{"id":763,"date":"2012-11-05T14:54:10","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T19:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.brown.edu\/modernlatinamerica\/?page_id=763"},"modified":"2012-11-05T14:54:10","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T19:54:10","slug":"forced-disappearance-and-impunity-in-el-jute-guatemala","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/chapters\/chapter-5-central-america\/moments-in-central-american-history\/forced-disappearance-and-impunity-in-el-jute-guatemala\/","title":{"rendered":"Forced Disappearance and Impunity in El Jute, Guatemala"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Josh MacLeod<\/p>\n

As the sun disappeared below the horizon all I could make out was Don Virgilio\u2019s profile against the fading but brilliant orange, blue and purple light of dusk behind him. Having finished dinner we were chatting under the palm thatches of his roof, enjoying the evening breeze.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the day, Don Virgilio had met me down in Chiquimula, a provincial market town in Guatemala\u2019s oriente, to show me the way up to his house in the village of El Jute. Virgilio was sporting the unofficial campesino uniform: old purple Wranglers, a long-sleeve button up shirt, impeccably polished boots, the ever present cowboy hat, and of course, a machete.<\/p>\n

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Street in the town of Chiquimula, Guatemala, courtesy of User Pablo3324<\/p><\/div>\n

In the fading light, Virgilio told me about what happened in El Jute when he was a teenager.<\/p>\n

After coming home from planting the fields one day, a group of men from Virgilio\u2019s family went to play cards, and I imagine, have a drink, in a neighbor’s tienda. There was a dispute, then a scuffle. Everyone went home. As it was, the man who owned the tienda, named Maldonado, was the El Jute military commissioner. Over the next couple of years the conflict took on a life of its own, until ultimately Maldonado and two of his commissioner friends from surrounding communities went to the nearby military base in Zacapa and accused Virgilio\u2019s family of being aligned with the communist guerrillas who were then fighting in the mountains of Guatemala (although not anywhere near El Jute). Shortly thereafter, early in the morning of October 19, 1981, the commissioners accompanied by a colonel and a unit of soldiers from the Zacapa base turned up in El Jute and kidnapped the accused. At the time, the men and their families were still sleeping. None of the eight men was ever\u00a0seen again.<\/p>\n

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Dead suspected guerrillas, army garrison, Nebaj, Quich\u00e9. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 373. \u00a9Jean-Marie Simon<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During la violencia<\/em>\u2014the most intense period of repression during\u00a0Guatemala\u2019s 36-year counter-insurgency war\u2014the Guatemalan military recruited and organized local civilians into what were called comisionados militares<\/em>. These military commissioners acted as local civilian agents for the army, frequently organizing the ubiquitous Civilian Defense Patrols (PACs). At the height of the war, the PACs incorporated more than 1.5 million civilian men into paramilitary groups. One result of militarizing virtually the entire country was that thousands of people were reported as subersivos<\/em> and subsequently extra-judicially kidnapped\u2014forcibly disappeared. To this day there are more than 45,000 unresolved cases of forced disappeared from la violencia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Guatemalan military logbook of disappeared persons, courtesy of the U.S. National Security Archive<\/p><\/div>\n

Commissioners often took personal advantage of the power over life and death they exercised to settle personal disputes. As is the case in El Jute, it was easy to inform on someone because of reasons that had everything to do with interpersonal politics and nothing to do with the counter-insurgency politics of the state.<\/p>\n

Beyond the torture and murder of those disappeared, the crime of forced disappearance is a horrible thing for surviving family members. Loved ones are literally disappeared, never to be heard from again. Family members have no closure, only questions: \u00bfDonde est\u00e1n?<\/em> Although presumed dead, in the absence of a body there is no definitive proof. The hope can persist for years that one day your dad or husband will turn up alive. Consequently, the process of mourning is completely disrupted. This sort of pain is like a wound that refuses to heal; as long as loved ones remain disappeared, there is no justice and that wound festers.<\/p>\n

Expressing his pain and outrage, even after 27 years, Virgilio said, \u201cOnly God has the right to remove a person from this earth. If someone dares commit such an act against human life they must face justice.\u201d In Guatemala justice is a rare luxury. Impunity characterizes the Guatemalan justice system; just 2% of the crimes committed in the country are successfully prosecuted.<\/p>\n

Several years ago, Don Virgilio and a number of other family members of the men disappeared in El Jute organized as El Grupo<\/em> to bear witness to what happened, demanding justice for their loved ones. With the legal support of the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman\u2019s office, they filed suit against the three now ex-military commissioners and the ex-colonel for the crime of forced disappearance and extra-judicial assassination of the eight\u00a0men from El Jute in 1981. Although the process has been painfully slow, in early April it was announced that the case is finally going to trial; pending the outcome the four accused have been jailed.<\/p>\n

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The case is precedent setting; it is the first time in Guatemalan history that a military officer will face trial for the crime of forced disappearance. This could open the floodgates for some of the other 45,000 unresolved cases. Guatemalan President \u00c1lvaro Colom recently ordered the declassification of military archives dating from la violencia<\/em>; contained in the archives are thousands upon thousands of pages of military documents which would shed light on just what happened to those disappeared. These are potentially huge steps for justice and against the endemic impunity and silence in Guatemala. The military is not happy about this, and so far refuses to comply with Colom\u2019s order.<\/p>\n

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President \u00c1lvaro Colom in 2007, courtesy of Ag\u00eancia Brasil<\/p><\/div>\n

In the mean time, those in El Grupo<\/em> have faced constant threats and intimidations from family members of those who killed and disappeared their loved ones. The families of the accused live in El Jute and nearby villages. As such, the witnesses of El Grupo<\/em> encounter them on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

Recently, the comisionados<\/em> offered those in El Grupo<\/em> a bribe to drop the case. But as Don Virgilio told me, the survivors don\u2019t want money, they want justice for the crimes committed. In a direct challenge to the accused, an impossible challenge, Virgilio said, \u201cIf they give back our fathers, brothers, and husbands alive and healthy the way they took them, then we will drop the case.\u201d Another member of El Grupo<\/em> told me that what they really want is for the accused to come clean and reveal where the remains of the disappeared are,\u201cThey know. They are the ones who kidnapped and killed our family members. They buried them. But they won\u2019t tell us anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

The El Jute case represents an attempt to pick up where Guatemala\u2019s United Nations-mandated truth commission left\u00a0off. Established in 1994 as part of Guatemala\u2019s peace process, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) was created to investigating the dimensions of the violence in Guatemala. The mandate of the CEH was limited to produce a report clarifying human rights violations culminating with a series of recommendations with the ends of assuring that such violence would never be repeated. Within this mandate, the CEH was prohibited from identifying specific individuals responsible for the human rights violations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Holding the guilty responsible is just one aim of El Grupo<\/em>. Virgilio speaks of a more fundamental aspect of their struggle: the construction of a Guatemala where the past is acknowledged and where impunity no longer reigns. For the members of El Grupo<\/em> justice is twofold: individual accountability but also a profound societal healing of the persisting social wounds from la violencia<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Back at Don Virgilio\u2019s he looked at me and as the moon appeared rising over the horizon, said, \u201cWe are fighting so our kids won\u2019t ever have to know the pain of what we lived through, so that the violence is never repeated again.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

[Original Published in\u00a0Dialogos Magazine<\/em>. Providence: Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Brown University. 2009.]<\/p>\n

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Josh MacLeod<\/strong> is a graduate student in the Anthropology program at Brown University. Josh graduated, with honors, from the University of Vermont in 2003 with a degree in Anthropology and Philosophy. Prior to coming to Brown, Josh worked with the San Francisco-based NGO, Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA) as a genocide case and human rights accompanier. At Brown Josh is developing his interests that derive from these experiences–human and indigenous rights, social movements, natural resource issues, and international law.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Josh MacLeod As the sun disappeared below the horizon all I could make out was Don Virgilio\u2019s profile against the fading but brilliant orange, blue and purple light of dusk behind him. Having finished dinner we were chatting under … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"parent":765,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"sidebar-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-763","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/763\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/create\/modernlatinamerica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}