In Guatemala, where the notion of justice can easily be seen as the salt rubbed into a wounded nation, criminals embedded in high-level government are being prosecuted as never before. The former president has fled, and many of his ministers have been arrested, marched between courts and jails in bright orange suits and handcuffs. Perpetrators and conspirators of last July’s Black Thursday riots have lined up before a judge, so far without a single acquittal. And to top it all off, the most notorious of dictator-generals, EfraÃn RÃos Montt, has been placed under house arrest, accused of murder as the man behind Black Thursday.
It all sounds impressive after years, decades, centuries of untouchable power used against the Guatemalan masses, but whether these cases mean anything for the state of justice is yet to be known. As the dominoes topple, the profundity of the matter lies in who falls and how; whether entrenched officer will be found alongside corrupt minister, and how their conviction relates to the national state of military crime.
Central American border guards must be learning to look out for tinted windows. Alfonso Portillo, recently retired Guatemalan president, drove to El Salvador as the sun rose on his first morning without diplomatic immunity. With eight charges against Portillo, including major international embezzlement, the Guatemalan Constitutional Court revoked the immunity granted all former presidents as automatic members in the Central American Parliament. Portillo flew from El Salvador to Mexico, and has not been seen since.
Óscar Dubón, Portillo’s Comptroller General, opted for the all-land route, driving as far as the Nicaragua-Costa Rica border before being arrested. Stopped by a customs official, Dubón was sent back to Guatemala, where he is being held for laundering Portillo’s corrupt funds. When it was discovered that the head of the tax authority stole $6.6 million from public funds, he flew to Miami, but is rumored to have driven back into Guatemala via El Salvador. All told, nearly 40 people linked to Portillo’s Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) government are under investigation for corruption, many in hiding from arrest warrants.
Undeniable: if guilty, these men are among the lowest criminals, who sacked their nation of hundreds of millions of dollars from social sector institutions while nearly 40% of the population struggles on $1 or $2 a day. But corruption, in spite of its shockingly painful and insulting effect on the poor, is not the main issue in Guatemalan justice. The main issue is the impunity of the military, with its untouchable leaders and its dozens and hundreds of massacrists, rapists, torturers, slaughterers, indiscriminate exterminators of the Mayan population, its detachable tentacles which have broken off and cozied into government and the legal system, its backstage control of profitable crime with allegiances still hanging onto decades-old hierarchies of command.
These are the people who should be tracked down in a Guatemalan purge. But, on the one hand, it suits the bitterly anti-FRG government of Oscar Berger to be seen as a cleanser and a bringer of a new day for government. Being anti-FRG essentially amounts to being anti- military elite, though, and Berger should also want to bring down the pillars of the military command and its civilianized branches. Which brings us to the other hand: you can’t do that in Guatemala. These people are the very definition of power.
Yet the purge has gone beyond the merely corrupt, scratching the surface of the untouchable. Members or supporters of the Hidden Powers are also being prosecuted, for last July’s masked manifestation and murder in support of RÃos Montt’s then-contested presidential candidacy. Now the higher officials involved—the former national chief of police, an FRG congressman, the riot’s authors and coordinators—are summoned to court. Their sentences are uniform and meager: a $12,500 fine, which they pay in cash. RÃos Montt himself, on a stronger accusation concerning the same deed, has been placed under house arrest. Only the sentencing judge decided that the General’s “house†is the Republic of Guatemala, and his “arrest†means that he cannot leave national territory.
But don’t get discouraged just yet. Fancy nothings and petty fines they may be, but they strike directly at the heart of Guatemalan power—the villains of the present and the demons of the past. The easiest charge is the most recent, and you have to start somewhere. But the precedent of trying a military officer—the military officer—will open doors. What remains to be seen is how far Berger can ride his new bull: the deeper he goes, the closer Guatemala can be to leaving behind its past and the worst of its present.
Simon Helweg-Larsen is a human rights accompanier working in Guatemala. He can be reached at [email protected]
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