The Guatemala Genocide Ruling, Five Years
Later
Published: May 10, 2018
Briefing Book #627
Edited
by Kate Doyle
For more information, contact:
202-994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
U.S. policy and the dictator, General Efraín Ríos Montt – “a
man of great personal integrity and commitment”
Washington
D.C., May 10, 2018—Five
years ago today, one of the most celebrated human rights trials in Latin
America came to a stunning conclusion when Guatemalan dictator, retired Army
general, and self-proclaimed “president” Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted for
genocide and crimes against humanity by a panel of three Guatemalan judges.
To commemorate that milestone in
Guatemalan history, the National Security Archive is posting the groundbreaking
ruling that was issued on May 10, 2013, by the court that found Ríos Montt
guilty. The Archive is also making a collection of 15 declassified documents
available that chronicle Washington’s unabashed support for the dictator at the
height of his powers, and the US Embassy’s determination to ignore the violence
unleashed by his Army against civilians.
The verdict was unprecedented in
Guatemala and around the world; never before had a former head of state been
convicted by his own country’s justice system for the crime of genocide. Ríos
Montt, 86 years old at the time of the 2013 trial, was sentenced to 80 years in
prison. Many of the hundreds of spectators present in the courtroom stood and
clapped, wept, and cheered as the verdict was read.
But the court’s decision was felt
most powerfully by survivors of the Guatemalan Army’s scorched earth campaigns,
which in the early 1980s sought to destroy them, their villages, and their
culture in the Maya Ixil region of the country’s northwest. Ninety-seven men
and women testified before the tribunal in the course of the almost two-month
proceeding. They described repeated military sweeps through the Ixil
communities that left a trail of death and mayhem in their wake. According to
the testimonies, the soldiers massacred entire communities, raped and tortured
their victims, looted and destroyed homes, hunted down fleeing refugees with
helicopters, and occupied and destroyed sacred Mayan sites. Those captured were
corralled into militarized camps where they were forced to stay, sometimes for
years.
The witnesses’ searing words are
preserved in the genocide tribunal’s ruling, a 718-page document that not only
pronounces the sentence on Ríos Montt (see page 682 and ff.), but summarizes
the statements of all 97 survivors, reports from dozens of expert witnesses,
Guatemala military and other government documents, results from exhumations,
truth commission reports, and human rights publications.
This is the story of just one
of the 97 survivors of Ríos Montt’s Army attacks on the Ixil region of El
Quiché in 1982. She was among a group of courageous women who appeared before
the genocide tribunal to describe not only the destruction of their families,
their homes, their livelihoods, but their sexual assault by soldiers. See the
court’s ruling, pp. 516-17.
69.The witness ANA PACHECO RAMÍREZ
declared that: In the year 1982 she lived in the Juil settlement, Chajul. In
that settlement, she lived with her husband on land owned by her
parents-in-law. One night at 8 o’ clock the soldiers came to take her husband
away. At nine they returned and took her to a field that was about a mile from
the house. The soldiers raped her after they brought her to the field. They
shamed her, they left her practically naked and it was other people who gave
her some clothes to wear. Her husband was Ignacio Pacheco. They had children.
One child was 30 days old. After [the rape] she decided to go back to her house
but everything had been burned. Her child died in the fire when they burned her
house because he was just a baby. She wept to see everything burned. She says
her testimony comes from the grief caused by that time. What she seeks is
justice. To be giving her declaration 30 years later is sad, her husband never
appeared again. She says that she has experienced great sorrow and suffered
enough. Her declaration is granted
evidentiary value for the following reasons: a). She
recounts how the soldiers arrived and took her husband away. b). She describes
how the soldiers raped her. c). She explains that her baby, just thirty days
old, was burned to death. d). The sorrow can still be observed in the face of
the victim, remembering what happened.
In
light of the 2013 ruling and the extraordinary personal stories of suffering
and survival recounted by Ixil witnesses during the trial, it is disturbing to
recall that at the time of the Ríos Montt regime (March 23, 1982 – August 8,
1983), the United States refused to acknowledge the role of the Guatemalan Army
in the widespread killing of civilians. Instead, the administration – and
President Reagan himself – championed the Guatemalan leader and sought to
lift the sanctions imposed by Congress barring US military assistance to
Guatemala because of the atrocities committed by the Army.
At the time of the 1982 coup that brought Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt
to power, the Reagan administration was fighting a covert war against the Nicaraguan
Sandinista regime and in need of allies in Central America who would support
the anti-Sandinista contras. The
overthrow of the reviled President Romeo Lucas García provided a welcome
opening for Washington to reestablish ties with Guatemala and bolster US
strategic goals in the region. Reagan officials were eager to embrace the
country’s new leader; as a memo to President Reagan from his Secretary of
State, George Shultz, said before Reagan and Ríos met for the first time, “The
coup which brought Ríos Montt to power on March 23 presents us with an
opportunity to break the long freeze in our relations with Guatemala and to
help prevent an extremist takeover.” (Document 11)
Breaking the freeze proved to be
more difficult than expected. Although U.S. officials repeatedly asserted to
the press, in congressional hearings, and in their own secret internal
communications that Ríos Montt had made tremendous strides in “human rights
reforms,” international human rights groups were just as insistent about the
Guatemalan military’s role in repeated brutal massacres in the country’s rural
and predominantly Mayan regions.
Despite the public outcry, US
diplomatic, military and intelligence officers in Guatemala and Washington
perceived Ríos Montt and reported on his government in ways that served US
interests. The declassified documents from 1982 described Ríos Montt as a
leader who brought the Army under control, quelled the growing insurgent
threat, and curbed human rights violations. If Lucas García was routinely
characterized by US officials as a butcher, Ríos Montt was a democratic
reformist, using legal tactics to fight a brutal insurgency.[1]
As the CIA analyzed, “Reporting from [multiple sources] indicates that human
rights violations by the Guatemalan Government – widespread and chronic under
former President Lucas – have decreased substantially to the point where discriminate violence (that is, targeting
guerrillas) has replaced indiscriminate slaughter since Ríos Montt came to
power.” (Document 15
The bias in reporting is clearest
in US accounts of the massacres. Although evidence of atrocities committed by
the Army reached the United States from human rights groups, humanitarian and
refugee organizations, the Church, US Congress, foreign and national media,
survivors and eyewitness accounts – and was noted in US reports – the US
Embassy in Guatemala and officials in Washington were deeply skeptical. In some
cases, US Ambassador Frederic Chapin and his political officers, officials of
the CIA station in Guatemala and defense attachés posted in country called the
alleged massacres inventions of disinformation and guerrilla propaganda. In
almost all other cases, with some exceptions, United States officials blamed
the guerrilla forces as the perpetrators of the mass killings.
This trend in US reporting bias
from that period was directly contradicted by the conclusions of the exhaustive
study of the Commission for Historical Clarification (Comisión
para el Esclarecimiento Histórico—CEH), published in February 1999.
The CEH found that the Guatemalan State, through operations carried out by the
Army and paramilitary forces, was responsible for 93% of the human rights
violations registered by CEH investigators; the guerrillas were responsible for
3% of the violations.[2] The
CEH concluded that the Armed Forces committed “acts of genocide” in four
regions of the country, targeting distinct ethnic groups, between 1980-83; for
many of the genocidal acts documented by the commission, the periods of
greatest intensity occurred during the Ríos Montt government.[3]
An analysis of the sources used by
the United States to obtain the majority of its information on the massacres
demonstrates that the most common were the Army, the Guatemalan press,
Presidential Public Relations Secretary Francisco Bianchi, Sub-secretary Rafael
Escobar Arguello, and civilians speaking in the presence of Guatemalan State
officials (Document 14). Documents describing
massacres were rarely drawn from firsthand accounts by US officers who
physically went to the sites and conducted inspections personally.[4]
In late August, US Ambassador
Frederic Chapin wrote, “The guerrillas have waged a sustained and
indiscriminate campaign of terror, arson, intimidation, kidnapping, mayhem,
bombing, disinformation and murder.” (Document 10) The State Department
accepted the Embassy claims at first. An analysis produced in the same month
observed that, “Human rights violations by Guatemalan security forces have
decreased substantially over the past four months…During the same period,
killings of civilians by the insurgent forces have reached unprecedented
levels. The improvement in the human rights situation can be credited to the
efforts of President Efraín Ríos Montt…” Although State Department analysts
acknowledged that Army gains against insurgents were marred by “widespread
allegations of atrocities by the troops…the Embassy does not as yet believe
that there is sufficient evidence to link government troops to any of the
reported massacres.” (Document 6)
By the end of 1982, however, the
State Department was beginning to have doubts about the quality of the
intelligence information and analysis reaching Washington from Guatemala. On
November 23, in a highly unusual critique of its own Embassy, the State
Department’s Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs questioned the
credibility of US reporting on the human rights crisis in Guatemala. The
secret, “eyes only” (highly classified) memorandum was prompted by intelligence
obtained from the US Embassy regarding a massacre of civilians and other violations
committed in and around Choatalum, Chimaltenango in late 1982. Having sent
several cables discounting the veracity of the reports, Embassy officials
suddenly reversed themselves after speaking with several eyewitnesses and an
unnamed trusted source who confirmed that the Army
had been responsible for the violence.
The Embassy’s contradictory
accounts prompted the Bureau of Human Rights to review “most of the important
cable traffic from Guatemala since March 23.” The Bureau’s analysis focused, in
particular, on the sources of Embassy reporting and concluded that “Almost all
of the Embassy early responses to charges of Army massacres were based
primarily on asking the Army whether or not they were true.” Judging from the
information reaching Washington, the State Department observed, “Our Embassy
does not really know who is responsible for the killings in rural Guatemala.”
Despite mounting evidence of the military’s involvement in violence, the
memorandum concluded, the Embassy “has not reported in any cable a single
instance that it believes was done by the Army.” (Document 12
By the end of the Ríos Montt
regime, the Embassy was producing more critical assessments of the Army’s role
in human rights violations under Ríos Montt’s leadership, in part under
pressure from the State Department internally, and in part because of evidence
the Embassy obtained of the military’s role in the assassination of a
Guatemalan employed by the US Agency for International Development (AID).
On August 8, 1983, General
Oscar Mejía Víctores took power in a military coup. By that time the CIA was
conceding in a wide-ranging assessment of the Ríos Montt regime that “The Army
used extreme violence against guerrilla-controlled villages during last year’s
counterinsurgency offensive.” (Document 15)
* * *
Just ten days after Ríos Montt’s
conviction for genocide in 2013, the Guatemala Constitutional Court – under
tremendous pressure from the country’s political right, retired military
officers, and private sector – vacated the ruling for technical (not
constitutional) reasons and ordered a new trial. Following repeated delays and
appeals filed by Ríos Montt’s lawyers, the case was reopened in 2017. This time
the trial would take place behind closed doors and without the presence of the
press or public. Ríos Montt was said to be ill, even demented; he was wheeled
to the proceedings on a stretcher from his detention under house arrest. On
April 1st of this year, Efraín Ríos Montt died at 91 years of age, and the
second genocide trial abruptly came to an end.
Violence and Human Rights
Report: May 1982
1982-07-08
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City
The US embassy’s
monthly “Violence and Human Rights Report” for May 1982 is a representation of
the dual policy of the United States in Guatemala and Latin America at the
time. On the one hand, President Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy required
embassies to produce regular reporting on a country’s human rights situation,
resulting in what today is a valuable trove of data and narrative descriptions
of human rights abuses. On the other, US policy supported anti-communist
dictators, so the reporting was so skewed to fit US ideological objectives.
“The savage massacre of large numbers of campesinos in specific attacks reflects
a clear increase in attacks against unarmed Indians,” wrote the embassy. “…We
did not attribute any of these killings to the GOG [Government of Guatemala].”
Short-Term Prospects for Central America (Cover letter)
1982-07-12
Source: Central Intelligence Agency
According to the
CIA’s Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE), the principal threats
emanating from Guatemala in mid-1982 are the terrorist acts of the Guatemalan
insurgents and Ríos Montt’s political instability.
According to the Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala (CEH),
between the March 23 coup that ousted Lucas García and the end of May 1982 –
just before this SNIE was finished – the Guatemalan Army had carried out a
minimum of 64 massacres against indigenous communities of men, women, children,
and elders in which more than 1,500 unarmed civilians were slaughtered –
attacks that also involved rape, torture, burning alive, mutilation,
beheadings, and forced disappearances. The US intelligence assessment of
threats to US interests makes no reference to the genocide underway in
Guatemala at the time of the SNIE’s publication.
Violence and Human Rights Report–June 1982
1982-07-20
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City
June saw a
“Steady increase in Indian deaths over the last few months.” The massacres are
ascribed exclusively to guerrillas.
Visit to Guatemala of Congressman Charles Wilson
1982-07-27
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City
Congressman Charles Wilson visits
Guatemala July 23-26 with two private businessmen at the government’s
invitation. They fly in helicopters to El Quiché and land in Sta. Cruz del
Quiché and Joyabaj. “He and his companions were favorably impressed by the
absence of signs of violence in Guatemala City and Antigua, as well as by
conversations with troop commanders in El Quiché, in the primary conflict
zone.” Later, the group learns about investment opportunities in Guatemala. “We
believe Rep. Wilson left Guatemala strengthened in his conviction that the
human rights situation has improved and that the U.S. should now move to
improve relations,” writes the embassy. In other words, to lift ban on
helicopter spare parts, and allow military training and assistance to the
Guatemalan Army.
According to the truth commission report, there were three massacres in Joyabaj
in April 1982 in which over 150 people were killed, and a massacre of 75 people
in Santa Cruz de El Quiché the same month. When Wilson was visiting, the
counterinsurgency sweep called “Operation
Sofía” was underway, targeting civilian settlements for
violence and destruction.
Additional Information on Operations Plan ‘Victoria 82’
1982-07-30
Source: Defense Intelligence Agency
In the first week
of July, shortly after the state of siege began, President Ríos Montt held a
meeting with all senior unit commanders to motivate them to make Plan Victoria
a success. Describing his speech, a US defense attaché reported that the new
chief of state intended “to permit each commander as much freedom as possible”
in fighting the guerrillas. “Rios said he was leaving the details up to them,
and he expected results. … He wanted each commander to take special care that
innocent civilians would not be killed; however, if such unfortunate acts did
take place, he did not want to read about them in the newspapers.”
Guatemala-Reports of Atrocities Mark Army Gains
1982-08-00
Source: Department of State
The US embassy
reports that the government has improved its control in the Mayan highlands
through a strategic hamlet program, relocating locals into military-run
villages. “A scorched earth policy is then applied in the surrounding area.
These tactics have been accompanied by widespread allegations that government
troops are regularly guilty of massacres, rape, and mayhem.” But the embassy
does not have “sufficient evidence to link government troops with any of the
reported massacres.”
Allegations of Government Violence
1982-08-03
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City
An example of the
biased reporting coming out of the US Embassy in Guatemala during the Ríos
Montt regime. The State Department and Congress are hearing from international
human rights organizations about military atrocities against civilians, but the
Embassy’s consistent response is that massacres were carried out either by “the
left” or “unknowns.”
1982-08-13
Source: Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and
Research
The State
Department’s intelligence division echoes the reporting it receives from its
Embassy in Guatemala: “Killings of civilians by the insurgent forces have
reached unprecedented levels.”
Blohm-Graham Telcon of August 18
1982-08-20
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City
The US Embassy
reacts to a report from Amnesty International blaming the military for the
majority of atrocities committed since the March 23 coup. The report, submitted
as testimony to a congressional subcommittee on August 5, accuses the army of
killing hundreds of noncombatant civilians. Evidently Amnesty accepts the
claims of campesino activists. The US political officer writes, without irony:
“How these peasants could have gathered information about these incidents –
scattered all over Guatemala – is unexplained. Many of the incidents are
unknown to the Embassy and to Embassy sources – the press, the Army, and the
police.”
Attribution of Massacres–A Summation
1982-08-30
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala
In what the US
Embassy calls a “direct refutation… of Amnesty International’s accounts,” this
document challenges the human rights group’s descriptions of six different
attacks by what Amnesty believes are Guatemalan soldiers against communities of
unarmed civilians. In each case, according to the Embassy, guerrilla forces
were the real culprits. Ambassador Chapin concludes by asserting that “the
guerrillas have waged a campaign of sustained and indiscriminate terror” in the
Guatemalan highlands.
Your Meeting with Guatemala President Rios Montt on December 4
1982-11-20
Source: Department of State
In preparation
for President Reagan’s meeting with Ríos Montt in Honduras, Secretary of State
George Shultz calls the Guatemalan dictator an “avowed anti-communist” and an
ally of the United States. Among the talking points Shultz supplies Reagan is
reassurance that the administration will push for renewed US aid to the
Guatemalan armed forces. “We have been considering how we can sell you military
equipment, but Congressional opposition is strong among those who fail to
appreciate the effort you are making to improve human rights situation.”
Credibility of Embassy Guatemala Human Rights Reporting
1982-11-23
Source: Department of State
Contradictions in
reporting on human rights by the US Embassy in Guatemala and persistent
criticism from congressional staff and human rights groups in the United States
prompt the State Department to conduct a secret analysis of cable traffic from
Guatemala since the Ríos Montt coup on March 23. The study reveals a remarkable
failure on the part of the Embassy to identify a single massacre as having been
perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army.
Draft Memorandum of Conversation-Bilateral
1982-12-06
Source: US Embassy Guatemala
President Ronald
Reagan and Guatemala’s chief of state Efraín Ríos Montt meet in San Pedro Sula,
Honduras. Also present are Secretary of State George Shultz and Ríos adviser
Francisco Bianchi. Reagan tells Ríos Montt that the United States wants to help
Guatemala. Ríos does most of the talking, requesting weapons and ammunition,
construction materials, and US support in Guatemala’s negotiations to obtain
international loans. He avoids committing to a date for holding elections for a
new constituent assembly, despite being pressed to do so by Shultz.
Current Situation in San Juan Ixcán and Xalbal, El Quiché
1983-04-20
Source: U.S. Embassy in Guatemala
US Embassy
officers visit various sites in the department of El Quiché in an attempt to
see firsthand the effects of the conflict on Mayan communities in the area.
Villagers are prompted by the Army to recount their terrifying experiences of
attacks on their settlements, the looting and sacking, their flight into the
inhospitable mountains, the starvation of their families as they hid for days
without food. The violence is blamed on the guerrillas. “The above accounts
were given in between sobs, tears and bitter denunciations of the guerrilla
behavior,” wrote Ambassador Frederic Chapin. “The Embassy was fortunate to be
able to debrief these villagers. Perhaps too fortunate…,” he added, in
recognition that the interviews may have been staged by the Army.
Guatemala-Prospects for Political Moderation
1983-08-00
Source: Central Intelligence Agency
Shortly before
Ríos Montt is deposed in a military coup, the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate
assesses the gains made by the Guatemalan regime and the challenges that lie
ahead. Although the agency continues to describe the dictator as a moderating
force, a reformist, and an improvement over his predecessor on human rights,
the analysis of Ríos Montt’s time in office is complex and frankly acknowledges
the Army’s violent tactics in their war on the guerrillas.
NOTES
[1] After
meeting Ríos Montt at a conference of regional heads of state in Honduras in
late 1982, President Ronald Reagan said famously the Guatemalan leader was
“totally dedicated to democracy,” calling him “a man of great personal
integrity and commitment.” See press
release of December 4, 1982, preserved by The American Presidency
Project.
[2] UN Historical
Clarification Commission. Memory of Silence. Chapter II, para. 1752-55
[3] In
relation to the Ixil region of El Quiché alone, the CEH registered 32 massacres
between March 1980 and November 1982, with 96 percent of victims of Maya Ixil
origin. (Chapter II, para. 3274)
[4] See
Document 12, in which a State Department analysis of US reporting on the
massacres observed, “We have not done very many such inspections. I was
directly asked by [a US government colleague]… exactly how many on-site
inspections Embassy Guatemala has carried out. I don’t know the answer, but
suspect it might be embarrassing.”
