Tuesday, April 23, 2013

If Enough Forces Weigh In, the Trial Can Resume.


The mechanism for reviving the genocide trial of Rios Montt is and has to be political.  Technical legal merits have less than almost nothing to do with it.

The outside judicial decision that was the instrument for stopping the trial just short of verdict has been laughed out of court by every serious legal expert who has examined it.

Where to go from here is the choice of the President, General Perez Molina, the institutional army and the death-squad oligarchs.   It's a good bet that at this writing they have not yet reached a full decision.

On the one hand, by killing the case they get to revel in untouchability.  They think they get to say, as their slogan goes, "In Guatemala there was no genocide," to hand out bumper stickers, like this morning, saying "I love the Guatemalan army," and to say, with Rios Montt's daughter, Zury: "God is our attorney."

On the other, they hurl a fragrant wad of spit in the faces of the country's Mayan survivors and those of other reformers everywhere who thought some Guatemalan rules might be changing.

For some of the elite such political expectoration may indeed be enjoyable, but it may not be politically costless.  Even for very rich people wild self indulgence is not always successful.

Specifically, in this instance it can fail if enough Guatemalans protest and if enough of the foreigners who were piously celebrating this progress in the world power system now just as energetically hold culpable the rulers who went out and killed it.

As the Guatemalans rulers making the decision right now behind closed doors somewhat anxiously know, the decisive foreigners include the US White House and Embassy which backed the Rios Montt slaughter but this time around were backing his trial.

There's nothing new in that.  The US routinely abandons its former footmen.  See Ferdinand Marcos, Noriega, Saddam Hussein and Moammar Qadaffy.

In this case, the understanding all over Guatemala including inside the palace was that if Perez Molina allowed the hand-cleansing trial, the US -- at that time on Hillary Clinton's authority -- would respond with still more military/ "anti-terror"/ "anti-drug" aid.

The Americans thought they had a deal, but now they don't.   Will the US just let it slide?   They certainly might.  For the US, the trial was just an ornament, something to point to and say, when needed: 'See?  We're actually pro-human rights.'  

They saw no danger that the example would spread, that US DA's would start indicting Bushes (or worse).  

So it was a nice cheap fillip, but now Perez Molina and co. have made things complicated.

This is the kind of second-tier decision that US Congress members have the power to shape.

If enough forces weigh in, the trial can resume.   

If not, the local killers chuckle.


Allan Nairn





NOTE TO READERS: News and Comment is looking for assistance with translating blog postings into other languages, and also with fund raising and distributing the blog content more widely. Those interested please get in touch via the e-mail link below. NOTE TO READERS RE. TRANSLATION: Portions of News and Comment are now available in Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, French, German, Russian and Spanish translation (click preceding links or Profile link above) but translation help is still needed -- particularly with older postings, in these and all other languages. NOTE TO READERS RE. POTENTIAL EVIDENCE: News and Comment is looking for public and private documents and first-hand information that could develop into evidence regarding war crimes or crimes against humanity by officials. Please forward material via the email link below. Email Me

A Little Too Close to the Bone


Military terror dictatorships are stupid, fragile systems.  

They survive by total suppression.  

And since total-anything is hard to maintain they are vulnerable in the long run.

That's one reason why rich, dominant people all over have been learning for decades now that simply shooting others in the head is not the only way to maintain privilege.   

Democratic free elections work too, so long as you're free to pick candidates and issues and purchase ads and influence.   And a free press can work nicely as well so long as you're free to own the presses.

So you have a proliferation of non-dictator regimes in which working people are still underpaid or starving and those on top are still meritlessly rich beyond the dreams of any type of necessity.

But since such regimes are also democratic and their press is free, they escape destabilizing quantities of condemnation for freedom-of-expression or human rights abuses.  

It's beautiful, you have your cake and eat it too, you bask in enlightened acclaim but at the same time you can fly to Rio on a whim while those who work for you have kids who are hungry.   

But one weakness in such regimes from a top-down point of view is that by tolerating some space you run the risk that now and then someone will say or do something that cuts a little too close to the bone.

Such is the effort to finish the criminal trial of the ex terror dictator General Rios Montt, the onetime US protege who once lorded over Guatemala.  

Rios Montt is 86.  He lost power in '83.  

Washington lost use for and washed their hands of him before some current US lawmakers were born, and the Guatemalan elite decided a while ago that it was worth their while to let him hang.* 

But that was before the trial began.  

What came out was not much new.  

But this time as the heroic survivors spoke, their words were being chiseled in stone.

"They killed my father..."

"They burnt our homes..."

"They raped me, one after the other...."

This was no longer policy, it was crime.  A court reporter took everything down.

Unlike much political speech, words in such a setting don't tend to evaporate.   

Thus sanctified on the official record, this commonplace, everyday truth that the rulers were rapists and murderers began emitting an ominous glow.

"This is a very dangerous case, for everyone," says a Guatemalan dissident from a well-off family.

Beyond the dimension of the testimony being official, it was also starting to circulate.   

In some cases it was lodging at the front of people's minds.  The rythm of repetition is powerful.       

"The elite was ready to throw over Rios Montt, but they didn't properly anticipate how things would go.  If you have a month of people talking about massacres and massacres and massacres, and women's bellies being slit open, all of a sudden it dawned on them, even if they were willing to let Rios Montt collapse the information was too much of a cost."

"They can see the political effect.  Its in the air, you can see it online.  They recently concluded: 'God, it's just too much.'"

They stepped in and shut the case down; it's dead, but, for this man and others, not yet finally buried.

In Guatemala, the notion of resurrection matters.   

Even as the army was crucifying the nation, people paused to celebrate Easter.

Sunday of the Resurrection was and is preceded in Guatemala by Holy Monday through Holy Saturday.

Guatemalans, as a people, are not predisposed to rule out comebacks.


Allan Nairn



* Hang figuratively, that is.  Guatemala has de facto abolished the death penalty, unlike the US, China and Saudi Arabia.



NOTE TO READERS: News and Comment is looking for assistance with translating blog postings into other languages, and also with fund raising and distributing the blog content more widely. Those interested please get in touch via the e-mail link below. NOTE TO READERS RE. TRANSLATION: Portions of News and Comment are now available in Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, French, German, Russian and Spanish translation (click preceding links or Profile link above) but translation help is still needed -- particularly with older postings, in these and all other languages. NOTE TO READERS RE. POTENTIAL EVIDENCE: News and Comment is looking for public and private documents and first-hand information that could develop into evidence regarding war crimes or crimes against humanity by officials. Please forward material via the email link below. Email Me