First soldier convicted in Guatemala disappearances

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

First soldier convicted in Guatemala disappearances
By REUTERS
Published: December 4, 2009
Filed at 12:31 a.m. ET

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A retired colonel was convicted of ordering the forced disappearance of people during Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war on Thursday, marking a major break with decades of impunity for civil war-era crimes.

Marco Antonio Sanchez was sentenced to 53 years in prison for his role in the disappearance of eight peasants in October 1981. He is the first army officer to be successfully prosecuted in connection with disappearances during the brutal civil war.

Almost a quarter of a million people, mostly indigenous Mayans, were killed during the conflict between leftist guerrillas and the government. Around 45,000 of the victims are thought to have been disappeared -- a term widely used in Latin America to people believed to have been kidnapped and murdered but whose bodies have never been found.

A United Nations-backed truth commission found more than 80 percent of the atrocities were carried out by the army.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/12/04/world/international-uk-guatemala-crime.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. History of Guatemala's Death Squads

History of Guatemala's Death Squads
by Robert Parry
consortiumnews.com, 1/11/05

~snip~
The Reagan Bloodbath
As brutal as the Guatemalan security forces were in the 1960s and 1970s, the worst was yet to come. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan army escalated its slaughter of political dissidents and their suspected supporters to unprecedented levels.
Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency against leftist enemies.
In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
After his election in 1980, Reagan pushed to overturn an arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by Carter. Yet as Reagan was moving to loosen up the military aid ban, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were confirming new Guatemalan government massacres.
In April 1981, a secret CIA cable described a massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17, 1981, government troops attacked the area believed to support leftist guerrillas, the cable said. According to a CIA source, "the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas" and "the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved." The CIA cable added that "the Guatemalan authorities admitted that 'many civilians' were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants."
Despite the CIA account and other similar reports, Reagan permitted Guatemala's army to buy $3.2 million in military trucks and jeeps in June 1981. To permit the sale, Reagan removed the vehicles from a list of military equipment that was covered by the human rights embargo.

No Regrets
Apparently confident of Reagan's sympathies, the Guatemalan government continued its political repression without apology.
According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981, Guatemalan leaders met with Reagan's roving ambassador, retired Gen. Vernon Walters, and left no doubt about their plans. Guatemala's military leader, Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, "made clear that his government will continue as before -- that the repression will continue."
Human rights groups saw the same picture. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981, blaming the Guatemalan government for "thousands of illegal executions."
But the Reagan administration was set on whitewashing the ugly scene. A State Department "white paper," released in December 1981, blamed the violence on leftist "extremist groups" and their "terrorist methods," inspired and supported by Cuba's Fidel Castro. Yet, even as these rationalizations were pitched to the American people, U.S. intelligence agencies in Guatemala continued to learn of government-sponsored massacres.
One CIA report in February 1982 described an army sweep through the so-called Ixil Triangle in central El Quiche province. "The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and eliminate all sources of resistance," the report stated. "Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed."
The CIA report explained the army's modus operandi: "When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed." When the army encountered an empty village, it was "assumed to have been supporting the EGP, and it is destroyed. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees in the hills with no homes to return to. The well-documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike."
Rios Montt
In March 1982, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup d'etat. An avowed fundamentalist Christian, he immediately impressed official Washington, where Reagan hailed Rios Montt as "a man of great personal integrity."
By July 1982, however, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign called his "rifles and beans" policy. The slogan meant that pacified Indians would get "beans," while all others could expect to be the target of army "rifles." In October, he secretly gave carte blanche to the feared "Archivos" intelligence unit to expand "death squad" operations.

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/HxGuatemala_DeathSquads.html

http://www.russellmeansfreedom.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/2122_sc_graves_of_guatemala-4_04700300.jpg

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/41861000/jpg/_41861064_guatemala_203.jpg

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0aN13rF6BX57U/610x.jpg

Mayan Ixil men carry the coffins of their beloved --victims of the Guatemalan Army massacre of April 16, 1981-- for their burial in the cemetery of Cocop, in Nebaj, some 300 km northwest of Guatemala City on June 9, 2008. Fifty victims of the massacre, in which 76 people died, were buried in the small village of Cocop, where the killing took place. According to a report backed by the United Nations, the civil war in Guatemala (1960-96) left 200,000 deaths or disappeareances and 669 massacres were carried out, most of which -626- were the state�s security forces responsibility.

[L. Coyote]

2. Rec #10 Great News, and sooooo overdue.

When will the killers in Honduras face justice?