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OCR for page 27
Appendix B
JUSTICE AGAINST ALL ODDS
Guatemalan Military Officers Finally on Trial
for Murder of Myrna Mack
Rachel Garst
September ~ Ith marks not only the date of a U.S. national
Sagely, but in the Central American country of Guatemala is the
anniversary of another notorious act of terronsm: the vicious stab-
bing murder of social scientist Myoma Mack by Guatemalan state
agents. For over a decade the victims family has pushed Guate-
mala's almost inoperative legal system to respond to that crime.
That struggle has now finally led to one of Latin America's most
important challenges to military impunity.
Guatemalan anthropologist Myma Mack was murdered on
the sidewalk In Wont of the offices of the Guatemalan Association
for the advancement ofthe Social Sciences AVANCSO) in fiche
27
OCR for page 28
28
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE MACK CASK
early evening of Sept 1 1, 1990. Twelve years later, on September
3, 2002, the high-level military intelligence officers indicted as the
suspected plotters of that murder finally went on teal. Retired
General Edgar Augusto Godoy Gaitan, Colonel Juan Valencia
Osono, and Colonel Juan Guillenno Oliva Carrera are at long last
facing the charge of planned assassination in an open, public, civil-
ian Guatemalar1 court. And, after years of impunity won through
endless legal delays and appeals, the presiding judge just ordered
them confined to prison on the grounds that now that they are fi-
nally being forced to face justice, they might well attempt to flee.
.
.
. -
Noel de Beteta Alverez, the low-level sergeant major who
actually wielded the knife against Myrna, was convicted and jailed
for that murder in 1993. These further indictments are thus not
against the actual killer, but more significantly, against the high-
leve] military intelligence officers who apparently masterminded
arid ordered her assassination as part of a larger state terror cam-
paigrl.
According to the official 1998 report of the U.N.-backed
Guatemalan Histoncal CIanfication Commission (Guatemala's
equivalent of a Truth Commission), an estunated 200,000 Guate-
malarls, nearly all civilians, were killed or "disappeared" dunng 36
years of civil war that ended in ~ 996; and some 97°/O of these cases
were attributed to government forces. ~ the rural areas, according
to the Commission, state repression against Indigenous populations
reached the level of "genocide."
In a county with this degree of state terror, there was noth-
~ng particularly unusual about one more murder of yet another so-
cial scientist. But what is special about the Mack case is the tenac-
ity and ethical vision we which her family, especially her sister
Helen Mack, has pursued basic justice, and successfi~ly mobilized
both Guatemalar~ d international support to that end.
OCR for page 29
APPENDIX B
At the time of Myrna's killing, no military personnel had
ever been tned for a human rights violation in Guatemala, and
Helen Mack was a 39-year-old Guatemalan business administrator
win no prior political involvement or legal experience. Yet when
Guatemala's civilian government neglected to adequately investi-
gate or prosecute her sister's murder Just as state authorities failed
to do in 200,000 other cases) the Mack family decided to pursue
justice at all costs.
Making use of a provision Guatemalan law that allows pri-
vate citizens to sign up in a prosecutorial role ("querellante a&e-
siva"), Helen has single-mindedly dedicated the last dozen years
of her life to investigating, prosecuting, and publicizing her sister's
case, and through that process has evolved into a seasoned, though
untitled, lawyer advocate. By 1992, Helen's efforts to bring this
case to justice won her Sweden's Right Livelihood Award, also
known as the "Alternative Nobel Peace Pnze." This award enabled
Helen to establish the Myrna Mack Foundation, which is dedicated
to research and advocacy on measures to help reform the justice
system in Guatemala.
Helen Mack's argument is simple yet unprecedented in a
country where the rule of law has been so long ignored: the Gov-
e~nent o f Guatemala must credibly investigate this murder and
prosecute those responsible, even if the evidence points to the up-
per echelons of the aimed forces. Only in this way could the cour~-
try's widely heralded "transition to democracy,' begin to have any
real meaning.
WHO WAS MYRNA MAC K?
29
Myrna Mack was a social anthropologist whose research on
refugees and internally displaced populations helped break the si-
lence within Guatemala concerning the effects of army cour~tenn-
surgency and scorched earth policies on Mayan communities in the
highlands.
OCR for page 30
~ -
30
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE MA CK CASE
Trained in England, Myrna resumed to Guatemala in the mid
1980s, just abler the height of the anny's war against guerrilla
groups and those groups suspected civilian supporters. Rural Gua-
temala was in shambles, with, according to a Catholic Church es-
timate, up to one niillion people forcibly displaced from their
homes. ~ Guatemala City, art entire generation of intellectuals
had been either killed or forced into exile. Despite the pervasive
fear that existed ~ Guatemala, Myrna was determined to continue
her anthropological work by documenting conditions in the coun-
tryside. In 1986, following national elections arid the inauguration
of a new civilian government, she arid a group of colleagues
fourteen a small research institute called the Association for the
Advar~cement ofthe Social Sciences (AVANCSO).
From 1987 to 1990, Myrna conducted research on the re~nte-
~ation of refugees arid internally displaced Soups, a delicate and
politically sensitive topic. As she traveled throughout the courltry-
side, Myrna documented the massacres that drove tens of thou-
sands into hiding in he mountains, government policies to capture
and control displaced populations, and the difficult and slow proc-
esses by which villagers were seeking to return to Weir fanner
lands (many of which meanwhile had been usurped by others). She
shared her research results with Church groups and non-
gove~nmental organizations in the capital, and she soon gained
recognition as one of the few people In Guatemala City who could
accurately describe conditions In the countryside. She worked
closely win the Ford Foundation, as well as Georgetown Univer-
sity, the University of Califoniia at Berkeley, and the University of
Texas.
Whereas the Guatemalan refugees in Mexico had begun to re-
ceive international attention alla United Nations assistance by the
mid 1980s, the situation of the internally displaced was entirely
different. Within the borders of Guatemala, extremely difficult pot
litical and security conditions made Myrna's held research both
~0
OCR for page 31
APPENDIX B
31
dangerous and unprecedented. Her field visits showed the devas-
tating social effects of the Guatemalan army's policy of resettling
internally displaced populations into "mode! villages." She wrote
of how the army viewed the displaced as art issue of national secu-
nty and of how assistance to these populations was being stnctly
controlled by military authonties, in violation of international hu-
mamtanan law.
In 1990, small groups of displaced villagers living In remote
mountainous and jungle areas outside of army control, called
"Communities of Population in Resistance (CPR's)" began orga-
n~zing to seek national and international hum~tanan assistance.
Many of these people, which numbered about 25,000 persons and
included large numbers of women, children and the elderly, had by
then been living hidden in the wilderness for 6-S years or more,
with little or no access to clothing or supplies. The army viewed
these persons as guerrilla collaborators and fiercely opposed their
efforts to live outside military control, responding both with bomb-
mg c ampaigns and the forced p olitical reeducation o f t hose t hey
were able to capture on their periodic sweeps. On September 7,
1990, the CPR's published a statement in the Guatemalan press
protesting army bombings and requesting that, as civilians, they be
able to exercise their Constitutional right to live, travel, and freely
resettle in peace.
.
A few days later, on September 1 1, 40-year-old Myoma Mack
was stabbed 27 times as she led her office In downtown Guatemala
City abler work. Marty interpreted the attack against Myma not just
as an army effort to discourage research and documentation of ru-
ral atrocities, but also as a message to religious and humanitarian
groups to dissuade them from aiding the internally displaced. In
reaction to the murder, scholars, religious leaders and human nghts
activists from all over the world sent public letters to the Gove~n-
ment of Guatemala, Including a protest statement signed by over
500 U.S. university professors.
OCR for page 32
32
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE MACK CASE
THE INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION OF THE
MYRNA MACK MURDER
Investigation o f the M yrna M ack murder w as difficult from
the beg~nrung. Initial obstacles included official statements with
offensive insinuations regarding Myrna's character, in order to
suggest a crime with non-political motivations; the loss of key fo-
rensic evidence from official custody; and the preparation of a
false police report. In 1991, after this fake report came to light, the
police homicide detective In charge of the case, Jose Sterna
Escobar, was shot and killed shortly after ratifying his ong~nal in-
vestigative report (which had implicated the military in this kill-
ing), arid another man was jailed for this supposed crime of pas-
sion. Yet another police investigator and numerous other
witnesses have been forced into temporary or permanent exile, and
other witnesses within Guatemala have been subject to repeated
threats and harassment.
.
.~.
Despite these obstacles and dangers, the persistence efforts of
Helen Mack and her supporters have slowly succeeded in pushing
the case forward through the Guatemalan prosecutorial system and
courts. ~ 1993, a low-level anny sergeant and intelligence opera-
tive, Noel de Jesus Beteta Alvarez, was finally convicted of the
Mack killing and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
But Helen Mack refused to rest there. At the time of the mur-
der, Beteta had been In the employ of an infamous military ~ntelli-
gence unit long operating within the offices of the Guatemalan
Presidency, known as the Presidential General Staff (Estado
Mayor Presidencial-EMP) and popularly called the "Archivo."
With the argument that B eteta was almost certainly acting under
orders, for the last Iiine years Helen Mack has pursued charges
against Beteta's superiors In the EMP as the apparent "intellectual
authors" of the crime.
The second phase of this case has also been fraught with in-
timidation against witnesses, prosecutors and judges, as well as
OCR for page 33
APPENDIX B
33
every mariner of legal roadblocks. Dozens of judges arid courts
have passed the case around like a hot potato, and lawyers for the
military defendants have filed appeal after appeal, first to try to get
the case held in military courts and then to simply delay it ever get-
ting to trial. Indeed, so blatant and numerous have been the obsta-
cles to justice that on August I, 2001, the Inter-Amencan Human
Rights Court in Costa Rica agreed to hear a case against the Gov-
ernment of Guatemala for its failure to ensure the timely applica-
tion of justice for the Mack family. That separate case, not against
the particular defendants but against the state itself, will take place
starting November 19, 2002, in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Meanwhile, the case has continued to wend forward in a
country where a real transition to democracy and justice still hangs
in the balance. The 1985-6 elections and, a decade later, the 1996
peace accords (signed between the Government of Guatemala and
that cour~try's tiny and largely ineffectual guernIla movement)
helped t o ~ argely e nd ~ ecades o f s tate-sponsored r epression. B y
now, the guemIlas have all been reincorporated into civilian life
and Church and sem~-official "Truth Commissions" have provided
a partial accounting of the worse of state repression. Yet those re-
sponsible for We estimated 200,000 civilian deaths and disappear-
ances are still unnamed, and at large. Furthennore, art repentant
military still wields enormous power and influence; arid the current
civilian government of Alfonso Portillo is marked by massive ~n-
stability and ongoing tensions within the government itself. Worse,
as the current UN Hum art Rights Mission to Guatemala winds
down and as the Mack case and other similar judicial cases finally
make it to trial, attacks against human rights advocates are once
again on the nse.
President Portillo, who cultivates an image as a populist and a
reformer, was brought to power by an extreme nght-w~ng party led
by the infamous retired General Efrain Rios Montt, who had been
dictator o f Guatemala in ~ 982-83 during the p enod o f the worst
repression and massacres. Under the current Portillo government,
where Rios Montt has been able to exercise substantial leadership
OCR for page 34
34
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE MACK CASE
as President of Congress, the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front
(FRG3 leadership has repeatedly shown a blatant disregard for the
rule of law. Current accusations against top FRG leaders include
the illegal alteration of legislation already voted on by Congress,
the use of government printing presses to print anonymous flyers
discrediting political opponents, and the illegal appropriation of
millions of dollars in state funds.
Over the last two years there has also been a marked increase
in threats and attacks on human rights workers. These have in-
cluded a rash o f o ffice break-ins (which u sually involve s tealing
the computers and data bases of the nonpro fits Gus targeted); the
apparently political murder of a U.S. nun in a staged car robbery;
arid abduction attempts against a visiting Amnesty international
representative and last October, against Matilde Gonzalez, an
AVANCSO employee. Wntten threats have also been received at
the Mack Foundation office, and in Curie 2002 AVANCSO director
Clara Arenas was included on a death threat naming I! human
rights activists and journalists and signed by a death squad. At the
end of August Helen's lawyer also received serious threats.
.
..0
This wave of persecution coincides with the advance of nu-
merous legal suits brought In recent years against both active-duty
arid retired Guatemalan government officials (including Rios
Montt himself). One of the most important cases was the trial of
ex-EMP members accused of the 1998 murder of Guatemalan
Bishop Juan Gerardi, head of the Catholic Church human rights
office. Just days after releasing a Church report on the history of
human rights violations In Guatemala, Bishop Gerardi was found
in his garage with his head beaten in with a piece of cement block.
June 2001, an unprecedented judicial ruling found two military
intelligence officers -one a retired colonel and the other a captain-
as well as a former member of the presidential guard who was also
an anny-tra~ned hit main, guilty of planning and executing Bishop
Gerardi's murder. (The Bishop's housemate, a Catholic priest, was
also convicted as an accomplice). The prosecutors, witnesses arid
judge in this case fled the country after the verdict.
6
OCR for page 35
APPENDIX B
35
Meanwhile, the infamous EMP--which in theory is to be a se-
cret service but in practice has been a military intelligence office at
the service of the presidency--has repeatedly been targeted for a
recomb that just never seems to happen. Each one of the last four
civilian presidents has vowed to disband it, but each seems to end
up relying on its services. President Portillo has proved to be no
exception. Upon taking office in January 2001, Portillo had an-
nounced his refonn plans to the Guatemalan and international
community, including the gradual dissolution of the EMP and its
replacement by a new civilian secret service (for protection) and a
Secretariat of Strategic Analysis-SAE (to generate analysis to
guide presidential decision-making). Shortly thereafter, the new
civilian head of the new SAE announced the discovery of art illegal
file of 650,000 Guatemalans (presumably authored by the Ems
found in the presidency's computers. To date, however, there has
been no credible investigation of this illegal political archive and
President P ortillo n ot o nly h as b acktracked o n t he d issolution o f
the EMP, but he has increased its budget and thereby the Presi-
dency's access to soft monies. The Mack case, if successful, could
provide one more pressure point to help finally force the dissolu-
tion of this militarized presidential intelligence unit.
The Histoncal CIanfication Commission called the Myrna
Mack case -a paradigm of justice failure in Guatemala, and cited it
as evidence of the existence of a parallel, shadowy intelligence ap-
paratus that blocks effective investigation and prosecution of po-
litical cnmes. The Guatemalan military and police have yet to be
brought to account for their murders of thousands upon thousands
of Guatemalan citizens, and individuals clearly implicated in these
crimes continue to hold high legislative and executive office. For-
mally, there is rule of law, but In practice, there has been near total
impunity for the crimes of the past. ~ addition, there are clear and
ongoing attempts to subvert the effective application of justice
through the intimidation of witnesses, prosecutors, and judges.
OCR for page 36
36
HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE MA CK CASE
Nevertheless, the Mack case remains as proof that signifi-
cant progress can be made and democratic spaces opened up, when
citizens refused to be intimidated and demand that justice be done.
Sept 6, 2002
.
6
Representative terms from entire chapter:
myrna mack
