IJCentral: International Justice Central

Last week the Guatemalan Supreme Court handed down a judgment ordering prison sentences totaling more than 24,000 years for crimes committed nearly 30 years ago in a tiny Mayan village called Dos Erres. The long-awaited resolution to the case against four former military soldiers is a key step toward ending the impunity that has cast a shadow over Guatemala since the genocide in the 1980s. Dos Erres, which lies in the northern district of the Peten, was attacked in December 1982 at the height of what a United Nations truth commission called a state-led genocide against indigenous Mayan Guatemalans (CEH Report). Over 200 civilians were killed, their bodies left by soldiers at the bottom of a well. CALDH, a prominent Guatemalan human rights advocacy organization, called the judgment “the opening of the historical debate in our country” (BBC).  The truth is, the debate has been raging for years in victim and advocacy circles; only now has the state finally joined in, lending hope for real change.

Last month, Pamela Yates described the ‘Pinochet Effect’ taking hold in Guatemala: as international attention to accountability for the genocide grows, so too does domestic will to address civil war era crimes. The Dos Erres judgment is a welcome manifestation of precisely this phenomenon. It may also act as treatment for a violence epidemic infecting contemporary Guatemala, reminding us that transitional justice is not simply about reckoning with past crimes but also attending to urgent contemporary emergencies.

Here’s why: the social and political landscape in Guatemala today looks much like it did in 1982 when soldiers stormed Dos Erres. Guatemala has been called the “crime capital of Central America” (COHA) and a “Killer’s Paradise” (BBC), thanks to rampant violence and a lack of institutional accountability. Its location at the heart of drug running channels, history of mass violence, and state allegiance to repression has sent the population into a state of genocide-era déjà vu. 

In the capital city, blood stains some cobblestone streets and women stay indoors for fear of the widespread murder and rape happening outside. Death squads lurk and indigenous Mayans discard their traditional clothing to better shield themselves from persecution.

Current violence statistics easily surpass those of the 1980s, when the genocide took place. Homicide rates climbed to 52 per 100,000 in 2009 (Washington Post) (a rate of 10 per 100,000 indicates an epidemic of violence; in the United States, the rate is around 5) and there is virtually no political will to investigate. Two women are killed a day, prompting the use of the term femicide, a phenomenon characterized as the killing of women because they’re women, targeting women and girls between the ages of 16 and 30 and typically including rape and torture. A culture of impunity is growing, as only 1.4% of homicide cases end in convictions. Guatemala’s status quo for combating criminal activity is rapid response by police forces largely made up of military personnel recycled from the genocidal conflict.

In popular media, incidents are attributed to random crime and gang violence, but in a 2006 report on violence and extrajudicial executions, UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston said that the responsibility for such crises must rest with the state. Three years later, he revisited the country’s progress on the issue only to report that violence and impunity have grown. The only hope he saw was a commission established to battle government corruption and impunity, called CICIG, is fraught with political tension and high turnover (New Yorker).

Dos Erres represents an initial breakdown of the structures that give rise to all this modern-day atrocity.  It is a case that provides a rare aggregation of international, regional and local efforts and expertise, pushing domestic authorities to rethink their tactics and publicly acknowledge state responsibility for past crimes.

The recent judgment is one that was initiated by locals, passed to the regional Inter-American Court for Human Rights, spurred on by related cases under universal jurisdiction in Spain and the United States, and finally resolved in national courts. For the lessons it offers to practitioners, we owe a great deal to the victims. In 2007, I lived in the war-battered region of Baja Verapaz in a resettlement camp for victims of a massacre that displaced a community of Mayan farmers. There, I witnessed daily the patience and bravery that we have seen come to fruition in the Dos Erres verdict. My colleagues were tireless survivors of war, working long days under tin roofed offices, developing the expertise and strategy it would take to build legal claims for decades-old state-authored massacres. They were forensic anthropologists and lawyers who withstood the pressure and intimidation of death threats regularly sent to their cellphones, and news headlines announcing the slaughter of prominent activists. Widows, well into their 70s and struggling to farm what little land they had left, would tell me, “as long as I am living, I’m going to keep telling my story. Let them kill me. I won’t stop telling the truth.”

The Guatemalan Supreme Court’s judgment is, above all, a triumph of victim communities and an illustration of the progress that can occur when grassroots, national, regional and international initiatives combine. It is not simply a benchmark for putting the past to rest, but a major contribution to ending the current crisis that haunts Guatemalans: impunity for violent crime. The central agents for this change are not international organizations, foreign attorneys or global media, but the survivors. The world would do well to learn from their example and support their efforts.

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Photos by Holly Dranginis

Holly Dranginis is a law student at Berkeley Law School and a researcher at the Berkeley Human Rights Center. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala in 2007, where she investigated transitional justice and femicide. Currently, she is an intern on the prosecution team for the Charles Taylor Trial in The Hague.

Follow Holly on Twitter: @hdranginis