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Guatemala genocide trial: Day 6. "If I die, the story of what I lived will never be forgotten"

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 16:43:14 +0000

Photo: NISGUA. A witness testifies in the trial of Rios Montt, with aid of court-appointed Nebaj Ixil interpreter.

As Emi McLean writes on the Open Society Justice Initiative's blog about the genocide trial in Guatemala, "Semana Santa (or Holy Week) seemed to slow down Guatemala City everywhere but in Judge Jazmin Barrios’s courtroom on Monday."

And the trial continues at breakneck speed. The prosecution of Jose Efraín Rios Montt, the Army general who ruled Guatemala from 1982-1983, and his then-chief of military intelligence Jose Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez, re-opens for the 6th day today in Guatemala City. The charges of genocide and crimes against humanity they face are based on evidence of systematic massacres of Mayan citizens by Guatemalan troops and paramilitary forces during a most bloody phase of the country's 36-year civil war. The US government provided assistance to Ríos Montt and other Guatemalan military dictators that followed in that era, in the form of funding, training, military and CIA personnel, and weapons that were used against the indigenous population.

Watch live video from the courtroom here; listen to audio here. A Twitter list with accounts who are live-tweeting the trial is here.

On Monday, March 25, the court heard 13 witnesses for the prosecution recount horrifying accounts of atrocities they witnessed and survived, committed by soldiers under Ríos Montt's command.

Again, from McLean's account:

Witnesses continued to describe the way that they were treated as subhuman: “as if we were animals”. Some witnesses also described being liberated with the recounting.

NISGUA, the Network in Solidarity for the People of Guatemala, is also providing excellent live-blog coverage of the trial. From their account of Monday's proceedings:

Military allies were absent in the plaza on Friday, while a small demonstration in support of the defendants took place this morning. Anti-communist and anti-foreigner sentiments were expressed on banners held by demonstrators. The gathering dispersed shortly after the proceedings began and participants, including Zury Ríos Montt and former FRG party members, entered the courtroom wearing white.
To date the prosecution's witnesses have been primarily Ixil survivors, 51 since the start of the trial, with some utilizing the services of the Nebaj and Chajul Ixil court-appointed interpreters while others gave testimony in Spanish. The witnesses have shared testimonies on different acts committed by the military --massacres, disappearances, sexual violence, forced displacement, forced service in civil patrols-- each sharing the horrors they experienced and the terrible moments in which loved ones were killed.

Today, Tuesday, March 26, when the tribunal re-opened, Rios Montt's defense team demanded that judge Jazmin Barrios be removed from the case. Their complaint against her (tl;dr: she isn't impartial because she's had various in-court conflicts with members of his legal team over the years) was originally presented on March 21. The court deliberated over their complaint today, them rejected it.

"We are impartial judges and we don't accept threats of any kind," Barrios said. "At this point, no objection can delay the judicial process."

And then, the testimonies of the day began with an 87-year-old man, Clemente Vásquez.

Vásquez described how Ríos Montt's forces killed his wife and children, and methodically raped women in his village.

“I went to get corn and when I came back my wife was dead," he told the court. "The pain inside hurts me, it hurts, but I want justice.”

The second testimony of the day came from Magdalena Marcos de Leon, whose voice trembled as she took the witness stand.

"Do not be afraid, no one is going to harm you here," the judge told her. The judge recognized as she gave testimony that the woman was visibly frightened about speaking in court.

"When my husband died, they grabbed me, I was holding my baby," Magdalena later explained. "I was sick, and he tied me up."

She went on to describe how soldiers burned houses in their village, then arrived at their home and tied her and her husband up. The soldiers then chopped off her husband's head. "I don't know why my husband was killed, he wasn't guilty," she says. "We didn't have any weapons in the house."

Were you raped, an attorney for the prosecution asks her.

"Yes, because they threatened to stab me with knives."

She had 5 children with her. She somehow escaped to hide in the mountains with the children. They all suffered from malnutrition and exposure to the cold, during the six months they hid in the mountains, all their clothing and food and belongings destroyed. She describes how children children died of "susto" (trauma/fear) and hunger, including one of her sons. He was one year old.

Magdalena: I looked for my husband, then we were able to exhume him. We buried him in the cemetery but I couldnt find his head. #IxilesSpeak
— NISGUA (@NISGUA_Guate) March 26, 2013

Military music is still blaring outside the courthouse. One protester remaining said protest is for equality and that there was no genocide.
— Rios Montt Trial(@RiosMonttTrial) March 25, 2013

Photo: Rodrigo Baires Quezada for Plaza Publica. "Residents of Santa Maria Xalapán accompany the coffin of Exaltation Ucelo Marcos, in the village of El Pito Laguna. Ucelo died in an attempted kidnapping along with three other Xinca activists Sunday night. Two escaped from their kidnappers.

Meanwhile in Guatemala, more political violence: the murder of indigenous activists who are protesting mining operations of the Canada-based multinational firm Tahoe Resources. Renata Avila writes at Global Voices:

While Guatemala attempts to bring former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to justice in a landmark genocide trial, deadly violence elsewhere in the country continues unpunished. In less than one month, five activists and human right defenders struggling against mining companies and fighting for land and labor rights have been murdered in rural areas. (...) as No a la Mina (No to the mine) pointed out [es], the recent repression resembles the death squad operations that once left thousands of leaders killed in Guatemala. If social conflicts are going to be solved with a gun and left in absolute impunity, Guatemala's future looks just like its grim past.

The Center for International Environmental Law has a related petition here: "Call for investigation and company departure in response to recurring violence in area of Canadian-owned silver project."

Gangnam Canadian Inuit Style

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 16:36:03 +0000

A Gangnam Style video from the students of Nunavut Sivuniksavut, a college program based in Ottawa for Inuit youth from Nunavut. (thanks, James McCullough)

Mayan Oxlajuj Baktun: "End of an Era, More of the Same," photo essay by James Rodriguez

Xeni Jardin — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 15:42:49 +0000

James Rodriguez, a brave and talented photojournalist in Guatemala, has a striking photo-essay up on his blog.

On this occasion I share a photo essay documenting events in the Guatemalan northern city of Huehuetenango during the much-awaited end of the Mayan Oxlajuj Baktun. These provide a clear reflection of the divisions and challenges faced by Mayan communities today. The media exploited erroneous apocalyptic rumors, the government and business sectors viewed it as an opportunity to gain economically through tourism, and progressive groups seized the opportunity “to strengthen ancestral wisdom and never-ending search for balance” while vindicating what seem never-ending struggles for justice, inclusion, and self-determination.

View the full essay here. Photo editors, you can license the pics (and support his work) here. Below, Anselma states: “I think it was the foreigners who invented this whole end-of-the-world scenario so they could make movies and profit from it.”

Shit White People Do, part umptybillion: "Les Indes galantes—Les Sauvages" (video)

Xeni Jardin — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:20:32 +0000

[Video Link]

BB Community moderator Antinous (the person who nukes your comments at Boing Boing when you act like a dick) plucked this gem from the jaws of YouTube and says,

I could watch this a hundred times and find something new to be horrified at every time. I love Rameau's music, but who thought that it was a good idea to have the singers doing the chicken dance in front of a giant turkey cloaca while clenching corncob pipes in their teeth?
You need to see it on a proper monitor to appreciate the full cavalcade of racialist nuances.

The opera-ballet shown, "The Noble Savages" is by French Baroque era composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. More about its history here, and you can buy the music on Amazon if you're so inclined. I can maybe give the dude a break, seeing as how it was all, like, 1725 when he wrote it and stuff, man. But there can be no forgiveness for any of the contemporary humans involved in this production.

In Guatemala, pirate Mayan radio connects marginalized indigenous communities

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:59:11 +0000

I missed this great read published a few months back by photojournalist Connor Boals in Columbia Journalism Review, but it's worth revisiting now: a story about the indigenous pirate radio stations that connect poor rural Mayan communities throughout Guatemala.

I've traveled in the region off and on for years, and am familiar with the sort of risks these operators face, and the benefit their efforts provide. Connor's story focuses on one station in the Kaqchikel Maya pueblo of Sumpango, in the central highlands. Here, Radio Ixchel (named after the jaguar goddess of midwifery and medicine) operates on the downlow. No sign on the door, housed in what looks like a home, with chickens and geese bustling around. That, for a reason: The Guatemalan government considers the project a criminal operation.

Snip:

Angélica Cubur Sul opens the door to the studio, clad in a traditional Mayan multicolored blouse. She’s a “locutora” here at the station. You could call her a DJ, but she does much more. Inside, another woman runs the mixer as a Mayan herbalist provides instructions in Kaqchikel, the local dialect, on what local flora listeners can use to treat indigestion. The door is thin and the goose is still honking outside. Sul taps out a script on an ancient PC for her top-of-the-hour newscast.
Guatemala still bears scars from the civil war that gripped the country for more than thirty years, ending finally in 1996. The government mainly relied on terror to suppress indigenous populations from supporting the leftist guerrillas. The Guatemalan Archbishop’s Office for Human Rights estimates that the Guatemalan military and paramilitary forces committed over 90 percent of the atrocities. Indigenous people were almost always the target. Mass graves are still being unearthed.
“Radio has been important in Guatemala for decades,” says Mark Camp, director of the Guatemala Radio Project for Cultural Survival, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of indigenous groups. “During the civil war, radio played a really important part for the guerrillas to get their message out to the people.”

Read more: Pirate Radio, Mayan Style, and there are more wonderful photos at Connor's site. (CJR, via Renata Avila; photo by Connor Boals)