wfn.org | One Year Later, Guatemalan Bishop's Murder Remains a Mystery

[PCUSA NEWS <pcusa.news@ecunet.org>]

3-May-1999 
99173 
 
    One Year Later, 
    Guatemalan Bishop's Murder Remains a Mystery 
 
    by Paul Jeffrey 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
GUATEMALA CITY-April 26 marked the first anniversary of the brutal murder 
of Roman Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera. 
 
    The investigation of his death has generated countless rumors and, at 
times, bizarre melodrama.  But the identity of the person or persons 
responsible for the death of the bishop, an ardent defender of this 
country's indigenous majority, remains an unanswered question. 
 
    Local church leaders are turning up the heat on the Guatemalan 
government to resolve the case.  Regular Sunday masses in local parishes 
across the capital city were canceled April 25, and more than 60,000 
faithful marched to the city's cathedral for a special anniversary mass 
concelebrated by hundreds of priests and bishops from throughout the 
Americas. 
 
    On April 26, a "march against impunity" culminated in a memorial mass 
in front of the Church of San Sebastian complex where Bishop Gerardi was 
killed.  Similar services have been held recently  in Los Angeles, Miami, 
Toronto, and other foreign cities. 
 
    Juan Gerardi, auxiliary bishop of Guatemala City, was killed two days 
after presenting a devastating report that blamed the nation's military for 
most of the violence during Guatemala's civil war that lasted three 
decades. 
 
    About 200,000 Guatemalans, most of them poor Maya Indians, were killed 
or disappeared during the conflict, which came to an end in 1996. 
 
    "[Bishop Gerardi] was killed because he hated injustice and loved 
equality ... because he didn't remain insensitive to the pain of his 
people, a people humiliated, impoverished, exploited, and massacred," 
Bishop Gerardo Flores, of Coban, in central Guatemala, declared during the 
mass on April 25. 
 
    Although many here still assume the killing was carried out by military 
officials angered by the report which Bishop Gerardi had supervised, the 
early stages of the official investigation focused on a poor shoe cobbler 
who sometimes slept in the park in front of the bishop's residence. 
 
    Then attention turned to a fellow priest, Mario Orantes, who was 
arrested and held for seven months while investigators tried to build a 
case that with the assistance of his dog, an ageing German shepherd, he had 
killed the bishop in a fit of homosexual jealousy.  In February, due to 
lack of evidence, Orantes was released by Judge Henry Monroy, who withdrew 
from the case after receiving repeated death threats. 
 
    In the last two months, investigators have renewed their efforts to 
find the murderer, generating cautious optimism among church officials long 
frustrated with the government's failure to investigate political angles to 
the case. 
 
On April 23, prosecutor Celvin Galindo asked Judge Flor de Maria Garcia, 
the third judge to oversee the case, for permission to take blood samples 
from 12 military officials and five civilians, including Orantes.  If the 
request is granted, Galindo will match the DNA of the specimens to that 
of four different blood stains found on the floor of Gerardi's residence. 
 
    The stains have been analyzed by the U.S. Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, and Galindo went to Washington early this month to review 
the results. 
 
    "Far from taking its responsibility seriously, since the beginning the 
government has tried to evade a serious investigation," said Mynor Melgar, 
a lawyer with the Catholic Archdiocesan Human Rights Office.  "But we 
haven't lost hope that the crime will be cleared up, especially now that 
[government investigators] are following up on a variety of clues.  For the 
moment, however, there is nothing concrete." 
 
    A recent crime is, ironically, being interpreted by many as a sign that 
investigators are finally on the right track. On April 16, three armed men 
searched the home of Ronalth Ochaeta, the director of the Archdiocesan 
Human Rights office.  They held Ochaeta's four-year-old son and the 
family's maid at gunpoint while searching files in the house.  On their way 
out, the armed men left a box containing a chunk of concrete, similar to 
that which was used to kill Gerardi. 
 
    The meaning was clear, but Ochaeta, who has now turned down several 
offers of asylum by European governments, insisted the church would not be 
intimidated.  "We're getting closer to clarifying the crime, yet some 
people don't want us to know the truth.  They're afraid of the truth," 
Ochaeta said. 
 
    Dennis Smith, a Presbyterian Church (USA) mission worker here, said the 
intrusion in Ochaeta's house should be seen in the context of a report in 
February from a United Nations-supervised truth commission that presented 
findings similar to those in last year's church report. 
 
    "Since the commission released its report, the discussion of holding 
people accountable for the violence has made some people in the military 
uncomfortable," Smith said.  "It was time for a public act that would set a 
limit on the debate." 
 
    The popular theory that the military was behind Bishop Gerardi's 
killing was bolstered recently by the testimony of an eyewitness to events 
outside the scene of the killing.  Jorge Mendez Perussina, a taxi driver, 
said he saw a man without a shirt leave the bishop's building and get into 
a car with military licence plates.  Within days of the incident, Mendez 
told his local priest.  Soon afterwards, a colleague who was driving 
Mendez's taxi was shot dead.  A second substitute driving the same taxi was 
also attacked. 
 
    Mendez went into hiding for months.  A day before the taxi driver 
finally gave his testimony to prosecutors, two armed men tried to kidnap 
him.  On Feb. 25 Mendez fled Guatemala to live in Canada. 
 
    Many people believe that the government of President Alvaro Arzu knows 
more about the killing than it admits.  Before President Arzu met Pope John 
Paul II in the Vatican on April 22, Carmen Gerardi, the murdered bishop's 
sister, urged the politician to come clean before the Pope.  "I hope that 
God will inspire the president to speak, and if he knows anything to 
confess it to the Pope, because here in Guatemala we haven't been able to 
achieve that," Carmen Gerardi told the daily newspaper "Siglo XXI." 
 
    During the papal audience, Pope John Paul urged the Guatemalan 
president to resolve the case.  Yet when asked whether the Pope's pressure 
would contribute to a solution, Victor Hugo Martinez, the archbishop of 
Quetzaltenango, replied, "It's hard to tell.  They say things and make 
offers, yet like good Guatemalans they never do anything.  I have a lot of 
doubts that they'll keep their word." 
 
    The bishop's murder has added to long-standing tensions between 
President Arzu and the Roman Catholic Church.  The president chafes under 
the frequent social criticism offered by the bishops.  But the appointment 
of Galindo in January, and his subsequent decision to release Orantes as 
well as signs that the military is being investigated for possible 
involvement in the crime, have allowed the two sides to come closer 
together.  On April 20, after the intrusion in Ochaeta's house, church 
leaders met with  government officials, including the defense minister, 
Hector Barrios.  The government is now providing increased security outside 
archdiocesan offices and the homes of church activists. 

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  This note sent by Office of News Services, 
  Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
  to the World Faith News list <wfn-news@wfn.org>.
  For additional information about this news story,
  call 502-569-5493 or send e-mail to PCUSA.News@pcusa.org

  On the web:  http://www.pcusa.org/pcnews/

  If you have a question about this mailing list, 
  send queries to wfn@wfn.org