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 rectangular
pit. In hushed tones she identifies
the remains of her husband’s
body, a skeleton lying face down
in the ground. He is still wearing
the green sweater and dark
trousers he wore the day he was
killed 15 years ago. Julian
Santiago-a member of Guate-
mala’s paramilitary civil patrols
known by their Spanish acronym
PACs-was just one of an esti-
mated 180 Ixil Mayans killed by
the guerrillas in Chacalt6, a small
isolated village high in the hills
of Guatemala’s Quich6 province.
From the early 1980s onwards
the armed PACs formed an inte-
gral part of the military’s coun-
terinsurgency strategy. At one
point, as many as a million men
and boys-the majority indige-
nous-served as the eyes and
ears of the army in rural commu-
nities.
Today, a team of anthropolo-
gists working for the Recovery of
the Historical Memory (REMHI)
project directed by the Arch-
diocese’s Human Rights Office
are exhuming seven graves in
Chacalte. Although the process
of exhuming clandestine graves
in Guatemala began in the early
1990s, this one has gained notori-
ety for being the first exhumation
of victims of the guerrillas.
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. “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….
Therefore we dealt with the mat-
ter in the framework of battle.”
According to testimonies col-
lected by REMHI, however,
members of the guerrilla entered
Chacalt6 early in the morning of
June 13 and killed men, women
and children. Roberto SAnchez,
who was nine years old at the
time, says he hid with his mother
and little sister under their bed.
Sinchez later escaped, but his
mother and sister both died.
Following the killings, the army
-suspecting the continued pres-
ence of rebel informers-report-
edly returned to the community,
killed survivors and burnt
Chacalte to the ground.
The exhumation in Chacalt6,
because guerrilla forces are
implicated, brings a new dimen-
sion to the historical picture. On
one hand, it runs the risk of
equating levels of violence com-
mitted on both sides. On the
other, it is a crucial part of com-
ing to grips with the past, as
Frank La Rue, director of The
Center for Human Rights Legal
Action (CALDH), points out.
“l…believe that the Guatemalan
military is responsible for 95% of
the atrocities,” he says, “but…the
five percent under the responsi-
bility of the URNG should also
be investigated.”
The exhumation of Chacalt6 is
yet another building block within
REMHI’s efforts to reconstitute
the historical memory of Guate-
mala which has, until now,
remained suppressed as a result
of the vicious counter-insurgency
strategies of successive military
governments. 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.”
Similar efforts are also under-
way by other organizations,
including the official Truth
Commission set up as part of the
1996 Peace Accords. These
attempts to recognize and give
voice to the country’s violent his-
tory 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. Guate-
malans such as La Rue hope that
by “reliving” the violence, the
country will give birth to a
stronger society no longer based
on silence. “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. Otherwise
they have no new future.”
— Ann Birch
Clodomiro Almeyda,
1923-1997
SANTIAGO. SEPTEMBER 1, 1997
C lodomiro Almeyda, a promi-
nent Chilean socialist, died
on August 25, at the age of 74. As
a member of the Socialist Party
(PS) since 1940, he served as a
party official, member of Con-
gress, ambassador, and cabinet
minister. Almeyda first held
national office as Minister of
Labor and Minister of Mining
during the Ibafiez Administration
(1952-1958). 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. The move provoked a
split, and Socialist leader
Salvador Allende ran his own
campaign with support from a
Socialist minority and the Com-
munist Party (PC).
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 rela-
tions with Latin American and
Western European countries, and
attempted to minimize conflict
with the United States. Briefly
leaving the cabinet in early 1973,
Almeyda returned as Minister of
Defense around mid-year, soon
after an attempted coup.
After the military coup of
September 1973, Almeyda and
other prominent left politicians
were imprisoned on the notorious
Dawson Island, in Chile’s Ant-
arctic South. Expelled from Chile
in 1975, Almeyda was exiled in
Romania, then Mexico, and
finally East Germany. In exile, he
served as Executive Secretary of
the Popular Unity and, later, as
Secretary General of the PS.
During this period, sharp divi-
sions emerged among the
Socialists in exile. Almeyda
championed a Marxist-Leninist
perspective and supported armed
strategies to overthrow the mili-
tary dictatorship.
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. The contro-
versy resulted in Almeyda’s resig-
nation.
Besides his prominent career in
politics and government, Almeyda
was a journalist, book editor, author and academic. He was
Dean of Sociology at the Uni-
versity of Chile when he died. His
August 26 funeral was attended
by former President Patricio
Aylwin and current President
Eduardo Frei.
-Alejandro Reuss
Indigenous/Peasant
Protests Disrupt Ecuador
QuITO, OCTOBER 14, 1997
n September 28, an array of
indigenous and peasant orga-
nizations began a series of nation-
wide mobilizations that converged
on October 12 in Quito for the
convening of a popular National
Constituent Assembly. These
recent mobilizations come only
months after the massive nation-
wide demonstrations in February
that forced the impeachment of
former President Abdala Bucaram
and demanded fundamental
changes in the workings of the
Ecuadorian state. Central to the
February “Popular Mandate” was
the call for a National Constituent
Assembly to draft a new
Constitution. In late July, how-
ever, interim President Fabidn
Alarc6n decreed that the Assem-
bly must be postponed for another
year.
In August, thousands of Ecua-
dorians protested the govern-
ment’s postponement of the
Assembly, claiming the deferral
sought to weaken popular
demands for participation in the
creation of a “new democracy.”
Through unprecedented support
from a wide spectrum of civil
society, the February “Mandate”
affirmed citizens’ rights to con-
demn corrupt and discriminatory
rule. The August protest further
emphasized that right and de-
nounced the government’s con-
tempt for the Mandate.
The government’s inaction led
to a national strike which virtu-
ally paralyzed the country. On
August 11, thousands of indige-
nous and campesino women and
men dug ditches and hauled trees
across Ecuador’s major roads.
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. ”
transport for 48 hours and sent a
forceful message to President
Alarc6n about the power of popular
conviction. The following day, 500
demonstrators in Quito staged a
wake and funeral procession for the
February, 1997 Mandate. Solemnly
clothed men bearing a massive cas-
ket led the procession through city
streets. Ending their procession
outside the National Congress, pro-
testers set the casket ablaze.
August’s roadblocks interrupted
commerce and travel throughout
the country. The military’s presence
was strong, leading to sporadic
confrontations. In Azuay Province, an angry trucker ran a blockade
injuring three protesters. On the
principal highway north of Quito, soldiers intimidated protesters and
repeatedly shot tear gas into the
crowds. Conservative politicians
characterized the August mobiliza-
tion as “violent” and “destructive.”
Popular leaders insisted, however,
that the paro was the only means at
their disposal for confronting “an
antidemocratic, exclusionary, and
authoritarian” regime. Like the
February mobilizations, the pro-
tests also challenged neoliberal
economic reforms, demanded con-
gressional ratification of an ILO
labor-protection convention and
denounced government plans to
privatize the peasant social security
agency and many state enterprises.
As the first march to the capital
got underway in Puyo-a city 325
miles away from Quito-on Sep-
tember 28, local and national
indigenous and peasant leaders
repeated their call for a truly partic-
ipatory Consituent Assembly. As
the president of the Confederation
of Indigenous Nationalities of
Ecuador (CONAIE) noted, no
political regime could dismiss the
participation of peasant and indige-
nous organizations in the genera-
tion of a genuine democratic
debate.
-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.
Bursts of gunfire went on for about
four hours. Then a bullhorn
mounted on a car told residents to
assemble in the town square. They
came out of their homes to find over
200 combatants of the Revolu-
tionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) in the plaza. The rebels,
who had just executed two men
they accused of being army infor-
mants, delivered a short message:
Gachald will not participate in the
upcoming municipal elections.
The morning after its midnight
action in Gachali, every candidate
for mayor and town council with-
drew, and several of them left town.
Gachali is one scores of towns in
Colombia which sat out of the
municipal elections on October 26.
The FARC, which in the past had
declared election day cease-fires in
order to support sympathetic candi-
dates, changed its strategy after the
leftist Patriotic Union party-which
was loosely affiliated with the guer-
rillas-dissolved itself following the
assasination of 3,000 of its members
by paramilitary squads. 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.
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. Rebel tactics include mid-
night meetings like the one in
Gachali as well as kidnapping can-
didates. Threats from guerrilla and
paramilitary groups affected nearly
10% of the municipalities in Colom-
bia, in which over 26,000 candidates
had registered for the October 26
elections.
The practice of electing local gov-
ernments has become very popular
since it was introduced in 1988.
Eduardo Pizarro, a political scientist
at the Universidad Nacional notes
that voter turnout is much higher in
local elections than in national ones.
The guerrillas have lost some sup-
port in rural areas where residents
see their governments working, he
says. “It’s indisputable that the pop-
ularity of elected mayors has taken
support from the guerrillas,” agrees
Gilberto Toro, director of the
Colombian Federation of Muni-
cipalities. “The local community
now sees that electing someone has
an immediate result. The communi-
ties have really taken to the process,
and it’s returned some credibility to
state institutions.”
The government has not yet pro-
posed 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 militar-
ily. “It will break the link between
the people and their central govern-
ment. And it’s going to imply that
the army has to occupy areas where
the guerrillas are strong. The
guerilla strategy is going to be effec-
tive,” says Pizarro. With a military
presence, the conflict will be inten-
sified in areas previously untouched
by the war.
SOURCES:
Ann Birch is researcher with CERIGUA, an NGO in Guatemala City.
Alejandro Reuss is a graduate student in Latin American Studies at Tufts University.
Suzana Sawyer teaches anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
David Aquila-Lawrence is a freelance journalist based in Colombia.
InterPress Service is an international news service based in Italy. Its dispatches can be read on-line in the Peacenet confer- ences: ips.espafol and ips.english.