Truth & its consequences:
Burkhalter, Holly & Simon, Jean-Marie
REPORT FROM GUATEMALA TRUTH & ITS CONSEQUENCES WHO WILL LISTEN? Last May, the parish priest of Chichicastenango organized a special Mass for the victims of political violence in his Guatemalan...
...What happened as a result illustrates the weakness of Guatemala's civilian democratic government and the need for continued international pressure to protect human rights...
...Nationwide, the figures are even more shocking...
...The civil patrol system is intact, though renamed in Orwellian fashion "Voluntary Civil Defense Committees...
...I even had to stop them in some places...
...One widow's testimony captured the anguish of the group: "My heart aches...
...HOLLY BURKHALTER & JEAN-MARIE SIMON Holly Burkhalter is Washington representative of Human Rights Watch and Jean-Marie Simon is a consultant to Americas Watch...
...We have no one who listens...
...They weren't to blame for anything...
...The Guatemalan army had killed or "disappeared" their relatives in the counterinsurgency campaign of the early 1980s...
...Nearly every one of the sixty-seven hamlets around Chichicastenango has thirty-five to forty widows...
...In an interview last month, he said, "As the widows talked, I thought to myself, there is no doubt that this is going to cause persecution later on, because they are telling the truth...
...I hope that God gives us life...
...Our pain has not gone away...
...Our husbands died...
...Yet today, the military's domination of rural life seems as complete as ever...
...The priest foresaw the danger to the women for giving their testimonies...
...From this, the court determined that 45,000 to 60,000 highland Indian parents had been killed from 1978 to 1985...
...The Reagan administration has long sought to restore close ties to the Guatemalan armed forces, which were severed in the 1970s because of human rights violations...
...Military operations continue against an elusive guerrilla force numbering 2,000 at most...
...Some 100,000 Indians fled into Mexico...
...The model villages remain under military control...
...Why did they kill them...
...And both the Congress and the State Department appear to be using military assistance to reward the military for permitting a civilian president to remain in office...
...he was astonished when 1,800 Indian widows showed up...
...Sadly, no U.S...
...As they placed their offerings on the altar—a tomato, a weaving, a few coins—the women told their stories...
...When you lie, nothing happens afterwards, but when you tell the truth, it is certain that there will be reprisals...
...policymakers...
...On July 26, a large crowd of civil patrolmen burst into a Mass at which Father Lux was expected to preside, claimed the microphone, and broke up the service...
...When the Guatemalan army permitted the election of a civilian president in 1985, Guatemalans and others around the world hoped that the long nightmare had ended...
...As for Father Lux, the military seems determined to punish him for the service he held for his congregation of widows...
...The reign of terror imposed by the Guatemalan army devastated highland life...
...Communities that resist "voluntary" participation have suffered military reprisals, including killings and disappearances...
...The army boasts of having wiped 440 villages off the map in a counterinsurgency campaign that included thousands of targeted executions and disappearances, indiscriminate bombings, and wholesale massacres...
...I was afraid...
...They serve as informers on their own communities, and, occasionally, as .untrained and poorly armed combatants against guerrilla attacks...
...Members of Congress who previously denounced military repression in Guatemala and prohibited aid have supported military aid to Guatemala for a different reason: they seek to reward President Cerezo for his important contribution to the Central American peace process...
...Some 70,000 were forcibly relocated by the army into squalid "model villages" where they were required to undergo "reeducation" and, to this day, are closely watched by the military and prohibited from traveling freely...
...As many as 600,000 rural men and boys are still required to provide onerous unpaid services to the army in a vast network of civilian patrols...
...according to Guatemalan City Archbishop Prospero Penados, aerial bombings of civilian communities have been reported in two highland departments...
...The civil patrols also provide an unpaid labor force for military projects such as bridge and road building...
...The army represses us...
...Last May, the parish priest of Chichicastenango organized a special Mass for the victims of political violence in his Guatemalan highland community...
...But neither he nor the widows who spoke at the service are safe from reprisals...
...At least half a million more, according to the Guatemalan Bishops' Conference, were uprooted from their ancestral homes and communities and became refugees within their own country, swelling the slums of Guatemala City...
...Thousands of additional displaced civilians have been forced out of their mountain refuges, interrogated by the army and subjected to prolonged military indoctrination...
...We can't survive...
...The Mass, with its gathering of widows and outpouring of grief, was unprecedented in Guatemala, but the women's experience was far from unique...
...Father Ventura Lux Herrera said that he had expected 400 to 500 people to attend the special Mass...
...The Guatemalan Supreme Court's Juvenile Division conducted a census of highland orphans in 1985 and found some 150,000 to 200,000...
...Father Lux had already fled and is now in hiding...
...Who will listen...
...Such a policy puts symbols over substance and honors declarations over deeds...
...President Vinicio Cerezo, a Christian Democrat who himself had suffered death threats and attacks, took office with 68 percent of the popular vote...
...Who will listen...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 16
