Rios Montt will be tried for genocide - Guatemala

Photo courtesy Skylight pictures

We learned yesterday, January 28 2013, that former army general and de facto ruler of Guatemala Efrain Rios Montt will face trial for charges of genocide. Rios Montt led the country during the most violent period of a 36 year internal armed conflict that resulted in over 200,000 deaths, the vast majority of which were innocent indigenous peasants.

Under his tenure (1982-83), the government carried out what many call a "scorched earth" campaign (specifically, he is charged with overseeing the massacre of over 1700 individuals) in the indigenous Ixil areas of of the country.

The former general and his defenders are using an interesting defense, claiming at once that Rios Montt either did not fully control his troops, or was not aware of the dozens of massacres of indigenous communities that happened under his watch. At the same time, Rios Montt et al are labelling the trial as an attack, not on the former general, but on the army as an institution--a clear appeal to public opinion, and maybe even to the popular president Otto Molina Perez, himself a former general who served under Rios Montt.

However, the discovery of a document called Plan Victoria (Victoria 82), sheds doubt on the general's plea of ignorance. The plan, signed by Rios Montt, identified the Ixil ethnicity as subversive and inherently supportive of the leftist rebels engaging the government in battle at the time. As part of a kind of "drain the swamp" strategy, the document planned the annihilation of indigenous communities, according to prosecutors.

On a related note, the documentary by Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis, Granito, includes footage from a conversation with the general in the early 1980s. In the footage, Yates presses the general on accusations of genocide. He denies it outright, of course, but goes on to brag about his tight control over the armed forces, which he presumably exercised in ordering the army not carry out such massacres. "If I can't control the army, then what am I doing here?" the general asks. Whether such footage will be used in the trial is uncertain (though it was used in previous attempts to try Rios Montt, in Spain), but I imagine the prosecution will strongly contest the general's purported lack of control argument.

**Update, Granito producer Paco de Onis writes in an email that "Outtakes from Skylight's documentary Granito: How to Nail a Dictator are being used as filmic evidence in the case to prove the prosecution’s command responsibility liability theory: that Ríos Montt ordered the targeted killings."**

The trial of a former dictator is, in itself, a major milestone in the fight against widespread impunity in Guatemala. A conviction would be a monumental win for the country's battered judicial system. Yet even bringing the man to trial,--as happened in Chile's prosecution of former dictator Pinochet--offers a major symbolic and normative achievement--eroding the reactionary narrative offered against getting too caught up in the past (read: seeking justice for past atrocities), or the mental and social barriers to seeking accountability for the highest political leaders, for example.

The very act of trying a former dictator helps to break down the veneer of legitimacy surrounding the period and acts in question, and helps break down impunity enjoyed by those involved in past atrocities, or those whose more recent crimes simply benefit from this umbrella of impunity. This is, arguably what happened in Argentina, Peru, and Chile, when, following trials of senior political-military leadership, the barriers to accountability for mid- and lower-level opperatives began to be swept away.

One can only hope that as Rios Montt, a pilar supporting impunity in Guatemala, is tried for crimes against humanity, that the umbrella of impunity that benefits organized crime, abusers of women, and gang members will be blown away.