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Guatemala City, Guatemala – Marcia Mendez never stopped looking for her sister.
Now, with the disappearance of Guatemalan military forces from Luz Haydee and a few decades later, justice may be on the horizon after a Guatemalan judge ordered a trial for crimes committed in the 1980s.
“This is a big step forward for us already,” Mendez told Al Jazeera outside the Guatemala City courthouse complex after a hearing last week.
Luz Haydee Mendez Calderon was arrested and disappeared in 1984, approximately 45,000 people disappeared In the Guatemalan civil war. Approximately 200,000 people were killed during the 1960-1996 armed conflict.
At the time, Mendez Calderon was the secretary of international relations for the Guatemalan Labor Party, which was forced underground after the U.S.-backed coup in 1954 and became one of the armed groups fighting with the military in the 36-year conflict.
She was also the mother of two children. The nine-year-old daughter was sexually assaulted during the kidnapping, and was arrested and tortured for several days along with her younger brother. The children reappeared but the mother never did.
In 1999, leaked documents strengthened the family’s search for truth.
The Military Journal or Death Squad Diary documented the kidnapping, torture, disappearance and execution of 183 people, including Mendez Calderon, between 1983 and 1985. The military intelligence dossier includes section number 183, with their names, attachments, photograph, date and location of the kidnapping, and other basic details.
On June 9, a Guatemalan judge ordered six former military personnel to stand trial for allegations in the Death Squad Newspaper – the relatives of the victims celebrated the move, and also repeated calls to save their loved ones. to locate and return.
‘It seemed impossible’
Most – but not all – of the victims listed in the Death Squad Newspaper were members of the fighting group and their originators, organizers of student movements, union leaders, writers and other dissidents. Some were just kids.
In most cases, the victims were arrested for weeks and then killed, according to the document. So far, however, the remains of the eight victims of the Death Squad Diary have been extracted and identified, including one at a former military base 70 km west of the Guatemalan capital, found in six clandestine graves.
The six defendants were charged with crimes against humanity, and five of them for rape. He is also charged with murder, attempted murder or both. The allegations are about 20 individual victims, based on eyewitness testimony and documentation gathered over more than two decades.
“It’s a victory to have come to that after nearly 40 years in that fight,” Mendez said after the court ruling. “It seemed impossible to us for so many years.”
Marcia Mendez (bottom center) and other relatives of the forced disappearance victims in Guatemala asked “Where are they?” They pose with a banner asking. [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]Truth Commission
A truth commission backed by the United Nations concluded in 1999 that the Guatemalan army and paramilitary forces were responsible for more than 90% of the atrocities committed in the civil war. More than 80% of the victims were indigenous Mayan civilians, many of whom were killed in more than 600 documented massacres.
The truth commission has concluded that state actors have committed acts of genocide, and the domestic courts of the time have given important consensus. High-ranking military officials are also currently awaiting trials on genocide, violent extinction and other crimes against humanity, largely in indigenous rural areas.
In contrast, most of the victims of the Death Squad Newspaper lived in Guatemala City. According to the prosecution, the city’s operations were coordinated by military intelligence associated with the Presidential General Authority.
“It was a systematic policy that followed rural land policy,” said Francisco Sanchez, who was kidnapped and disappeared by Aunt Mendez Calderon when he was nine years old.
“I feel privileged because they get so few cases [into the courts]. That’s 183 out of 45,000 people, ”he said Wednesday in a square outside the courthouse, where he and others lined the steps with photos of the victims of the Death Squad Newspaper.
After the 1996 Peace Accords, Sanchez and other missing children, nieces and nephews created the HIJOS collective to help the older generation continue to fight for justice. Outside Wednesday they put on a loudspeaker to broadcast the audio of the court proceedings and lit firecrackers when Judge Miguel Angel Galvez read out the allegations.
The next day, Galvez arrested six defendants, ordering them to remain in custody prior to the trial. Galvez has given prosecutors three months to continue their investigations and has scheduled a mediation session in September.
Others were arrested
Most likely, six military officers will not be the only defendants in the case.
Eleven military and former police officers were arrested on May 27, and the twelfth was arrested when he appeared before the court. Six had initial hearings and will stand trial, according to Galvez’s June 9 ruling.
The initial hearings of six other former officers arrested on May 27 are pending and will determine whether they will hold a trial as well. Some of the remaining six are detained in medical facilities, others were detained in other parts of the country and not taken to the capital for a first-time hearing.
“It caught us by surprise,” Antonio Rustrian said of the arrests when his uncle Manuel Ismael Salanic Chiquil’s forced disappearance was reported in the Death Squad Newspaper. “It was very symbolic for me because the day of the arrests was the anniversary of my grandfather’s death,” Al Jazeera told the court outside.
Relatives of Guatemala’s missing have been fighting for decades for answers [Sandra Cuffe/Al Jazeera]
Rustrian’s grandfather, who died of natural causes in 2014, dedicated 30 years of his life to the truth and the justice movement. Shortly after his son’s death, he formed a Mutual Aid Group (GAM) and later joined the Association of Relatives of Detainees-Disappeared in Guatemala (FAMDEGUA).
“Struggle and history [have] I have always been a member of my family, “said Rustrian, 25, who lost his uncle and was born more than a decade ago.” He left a lasting mark on me since I was a child. “
Salanic Chiguil was 18, himself and three other young people who were studying to become teachers, when they disappeared by force in the night in 1984. Before taking him away, Salanic’s kidnappers tortured him with electric shocks in front of relatives; according to the family, the younger brother was also tortured and his father and uncle were beaten.
“The ongoing legal proceedings are important because they reveal how the state worked – with great savagery. History is what needs to be made known and there must be justice so that it does not happen again,” said Rustrian, a member of HIJOS.
Some setbacks
However, groups of military veterans and some right-wing politicians continue to dismiss this history.
When retired officials were arrested late last month in the Death Squad Diary case, Alvaro Arzu, chairman of the congressional human rights committee, tweeted in favor of the men, calling them “war heroes” and saying “they defended the country’s sovereignty and saved us from communism.” ”
Just two weeks later, nine lawmakers introduced a bill that would suspend the prosecution of crimes committed directly or indirectly by anyone directly or indirectly involved in the armed conflict. The bill would be retroactive, releasing former members of the convicted military and paramilitary forces and others awaiting trial.
The similar amnesty bill proposed in 2017 sparked months of protests and international condemnation after its first reading in Congress in 2019. The Constitutional Court eventually ruled against the bill and ordered its final filing.
A woman walks in front of a wall with images of people who disappeared in the 2019 Guatemalan Civil War [File: Saul Martinez/Reuters]
If the new bill goes ahead, there will no doubt be a resurgence of protests and legal challenges led by indigenous people who are survivors and relatives of the victims. The Guatemalan government has not commented on the new amnesty proposal.
For now, however, many groups are focusing on the progress made in the historical case of the Death Squad newspaper. “We finally see the result of everything we’ve done,” Mendez said, wearing a photo of his sister hanging from a poster hanging around his neck.
“We are both sad and happy,” he said, explaining that many of the parents of the victims were killed before they saw the cases of the missing children reach the courts. “We also cried a lot,” Mendez said, “because of the joy, the anger, the emotions of all kinds.”
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