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Brigadier General José Efraín Ríos Montt, flanked by General Horacio Egberto Maldonado Schaad and Colonel Francisco Luis Gordillo Martínez, at their first post-coup press conference on March 23, 1982, National Palace, Guatemala City. ©Jean-Marie Simon |
Washington, DC, March 23, 2012 -- Today marks the 30th anniversary of the coup that propelled General Efraín Ríos Montt to power and launched the most violent period of the 36-year internal armed conflict in Guatemala. The National Security Archive and the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) mark the coup anniversary with the publication today of NACLA Report on the Americas, “Central America: Legacies of War,” containing feature article by National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle on “Justice in Guatemala.”
The entire NACLA Report on the Americas is available, here.
January 26 marked a watershed in Guatemalan history. That evening, after more than eight hours of arguments from prosecutors and defense lawyers, retired army general Efraín Ríos Montt—the military leader who presided over the most intense and bloody period of state repression in the country’s modern history—was formally charged by Judge Carol Patricia Flores with genocide and crimes against humanity. Ríos Montt now faces the real possibility of a criminal trial. Inside the courtroom on the 15th floor of the Tribunal Tower in Guatemala City, the verdict was met with the mechanical gasp of a dozen camera shutters clicking simultaneously. Downstairs, in the plaza outside the building, hundreds of massacre survivors and families of victims were watching the proceedings on open-air screens. They cheered, applauded, and wept at the astonishing news.
The criminal acts at the heart of the indictment took place 30 years ago, in 1982–83, when Ríos Montt’s armed forces unleashed a savage counterinsurgency campaign that massacred thousands of unarmed Mayan civilians in the country’s northwestern department of Quiché. Investigations into his regime’s scorched-earth operations prompted the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH)—Guatemala’s truth commission—to declare in 1999 that “acts of genocide” had taken place in the Quiché’s Ixil region and other areas during the 36-year internal conflict. The finding opened the door to the possible prosecution of senior army officers and their commander in chief. But for years, Ríos Montt avoided facing charges, thanks to judicial inaction, elite complicity, and political immunity, frustrating efforts by human rights lawyers representing the affected communities to mount a legal case. The ruling on January 26 changed everything. READ MORE
