Guatemalans to Sue Top Lawmaker Over Genocide

By T. CHRISTIAN MILLER, Times Staff Writer

     PLAN DE SANCHEZ, Guatemala--Eleven communities nearly wiped out two decades ago will file today the first lawsuit in Central America accusing a sitting political figure of genocide.
     The lawsuit, by ethnic Mayas in Guatemala's northern and central mountains, charges that the current head of Congress, Efrain Rios Montt, presided over a brutal policy of racial extermination as the nation's dictator in the early 1980s.
     The suit is the first step in a process that community members hope will bring justice to those who orchestrated the deaths of more than 200,000 people, most of them Mayas, during this country's 36-year civil war.
     It also marks a historic turning point in the effort to close old wounds in a country struggling to come to terms with a legacy of repression and brutality unmatched in Central America during the 1980s. For the first time, massacre survivors intend to publicly step forward en masse to identify those responsible for the killings.
     "It is good to know what happened, to clear up the past," said Juan Manuel Jeronimo, 56, who survived a massacre of 267 people in 1982 in this remote hamlet in the Guatemalan highlands. "That is why we lived: to testify and tell the truth."
     Rios Montt turned down a request for an interview with The Times, and his representatives did not return phone calls Tuesday. But military officials have denied accusations of massacres, frequently insisting that those killed were leftist guerrillas who died in battle.
     Many in the military discount the charge of genocide by rightly pointing out that Mayas fought both for guerrillas and for the army and paramilitary groups.
     "The Guatemalan army never fought against its own people," former Defense Minister Juan de Dios Estrada said recently. "How would it be possible to be genocide since most of the army was made up of indigenous?"
     The Guatemalan justice system allows civil parties such as the 11 communities to file a suit to force a criminal investigation. They become a party to any eventual prosecution of the accused.
     If convicted, Rios Montt could face up to 30 years in prison.
     Few political analysts, however, believe the suit will bring down Rios Montt, who controls not only the Guatemalan Congress but also the political party of President Alfonso Portillo. The Guatemalan justice system is famously corrupt, often unable to resolve even the simplest crimes. And Rios Montt is a powerful figure with ties not only to the judiciary but to the police and military.
     "It might hurt his name and his reputation, but not his fate," predicted Hector Mauricio Lopez Bonilla, a political analyst and former military commander.
     Whatever the result, the lawsuit has special meaning here in Plan de Sanchez, a collection of rough wood dwellings scattered across the spine of a mountain that affords breathtaking views. Ridge after ridge of the Guatemalan highland mountains breaks like a wave on the sea.
     It was here on July 18, 1982, that, according to witnesses, about 60 soldiers and paramilitary troops rounded up residents from several nearby communities as the civilians returned from weekly shopping in a nearby town.
     They detained about 250 people, herding them onto a hillock covered with wild white mountain roses, purple fuchsias and towering pine trees. A number of teenage girls were separated from the group and raped in a nearby home.
     Later, as women and children screamed, the soldiers threw grenades, raked those who were still alive with machine-gun fire and then burned everyone and everything with gasoline that the villagers had purchased in the market that morning.
     Jeronimo, the survivor, had advance warning of the soldiers' approach. Thinking that male villagers were the target, he hid in the woods as the killings took place. He told investigators that he listened in rage and disbelief as his wife, four children, mother and other relatives were slaughtered.
     Jeronimo divides his life by that July day. Sitting on a bench outside his home after cutting wood in the steep slopes surrounding it, he pointed to his current wife and eight children.
     "This is my new family," he said. "The family I had before doesn't exist."
     Jeronimo was one of about 20 people who survived the killings at Plan de Sanchez, about 30 miles north of Guatemala City. It took more than a decade for the survivors to return to the village, build new homes and families and begin again.
     Still, the idea of bringing the killers to justice remained a distant prospect until peace talks began in the early 1990s and human rights groups, the Roman Catholic Church and the Guatemalan government began making efforts at reconciliation.
     An important part of that goal was bringing to trial those responsible for atrocities. The Center for Human Rights Legal Action, one of the country's preeminent rights groups, began contacting residents of various villages, helping to arrange visits by forensic teams that would collect evidence and exhume bodies.
     In Plan de Sanchez, six holes mark the spot where examiners in the early 1990s dug up the remains, about 130 of which could be identified as individual corpses. The villagers have since reburied the dead on the same hill where the massacre occurred, erecting a rough cinder-block church as a memorial.
     In the end, more than 70 communities cooperated with investigators, but only a handful decided to take the next step of filing a lawsuit. Residents of the rest, according to lawyers for the center, were too frightened to challenge the government.
     "The idea that people don't want justice isn't true," said Paul Seils, legal director for the center. "They're still scared."
     Other genocide claims have been filed in the past, with different degrees of success. In December, a suit filed against Rios Montt in Spain by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchu was tossed out after the judge decided that the European nation had no jurisdiction.
     Last year, the center helped 10 other communities file a genocide suit against Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, another former dictator, who now reportedly lives in Venezuela and suffers from Alzheimer's disease. That suit is progressing, and prosecutors have gathered evidence from more than 50 people.
     The communities and the legal center hope to pattern the Rios Montt suit after other successfully prosecuted genocide cases, such as those involving war crimes in the Balkans.
     The evidence against Rios Montt relies heavily on the concept of the chain of command. A report by a United Nations truth commission that investigated this country's civil war showed that nearly half of the documented massacres in Guatemala took place from 1980 to 1983, when Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt were in power.
     The attorneys for the communities have amassed secondhand testimony and a few original documents that show the Guatemalan army pursued written policies that called for soldiers to "annihilate" the guerrillas in the highlands.
     Using, in addition, statements by top commanders that all Mayas were considered guerrillas or sympathizers, attorneys for the center believe that they can portray the massacres as part of a coordinated effort to destroy the Mayas as a people.
     By bringing the government policies to light and holding those responsible accountable, the center hopes to heal the fractures that still run through Guatemalan society five years after the peace accords were signed.
     "In order to have closure, there has to be justice," said Frank La Rue, head of the center.
     While survivors have given testimony to the truth commission and the Catholic Church, those interviews were conducted in strict anonymity. The lawsuit marks the first time that witnesses have stepped forward to publicly describe the killings and identify those responsible.
     It is difficult for outsiders to understand the courage involved in such a step. Scores of human rights workers, church officials and others who have publicly criticized the military regime have been killed for their remarks.
     In the most prominent such case in recent years, Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi was beaten to death in 1998 two days after releasing a report blaming the military for most of the deaths during the war. The trial of his alleged assailants, with the prosecution fully supported by the Catholic Church and even Pope John Paul II, has been marred by a series of prosecutorial errors.
     "If the Catholic Church can't win, who can?" asked Miguel Albizures, head of the Alliance Against Impunity, a Guatemalan human rights group.
     The residents of Plan de Sanchez acknowledge their fear. They expect threats after the suit is filed and their names are made public, but there is little they can do to prevent trouble. The village has no police force. It's an hour away from the nearest city, up a steep and windy dirt track. And there is no telephone or radio communication.
     The villagers hope to install at least a radio set to be able to call for help, but they have no money available to purchase one.
     "We're always afraid, but you have to die some way," said Benjamin Manuel Jeronimo, 47, Juan's brother and a fellow survivor, as he sat on a low stump outside a shack made of unpainted wood. "It's better to do so leaving a legacy than leaving nothing."