The trial of Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt—for the genocidal murders of Guatemalan Indigenous people in the 1980s—was annulled on April 18 by a first-instance judge, Carol Patricia Flores. The trial began on March 19, 2012, in Guatemala City. Ríos Montt and his former head of military intelligence, Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, face genocide and other charges related to atrocities committed against members of the country’s Mayan Ixil population.
It is widely understood that the current president, General Otto Pérez Molina, also complicit in multiple murders, intervened to cancel the trial. Once he were to leave office, he could also face trial.
The trial website (riosmontt-trial.org) details the charges: “The first genocide charge against Rios Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez is in relation to 15 massacres against the Ixil population living in the Quiche region during his rule as head of state between March 1982 and August 1983. These charges allege that Rios Montt was the intellectual author of 1,771 deaths, the forced displacement of 29,000 people, sexual violence against at least 8 women, and torture of at least 14 people. They allege that Rodriguez Sanchez implemented military plans responsible for the killing of civilians in the Ixil Triangle of Nebaj, Chajul and San Juan Cotzal, in Quiche.
“In a second genocide charge, introduced in May 2012, Rios Montt was charged in relation to the deaths of 201 people in Dos Erres (Peten) in December 1982.”
A major blow
The April 18 decision struck a major blow to the indigenous victims and the people of Guatemala. Hundreds of Mayan survivors of the massacres, as well as other witnesses, risked their lives to come and testify. There was enough evidence to prove a case of genocide against General Ríos Montt and his co-defendant, by the horrifying evidentiary testimony that was given by the courageous Mayan survivors.
The trial of Rios Montt was historic—for the first time in the history of Guatemala and the world, a head of state stood trial for genocide within the country’s own judicial system. Hugo Reyes, a former military, told the court that President Pérez Molina, then serving as an army major under the name Tito Arias, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage a Mayan Ixil area in the 1980s.
And yet now, the struggle must resume to demand final justice. The annulment is a serious threat to the communities and people of Guatemala. Coming in the context of other political setbacks, the 2009 right-wing coup in Honduras, the 2012 “parliamentary coup” in Paraguay, and U.S. interference in Venezuela’s election offer clear proof that the U.S. government continues trying to turn the clock back to the days when fascist repression reigned.
Guatemala’s progressive President Arbenz was overthrown in a 1954 CIA coup. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan army, backed by the Reagan administration, escalated its slaughter of political dissidents and their suspected supporters to unprecedented levels.
Reagan was a great defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency against peasants and working people fighting to put an end to social injustice.
Guatemala’s Attorney-General Claudia Paz y Paz has said that Judge Flores’ April 18 annulment ruling is illegal. On April 19, Judge Yazmin Barrios, who is presiding over the Rios Montt trial, also rejected as illegal the order to annul the proceedings and affirmed that she will challenge the decision. But then she suspended the process pending a Constitutional Court review of the legality of the annulment ruling.
In the meantime, demonstrations have been taking place outside the Court House demanding justice for the Mayan people. National and international human rights organizations are demanding that the trial proceed, as are revolutionary and progressive people around the world.
