The impacts of a Guatemalan court's
decision to sentence former de facto head of state José Efraín Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity are only beginning to be felt, and may yet be stymied altogether. The trial and conviction have been hailed as "
a great leap forward in the struggle for justice in Guatemala." The three-judge panel, headed by judge Jasmín Barrios, has been rightly praised for its ability to withstand myriad delay tactics, cynical legal challenges,
veiled threats, and intimidation from various actors. Yet the Constitutional Court is expected to address several pending
legal challenges on Monday, May 20, any of which, including an order to annul the trial, emitted by a pre-trial judge, could erase this landmark ruling.
Sitting in the court room during the final week of the trial and witnessing the palpable tension among Guatemalans outside the chamber, I noticed a very interesting contradiction in the way various groups are struggling to address and argue the facts of the case.
To me it was striking to hear both Ríos Montt's and Rodriguez Sanchez' defense attorneys attempt to assign responsibility for these crimes to the commanders, soldiers, and other individuals who carried them out in the field. Cesar Calderon, the attorney for Rodriguez Sanchez, put it this way: “Criminal responsibility is personal and individual – each person must answer for that which they have done themselves,” referring to individual field commanders operating in the Ixil region. Ríos Montt himself, when he addressed the court, argued that he was "occupied by national and international matters" as head of state, and that while in such a role one must support his commanders, “each of these is responsible for his own territory.”
Meanwhile, the debate in the street and in the Guatemalan press was dominated by competing narratives that screamed "there was genocide in Guatemala! (Sí hubo genocidio!)" or "there was no genocide in Guatemala! (No hubo genocidio!)."
The rallying cries of both camps decline to address the facts of the case as they pertain to whether or not General Ríos Montt oversaw a genocidal campaign against the Maya Ixil (much less the commission of crimes against humanity), dwelling instead on whether or not genocide took place -
in Guatemala. The focus on the country became more evident to me in the days after the ruling: in conversations about the trial with normal Guatemalans in and outside of Guatemala City, responses often (but not always) focused on what I took to be the culpability of the country itself. CACIF, a powerful, conservative business group laments on its
website that the world will now see Guatemalans as genocidal, like the Nazis.
This first struck me as cynical or superficial, missing the point that Guatemala as a country was not on trial, nor was this a crusade against the armed forces, as many Ríos Montt defenders argued.
This is understandable, though, as no society wants to be associated with the kinds of atrocities that took place in Guatemala. Nor should a country necessarily be painted with the same brush of history that judges the actions of a few leaders.
The court said it was "absolutely convinced" that the massacres, forced displacement, the burning of homes, destruction of crops and use of rape were part of a
systematic effort to eliminate the Maya Ixil culture" (you can find the entire 700-plus page verdict
here, in Spanish). A project like that is never the sole product of one man, or even one institution. Accordingly, the court instructed the Public Ministry to continue investigating and prosecuting other individuals implicated in the commission of crimes against humanity during this dark chapter of Guatemalan history.
So while individuals should and will be held accountable, Guatemala
should be asking itself the tough questions prompted by the decision against Ríos Montt. How is it that one man was able to engineer such widespread destruction of the Ixil culture? Why was it so easy for broad swaths of Guatemalan society to believe that the Ixil community (98 percent of them, according to some military documents) supported or abetted Leftist insurgents? Sitting President Otto Perez Molina, who served as an Army Major in the Ixil area under Ríos Montt during the time of the genocide, may also have some questions to answer. Digging further, have the racism, xenophobia, and economic conditions that permitted the commission of these atrocities changed since the 1980s? The international community has its own uncomfortable self-examination to do: Why were Americans so willing to believe, as President Reagan said, that Ríos Montt had really just got a "bum rap" and that really, human rights in Guatemala "were improving step by step"?
The trouble with individualizing accountability is that it lets society off the hook for allowing or creating the conditions that enable individuals like Ríos Montt to carry out mass atrocities in the first place.
The trend in transitional justice over recent decades has been towards individual responsibility--as opposed to national or institutional responsibility (or outright impunity!). This has been a positive development, and has allowed courts, both domestic and international, to bring individual war criminals to account for their actions. Is it possible though, that by saddling an individual with the responsibility--and therefore the punishment--for crimes against humanity we miss the opportunity to do the kind of deep, introspective soul-searching that would allow us to say with some authority "never again"? Does this trial and conviction (whether upheld or not) distract us from addressing the core social injustices that allowed these atrocities in the first place? Only time will tell, but it does seem that unless Guatemala can secure the conviction against Ríos Montt for crimes of genocide, and therefor recognize that, yes, there was genocide in Guatemala, the deeper questions will never be asked.
This trial has been lauded as a landmark decision that is supposed to have all kinds of implications for rule of law and justice in the country. But this can't happen unless Guatemalans (and others) see themselves as a little bit convicted too.
