Ríos Montt:
Record of Human Rights Abuses in Guatemala
One of the leading candidates for Guatemala’s November 2003 presidential
elections, Efraín Ríos Montt, presided over a thirteen-month
period of horrifying human rights violations after he took power in a
coup in April 1982. Controversial court rulings have so far permitted
his candidacy to move forward despite constitutional provisions barring
coup leaders from becoming president. The following graphs and citations
from authoritative sources recall the scope of the human rights violations
that occurred during his presidency.
Accusations
of Genocide
State Violence under Ríos Montt
Testimonies of Victims of Violence
Lack of Progress Addressing Past Violations
“After Ríos Montt took over, the level of violence increased. Figure 6.4 shows how the number of state killings and disappearances rose even higher in April, 1982, Ríos Montt’s first full month in office. The 3,330 documented deaths and disappearances in the CIIDH database that month represent the highest one-month total number of documented violations of the right to life for the entire armed conflict (the actual total is higher).”
Source: Ball, Patrick, Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection. Washington, D.C: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1999: 40.
- “During his term as president, the Guatemalan
military carried out a ‘scorched earth’ campaign of hundreds
of massacres, tens of thousands of extrajudicial executions, and –according
to a U.N.-sponsored truth commission- ‘acts of genocide.
-Human Rights Watch, “Guatemala’s Former Dictator ‘Unfit’ Candidate for President,” press statement, July 15, 2003.
- “In consequence, the CEH (Commission for Historical
Clarification) concludes that agents of the State of Guatemala, within
the framework of counterinsurgency operations carried out between 1981
and 1983, committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people
which lived in the four regions analyzed. This conclusion is based on
the evidence that, in light of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the killing of members of Mayan
groups occurred (Article II.a), serious bodily or mental harm was inflicted
(Article II.b) and the group was deliberately subjected to living conditions
calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
(Article II.c). The conclusion is also based on the evidence that all
these acts were committed ‘with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part’ groups identified by their common ethnicity, by reason
thereof whatever the cause, motive or final objective of these acts
may have been (Article II, first paragraph).”
-Guatemala, Memory of Silence, Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH, the UN-sponsored truth commission), 1996, pg. 41.
Killings and disappearances soar during the Lucas García and Ríos Montt presidencies, as the violence became more rural and less discriminating, especially during 1982.”
Source: Ball, Patrick, Paul Kobrak and Herbert
F. Spirer. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection.
Washington, D.C: American Association for the Advancement of Science,
1999: 37.
State Violence under Ríos Montt:
- “Under Ríos Montt, the army was behind
the reorganization of municipal authority. It hand picked the mayors,
taking care that they were leaders in their communities. After these
authorities took office, the army promoted the formation of civil patrols.
Groups of six patrollers led search missions to pursue the guerrillas
in forests and ravines. The army escalated the terror to counteract
the population’s probable sympathy with the guerrillas. In Coatepeque,
the army paraded alleged guerrilla prisoners, naked and bearing signs
of torture, in the public square, at the same time warning the population
about the consequences of collaborating with the insurgency. In Santa
Lucía la Reforma, army detainees were also tortured in front
of the local population. Their bodies would later appear abandoned on
the roadsides.”
-Guatemala, Never Again!, REMHI: Recovery of Historical Memory Project (The Official Report of the Human Rights Office), Archdiocese of Guatemala, 1999, pg. 240.
- “When Ríos Montt came to power, the
persecution of priests decreased at the same time that Catholic Action
activists and catechists were bloodily repressed. In December, in the
village of Tabil de la Santa Cruz del Quiché, the army forced
civil patrollers to kill five Catholic Action activists. On December
4 soldiers went to the village of Santabal, San Pedro Jocopilas, looking
for Catholic Action activists and when they could not be found, killed
six women instead.”
-REMHI Report, pg. 240.
- “Ríos Montt’s ascension to power and the spread of the scored-earth policy had devastating effects on the El Petén, including massacres in the villages of Palestina, Josefinos, and Macanché in March and April 1982.”
- “General Ríos Montt issued an order
to chop down all the trees within 165 feet of both sides of the main
roadways to prevent the guerrillas from ambushing military convoys.
In 1983, civil patrollers from San Cristóbal, Tactic, and Chamá
began sorties to ‘hunt down’ the people that were hiding
in the hills and forest.”
-REMHI Report, pg. 238.
-REMHI Report, pg. 239.
Testimonies and documentary
sources in the CIIDH database establish that the violence increased, and
became increasingly rural, in the late 1970s and early 80s. Press coverage
in Guatemala completely missed the story.
Source: Ball, Patrick, Paul Kobrak and Herbert
F. Spirer. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection.
Washington, D.C: American Association for the Advancement of Science,
1999: 52.
- “In 1982, press sources collected in the CIIDH database report only 31 rural killings, while the database as a whole details over 18,000 rural victims. The State’s campaign of terror against Maya communities took place largely in silence, especially within Guatemala. The press was not completely shut down during the Lucas García and Ríos Montt governments. The dashed line in figure 9.1 shows that the press did manage to publish some accounts of the violence in the early 1980s, but they were almost exclusively about urban killings… Thus, few Guatemalans were fully aware of the mass killings taking place in 1982.”
- Little progress was made in clarifying the extrajudicial
execution of tens of thousands of Guatemalans during the army’s
counter-insurgency campaign of the late 1970s and early 1980s, or in
bringing those responsible to justice. In August, the first case of
its kind to reach the courts was suspended after the accused civil patrol
members reportedly requested amnesty under Decree Law 08-86 (see Amnesty
International Report 1987). The case concerned the massacres in Agua
Fria, El Quiché department, and Rio Negro, Baja Verapaz department,
in 1982, in which at least 240 people were killed.”
-Amnesty International, “Country Report: Guatemala,” 1997 http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aireport/ar97/AMR34.htm
- “Throughout 1982, the army waged Campaign Plan
Victoria 82 against guerrilla fronts in the north and northwestern regions,
deploying two thirds of its force. The offensive, which primarily targeted
the civilian population (mostly indigenous—peasant), dismantled
the guerrilla support base, claimed tens of thousands of victims, and
caused enormous internal displacement.”
-REMHI Report, pg. 229.
- “The Commission for Historical Clarification’s
analysis demonstrates that in the execution of these acts, the national
military structures were coordinated to allow for the ‘effective’
action of soldiers and members of Civil Patrols in the four regions
studied. Military plan Victory 82, for example, established that ‘the
mission is to annihilate the guerrillas and parallel organizations’;
the military plan Firmness 83-1 determined that the Army should support
‘their operations with maximum of PAC members, in order to raze
all collective works…’”
-Truth Commission Report, pg. 40.
- “The majority of the massacres examined (70
percent) occurred in 1981-82. An estimated total of 14,000 massacre
victims including dead and disappeared, is based on average numbers
of victims, although the total may be as high as 18,000 victims.
…Data on the perpetrators demonstrate the key role massacres played in the overall counterinsurgency policy: the army is implicated in 90.52 percent of the massacres (acting alone in 55 percent of the cases and in conjunction with military commissioners and civil patrollers in the rest). Civil patrollers and military commissioners were involved in 35.54 percent of the cases (as the only force in 4.5 percent of the case and, in the remainder, acting with the army); guerrilla forces were responsible for 3.79 percent of the cases; and unknown forces for 1.18 percent.”-REMHI Report, pg. 134.
-Ball, Patrick, Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection. Washington, D.C: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1999: 52-3.
The graph documents
that executions, disappearances and torture skyrocketed during Ríos
Montt’s year in power.
Source: Guatemala, Memory of Silence, Report
of the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH, the UN-sponsored
truth commission), 1996, pg. 84.
- “Through its investigation, the CEH discovered
one of the most devastating effects of this policy: state forces and
related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations
documented by the CEH, including 92% of the arbitrary executions and
91% of forced disappearances. Victims included men, women and children
of all social strata: workers, professionals, church members, politicians,
peasants, students and academics; in ethnic terms, the vast majority
were Mayans.”
-Truth Commission Report, pg. 20.
- “Beginning in 1982, traditional Mayan authorities
were generally substituted by delegates from the armed forces, such
as military commissioners and PAC commanders. In other cases the Army
tried to control, co-opt and infiltrate the traditional Mayan authority
structures. This strategy caused the rupture of both community mechanisms
and the oral transmission of knowledge of their own culture, likewise
damaging Mayan norms and values of respect and service to their community.
In their stead, authoritarian practices and the arbitrary use of power
were introduced.”
-Truth Commission Report, pg. 30.
- “The CEH counts among the most damaging effects
of the confrontation those that resulted from forcing large sectors
of the population to be accomplices in the violence, especially through
their participation in the Civil Patrols (PAC), the paramilitary structures
created by the Army in 1981 in most of the Republic. The CEH is aware
of hundreds of cases in which civilians were forced by the Army, at
gunpoint, to rape women, torture, mutilate corpses and kill. This extreme
cruelty was used by the State to cause social disintegration. A large
proportion of the male population over the age of fifteen especially
in the Mayan communities was forced to participate in the PAC.”
-Truth Commission Report, pg. 27.
- “The CEH has noted particularly serious cruelty
in many acts committed by agents of the State, especially members of
the Army, in their operations against Mayan communities. The counterinsurgency
strategy not only led to violations of basic human rights, but also
to the fact that these crimes were committed with particular cruelty,
with massacres representing their archetypal form. In the majority of
massacres there is evidence of multiple acts of savagery, which preceded,
accompanied or occurred after the deaths of victims. Acts such as the
killing of defenseless children, often by beating them against walls
or throwing them alive into pits where the corpses of adults were later
thrown; the amputation of limbs; the impaling of victims; the killing
of persons by covering them in petrol and burning them alive; the extraction,
in the presence of others of the viscera of victims who were still alive;
the confinement of people who had been mortally tortured, in agony for
days; the opening of the wombs of pregnant women. And other similarly
atrocious acts, were not only actions of extreme cruelty against the
victims, but also morally degraded the perpetrators and those who inspired,
ordered or tolerated these actions.”
-Truth Commission Report, pg. 35.
- A description, documented by the Commission for Historical Clarification, of the psychological tactics and goals employed by the Guatemalan army under Ríos Montt:
[Las] “operaciones psicológicas pueden definirse como el uso planeado de la propaganda y otras acciones designadas para influenciar en las emociones, actitudes, opiniones o conducta de grupos de personas, de manera que se apoye la consecución de los objetivos nacionales ... las operaciones psicológicas no son más que la explotación deliberada de las emociones humanas: miedo, esperanza y aspiraciones, para vencer al enemigo, y como tal es una parte del arte de la guerra ... sus medios son el ardid y la sorpresa, y su desarrollo el pánico o el terror...”49 Estas operaciones estuvieron dirigidas a lograr un efectivo control y manejo de la población. Como lo establece un plan de campaña del Ejército: “La población es el objetivo principal, debiendo alcanzar su control físico
y psicológico...”50- Cited in the Truth Commission Report, footnote 49 (Ejército de Guatemala, Manual de operaciones psicológicas, TE-318-01, pg. 20.) and footnote 50 (Ejército de Guatemala, plan de campaña Firmeza 83, párrafo IV-C-1. Guatemala 1983).
“Rural killings outnumber those in the city even for most years outside the 1980 to 1983 peak of rural terror. In the CIDH database, “urban refers to the capital, Guatemala City, plus three municipalities that help make up the bulk of the the metropolitan area: Mixco, Villas Nueva, and Amatitlán. Economically and socially this corridor of four municipalities has a distinctly non-agricultural character, with a historically higher level of industrial activity than the rest of Guatemala. “Rural” then, refers to the rest of the country, predominantly agricultural.”
Source: Ball, Patrick, Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer. State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection. Washington, D.C: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1999: 48.
Testimonies of Victims of Violence:
- “After all this, after they had
already killed a lot of people, the commissioners from several hamlets
surrounding Cahabón got together and, with all the soldiers,
went to gather up everything those people had: their machetes, their
new clothes, new underwear, hoes, grinding stones, pails. Those commissioners
got together and took everything that people used in their homes.”
Case 5931, Sechaj, Pinares, Alta Verapaz, 1982
-REMHI Report, pg. 138.
- “They began to carry off the dead,
and they went to dig a hole. They put them all in there, about seventy
people with their feet and hands in the air. Well, that was that. They
say that on the second day, the people went to get everyone, so sad.
They tied them all up and they blindfolded them and they went to kill
them in Armenia Lorena. I saw it. They were tortured, burned, shot.
When night fell, they went to throw them under the bridges. They were
all loaded into a truck and two or three were thrown out at each bridge.
They scattered them all along the route to Coatepeque. They were all
killed unjustly. The people from Tiubuj died; they said there was a
guerrilla cooperative there. Even now, who knows? I don’t know.
There was another massacre just like the one at Sacuchum Dolores in
Armenia Lorena.” Case 8649, Sacuchum Dolores, Tuibuj, San
Marcos, 1982,
-REMHI Report, pg. 138.
- “It was when the army had taken all of the people from Palob, which would have been during the first massacre. Then all the people had to leave, more than three hundred people left to save their lives. But the army pursued them and found them in the hills above the village. It found them there and massacred most of the people.” Case 7727, Palob, Nebaj, Quiché, 1982
-REMHI Report, pg. 139.
- “But the army was killing us, who know how many people they killed so we spent a year and a half living only in the hills. We couldn’t go to our fields because the army was on the lookout for us. The patrollers were there. We couldn’t come out of the hills; we often went hungry.” Case 3624, Las Buacamayas, Uspantan, Quiché, 1982
-REMHI Report, pg. 139.
- “They leveled the community. Those who survived left. They fled into the hills. They didn’t live there anymore, they abandoned everything. Some of us were already there; it was nearly two years of suffering, of fleeing in the hills and seeing how to get a little corn—something to eat. We lived on the run.” Case 8341, Los Josefinos, Petén, 1982
-REMHI Report, pg. 139.
Lack of Progress Addressing Past Violations:
“Progress in some notorious massacre cases stalled
at year’s end. In August, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
agreed to hear the case of the 1982 massacre in Plan de Sanchez, Baja
Verapaz, in which the army and PAC members killed 268 people. The Government
has not complied with the August 2000 settlement, including economic reparations,
with the survivors and the victim families.
The case of the 1982 military massacre at Dos Erres, Petén, remained
stalled in a Guatemalan court by 26 motions of appeal. Although the Government
made a reparation payment to the victims' survivors in December 2001,
further obligations under the 2000 amicable settlement remained unfulfilled.
Prosecutor Mario Leal continued to interview witnesses and conduct investigations
in connection with the lawsuits filed in 2000-2001 on behalf of communities
whose citizens were massacred by government security forces. Leal has
interviewed more than 100 witnesses and visited 4 massacre sites. The
suits allege crimes, including genocide, committed by the high command
of former President Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia and that of former ‘de
facto’ president and current President of Congress, retired General
Efraín Ríos Montt.
Exhumations of clandestine cemeteries continued throughout the year, although work was set back by death threats, and exhumation teams reported that some communities lost their will to participate... Forensic scientists have exhumed more than 2,000 remains from more than 280 sites since exhumations began in 1992. Most of the bodies recovered have been those of victims of military or paramilitary killings in the early 1980s. Forensics groups use the information obtained from the exhumations to verify eyewitness reports of massacres--of which the CEH recorded 669--and to determine, at least in general terms, who might have been responsible. Forensic research and DNA testing have identified some of the remains and have been used in some criminal cases.”
-U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” March 31, 2003, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2002/18333.htm
