Santa Eulalia is the name the Spanish gave to the Q'anjob'al settlement Jolom Konob, nestled among the Cuchumatán mountains in northern Huehuetenango. The municipality's population is almost completely indigenous; there are a handful of Ladino families in the town center. Eulalenses, as Santa Eulalia residents refer to themselves in Spanish, have been emigrating to the Unites States for decades, principally to Florida and Nebraska, more recently to Atlanta, and there is evidence throughout the town of the migrant trajectories. The town stretches along the highway that connects the eponymous departmental capital of Huehuetenango to Santa Cruz Barillas, a road that climbs and winds and curves through breathtakingly beautiful -- and breathtakingly perilous -- landscapes.
Santa Eulalia is home to the community radio station Snuq Jolom Konob, which just celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in December 2014. The radio station broadcasts almost entirely in Q'anjob'al, and offers a variety of programming, ranging from traditional marimba music from Santa Eulalia -- the town's nickname is "the birthplace of the marimba" -- to a Sunday morning program featuring young children. Sunday is the town's market day, and so a lot of children come to town with their parents, and the radio station opens its doors to them. The radio station also has covered the movement in defense of life and territory, reporting on the highway blockages in nearby Pett and San Mateo Ixtatán, and some of the leaders in the local "movimiento social" do regular weekly programs on the station. Daniel Pedro, one of the founders of the station, was an outspoken leader in the opposition to the dam in Barillas, and after his assassination in April 2013, one of his daughters began to fill in a regular slot at the radio station, in part inspired by his memory. Although he was no longer involved in day-to-day operations of the radio station at the time of his death, the station personnel all knew him and he was a revered figure.
During my last visit to Guatemala in January, friends in Santa Eulalia told me that they were facing increasing harassment, defamation and threats, mostly coming from the municipal mayor, Diego Marcos, and his allies. The mayor has been a strong proponent of the Hidro San Luis project, that would be situated in Santa Eulalia. One young friend said that he sensed that he was being followed or observed, and several people told me about town resident named Vicente López who broadcast defamatory comments about people affiliated with the social movement on one of the commercial radio stations. Rigoberto was one of the people who had come under attack. This dates back quite some time; on one of my earlier visits, probably in late 2013, my friend Alfredo Baltazar, one of the leaders in the social movement, had invited me to accompany him and a task force from the social movement who were going to investigate a problem in one of the aldeas outside of the town center, but then later called me to say that people thought that I shouldn't accompany the task force. He explained that there were people in town who were attempting to cast aspersions on Rigoberto, Alfredo and others, and the presence of foreign "escorts" (acompañantes -- accompaniment might be the ) was being used to discredit the social movement, implying that foreigners were somehow controlling the social movement and that there would not be opposition to the hydroelectric projects if it weren't for foreign interference. There are several international NGOs (INGOs, in NGO-speak) that are set up to provide "accompaniment" in Guatemala for human rights defenders (another term that comes from the NGO world that has been adopted into the discourse of indigenous rights activists in Guatemala), and the acompañantes have visited Santa Eulalia, Barillas and elsewhere fairly regularly over the past few years.
When I was in Guatemala in January, Rigoberto had said that he wanted to see me. He sounded somewhat urgent. That was unusual; while we have usually seen each other when I visit Santa Eulalia, and we had a very intense experience last summer of spending two days traveling to a gathering in Alta Verapaz, much of which we spent stopped at road block in Raxruhá, I have been the one who has initiated most of our contacts. I call him when I arrive or know that I am going to arrive. But this time was different. I knew that, like many of the leaders in the movement to defend life and territory -- people in those movements have rejected the label "community leader" which is used by the government, so I am trying to train myself to follow their lead -- Rigoberto had several arrest warrants issued against him. They included charges that he had burned equipment belonging to one of the foreign transnationals -- on a date that he was not in the department of Huehuetenango at all. In fact, when we had been stopped at the roadblock in Raxruhá in the summer of 2014, I knew that he was quite anxious because of the arrest warrants. The roadblock had been set up by residents of Raxruhá, not the authorities -- but there was a police presence and our entire delegation was worried that either Rigoberto or I might attract some undue attention. Last fall, in the face of stepped up negative campaigns and harassment, Alfredo wrote to me to ask for a letter of recommendation for Rigoberto, as an international scholar, certifying that I knew that he was a peaceful person dedicated to working for the betterment of his community and I readily complied. So while it was unusual for Rigoberto to seek a meeting with me, I was eager to see him.
However, we were on non-intersecting trajectories. When I was in Santa Eulalia, I called Rigoberto but he was in the capital. By the time he had returned to Santa Eulalia, I was no longer there. And so we didn't get to see each.
The day before I left Guatemala, January 19, 2015, two leaders in San Mateo Ixtatán were arrested and they were brought to the courthouse in Santa Eulalia, which is apparently the judicial center for the northern part of Huehuetenango (I am a little fuzzy on the exact structure of the Guatemalan judicial system). There were negotiations overnight between representatives of the Plurinational Government and the judges to obtain the release of the leaders. There were people gathered outside the courthouse awaiting the results of the negotiations. Around 5 a.m., on the morning of January 20, the day of my departure from Guatemala, someone in a car belonging to the town's mayor, Diego Marcos, fired shots. Two men were wounded, one of them quite seriously. They were both rushed to more specialized hospital facilities elsewhere. Then as the volunteer broadcasters were showing up to start the first radio broadcast of the day at Snuq Jolom Konob, whose broadcast studios are in a small space inside the municipal building, were attacked by a mob of the mayor's supporters. One of them was the daughter of Daniel Pedro, the man who was assassinated in 2013.
I found this all out when I went to the home of Prensa Comunitaria, an alternative web-based news service. Quimy de León, one of the editors of Prensa Comunitaria, had written to ask me to purchase a recorder but she wrote to me only the day before my departure, which didn't give me enough time, so I agreed to sell her mine when I was ready to leave, and so by arrangement I was stopping off to leave my recorder that morning, and she told me what had happened and that Rigoberto and my friend Lorenzo, who is the director of the radio station, and others had gone into hiding. I managed to get a few messages to people in Santa Eulalia as I was en route to the airport, and as soon as I got home I tried to keep up with things (yes, I know, I should have been blogging all of this in January and sparing you reading this all now). Within a few days the Mayor had denounced the radio station, claiming that they were parasitic (since they used facilities in the municipal building) and spreading a lot of negative comments about the radio station. Then he cut off the power, and the radio station was off the air. He launched a campaign against the radio station, saying that he would support the reopening community radio station but with a different mission and with different people running it. People throughout Guatemala rallied in support of Snuq Jolom - mostly virtually, creating posters on Facebook and sending messages of support. People in the community expressed their support of the radio station, as well as members of the Q'anjob'al migrant community in the U.S., many of whom listened to the radio station via internet, sending song requests and messages via Facebook, or sometimes calling in to place requests.
In March, the radio station decided that they were going to re-open, and set a date, planning a large ceremony, to which they invited community, alternative and mainstream broadcasters from around the country, local leaders and others. However, a few days before the planned re-opening, one of the two men who had been wounded in January, Pascual Basilio Pascual Diego, 20 years old, died in hospital in Santa Cruz del Quiché. His death created an uproar among those who supported the movement for life and territory, or the resistance movement, and in several of the towns that the hearse passed as it made its way to Santa Eulalia for the funeral and burial, people turned out alongside the highway to pay their respects, and express their outrage and anger, much of it directed at the mayor, Diego Marcos, whom many felt was responsible for Pascual Diego's death -- now labeled by many in the movement as an assassination.
Hundreds of people gathered for the funeral on March 17, and the notes posted on Facebok labeled him as another martyr for the defense of life and territory. So everyone was in a solemn but defiant state two days later when the reopening of the radio station was scheduled to take place. Again, hundreds of people gathered, this time in the central plaza of Santa Eulalia, where a platform had been erected for the speakers and the marimba orchestra. However, the festivities were disrupted by the mayor and his supporters. The mayor took the microphone and declared that the radio station was inciting violence, and that it could only be reopened by a juridical order. The mayor's supporters attacked some of the media people who had come to cover the event, including Jeff Abbott, photojournalist from the Chilean press service Opal and Lucia Ixchíu from Prensa Comunitaria, and confiscated several cameras.
A few days after these events, Rigoberto Juárez and Domingo Baltazar traveled to Guatemala City, to file complaints against the mayor for the attacks. As they were standing with some friends and allies on the Sexta Avenida of the Zona 1 -- the main street of the historic district, a large stretch of which was converted to a pedestrian-only zone some years back - they were seized and manhandled by police, acting upon some of the outstanding arrest warrants, and taken to jail.
This was just the latest in a series of aggressive actions by the state against those who have opposed mining and especially hydroelectric projects. Immediately notices and photos were posted, declaring that Rigoberto and Domingo were the latest political prisoners of the Guatemalan state.
In the next installment, I will try to briefly summarize what has happened between their arrest and my visit on July 4 -- a perfect way, in my view, to celebrate independence day.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Visiting political prisoners Rigoberto Juárez Mateo and Domingo Baltazar: the background, part 1
The first thing I did upon arrival in Guatemala, after getting in at 10:30 on Friday night, settling into my hotel and getting a few hours sleep, was to get up at the crack of dawn on Saturday in order to visit two of the "defenders of life and territory" (I will explain in a moment why I used that term), Rigoberto Juárez Mateo and Domingo Baltazar Pedro, who are in what is euphemistically called "preventive detention" (the equivalent of pre-trial detention) after being arrested in March on a series of bogus criminal charges, including kidnapping. They are among the latest in a series of indigenous and non-indigenous leaders in the struggle to defend life and territory -- what Guatemalans who are involved in these efforts prefer to call what others might label "resistance movements" or "movements against mining, hydroelectric and other mega-projects" -- who have been subject to campaigns attempting to discredit and defame them, harassment from the authorities, arbitrary arrest and even assassination. The movements to defend life and territory have been one of my central foci in Guatemala, and I have spent a fair amount of time during the last few years in Santa Eulalia, a Q'anjob'al town in the northern part of Huehuetenango, which is Rigoberto and Domingos' hometown, and the nearby tow of Santa Cruz Barillas, two municipalities that have been at the epicenter of some of the most recent clashes between the government, transnational companies and the mostly indigenous residents of these areas. In order to situate my visit in context, I need to backtrack a little and fill in some of what has gone on in the area.
Several years ago a Spanish transnational, Hidro Santa Cruz, began work on a proposed hydroelectric dam outside of the town center of Barillas, contravening a popular "community consultation" in which residents overwhelming voiced their opposition to mining, dams or megaprojects -- a catch-all term used to describe any large-scale undertaking, usually financed with foreign capital, such as biofuel production or the installation of a cement plant. These consultations in good faith (consultas de buena fé) are carried out by community members with help from some indigenous rights NGOs based on an interpretation of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which calls for prior consultation with and informed and free consent by indigenous communities regarding any projects that are to be undertaken on their territory. The consultations are supposed to be carried out by the national government, or at least with the government's participation, but the Guatemalan government has refused to abide by a ruling ordering it to establish such a procedure -- their proposal was to have some kind of a vaguely defined "public comment period". Since the government hasn't set up a process, indigenous rights groups decided to undertake this on their own. Technically these consultas (I am going to use the Spanish word here) are not legally binding because the national government doesn't participate in the process but they carry a lot of symbolic and moral weight.
Many residents of Barillas began to mount an organized opposition to the dam. I am not going to lay out an entire chronology here, but starting in May, 2012, a company guard killed a local leader in Barillas, and the government responded in a militarized fashion, declaring martial law and occupying Barillas. Folks from Santa Eulalia supported this movement, and the community radio station in Santa Eulalia, Snuq Jolom Konob, reported on the protests and other activities of the resistance movement. Residents of Barillas blocked the access road, burned machinery, and set up an encampment along the access road. There were also protests in nearby communities in between Barillas and Santa Eulalia about propose hydroelectric projects in those areas. Residents blocked the highway in the aldea (hamlet) of Pett, which belongs to the municipality of Santa Eulalia, and there were some disturbances in the Chuj municipality of San Mateo Ixtatán, which lies on the highway that connects Santa Eulalia and Barillas. As more communities were affected, leaders in the different municipalities joined together to form what they called the Plurinational Govermental of the Chuj, Akateko, Popti, Qanjobal and Mestizo people, and there were also local formations - the one in Santa Eulalia was called the "movimiento social" (social movement). Rigoberto and Domingo were leaders in the movimiento social in Santa Eulalia and also participated in some of the regional meetings. Rigoberto had made a trip to visit a group of Q'anjob'al elders in the immigrant community in Nebraska, who were familiarly called "los abuelos" (literally, grandfathers but it is used to mean "the elders" or "the ancestors"), and so his role in the community was not just local and regional but also international. When I first met Rigoberto in 2012, he was living in Salcajá, a small municipality in Queztaltenango, outside of Xela, but sometime in 2013 he moved back to Santa Eulalia, or at least began spending most of his time there, leaving his wife and children in Salcajá, so that he could assume more of a leadership role in the emerging movement. It may have been after the assassination of Daniel Mateo in April 2013; there's not really a precise date.
The next entry will look at the specific situation in Santa Eulalia that led to Rigoberto and Domingo's arrest in March of this year.
Several years ago a Spanish transnational, Hidro Santa Cruz, began work on a proposed hydroelectric dam outside of the town center of Barillas, contravening a popular "community consultation" in which residents overwhelming voiced their opposition to mining, dams or megaprojects -- a catch-all term used to describe any large-scale undertaking, usually financed with foreign capital, such as biofuel production or the installation of a cement plant. These consultations in good faith (consultas de buena fé) are carried out by community members with help from some indigenous rights NGOs based on an interpretation of Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, on the Rights of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples, which calls for prior consultation with and informed and free consent by indigenous communities regarding any projects that are to be undertaken on their territory. The consultations are supposed to be carried out by the national government, or at least with the government's participation, but the Guatemalan government has refused to abide by a ruling ordering it to establish such a procedure -- their proposal was to have some kind of a vaguely defined "public comment period". Since the government hasn't set up a process, indigenous rights groups decided to undertake this on their own. Technically these consultas (I am going to use the Spanish word here) are not legally binding because the national government doesn't participate in the process but they carry a lot of symbolic and moral weight.
Many residents of Barillas began to mount an organized opposition to the dam. I am not going to lay out an entire chronology here, but starting in May, 2012, a company guard killed a local leader in Barillas, and the government responded in a militarized fashion, declaring martial law and occupying Barillas. Folks from Santa Eulalia supported this movement, and the community radio station in Santa Eulalia, Snuq Jolom Konob, reported on the protests and other activities of the resistance movement. Residents of Barillas blocked the access road, burned machinery, and set up an encampment along the access road. There were also protests in nearby communities in between Barillas and Santa Eulalia about propose hydroelectric projects in those areas. Residents blocked the highway in the aldea (hamlet) of Pett, which belongs to the municipality of Santa Eulalia, and there were some disturbances in the Chuj municipality of San Mateo Ixtatán, which lies on the highway that connects Santa Eulalia and Barillas. As more communities were affected, leaders in the different municipalities joined together to form what they called the Plurinational Govermental of the Chuj, Akateko, Popti, Qanjobal and Mestizo people, and there were also local formations - the one in Santa Eulalia was called the "movimiento social" (social movement). Rigoberto and Domingo were leaders in the movimiento social in Santa Eulalia and also participated in some of the regional meetings. Rigoberto had made a trip to visit a group of Q'anjob'al elders in the immigrant community in Nebraska, who were familiarly called "los abuelos" (literally, grandfathers but it is used to mean "the elders" or "the ancestors"), and so his role in the community was not just local and regional but also international. When I first met Rigoberto in 2012, he was living in Salcajá, a small municipality in Queztaltenango, outside of Xela, but sometime in 2013 he moved back to Santa Eulalia, or at least began spending most of his time there, leaving his wife and children in Salcajá, so that he could assume more of a leadership role in the emerging movement. It may have been after the assassination of Daniel Mateo in April 2013; there's not really a precise date.
The next entry will look at the specific situation in Santa Eulalia that led to Rigoberto and Domingo's arrest in March of this year.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Tia Nosh
This is a completely frivolous blog entry, that will mostly be of interest to people who understand both Spanish and a little bit of Yiddish. There is a restaurant along the main highway in Guatemala, CA-1, also known as the Pan-American or Interamerican highway, on the stretch of road between Huehuetenango (the city), and Xela (i.e. Quetzaletenango), called Tia Nosh.
The name has always made me chuckle, because as someone who speaks Spanish and who knows a little Yiddish, the name seems funny. Tia is the Spanish word for aunt. Nosh is undoubtedly a K'iche' equivalent or nickname for some female name in Spanish (I say this authoritatively because Posh is the K'iche' equivalent of Sebastian, so it stands to reason that Nosh is the K'iche' equivalent of a female name).
So a Guatemalan would read this as Auntie So-and-So's restaurant. However, nosh is also a word in Yiddish. It means "to snack or nibble".
As in, "I noshed on the leftovers." It is also a noun, referring to the snack itself. "Would you like a little nosh?" So, in my view, this is a perfect name for a roadside eatery: Auntie Snack. I should add that I have never eaten at this restaurant. I am generally in a rush when I traverse this stretch of highway and unless I am really, really hungry I also don't like eating by the side of the road, especially with all the diesel fumes in Guatemala. So I cannot recommend the cuisine.
Friday, January 16, 2015
The Spanish Embassy, 34 years later
On January 31,1980, peasant and student leaders, mostly from the department of El Quiché, occupied the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City as a way of making visible their demands upon an unresponsive government, as security forces had already begun to launch attacks against community leaders. State security forces surrounded the embassy and cut off power, and then there was a massive blaze and nearly all of those inside, Embassy employees as well as protestors, died. Only two people escaped alive, and one of those '-- a Guatemalan who had helped the Ambassador flee -- was assassinated shortly afterwards, as he was recuperating from his injuries. For over 30 years the case lay dormant but in October of last year, the slow wheels of the Guatemalan justice system began to crank again and, nearly 35 years after those events, the prosecution started to unfold its case against Pedro Garcia Arredondo, who at the time was a police commander. Over 30 witnesses have been called in the last few months,and I had the opportunity to witness what was supposed to have been the last day of testimony (two witnesses who had been called by the defense did not appear and so there was another day of testimony set for Monday of this week, but I was not able to attend as I was en route to Huehuetenango).
Because I had no press credentials, my friends advised me to give them my camera and tape recorder since non-journalists were generally not permitted to tape or photograph, and they handed them back when we were inside (I gave them copies of the audio recording so it wasn't entirely bogus, and stayed close to the other photographers and videographers so that I would not stick out (any more than I would already stick out as a frizzy-haired gringa). There was a panel of three female judges (one thing that I will say about Guatemala's legals system is that there are a lot of female attorneys and judges, although one of the qualifications to be a female attorney in Guatemala seems to be wearing extremely high stiletto heels). The chief witness was the former Spanish ambassador, who had been dispatched to Guatemala immediately after the fire, arriving on February 1 and beginning an investigation that resulted in a pretty hefty report to the Spanish government. He was a tall, reserved and yet quietly powerful figure, speaking very thoughtfully and at times forcefully. He laid out his investigations in painstaking detail, at time relying upon the report and consulting other notes he had brought. I will not go back over all my notes and repeat everything I wrote down, but some of the key points he presented were the presence of some kind of chemical that had a paralyzing effect. In other words, they had sent for a toxicology report and it seemed that something had been used to paralyze the victims. Another point he raised was evidence of an accelerant, and what I understood was that both this and the other chemical were not garden-variety substances but more specialized, not something that you could pick up at the corner store. Also, some of the bodies had bullet wounds. He was very clear and unswerving in his testimony
When it came time for the defense to cross examine him, they tried unsuccessfully to find holes or contradictions, or force him into a corner. They were reduced to asking what seemed to be pretty silly questions and the judge seemed to concur, supporting many of the other sides objections that the questions were irrelevant, or telling the defense attorneys that the witness had already answered their question. They asked him about his relationship to the diplomatic service and whether he was no longer in the service. He explained patiently that while he was not an active member, and was not serving as an ambassador to anywhere, he was still a member of the diplomatic corps and would be until he died, and that he carried a diplomatic passport and still enjoyed the privileges of being a diplomat. They asked him who had paid for his trip and his lodging. He answered that the foreign service of Spain had paid for his ticket since they felt that his presence was important since it was, after all, their embassy that had been burned and their employees who had perished. The current ambassador, he added, had offered to put him up (the current ambassador and a few other embassy officials sat directly behind the witness). The defense attorneys then turned to one page in the report and asked about a specific phrase that the ambassador had used: that when these events had occurred and there was an international outcry, the Guatemalan government reacted like a wounded animal. What did he mean, asked the attorney, by the phrase, like a wounded animal. Like a wounded animal, he replied. The defense attorney persisted, but what did you mean by that. Like a wounded animal, he replied, a bit more testily. I think what I wrote is completely clear. The attorney asked, But what does that mean to you? He retorted quickly, What does it mean to YOU? At this the judge intervened and said, It seems that they do not understand what you were trying to say. Can you rephrase it for them? And then he said, It reacted like a cat (and I didn't catch the entire phrase but I think it was something like a cat whose tail had been stepped on). This was met with a generalized chuckle or laugh, and the judge would not let the defense attorneys persist with this questioning.
The next witness was a doctor who specializes in forensics. He was not especially impressive. He simply interpreted some of the medical reports that had been prepared at the time, and in a few cases declined to offer much interpretation.
The last two witnesses were called by the defense, and they were both relatives of victims. One was the son of a woman who had been the private secretary of the Ambassador and had worked at the embassy for many years. He had heard about a disturbance and left his work to drive over. He reported that the protestors had locked the embassy and were not letting people in but he managed to slip inside one of the doors. He said that he tried to offer himself in place of his mother, whom he saw as a hostage but that the peasants who were there, whom he said had machetes and molotov cocktails, said that no one was leaving and he eventually was forced out. He said that he stayed outside and watched, and then there was an explosion, the implication being that the peasant leaders had ignited bombs, and then the building went up in flames. In response to the other side's questions he said that he did not hear any gunshots. At the end, he was allowed to make a statement about why he was there, which I thought was highly unusual. He said that he had not spoken to anyone or participated in any events that were organized by victim's families for 34 years, but that he was tired of people using his mother for their own benefit and to support their own causes. When he was done he shook hands with all the defense attorneys and the defendant and then turned and curtly waved to the other side.
The last witness in some ways contradicted the first one, as he claimed to have heard gunshots but did not hear an explosion. He was an elderly man, fairly infirm and frail, who came in a wheelchair and had to be helped into the witness chair. He was full of fury, and started to launch into a diatribe as soon as he was asked to identify himself. The judge had to tell him that the only thing he was being asked to do was state his name and identity, and would have to wait to answer questions. His testimony was long winded and repetitious, and the defense kept asking him to repeat the same details about how he came to the embassy and what he saw. He insisted on calling the protestors guerrillas and the judge allowed that to stand. She allowed him to get away with a lot of pontificating, in my view. His testimony was so repetitive that a few of us nodded off during it. He insisted that the Spanish ambassador was the main person at fault along with the guerrillas who had molotov cocktails in their morales (woven or crocheted bags worn over the shoulder). How he saw inside their bags when he was in the street outside the embassy is not clear. However, at the end of his testimony, the judge allowed him to make a statement attacking Rigoberta Menchu, who was there as one of the two plaintiffs. He went on about how wonderful the Maya culture was and how in the past everyone got along and there were no problems and now it was Maya against Maya, implying that it was because of people who wanted to stir things up. Especially Rigoberta, who wasn't deserving of the title because she was not for peace. Very hateful and again, surprising that the judge let him rant on.Not only did she let him rant on but she invoked religion and apologized to him on behalf of the Guatemalan government and offered him comfort for his suffering. All of which again seemed highly unusual.
Because I had no press credentials, my friends advised me to give them my camera and tape recorder since non-journalists were generally not permitted to tape or photograph, and they handed them back when we were inside (I gave them copies of the audio recording so it wasn't entirely bogus, and stayed close to the other photographers and videographers so that I would not stick out (any more than I would already stick out as a frizzy-haired gringa). There was a panel of three female judges (one thing that I will say about Guatemala's legals system is that there are a lot of female attorneys and judges, although one of the qualifications to be a female attorney in Guatemala seems to be wearing extremely high stiletto heels). The chief witness was the former Spanish ambassador, who had been dispatched to Guatemala immediately after the fire, arriving on February 1 and beginning an investigation that resulted in a pretty hefty report to the Spanish government. He was a tall, reserved and yet quietly powerful figure, speaking very thoughtfully and at times forcefully. He laid out his investigations in painstaking detail, at time relying upon the report and consulting other notes he had brought. I will not go back over all my notes and repeat everything I wrote down, but some of the key points he presented were the presence of some kind of chemical that had a paralyzing effect. In other words, they had sent for a toxicology report and it seemed that something had been used to paralyze the victims. Another point he raised was evidence of an accelerant, and what I understood was that both this and the other chemical were not garden-variety substances but more specialized, not something that you could pick up at the corner store. Also, some of the bodies had bullet wounds. He was very clear and unswerving in his testimony
When it came time for the defense to cross examine him, they tried unsuccessfully to find holes or contradictions, or force him into a corner. They were reduced to asking what seemed to be pretty silly questions and the judge seemed to concur, supporting many of the other sides objections that the questions were irrelevant, or telling the defense attorneys that the witness had already answered their question. They asked him about his relationship to the diplomatic service and whether he was no longer in the service. He explained patiently that while he was not an active member, and was not serving as an ambassador to anywhere, he was still a member of the diplomatic corps and would be until he died, and that he carried a diplomatic passport and still enjoyed the privileges of being a diplomat. They asked him who had paid for his trip and his lodging. He answered that the foreign service of Spain had paid for his ticket since they felt that his presence was important since it was, after all, their embassy that had been burned and their employees who had perished. The current ambassador, he added, had offered to put him up (the current ambassador and a few other embassy officials sat directly behind the witness). The defense attorneys then turned to one page in the report and asked about a specific phrase that the ambassador had used: that when these events had occurred and there was an international outcry, the Guatemalan government reacted like a wounded animal. What did he mean, asked the attorney, by the phrase, like a wounded animal. Like a wounded animal, he replied. The defense attorney persisted, but what did you mean by that. Like a wounded animal, he replied, a bit more testily. I think what I wrote is completely clear. The attorney asked, But what does that mean to you? He retorted quickly, What does it mean to YOU? At this the judge intervened and said, It seems that they do not understand what you were trying to say. Can you rephrase it for them? And then he said, It reacted like a cat (and I didn't catch the entire phrase but I think it was something like a cat whose tail had been stepped on). This was met with a generalized chuckle or laugh, and the judge would not let the defense attorneys persist with this questioning.
The next witness was a doctor who specializes in forensics. He was not especially impressive. He simply interpreted some of the medical reports that had been prepared at the time, and in a few cases declined to offer much interpretation.
The last two witnesses were called by the defense, and they were both relatives of victims. One was the son of a woman who had been the private secretary of the Ambassador and had worked at the embassy for many years. He had heard about a disturbance and left his work to drive over. He reported that the protestors had locked the embassy and were not letting people in but he managed to slip inside one of the doors. He said that he tried to offer himself in place of his mother, whom he saw as a hostage but that the peasants who were there, whom he said had machetes and molotov cocktails, said that no one was leaving and he eventually was forced out. He said that he stayed outside and watched, and then there was an explosion, the implication being that the peasant leaders had ignited bombs, and then the building went up in flames. In response to the other side's questions he said that he did not hear any gunshots. At the end, he was allowed to make a statement about why he was there, which I thought was highly unusual. He said that he had not spoken to anyone or participated in any events that were organized by victim's families for 34 years, but that he was tired of people using his mother for their own benefit and to support their own causes. When he was done he shook hands with all the defense attorneys and the defendant and then turned and curtly waved to the other side.
The last witness in some ways contradicted the first one, as he claimed to have heard gunshots but did not hear an explosion. He was an elderly man, fairly infirm and frail, who came in a wheelchair and had to be helped into the witness chair. He was full of fury, and started to launch into a diatribe as soon as he was asked to identify himself. The judge had to tell him that the only thing he was being asked to do was state his name and identity, and would have to wait to answer questions. His testimony was long winded and repetitious, and the defense kept asking him to repeat the same details about how he came to the embassy and what he saw. He insisted on calling the protestors guerrillas and the judge allowed that to stand. She allowed him to get away with a lot of pontificating, in my view. His testimony was so repetitive that a few of us nodded off during it. He insisted that the Spanish ambassador was the main person at fault along with the guerrillas who had molotov cocktails in their morales (woven or crocheted bags worn over the shoulder). How he saw inside their bags when he was in the street outside the embassy is not clear. However, at the end of his testimony, the judge allowed him to make a statement attacking Rigoberta Menchu, who was there as one of the two plaintiffs. He went on about how wonderful the Maya culture was and how in the past everyone got along and there were no problems and now it was Maya against Maya, implying that it was because of people who wanted to stir things up. Especially Rigoberta, who wasn't deserving of the title because she was not for peace. Very hateful and again, surprising that the judge let him rant on.Not only did she let him rant on but she invoked religion and apologized to him on behalf of the Guatemalan government and offered him comfort for his suffering. All of which again seemed highly unusual.
Leadership on trial
When the business and political elites find opposition to their plans, they resort to repression and the criminalization of their opponents. At least that's how it goes down in Guatemala. In the community of San Juan Sacatepequez (in the department of Sacatepequez; there is a town called San Juan Sacatepequez in the department of San Marcos, just to keep things interesting), business interests have been working to establish a cement factory, against the opposition of many in the community. This has gone on for several years, and in the past year the situation has gotten more tense and conflictual.The company has hired thugs to intimidate residents, especially those in the opposition. Women in the communities have complained of assaults by the police and private security guards hired by the company. The town's mayor has been bought out by the company and has tried to pull people away from the opposition movement. In April, as I described in an earlier post there was a peaceful protest and a hired thug tried to disrupt it. He provoked a mob response and ended up dead. Barbara Diaz Surin, one of the leaders, was charged in his murder, and I decided to attend her trial, together with friends from the Prensa Comunitaria. Prensa Comunitaria is an independent news service that was started in the aftermath of the massacre of October 4, when the army opened fire on a peaceful protest on the Inter American highway, led by the authorities from the 48 cantons of Totonicapan, resulting in 8 deaths.
On Thursday, January 8, we headed out in a complicated route as we had to pick up several people along the way. One of our colleagues, Lucia, lugged along some heavy shopping bags full of staple food items. Since the tensions have risen in San Juan Sac.,the community leaders will not allow anyone from the outside to enter. So it is not possible for people to bring donations for the families of the people who are facing trial or who are in jail. Lucia knew that some of the family members would be there and so she had gathered donations so she could bring them to the courthouse and hand them over there.
One of my friends is part of the legal team and so we had talked about the trial a little bit in the day or two before. He was very worried because he saw the case as being entirely political and not really about legal issues or evidence. The only evidence that had been presented so far was the testimony of the man's son, and my friend Juan thought there were some problems with his testimony, based upon where he said he was standing in relationship to his father, and also the number of people who were part of the mob. Also, in his experience, leaders do not act the way Doña Barbara was supposed to have acted. They generally try to calm things down rather than stir them up. There are already several leaders who have been jailed on equally trumped up charges, and two of them have 50 year sentences, but this would be the first time that a woman had been sentenced for a political crime of this magnitude and for a sentence so harsh.
When we made it to the courthouse in Mixco, we were able to find parking close to the courthouse and then encountered a long line of people waiting outside. Some of them were family and supporters of Doña Barbara and her co-defendant, while others were probably waiting for other cases. We helped Lucia lug the large bags full of food so that she could turn them over to the intended recipients, and then walked past the first set of guards. I walked in with my friends from the media, a little anxious since I did not have any press credentials. Upstairs, we found more friends and supporters, along with the attorneys and the defendants. The courtroom was small and the security guards did not want to allow all the media in. So we waited, and eventually most of us were able to go in (the guards wanted to limit it to one person from each media outlet and there were four or five people from Prensa Comunitaria). I flashed my UMass Dartmouth ID and said that I was with a unviersity radio station in the U.S. Not true but it worked, that plus white skin/foreigner privilege.
The courtroom was tiny, and there was only room for about 25 people. I didn't understand all of the proceedings because I am not well versed in Guatemalan legal procedure, but much of the discussion focused on whether the trial could proceed, and some technical issues. Ultimately, after about an hour, the judge decided that the trial would be postponed because there was a video from the day in question that the Ministerio Publico had, and which they had not provided to the defense. So the Ministerio Publico would have to produce the video and let the defense review it in order to mount an adequate defense.
After ensuring that both Doña Barbara and Don Basilio had understood fully and were in agreement, the judge ordered that the new date would be February 17. Doña Barbara seemed both relieved and anxious, and while people crowded around her afterwards, her first comment was that what she wanted to do was see her daughter. I spoke to Juan afterwards and he said that this had been the only strategy that they had come up with, because they felt that the judge had a very negative attitude. In Guatemala there are no juries. Cases are decided by a judge or a panel of judges, as far as I can tell, and since many judges are political appointees, the judiciary is far from neutral.
On Thursday, January 8, we headed out in a complicated route as we had to pick up several people along the way. One of our colleagues, Lucia, lugged along some heavy shopping bags full of staple food items. Since the tensions have risen in San Juan Sac.,the community leaders will not allow anyone from the outside to enter. So it is not possible for people to bring donations for the families of the people who are facing trial or who are in jail. Lucia knew that some of the family members would be there and so she had gathered donations so she could bring them to the courthouse and hand them over there.
One of my friends is part of the legal team and so we had talked about the trial a little bit in the day or two before. He was very worried because he saw the case as being entirely political and not really about legal issues or evidence. The only evidence that had been presented so far was the testimony of the man's son, and my friend Juan thought there were some problems with his testimony, based upon where he said he was standing in relationship to his father, and also the number of people who were part of the mob. Also, in his experience, leaders do not act the way Doña Barbara was supposed to have acted. They generally try to calm things down rather than stir them up. There are already several leaders who have been jailed on equally trumped up charges, and two of them have 50 year sentences, but this would be the first time that a woman had been sentenced for a political crime of this magnitude and for a sentence so harsh.
When we made it to the courthouse in Mixco, we were able to find parking close to the courthouse and then encountered a long line of people waiting outside. Some of them were family and supporters of Doña Barbara and her co-defendant, while others were probably waiting for other cases. We helped Lucia lug the large bags full of food so that she could turn them over to the intended recipients, and then walked past the first set of guards. I walked in with my friends from the media, a little anxious since I did not have any press credentials. Upstairs, we found more friends and supporters, along with the attorneys and the defendants. The courtroom was small and the security guards did not want to allow all the media in. So we waited, and eventually most of us were able to go in (the guards wanted to limit it to one person from each media outlet and there were four or five people from Prensa Comunitaria). I flashed my UMass Dartmouth ID and said that I was with a unviersity radio station in the U.S. Not true but it worked, that plus white skin/foreigner privilege.
The courtroom was tiny, and there was only room for about 25 people. I didn't understand all of the proceedings because I am not well versed in Guatemalan legal procedure, but much of the discussion focused on whether the trial could proceed, and some technical issues. Ultimately, after about an hour, the judge decided that the trial would be postponed because there was a video from the day in question that the Ministerio Publico had, and which they had not provided to the defense. So the Ministerio Publico would have to produce the video and let the defense review it in order to mount an adequate defense.
After ensuring that both Doña Barbara and Don Basilio had understood fully and were in agreement, the judge ordered that the new date would be February 17. Doña Barbara seemed both relieved and anxious, and while people crowded around her afterwards, her first comment was that what she wanted to do was see her daughter. I spoke to Juan afterwards and he said that this had been the only strategy that they had come up with, because they felt that the judge had a very negative attitude. In Guatemala there are no juries. Cases are decided by a judge or a panel of judges, as far as I can tell, and since many judges are political appointees, the judiciary is far from neutral.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Modem madness
Sadly, I did not take advantage of the days when I had wifi in Guatemala City and Olintepeque, and now I find myself with very little internet access now that I have gotten started blogging again.
For the last several years I have been able to have easy access to the internet because cell phone carriers in Guatemala, like those in some other developing countries, have developed easy-to-use USB modems, which means that anywhere there is a cellphone signal, you can plug in one of those modems and be online shortly. Once during tne 2011 presidential campaign I got stuck in trying to pass through a town where there was a political rally underway. There was only one through road and traffic was completedly stopped and there was nowhere else to go. So I pulled out my laptop, plugged in my modem, and set to work.
I brought my modem with me but I didn´t need to use it for the first week since I was staying with friends who had wifi, and so this morning as I prepared to leave for Santa Eulalia and Barillas in Huehuetenango, where my friends do not have wifi, I went to the cell phone company to check out my modem. I thought maybe I would need to buy a new SIM card in case mine had expired -- the one in my phone was still working, which was a pleasant surprise as I didn't have to get a new one. There are cell phone kiosks (not full service stores) in many shopping centers and commercial areas and so I talked to someone at one of the Tigo kiosks when I was out having a cup of tea with a friend yesterday. She told me I had to go the main store, which is in one of the biggest shopping centers in Xela. So, this morning I set out in the opposite direction of the road that would take me to Huehuetenango and managed to find the shopping center. The street it is on is crowded with stores and centros comerciales (shopping centers -- mostly strip malls) and the sign announcing Pradera Xela is set back quite a bit from the road so I missed it the first time and had to do some complicated manuevering to get back (it's a divided road, and there aren't any easy places to go around the block). The young woman to whom I was assigned took a look at my modem and said the modem was fine (she plugged it into a different machine) and we tried it in my machine but kept getting an error message saying that the application quit unexpectedly. She went to talk to a technician. He told her the modem was not configured for my operating system. She brought me the newer modem that they have but that, too, didn´t work. We checked: it is compatible with Mac OSX 10.8 and 10.9. I have Mac OSX 10.10.1 The only option was a regular wifi modem that would not be mobile. It has to be plugged in, and it costs nearly $100. I then went to the two competitors, Claro and Movistar, and found out that all their modems were only compatible with OSX 10.8 and 10.9. No one has a modem that is compatible with the more recent operating systems.
So, for the moment, the only way I can get online is to use someone else´s computer and their modem (and of course pay for the airtime, many of my friends here don´t have monthly plans but buy airtime by the day when they need it). Kind of like loosies. By the way, loosies are probably the main way that people in much of Latin America buy cigarettes, especially the rural and urban poor, as few people have the money to buy full packs of cigarettes. And few people have cell phone plans. They purchase air time as their funds permit.
For the last several years I have been able to have easy access to the internet because cell phone carriers in Guatemala, like those in some other developing countries, have developed easy-to-use USB modems, which means that anywhere there is a cellphone signal, you can plug in one of those modems and be online shortly. Once during tne 2011 presidential campaign I got stuck in trying to pass through a town where there was a political rally underway. There was only one through road and traffic was completedly stopped and there was nowhere else to go. So I pulled out my laptop, plugged in my modem, and set to work.
I brought my modem with me but I didn´t need to use it for the first week since I was staying with friends who had wifi, and so this morning as I prepared to leave for Santa Eulalia and Barillas in Huehuetenango, where my friends do not have wifi, I went to the cell phone company to check out my modem. I thought maybe I would need to buy a new SIM card in case mine had expired -- the one in my phone was still working, which was a pleasant surprise as I didn't have to get a new one. There are cell phone kiosks (not full service stores) in many shopping centers and commercial areas and so I talked to someone at one of the Tigo kiosks when I was out having a cup of tea with a friend yesterday. She told me I had to go the main store, which is in one of the biggest shopping centers in Xela. So, this morning I set out in the opposite direction of the road that would take me to Huehuetenango and managed to find the shopping center. The street it is on is crowded with stores and centros comerciales (shopping centers -- mostly strip malls) and the sign announcing Pradera Xela is set back quite a bit from the road so I missed it the first time and had to do some complicated manuevering to get back (it's a divided road, and there aren't any easy places to go around the block). The young woman to whom I was assigned took a look at my modem and said the modem was fine (she plugged it into a different machine) and we tried it in my machine but kept getting an error message saying that the application quit unexpectedly. She went to talk to a technician. He told her the modem was not configured for my operating system. She brought me the newer modem that they have but that, too, didn´t work. We checked: it is compatible with Mac OSX 10.8 and 10.9. I have Mac OSX 10.10.1 The only option was a regular wifi modem that would not be mobile. It has to be plugged in, and it costs nearly $100. I then went to the two competitors, Claro and Movistar, and found out that all their modems were only compatible with OSX 10.8 and 10.9. No one has a modem that is compatible with the more recent operating systems.
So, for the moment, the only way I can get online is to use someone else´s computer and their modem (and of course pay for the airtime, many of my friends here don´t have monthly plans but buy airtime by the day when they need it). Kind of like loosies. By the way, loosies are probably the main way that people in much of Latin America buy cigarettes, especially the rural and urban poor, as few people have the money to buy full packs of cigarettes. And few people have cell phone plans. They purchase air time as their funds permit.
Quick rundown: from genocide trials to drag queens
For some reason it has taken me several days to feel that I had anything much to write about, and the psychic space and time to write it. Since I am nearly halfway through my stay this invariably means that I will be playing catch-up the entire time.
So, this first foray will just be a summary, as much so I can keep things straight for myself as for anyone else's benefit. I find sometimes that I can't remember what I did two days previously -- where I was, and with whom.
I had planned to spend the first handful of days in the capital as there were some important political trials that I wanted to attend. The retrial of Rios Montt was set to begin the Monday I arrived. Rios Montt had been convicted in a previous trial but after pressure from the right wing, the verdict and sentence were overturned and the court ordered a new trial which was set for January 5. However, there was a lot of speculation among my friends that the trial was not going to take place; that the judge would find some excuse for not proceeding with the trial or issuing a pardon. Rios Montt pulled a Mubarak and showed up in a hospital bed claiming to be seriously ill. The defense team asked for the judge to be removed because she had written a master's thesis a decade ago about genocide, and the trial was postponed -- this occurred before I arrived. But when I bought my ticket I thought there might be a chance to see part of the trial.
Then there was a hearing in the case of Barbara Diaz Surin, one of the leaders of the resistance movement in San Juan Sacatepéquez, where there has been opposition to a cement factory that is being built. Last spring there was a confrontation between residents who had organized a peaceful protest, and a man who residents argued had been paid by the company to create disturbances (women in the community have brought claims of sexual assault and rape against private security guards and police). The man was brandishing a machete and the crowd set upon him. Someone, or more than one someone, hit him over the head with a piece of wood and he later died of his injuries. Barbara was present at the confrontation, and because she is highly visible as a leader, she and one other person were charged in the man's death. The entire case to this point relies upon the testimony of the victim's son, and Barbara is facing a possible 50 year prison sentence.
The last trial is the case of the Spanish Embassy bombing in 1980. The Embassy, for those who might not remember, was occupied in January 1980 by representatives of a peasant organization, the Comite de Unidad Campesino (CUC) and student activists, and the Embassy was set on fire, killing nearly everyone inside. Two people escaped alive --the ambassador and one other man (but he was later assassinated in the hospital where he was recuperating from his injuries). One of the top police officials at the time is now on trial for the fire that killed over 30 people, including Rigoberta Menchú's father Vicente Tum. Like the trial of Rios Montt, over three decades passed before this case actually saw the inside of a courtroom.
While the Spanish embassy trial is not directly related to my research it seemed like an important opportunity to witness a historic event, and so I decided to spend the first week in and around the capital, since the Spanish Embassy hearing was set for Friday. I had misunderstood some communication from an attorney friend about Doña Barbara's trial -- I thought it was set for Tuesday but it was actually scheduled for Thursday, and once I realized the mistake there wasn't really time to make a trip to anywhere distant. However, I did make two short trips on Wednesday, one to visit the resistance movement in La Puya, and another to visit a women's organization in Santiago Sacatepequez that is planning to bring a legal case around intellectual property issues.
There is an entirely separate research project that I have been working at slowly and intermittently about the "reinas mayas de diversidad sexual" -- "Maya queen" pageants of Maya men wearing Maya women's clothing (or Maya drag queens). I had "befriended" the winner of last year's contest (it was only the second one) on Facebook and we had set up an interview in Mazatenango, a city on the south coast of Guatemala, for Saturday, after which I was planning to head to Xela to interview one of the organizers of the pageant.
When I arrived in Xela late Saturday night, I went to my friend Jose Luis' home in Olintepeque to find that he was at a ceremony that was taking place to ensure an auspicious start to a project to rebuilt the bridge at the main entrance to Olintepeque. And Sunday I had been invited to go to Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, a town near Xela, where every year the local authorities take the precious documents that are the original titles to the lands that constitute the municipality and show them to the population. The documents are guarded closely by a committee of respected citizens and the committee hides the documents in a different place each year; no one other than the committee knows where they are kept but with great ceremony they are revealed to the public on January 11.
So, that is a quick snapshot of the week.
So, this first foray will just be a summary, as much so I can keep things straight for myself as for anyone else's benefit. I find sometimes that I can't remember what I did two days previously -- where I was, and with whom.
I had planned to spend the first handful of days in the capital as there were some important political trials that I wanted to attend. The retrial of Rios Montt was set to begin the Monday I arrived. Rios Montt had been convicted in a previous trial but after pressure from the right wing, the verdict and sentence were overturned and the court ordered a new trial which was set for January 5. However, there was a lot of speculation among my friends that the trial was not going to take place; that the judge would find some excuse for not proceeding with the trial or issuing a pardon. Rios Montt pulled a Mubarak and showed up in a hospital bed claiming to be seriously ill. The defense team asked for the judge to be removed because she had written a master's thesis a decade ago about genocide, and the trial was postponed -- this occurred before I arrived. But when I bought my ticket I thought there might be a chance to see part of the trial.
Then there was a hearing in the case of Barbara Diaz Surin, one of the leaders of the resistance movement in San Juan Sacatepéquez, where there has been opposition to a cement factory that is being built. Last spring there was a confrontation between residents who had organized a peaceful protest, and a man who residents argued had been paid by the company to create disturbances (women in the community have brought claims of sexual assault and rape against private security guards and police). The man was brandishing a machete and the crowd set upon him. Someone, or more than one someone, hit him over the head with a piece of wood and he later died of his injuries. Barbara was present at the confrontation, and because she is highly visible as a leader, she and one other person were charged in the man's death. The entire case to this point relies upon the testimony of the victim's son, and Barbara is facing a possible 50 year prison sentence.
The last trial is the case of the Spanish Embassy bombing in 1980. The Embassy, for those who might not remember, was occupied in January 1980 by representatives of a peasant organization, the Comite de Unidad Campesino (CUC) and student activists, and the Embassy was set on fire, killing nearly everyone inside. Two people escaped alive --the ambassador and one other man (but he was later assassinated in the hospital where he was recuperating from his injuries). One of the top police officials at the time is now on trial for the fire that killed over 30 people, including Rigoberta Menchú's father Vicente Tum. Like the trial of Rios Montt, over three decades passed before this case actually saw the inside of a courtroom.
While the Spanish embassy trial is not directly related to my research it seemed like an important opportunity to witness a historic event, and so I decided to spend the first week in and around the capital, since the Spanish Embassy hearing was set for Friday. I had misunderstood some communication from an attorney friend about Doña Barbara's trial -- I thought it was set for Tuesday but it was actually scheduled for Thursday, and once I realized the mistake there wasn't really time to make a trip to anywhere distant. However, I did make two short trips on Wednesday, one to visit the resistance movement in La Puya, and another to visit a women's organization in Santiago Sacatepequez that is planning to bring a legal case around intellectual property issues.
There is an entirely separate research project that I have been working at slowly and intermittently about the "reinas mayas de diversidad sexual" -- "Maya queen" pageants of Maya men wearing Maya women's clothing (or Maya drag queens). I had "befriended" the winner of last year's contest (it was only the second one) on Facebook and we had set up an interview in Mazatenango, a city on the south coast of Guatemala, for Saturday, after which I was planning to head to Xela to interview one of the organizers of the pageant.
When I arrived in Xela late Saturday night, I went to my friend Jose Luis' home in Olintepeque to find that he was at a ceremony that was taking place to ensure an auspicious start to a project to rebuilt the bridge at the main entrance to Olintepeque. And Sunday I had been invited to go to Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán, a town near Xela, where every year the local authorities take the precious documents that are the original titles to the lands that constitute the municipality and show them to the population. The documents are guarded closely by a committee of respected citizens and the committee hides the documents in a different place each year; no one other than the committee knows where they are kept but with great ceremony they are revealed to the public on January 11.
So, that is a quick snapshot of the week.
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