| Mar. 4, 2013
For the first time in history a former head of state, Guatemala's Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, is on trial for genocide in the country where the crime occurred. Two hundred thousand died over 36 years of armed conflict in the Central American nation, mostly Maya indigenous noncombatants at government hands. The unfolding judicial process has global repercussions, strengthening possibilities for prosecution of other prominent human rights cases. Next door in El Salvador, no ranking officer has been charged with war crimes, not even those known to have given the orders to kill six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter in 1989.
After a CIA coup overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954, years of military rule included Ríos Montt's dictatorship from March 1982 to August 1983. It was a particularly frenzied epoch of bloodletting. The army, by its own accounting, annihilated entire villages, lest residents support left-leaning guerrillas.
Even as the army remained untouchable, family members of the dead and disappeared gathered evidence and testimony, holding faith that someday they might see justice, recover the remains of loved ones or know their fates. Carefully exhumed remains from sites across the country now number in the thousands, many positively identified after painstaking work.
In February, before a courtroom including grim-faced survivors, some in traditional, brightly woven Maya dress, a judge accepted some 900 elements of evidence, including every death certificate and expert witness proposed by government prosecutors, despite virulent objections from the defense. Ríos Montt, hale-looking at age 86, wearing a dark blue suit and with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, wrote notes on a white pad, appearing not at all a defeated man. Indeed, a guilty verdict on the genocide charge is far from assured.
Some Guatemalans believe what the army has long averred, that it saved the country from falling into rebel hands. Many do not care about the recent past; most of the population was born after the regime, and schools barely mention the war. Still others see through an arguably skewed glass. In 1982 in Guatemala City, U.S. President Ronald Reagan met with the fiercely anticommunist Ríos Montt, characterizing him as "a man of great personal integrity" who was getting "a bum rap."
"There is celebration globally about the Ríos Montt trial, which is advancing issues in law and human rights," said Amy Ross, a University of Georgia geography professor who has written widely on international rights trials. She calls the Guatemala proceedings "uncharted waters."
Risks to witnesses and dangers to the court system are greater when holding a war crimes trial in the country where the violence occurred, instead of at an international tribunal. Nevertheless, the anticipated months of argument, testimony and public airing of evidence may help to reinforce Guatemala's own judicial system, long weakened by an overweening military, corruption and the assassination of judges. Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, with diminutive stature and youthful appearance, does not look like any country's top cop, but for three years she has indefatigably pursued organized crime, drug lords, and now one of the most fearsome dictators in the history of the region.
After a CIA coup overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954, years of military rule included Ríos Montt's dictatorship from March 1982 to August 1983. It was a particularly frenzied epoch of bloodletting. The army, by its own accounting, annihilated entire villages, lest residents support left-leaning guerrillas.
Even as the army remained untouchable, family members of the dead and disappeared gathered evidence and testimony, holding faith that someday they might see justice, recover the remains of loved ones or know their fates. Carefully exhumed remains from sites across the country now number in the thousands, many positively identified after painstaking work.
In February, before a courtroom including grim-faced survivors, some in traditional, brightly woven Maya dress, a judge accepted some 900 elements of evidence, including every death certificate and expert witness proposed by government prosecutors, despite virulent objections from the defense. Ríos Montt, hale-looking at age 86, wearing a dark blue suit and with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, wrote notes on a white pad, appearing not at all a defeated man. Indeed, a guilty verdict on the genocide charge is far from assured.
Some Guatemalans believe what the army has long averred, that it saved the country from falling into rebel hands. Many do not care about the recent past; most of the population was born after the regime, and schools barely mention the war. Still others see through an arguably skewed glass. In 1982 in Guatemala City, U.S. President Ronald Reagan met with the fiercely anticommunist Ríos Montt, characterizing him as "a man of great personal integrity" who was getting "a bum rap."
"There is celebration globally about the Ríos Montt trial, which is advancing issues in law and human rights," said Amy Ross, a University of Georgia geography professor who has written widely on international rights trials. She calls the Guatemala proceedings "uncharted waters."
Risks to witnesses and dangers to the court system are greater when holding a war crimes trial in the country where the violence occurred, instead of at an international tribunal. Nevertheless, the anticipated months of argument, testimony and public airing of evidence may help to reinforce Guatemala's own judicial system, long weakened by an overweening military, corruption and the assassination of judges. Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, with diminutive stature and youthful appearance, does not look like any country's top cop, but for three years she has indefatigably pursued organized crime, drug lords, and now one of the most fearsome dictators in the history of the region.
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