Newsbriefs
Victims of the War Exhumed in Guatemala CHAJUL, QUICHE AUGUSI 30, 1997 In the middle of a field of high corn, under strong sunlight, 48-year-old Caterina P6rez L6pez kneels beside a small...
...It took place just as the army was putting into practice the concept of the civil patrols," he says, "and because of this the URNG hadn't found a political formula with which to confront them...
...Expelled from Chile in 1975, Almeyda was exiled in Romania, then Mexico, and finally East Germany...
...Now, along with the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), it has resolved to impede elections until a satisfactory peace agreement is reached between the government and the guerillas...
...Eduardo Pizarro, a political scientist at the Universidad Nacional notes that voter turnout is much higher in local elections than in national ones...
...The exhumation of Chacalt6 is yet another building block within REMHI's efforts to reconstitute the historical memory of Guatemala which has, until now, remained suppressed as a result of the vicious counter-insurgency strategies of successive military governments...
...With a military presence, the conflict will be intensified in areas previously untouched by the war...
...Arnoldo Noriega, a spokesperson for the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), says the 1982 battle in Chacalt6 was exclusively between the guerrilla and the PACs...
...His August 26 funeral was attended by former President Patricio Aylwin and current President Eduardo Frei...
...The guerrillas have lost some support in rural areas where residents see their governments working, he says...
...Besides his prominent career in politics and government, Almeyda was a journalist, book editor, author and academic...
...With his sights set on winning the strongman's mass following to socialism, Almeyda galvinized support for lbaiiez-a populist-turned-dictator-within the Party...
...Similar efforts are also underway by other organizations, including the official Truth Commission set up as part of the 1996 Peace Accords...
...Guatemalans such as La Rue hope that by "reliving" the violence, the country will give birth to a stronger society no longer based on silence...
...August's roadblocks interrupted commerce and travel throughout the country...
...As the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) noted, no political regime could dismiss the participation of peasant and indigenous organizations in the generation of a genuine democratic debate...
...Suzana Sawyer teaches anthropology at the University of California, Davis...
...As the first march to the capital got underway in Puyo-a city 325 miles away from Quito-on September 28, local and national indigenous and peasant leaders repeated their call for a truly participatory Consituent Assembly...
...It will break the link between the people and their central government...
...Through unprecedented support from a wide spectrum of civil society, the February "Mandate" affirmed citizens' rights to condemn corrupt and discriminatory rule...
...The government has not yet proposed a solution for towns that had no elections, but townspeople fear that military mayors will be appointed - a move that will serve the guerrillas politically and militarily...
...Conservative politicians characterized the August mobilization as "violent" and "destructive...
...David Aquila-Lawrence is a freelance journalist based in Colombia...
...l...believe that the Guatemalan military is responsible for 95% of the atrocities," he says, "but...the five percent under the responsibility of the URNG should also be investigated...
...The military's presence was strong, leading to sporadic confrontations...
...Ending their procession outside the National Congress, protesters set the casket ablaze...
...The controversy resulted in Almeyda's resignation...
...Solemnly clothed men bearing a massive casket led the procession through city streets...
...Then a bullhorn mounted on a car told residents to assemble in the town square...
...The exhumation in Chacalt6, because guerrilla forces are implicated, brings a new dimension to the historical picture...
...On the other, it is a crucial part of coming to grips with the past, as Frank La Rue, director of The Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), points out...
...Its dispatches can be read on-line in the Peacenet confer- ences: ips.espafol and ips.english...
...In August, thousands of Ecuadorians protested the government's postponement of the Assembly, claiming the deferral sought to weaken popular demands for participation in the creation of a "new democracy...
...The FARC, which in the past had declared election day cease-fires in order to support sympathetic candidates, changed its strategy after the leftist Patriotic Union party-which was loosely affiliated with the guerrillas-dissolved itself following the assasination of 3,000 of its members by paramilitary squads...
...Suzana Sawyer Guerrillas Disrupt Local Elections GACHALA, COLOMBIA, AUGUST 10, 1997 Just after midnight on August 4, residents of Gachali, an Andean village about 40 miles east of Bogota awoke to the sound of their police station being blown to bits...
...Almeyda first held national office as Minister of Labor and Minister of Mining during the Ibafiez Administration (1952-1958...
...It might not be what you'd like to remember," says the human rights activist, "but all countries and all peoples have to be able to acknowledge their past to build their future...
...And it's going to imply that the army has to occupy areas where the guerrillas are strong...
...The coordinated uprising halted Continued on page 45 Demonstrators in Quito, protesting President Fabian Alarc6n's postponement of a National Constituent Assembly burn a casket they had just borne through city streets, labeled "Popular Mandate...
...During this period, sharp divisions emerged among the Socialists in exile...
...Today, a team of anthropologists working for the Recovery of the Historical Memory (REMHI) project directed by the Archdiocese's Human Rights Office are exhuming seven graves in Chacalte...
...Threats from guerrilla and paramilitary groups affected nearly 10% of the municipalities in Colombia, in which over 26,000 candidates had registered for the October 26 elections...
...On one hand, it runs the risk of equating levels of violence committed on both sides...
...Briefly leaving the cabinet in early 1973, Almeyda returned as Minister of Defense around mid-year, soon after an attempted coup...
...Julian Santiago-a member of Guatemala's paramilitary civil patrols known by their Spanish acronym PACs-was just one of an estimated 180 Ixil Mayans killed by the guerrillas in Chacalt6, a small isolated village high in the hills of Guatemala's Quich6 province...
...Central to the February "Popular Mandate" was the call for a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution...
...Gachali is one scores of towns in Colombia which sat out of the municipal elections on October 26...
...Rebel tactics include midnight meetings like the one in Gachali as well as kidnapping candidates...
...In hushed tones she identifies the remains of her husband's body, a skeleton lying face down in the ground...
...transport for 48 hours and sent a forceful message to President Alarc6n about the power of popular conviction...
...Almeyda championed a Marxist-Leninist perspective and supported armed strategies to overthrow the military dictatorship...
...On August 11, thousands of indigenous and campesino women and men dug ditches and hauled trees across Ecuador's major roads...
...Like the February mobilizations, the protests also challenged neoliberal economic reforms, demanded congressional ratification of an ILO labor-protection convention and denounced government plans to privatize the peasant social security agency and many state enterprises...
...Following the victory of Chile's pro-democracy forces in the 1988 plebiscite and in the subsequent elections, Almeyda served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union for the Aylwin Adminstration, drawing international attention in 1992, when he granted former East German dictator Erich Honecker asylum in Chile's Moscow embassy...
...Otherwise they have no new future...
...They came out of their homes to find over 200 combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in the plaza...
...From the early 1980s onwards the armed PACs formed an integral part of the military's counterinsurgency strategy...
...Alejandro Reuss is a graduate student in Latin American Studies at Tufts University...
...It's indisputable that the popularity of elected mayors has taken support from the guerrillas," agrees Gilberto Toro, director of the Colombian Federation of Municipalities...
...Following the killings, the army -suspecting the continued presence of rebel informers-reportedly returned to the community, killed survivors and burnt Chacalte to the ground...
...The local community now sees that electing someone has an immediate result...
...These recent mobilizations come only months after the massive nationwide demonstrations in February that forced the impeachment of former President Abdala Bucaram and demanded fundamental changes in the workings of the Ecuadorian state...
...These attempts to recognize and give voice to the country's violent history are only the beginning of a long process...
...It is clear that many people now want to speak about those things which before were never even whispered...
...Bursts of gunfire went on for about four hours...
...In Azuay Province, an angry trucker ran a blockade injuring three protesters...
...Popular leaders insisted, however, that the paro was the only means at their disposal for confronting "an antidemocratic, exclusionary, and authoritarian" regime...
...He was Dean of Sociology at the University of Chile when he died...
...It is part of the ongoing attempt to record what happened during 36 years of civil war which left at least 150,000 Guatemalans dead or "disappeared...
...In late July, however, interim President Fabidn Alarc6n decreed that the Assembly must be postponed for another year...
...The August protest further emphasized that right and denounced the government's contempt for the Mandate...
...Therefore we dealt with the matter in the framework of battle...
...The communities have really taken to the process, and it's returned some credibility to state institutions...
...Victims of the War Exhumed in Guatemala CHAJUL, QUICHE AUGUSI 30, 1997 In the middle of a field of high corn, under strong sunlight, 48-year-old Caterina P6rez L6pez kneels beside a small rectangular pit...
...The morning after its midnight action in Gachali, every candidate for mayor and town council withdrew, and several of them left town...
...SOURCES: Ann Birch is researcher with CERIGUA, an NGO in Guatemala City...
...Alejandro Reuss Indigenous/Peasant Protests Disrupt Ecuador QuITO, OCTOBER 14, 1997 n September 28, an array of indigenous and peasant organizations began a series of nationwide mobilizations that converged on October 12 in Quito for the convening of a popular National Constituent Assembly...
...The move provoked a split, and Socialist leader Salvador Allende ran his own campaign with support from a Socialist minority and the Communist Party (PC...
...Ann Birch Clodomiro Almeyda, 1923-1997 SANTIAGO...
...The practice of electing local governments has become very popular since it was introduced in 1988...
...When Allende won the Presidency in 1970, he entrusted Vo XX IN 3 N /Ic 19971 I I I I l IIIII Vol XXXI, No 3 Nov/DEc 1997 1NEWSBRIEFS Almeyda with the Ministry of Foreign Relations, where he broadened relations with Cuba and the socialist bloc, negotiated integration to the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, tended to the maintenance of normal relations with Latin American and Western European countries, and attempted to minimize conflict with the United States...
...Sinchez later escaped, but his mother and sister both died...
...At one point, as many as a million men and boys-the majority indigenous-served as the eyes and ears of the army in rural communities...
...As a member of the Socialist Party (PS) since 1940, he served as a party official, member of Congress, ambassador, and cabinet minister...
...In exile, he served as Executive Secretary of the Popular Unity and, later, as Secretary General of the PS...
...The following day, 500 demonstrators in Quito staged a wake and funeral procession for the February, 1997 Mandate...
...Although the process of exhuming clandestine graves in Guatemala began in the early 1990s, this one has gained notoriety for being the first exhumation of victims of the guerrillas...
...The government's inaction led to a national strike which virtually paralyzed the country...
...He is still wearing the green sweater and dark trousers he wore the day he was killed 15 years ago...
...InterPress Service is an international news service based in Italy...
...The guerilla strategy is going to be effective," says Pizarro...
...The rebels, who had just executed two men they accused of being army informants, delivered a short message: Gachald will not participate in the upcoming municipal elections...
...On the principal highway north of Quito, soldiers intimidated protesters and repeatedly shot tear gas into the crowds...
...SEPTEMBER 1, 1997 C lodomiro Almeyda, a prominent Chilean socialist, died on August 25, at the age of 74...
...After the military coup of September 1973, Almeyda and other prominent left politicians were imprisoned on the notorious Dawson Island, in Chile's Antarctic South...
...Threats by armed groups on the left and right have figured in local elections for years in Colombia, but never in the last 31 years of civil conflict have the elections been shut down...
...Roberto SAnchez, who was nine years old at the time, says he hid with his mother and little sister under their bed...
...According to testimonies collected by REMHI, however, members of the guerrilla entered Chacalt6 early in the morning of June 13 and killed men, women and children...
Vol. 31 • November 1997 • No. 3
