Guatemala Human Rights and the Myrna Mack Case (2003) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix B: Justice Against All Odds, Rachel Garst
Appendix B: Justice Against All Odds, Rachel Garst
Pages 27-36
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From page 27... ...
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
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From page 28... ...
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, civilian 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 finally being forced to face justice, they might well attempt to flee.
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From page 29... ...
WHO WAS MYRNA MAC K? 29 Myrna Mack was a social anthropologist whose research on refugees and internally displaced populations helped break the silence within Guatemala concerning the effects of army cour~tennsurgency and scorched earth policies on Mayan communities in the highlands.
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From page 30... ...
As she traveled throughout the courltryside, Myrna documented the massacres that drove tens of thousands into hiding in he mountains, government policies to capture and control displaced populations, and the difficult and slow processes by which villagers were seeking to return to Weir fanner lands (many of which meanwhile had been usurped by others)
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From page 31... ...
Marty interpreted the attack against Myma not just as an army effort to discourage research and documentation of rural 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~nment of Guatemala, Including a protest statement signed by over 500 U.S.
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From page 32... ...
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 investigative report (which had implicated the military in this killing) , arid another man was jailed for this supposed crime of passion.
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From page 33... ...
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.
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From page 34... ...
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 captainas 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.
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From page 35... ...
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 apparatus that blocks effective investigation and prosecution of political 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.
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From page 36... ...
36 HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE MA CK CASE Nevertheless, the Mack case remains as proof that significant progress can be made and democratic spaces opened up, when citizens refused to be intimidated and demand that justice be done.
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