Seeking Justice for Plan de Sanchez

Written by Charlie Clements, who is currently visiting Guatemala with a delegation from UUSC.

During the 36-year civil war in Guatemala, the military forced an estimated one million men into service as militias, whom they referred to as PACs. They were unpaid. Some joined willingly, most joined out of fear. Refusing to join was a signal of sympathy for the guerrillas and meant death.

In Plan de Sanchez, a remote village in the state of Baja Verapaz, there were three brothers who were in the PAC, who were also ‘delegates of the word,’ or lay catechists. In that role, they would lead discussions of the New Testament, encouraging villagers to reflect on the meaning of the verses in their own lives. I’ve heard a number of campesinos say it was the first time anyone had ever asked what they thought.

Seeing that the military expected PACs to spy on their neighbors, and perhaps even use violence, the three brothers decided they would no longer serve in the local PAC. Word soon got out that the military assumed they were guerrillas or guerrilla sympathizers, and were coming after them. The three brothers, as Juan Manuel Jeronimo told us yesterday, chose life and fled the village, rather than remain and be killed by the military.

As they watched from high on a mountain above the village, the military did come. They rounded up everyone in the village: men, women, elders, and children. They put many of them in houses, which they burned. Younger women were separated so they could be raped. A few children were kidnapped by the military to become slaves in their homes. In all that day, more than 300 Mayans from Plan de Sanchez lost their lives.

Last week, Eduardo Stein, the vice president of Guatemala, was forced to watch a reenactment of that massacre when he visited Plan de Sanchez. It wasn’t on his agenda. His aides didn’t know about it in advance. But Juan Manuel Jeronimo, who is president of a Mayan nongovernmental association called the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) said, “No re-enactment, no ceremony.” The vice president’s staff said he would not sit through such an event. Juan Manuel said, “Fine, then we won’t allow your ceremony to proceed.”

The vice president had come to Plan de Sanchez to apologize and accept responsibility for the massacre on behalf of the government of Guatemala. Nothing like that had ever happened in Guatemala, but earlier this year the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had heard this case presented by Juan Manuel and his colleagues at AJR. The court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, ordering the government to acknowledge responsibility, apologize, and make $8 million in reparations.

The official ceremony was delayed more than an hour while the villagers reenacted the massacre. Juan Manuel said the vice president fidgeted a lot, but he stayed. He then officially acknowledged that the state had perpetrated the crimes, which included rapes, and apologized to those survivors who had gathered for this moment.

I met Juan Manuel for the first time less than two years ago, when a UUSC monitoring team observed the presidential elections. Juan Manuel and his colleagues at AJR were getting death threats at that time because they were preparing indictments against the then-head of the Congress, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who was running for the presidency. The report of a U.N.-ordered truth commission at the end of the war had attributed half of the more than 200,000 deaths in the civil war to a two-year reign of terror under Rios Montt, who himself was then deposed in a coup.

Being around Juan Manuel is an inspiration. He is humble. He is determined. He is courageous. He thanked us for coming to visit him, for not forgetting the survivors, for continuing to support the work of AJR. He says, “The only way we can honor our loved ones is to pursue justice.”

Juan Manuel lost his wife, four children, mother and father, and 16 other relatives in the massacre of Plan de Sanchez that day. Although the government has apologized as ordered by the courts, now Juan Manuel and the other survivors want justice. They aren’t giving up. It is no secret who was in command that day. Why shouldn’t those responsible be indicted, arrested, and hauled into a court of law?

Theodore Parker, the fiery abolitionist Unitarian minister, taught us that "the arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice." Juan Manuel Jeronimo and his colleagues at AJR teach us that the universe has no arc unless determined and courageous men and women bend it when they demand justice be done. Surely, it must have bent just a little when they forced the vice president and his entourage to watch the reenactment of the massacre at Plan de Sanchez.