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NISGUA Articles and Interviews

Dispatch from Guatemala: The Civil Trial Begins
CU Cityview
By Jessica Pupovac
July 21-27, 2002

Last year, Jessica Pupovac left CU for Guatemala to work as a human rights observer. When she could get to a computer, every three months or so, she wrote us about her experiences. After a brief stint back home, she was invited back to Guatemala to observe – and accompany witnesses – during a politically-charged and dangerous trial. Here’s her latest message from Guatemala.

June 2, 2002
I came home to the States just in time for Christmas. I bounced around visiting family and friends, spent a couple weeks out on the East Coast doing a speaking tour, a week in D.C. marching around and not nearly enough time in Champaign and Chicago. In this way, I never quite readjusted to any one place and still felt slightly uncomfortable in the land of plenty when I received that fateful phone call in late April. The civil trial for the 1995 massacre in Xamán would be beginning in five days. I agreed to leave immediately to help accompany the witnesses to trial.

I had dinner with Dad later that evening.

“Let’s get another round of shots before we order, Pops.”

“What’s up with you today, Jes?” my father asked suspiciously. I took a deep breath and pondered how to put this, fidgeting with the salt shaker and lime. “Did you get the job in D.C.?” he asked hopefully. “Are we celebrating?”

“Well, maybe,” I answered, trying to muster up my most charming smile.

“Salud.”

My father gave me that sideways, apprehensive smirk of his. “You’re either pregnant or you’re going back to Guatemala.”

“Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not pregnant.”

“Just what I was afraid of.”

***
The community of Xamán is comprised predominantly of returned refugees, survivors of Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict. The majority of them fled the country at the height of la violencia in the early 1980s, many losing family members and loved ones either to massacres in their former communities or along the treacherous path to Mexico. In 1992, a group of representatives negotiated the terms of their return with the Guatemalan government.

One year after the community of Xamán was re-settled, a military patrol entered unannounced. “We have come to participate in your celebration,” some of the soldiers claimed, while their leader, Lt. Camile Antonio Lacan Chaclan, explained that they were on assignment. A group of skeptical community leaders told them that they would call MINUGUA (the UN Mission in Guatemala) to verify the presence of the soldiers and mediate the situation. More and more community members assembled around the soldiers, next to the elementary school.

The climate grew increasingly tense. The soldiers claim that an elderly woman grabbed one of their guns, an allegation ardently rejected by others. Regardless, what cannot be contested is that the Lieutenant at one point ordered his men to fire upon the unarmed crowd and the lives of everyone there were changed forever. Community members ran. Many began to fall, dead or wounded. That did not stop the shower of bullets and grenades.

On their way out of the community, the soldiers encountered a young, 8-year-old boy returning from fishing in a river two hours outside of town. Not knowing what had just happened in his community, and not having survived la violencia of the 80s, the boy did not know to run away. He was shot twice – once in the head and once in the chest.

Next to the school, no longer in session, people began to assess the damage. The accounts are horrific.

In the end, 11 people died and 27 suffered serious physical injuries.

The eight-month-long criminal trial ended in 1999 and was ultimately thrown out by the Guatemalan Supreme Court due to “irregularities.” (Some say one of them was that the judge and some witnesses were being paid by the military). Only 14 of the 25 soldiers originally charged are currently in jail awaiting retrial. Those 14 were called to testify in the civil trial, which began April 30. The rest are currently at-large.

The civil suit is not concerned with punishing the soldiers, but rather with securing reparations for the afectados (affected parties) and the community at large. There is little hope that this will actually happen.

April 28, 2002
No one received much notice of the commencement of the trial. Two-and-a-half days after being asked to return, there I was: feeling the effects of a lovely going-away party, half-asleep, with $400 in my bag, heading out of the country indefinitely. I felt like a fugitive rushing to O’Hare hours before the sun came up.

The next morning, I woke up in Guate and set off for Cobán to meet up with Efraín, a community member whose declaration the next morning would officially begin the trial. His mother was killed in the massacre and his father and brother were wounded. He almost lost his life and spent eight months in the hospital. He was accompanied by representatives from the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation (FRMT), a Guatemalan NGO (non-governmental organization) providing legal council.

As we sat in Cobán eating lunch, in Guatemala City, Guillermo Ovalle, the 28-year-old accountant for the FRMT, lay on the floor of a neighborhood restaurant, shot through the chest. The secretary in their office down the block hung up the phone after listening to an anonymous caller playing a funeral march. The Guatemalan papers immediately linked the crime to the commencement of the Xamán trial the following day.

Since February, there has been an increase in the number of threats, attacks and acts of intimidation directed toward people or organizations that work to bring past crimes to justice. Many say that things haven’t been this bad since years before the Peace Accords were signed in 1996. Five days after the murder of the FRMT accountant, a man who works for the National Coordination of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA) was kidnapped, beat up, tortured and interrogated, and then later released. Teams of forensic anthropologists who are working on exhumations of clandestine cemeteries created during the war have recently received a “death list” along with numerous threats. David Herrera, a journalist who has worked for NPR and has assisted in various investigations into human rights issues was attacked. Two women from the Archbishop’s office on Human Rights in Guatemala (ODHAG) were threatened a couple weeks ago with a pistol as they were leaving the office. The list goes on. In this climate of insecurity, the United States will be discussing removing its ban on military aid to Guatemala this month.

Back in the Saddle…
Despite all this, in Xamán, life goes on. The dry season is coming to a much welcome close, fields are being burnt down and then replanted for the new crop cycle and the arrival of old friends is still a call for bustin’ out the good stuff. I received a fantastic welcome upon arrival. I was showered with gifts of pineapples, coconuts, zapote, cushi, grenadas (all regional fruits) and even got to watch a duck get slaughtered, degutted and boiled in my honor. Yeah. Don Lucas, one of the elders of the community, ceremoniously offered me a sip of his homemade boj, a traditional Kek’chi fermented sugar cane beverage, of which I have always dreamt of being judged worthy to partake.

Trial Update: Bearing Witness
What has gone on in the trial is worthy of volumes. Where to begin….

One week ago all 37 of the wounded along with representatives of the fallen were called together to testify. The group was for the most part nervous, although they were resolved. As one community member said, “I saw these things and I survived them. It is now my duty to tell the story.” At 7:30 a.m. we began walking to the courtroom as a group, the women all in their finest woven traje, bearing the traditions of the Quiché, Ixil, Qanjobal, Mam and Kek’chi women before them. We walked in solemn silence. The various ethnic groups in Guatemala have historically been at war with one another. However, in recent history, racism, shared hardship and horror have given way to cooperation. As we approached the court building, they made a powerful sight – 37 afectados, the colorful diversity of their ethnicities contrasting the unity of their resolve, walking together to go tell the world, for the record, that they will never forget.

In the lobby we met the judge, her assistant and two UN observers, along with the Lieutenant and his lawyer. There was barely enough room for everyone to stand. The pregnant and elderly women were given what few seats there were while everyone else crammed into the remainder of the space. One of the wounded couldn’t stand for long and so he sat on the floor for about an hour until a court employee finally brought him a chair. After three hours of checking everyone’s identification papers, the proceedings began.

There were only three translators, meaning that two of the ethnic groups would have to declare in Spanish (declaring in a civil trial in Guatemala involves answering a series of questions written by the other side with a “yes,” “no” or “I don’t remember” response). Because it is their legal right to declare in their mother tongue, they refused to declare in Spanish, afraid of giving the wrong answer, at the advice of their lawyer. The defense lawyer stated that once the envelope with the questions was opened, it had to be presented to every person consecutively, lest the sanctity of the questions would be destroyed. Therefore, if certain members were going to request to testify at a later date, he would object to anyone testifying at all.

After much discussion about this (in four languages, mind you) the judge declared that there would be no declarations on this day and suspended the trial. Until when, we do not know.

That afternoon, morale was at a low. Some people had spent their savings to travel to Cobán for this. Not only were they spending their money, but missing three days of work during planting season.

The lawyer from the FRMT told them that if they wished to denounce their rights to pursue this case, they can individually sign desistimientos. “This will be a long journey,” she said, “and we can’t have this conversation after every minor defeat. If you are going to quit, quit now. But if you decide to quit today and one day we do encounter justice, you will not be able to join us there, either.” One of the community leaders pleaded with everyone to think it over, as they were all so very exhausted.

One woman began telling the group about her infirmity. She was shot and her husband killed and she had moved to another community after the massacre. She has no money and would not be able to come to Cobán again with the mere hope of testifying – and who knows how many times they will want us to do this? She wanted to sign away her rights. The group looked on as she put her thumbprint on the legal denouncement. “Perfect. This is exactly what they want,” one of the others whispered to me. No one else signed that day.

For more on these situations, Pupovac suggests visiting these sites: Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (www.nisgua.org), Rights Action (www.rightsaction.org) or Amnesty International (www.amnesty.org).

You can write Jessica Pupovac at:
3-488 3a calle
Zona 2
Ciudad de Guatemala
Guatemala, CA