Reagan Administration still managed to support Ríos Montt by applying pressure to international lending agencies to help the military government manage its foreign currency reserve crisis, and by reaching out to a growing grassroots network of Cold War hardliners in the Christian Right. They also still managed to bump up “economic development” assistance provided by USAID.
Ríos Montt’s presidency garnered support from the US Christian Right because in many ways the dictator was one of them. He converted to Pentecostalism at the Iglesia del Verbo in Guatemala City, a church founded in 1976 by North American evangelicals from the Eureka, CA based Gospel Outreach. In 1979, Ríos Montt traveled to Eureka to meet ministers there who would later join his government as “spiritual advisors.” When Ríos Montt seized power in a military coup, Gospel Outreach ministers Joseph Anfuso and David Sczepanski received a call informing them of the change in power before most Guatemalans knew. The two ministers wrote approvingly of one of their own taking on the presidency.
More:
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/ronald_reagans_genocidal_secret_a_true_story_of_right_wing_impunity_in_guatemala/
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