Latin America
Related: About this forumRemembering Guatemala
By Frida Berrigan
Source: Waging Nonviolence
Thursday, January 10, 2013
I was there as part of a delegation visiting the sites of military and paramilitary massacres. The mass graves that scarred the country were being exhumed, survivor testimonies were being recorded and funerals were being held. I was working with the Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA), and we had raised money to fund exhumations and the construction of monuments bearing the names of those killed in massacres.
It was a tough trip. We listened to story after story after story. We wept endlessly. We were reminded again and again of the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic, military and political support doled out by Washington over the decades to repressive oligarchs in Guatemala City. We heard about human rights violations and crimes carried out by Guatemalan soldiers trained at the U.S. School of the Americas. We visited modest monuments inscribed with the names of men, women and children slaughtered by government-backed death squads. Some of these concrete and rebar structures had to be rebuilt again and again. As soon as they were erected, soldiers came with dynamite or bulldozers or sledgehammers and knocked them down. Despite enjoying almost complete impunity, the military was threatened and destabilized by these simple truth tellers. We saw one monument that was as big as a tank, built up with stones and concrete, fortified with rebar dug deep into the hillside, surrounded by rutted trenches. The villages boasted that the military had not been able to get rid of it yet.
The Guatemalan Catholic Church was supporting a massive truth and reconciliation process, interviewing survivors and telling the harrowing stories of violence experienced mostly by indigenous and poor people during the war. The interviews were conducted in more than two dozen languages and testimony collected from thousands of people. They were planning to produce a detailed and unimpeachable report that would name names so that crimes could be prosecuted at some point when political will and courage asserted themselves. Two days after that report Guatemala: Nunca Más was released in 1998, Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, the man who spearheaded the effort, was beaten to death.
http://www.zcommunications.org/remembering-guatemala-by-frida-berrigan
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)where they have committed their unholy massacres. Pure evil. We have supported this army with US tax dollars, and training at the SOA, etc., etc., etc.
Too evil to allow the people to mourn, and remember those who were tortured, terrorized, and murdered, the lives stolen from families and neighbors, from the lives they were given for a higher purpose.
Hope the killers haven't had a good night's sleep since they decided it's fine to become demons against the human race, to spread death and suffering.
Amazing, and not in a good way.
polly7
(20,582 posts)good. Before reading here, I had no idea just how brutally and horrifically the people of LA had been treated - in so many places, and for so long. I hope those creatures and everyone who trained and funded them all rot in hell.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)criminals who support torture and dictators, our history in LA is tragic and criminal and it's reprehensible that people like Henry Kissenger will never pay for his part in it. It speaks volumes that we treat criminals like him with so much respect, while smearing people like Chavez. Thankfully the rest of the world is not fooled.
Peace Patriot
(24,010 posts)I did not know this. In 1998! I am speechless!
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)we still would not know. We do not have a news media, we have a propaganda machine. That should be the first issue that this new Liberal movement takes on, a truly free press so our own criminals can no longer operate in secret to support some of the world's worst dictators, as we are still doing.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)they all blur together, sometimes.
[center]
Bishop Gerardi's image[/center]
As his murder is something too personal to post, here's his Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Jos%C3%A9_Gerardi_Conedera
[/center]~~~~~[/center]
Here's an article on the release of his murderer last July:
Guatemala frees ex-colonel who killed campaigning bishop
Byron Disrael Lima Estrada was in jail for killing of Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi, who wrote report on civil war crimes by army
Associated Press in Guatemala City
guardian.co.uk, Saturday 14 July 2012 01.34 EDT
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/14/guatemala-frees-colonel-murder-bishop
(This happens the year they "elect" the "Iron Hand" former death squad officer who has been accused of horrendous human rights abuses himself. Quite the coincidence.)