wfn.org | Bishop's Murder Again Threatens Peace in Guatemala

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

8-May-1998 
98164 
 
    Bishop's Murder Again Threatens 
    Peace in Guatemala 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The murder of a 75-year-old Roman Catholic bishop shortly 
after his office released a report blaming the Guatemalan military for most 
of the human rights violations during the war years seems, in the minds of 
most Guatemalans, to prove the church's point: that reconciliation between 
the perpetrators and victims of violence requires more than political 
negotiation. 
 
    The church is arguing that, despite the 1996 peace accords that brought 
an end to Guatemala's 36-year civil war, peace takes something more: 
healing the souls of victims and perpetrators who endured some of the worst 
bloodletting in this hemisphere. 
 
    "There is a culture of violence here," said Edgar Gutierrez, 
coordinator of the three-year investigation by the Archbishop's Human 
Rights Office that resulted in a 1400-page report called, "Guatemala: Never 
Again!"  The report was made public just two days before Bishop Juan 
Gerardi Conedera was bludgeoned to death in his garage with a jagged cement 
block.  "It is like a sickness.  When you're sick, the worst thing you can 
do is ignore the sickness.  You have to find a way to get medication for 
it. 
 
    "That," Gutierrez said, "is what we're trying to do." 
 
    Gutierrez and teams of interviewers documented eyewitness testimonies, 
including those by a few perpetrators, of 422 massacres -  401 of which 
were committed by the Guatemalan army or one of its paramilitaries. The 
report also describes the torture, rape, killing, illegal detention and 
"disappearance" of more than 55,000 people -  crimes that often went 
undocumented and unpenalized during the long years of a guerrilla war. 
Experts estimate that more than 130,000 people have been killed, most of 
whom were indigenous people in remote parts of the country.  Human Rights 
groups in the United States most stridently protested that violence in the 
1980s during the administrations of former presidents Gen. Efrain Rios 
Montt and his predecessor Romeo Lucas Garcia. These groups also argued that 
the violence was backed by nearly $40 million in U.S. military aid to a 
series of right-wing military juntas. 
 
    Blaming the military for almost 90 percent of the war's human rights 
abuses, "Guatemala: Never Again!" recommends that the army and the 
guerrillas take responsibility for abuses committed during the war and make 
reparation to survivors, that care be given to war victims and that 
Guatemala's long tradition of impunity end.  It also recommends civilian 
control over the military and, according to Ecumenical News International 
(ENI), advocates barring government and guerrilla leaders responsible for 
human rights violations from public office. 
 
    "This country lives in a vicious circle,"  Gutierrez told the 
Presbyterian News Service, describing the crime wave that has swept 
Guatemala since the war's end. "We signed the peace accords and things are 
the same, if not worse.  There are kidnappings, though not for political 
reasons anymore, but for economic ones and for personal vengeance." 
 
    Guatemala's bloody history is destined to repeat itself unless changes 
are made, Guterrez said, adding that the archdiocese has already begun 
peace education courses, opened mental health clinics and started 
exhumations at several massacre sites as ways of getting at the truth about 
what happened in the war. 
 
    The timing of the bishop's murder so close to the report's release is 
suspected by many to be a devastating repetition of the past - another 
conspiratorial spiral in the circle of death and violence in Guatemala - 
though the government hasn't ruled out the possibility of common crime. It 
quickly detained a 24-year-old vagrant as a possible suspect and also 
launched a murder probe using the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation 
instead of army investigators. 
 
      But others fear the bishop's death has more to do with "recalcitrant 
sectors" of the military, unhappy with proposed constitutional changes that 
would limit the army's power.  Even the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated 
clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), raised the question of military 
reprisal with Guatemala's President Alvaro Arzu and U.S. Secretary of State 
Madeleine Albright for Gerardi's refusal to remain quiet about human rights 
violations. 
 
      According to ENI,  military officials and guerrilla commanders 
allegedly responsible for atrocities are cited, in some cases by name, in 
"Guatemala: Never Again!"  That is in contrast to an upcoming report from 
the United Nations-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification, 
which, according to terms established in the peace negotiations, does not 
name those who committed particular acts of violence. 
 
    But to human rights lawyers like Guatemala City's Frank LaRue, who has 
represented Guatemalan Presbyterians in international court, enforced 
silence is precisely the purpose of the bishop's murder.   He believes it's 
a way to squelch other legal investigations that could arise out of the 
report; but more importantly, it demonstrates the limits of the Guatemalan 
government's authority and  the limits on the safety of those figures who 
protest the violence. 
 
    "This is such a major incident, it has to be linked to the security 
forces," said LaRue, who interprets Gerardi's death as the beginning of a 
new era of danger that reverses the gains of the peace process.  "If they 
can murder a bishop, they can murder anyone ... We used to believe that 
exposure was good security.  But this is the most visible bishop in human 
rights and international work.  There is no confusion in terms of this 
message: we [can] hit even the most visible person.  High-level visibility 
is no longer the safety it was before. 
 
    "And people are very scared," LaRue added, "Bishop [Oscar] Romero [who 
was martyred in El Salvador for his opposition to human rights abuses 
there] was murdered during the war.  Bishop Gerardi was murdered during 
peace.  What peace are we talking about?" 
 
    The plea for healing that goes beyond political peace was summed up 
poignantly in a letter to the editor of Prensa Libra, a Guatemala City 
daily, that called upon Gerardi's killer to turn himself in and get help 
for his own sake.  "I suppose," it read, "you have not ceased to be human, 
to feel something.  How did your hands feel afterward; do they still 
tremble?  I don't know if you went to the School of the Americas ... but 
someone programmed you to do what you did ... We all know we must have help 
to get over this kind of trauma.  You need it doubly so ... Don't commit 
the same crimes again. 
 
    "Every murder committed by your hands causes a piece of  you to die 
too.  Don't continue to kill yourself." 
 
    Such accountability distinguishes the proposed ecclesiastical 
reconciliation process from the political one, according to Presbyterian 
Church (U.S.A.) mission worker Dennis Smith, who has served in Guatemala 
City for more than 20 years. 
 
    "There are some who want to say that the war is a stage that is all 
over, all behind us. ... Just forgive and forget," Smith said. "But this is 
different terms for forgiveness.  It requires acknowledgment of 
responsibility. ... For reconciliation to be real, to build up something 
new, to assure this doesn't happen again, we have to assume responsibility 
without pursuing vengeance." 
 
    Smith said the Catholic church has taken the lead in exploring pastoral 
models to begin 
reconciliation in communities divided by the war. This often includes using 
liturgy and ritual to bring closure to the past, to end what may be years 
of grieving for a  "disappeared" son, husband or father.  Simultaneously, 
he said, the church is working in some settings to reintegrate perpetrators 
of violence back into communities they once terrorized. 
 
    "The fact is victims and victimizers continue to live side-by-side," 
said Smith, pointing out that one of the tactics used to divide communities 
was to arm some members against others. 
 
    "Polarization is more manageable politics," he continued, "but if you 
are able to build a community that transcends `them' and `us,' then the 
power of the people is affected who kept us `them' and `us' for their own 
partisan ends." 
 
    Ten Protestant church bodies - including two indigenous Presbyterian 
groups ( Kaqchikel Presbytery and the Mayan Presbyterian Brotherhood) - 
signed on to a published poem Smith wrote for the local paper, declaring 
themselves to be "accomplices" in the bishop's gospel-project of 
"truth-telling, practicing repentance and pardon, defending each one's 
dignity." The church groups also demand the capture and prosecution of not 
only the "assassin," but the behind-the-scenes planners they believe exist. 
 
    "This particular crime needs to be solved," Smith told the Presbyterian 
News Service, referring to years of impunity, "not for vengeance, but 
because this level of impunity undermines all our humanity." 
 
    Proceedings were temporarily halted last week in what the Associated 
Press calls "the first-ever trial of army members for a wartime massacre," 
when Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu protested to the Guatemalan 
Supreme Court that the judges were being partial to the military.  In the 
trial, 25 soldiers are accused of murdering 11 refugees who were returning 
to Guatemala in 1995. 
 
    LaRue commented, "How much can we say we live at peace?  How much can 
we say peace is triumphant over the forces of violence, the evil of the 
past? 
 
    "Or are we just reliving the past again?" he asked, stressing that 
solving the Gerardi case would strengthen the Arzu government like nothing 
else could do 
 
    After the bishop's death, ENI reported that the Costa Rican printer was 
instructed to increase the press run of "Guatemala: Never Again!" from 
3,000 to 17,000. 

------------
For more information contact Presbyterian News Service
  phone 502-569-5504             fax 502-569-8073  
  E-mail PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org   Web page: http://www.pcusa.org 
  mailed from World Faith News <wfn-news@wfn.org>  

--