Guatemala activists celebrate army's
departure from indigenous community
The town of Rabinal, homebase for one of UUSC's program partners, celebrated the departure of the Guatemalan army on Dec. 21, 2003. According to the Maya Achi Association for the Integral Development of Victims of Violence (ADIVIMA) and reports from the Prensa Libre newspaper in Guatemala City, the army has finally left the area 34 years after establishing a base there. UUSC President Charlie Clements and Program Associate Allison Kent led a delegation of UUSC members, policy-makers and human rights activists to Rabinal in November to monitor the Guatemalan national elections. Delegation members saw firsthand the fear that the military had fomented in the local community during three decades of occupation.
Soldiers from the base were infamous for terrorizing the local indigenous people. The army's crimes included complicity in the deaths of nearly a fourth of the population of Rabinal. These human rights abuses were carried out alongside the local civil defense patrols which the military organized. ADIVIMA, an organization of massacre survivors, is working to bring to justice ex-paramilitary and military perpetrators of the massacre of more than 70 women and 107 children in Río Negro, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz in 1982 during Guatemala's civil war. ADIVIMA's work includes exhumations of massacre sites, re-burials for the victims and legal support for victims.
Many in Rabinal, including UUSC's partner organization, have been pushing for the army base to close for years. The area is of no military or strategic importance, and the sole reason for its existence was to intimidate the local population. The location of the base was ironically right across from the local cemetery where ADIVIMA has erected monuments in memory of the victims of the massacres by the military and civil defense patrollers.
New president supports genocide trial for ex-dictator
The departure of the army from Rabinal comes about a month after the November election in which Guatemala voters rejected the candidacy of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. The former military general finished third in the balloting, setting the stage for a runoff election between the top two candidates. Visit Guatemala election: Ex-dictator loses in bid to return to power for a report and background on the November election
.On Dec. 28, 2003, the presidential runoff election was held and conservative Oscar Berger, a former Guatemala City mayor and businessman, won with 54 percent of the vote. Berger will take office on Jan. 14, 2004. On that same day, former dictator Ríos Montt loses his immunity as he ends his congressional term after his failed presidential bid. In his first address as president-elect the day after the election, Berger said for the first time that he would support the efforts to put Ríos Montt on trial for genocide and other egregious human rights abuses during the civil war. Survivors from Rabinal and elsewhere, together with other members of the human rights community, will be paying close attention to further developments.
The courageous men and women of Rabinal had much to celebrate this holiday season.
Posted Jan. 6, 2004
