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.

William Saturno, a Boston University archeologist, excavates a mural in a house in Xultun. Photo: Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic

An archaeological expedition in the northeastern lowlands of Guatemala yields an amazing discovery: the "9th-century workplace of a city scribe, an unusual dwelling adorned with magnificent pictures of the king and other royals and the oldest known Maya calendar."

From Thomas Maugh's report in the Los Angeles Times, on the dig in the ruins of Xultun led by William Saturno of Boston University:

This year has been particularly controversial among some cultists because of the belief that the Maya calendar predicts a major cataclysm — perhaps the end of the world — on Dec. 21, 2012. Archaeologists know that is not true, but the new find, written on the plaster equivalent of a modern scientist's whiteboard, strongly reinforces the idea that the Maya calendar projects thousands of years into the future.

To paraphrase modern-day Maya priests I've spoken with on past travels in rural Guatemala: "Well, duh."

The findings were first reported Thursday in the journal Science. The full text of the report requires paid subscription, but a recent Science podcast covers the news, and is available here (PDF transcript or MP3 for audio).

A related story at USA Today by Dan Vergano.

The astronomical calendar was unearthed from a filled-in scribe's room. While about 7 million Maya people still live in Central America today, the "Classic" Maya civilization of pyramid temples had collapsed there by about 900 A.D., leaving only a few birch-bark books dating to perhaps the 14th century as records of their astronomy, until now.

"The numbers we found indicate an obsession with time and cycles of time, some of them very large," Saturno says. "Maya scribes most likely transcribed the numbers on the wall in this room into (books) just like the ones later seen by conquistadors."

Explorers first reported the site of Xultun, once a large Maya center, in 1915. But it was only two years ago that National Geographic Society-funded archaeologists noted a small residential room partly exposed by looters. The room's walls proved to hold murals and small, delicate hieroglyphs inscribed in rows between paintings of scribes and rulers that not only corresponded to a 260 day ceremonial calendar and 365-day year, but the 584-day sky track of Venus and 780-day one of Mars.

And at the Boston Globe, Carolyn Johnson has a report here:

Scholars who study the Maya said the well-preserved room provides insights into the people’s lives beyond those drawn from the more lasting stone monuments and artifacts that archeologists often depend on to reconstruct ancient civilizations. It’s almost as if the researchers can peer over the shoulders of the scribes who were writing and thinking there. The BU-led team reported sections of the wall had been plastered over to make space for new text.

“For me what’s really amazing is people are erasing and changing it and adapting it,” said Charles Golden, associate professor of anthroplogy at Brandeis University, who was not involved in the research. “You get these works in progress that really humanizes this, it kind of demystifies it.”

Photo: Tyrone Turner © 2012 National Geographic. Zoomable "Gigapan" here.

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)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/04/24/in-guatemala-pirate-mayan-rad.html/feed 1 http://boingboing.net/2012/01/26/guatemala-at-long-last-ex-di.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/26/guatemala-at-long-last-ex-di.html#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:01:26 +0000 Xeni Jardin http://boingboing.net/?p=140843

Cloths embroidered with signs are seen in front of the Supreme Court of Justice in Guatemala City January 26, 2012. Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who ruled the country from 1980-1982 during a bloody civil war, went to the Supreme Court of Justice to declare for the genocide accusations committed during the armed conflict. Rios Montt is one of those accused by Spain of genocide during the 36-year conflict in which some 250,000 people died and 45,000 disappeared from 1960-1996. The sign reads, "In memory of the victims of armed conflict."

Below: Ríos Montt speaks on the phone at the Supreme Court of Justice in Guatemala City, while indigenous Maya protesters outside carry banners with the faces of "desaparecidos," relatives who disappeared during his military era.

Related coverage: Amnesty International, BBC News, NYT, LAT, and an LAT op-ed today. The Wikipedia entry on Ríos Montt is pretty comprehensive, and includes reminders of Ríos Montt's many links to the US: he was trained at the School of the Americas, was involved in the 1954 CIA-backed coup, and was longtime pals with US power-evangelicals Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell. (photos: REUTERS)]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/01/26/guatemala-at-long-last-ex-di.html/feed 10 http://boingboing.net/2012/01/02/the-last-thing-i-will-post-abo.html http://boingboing.net/2012/01/02/the-last-thing-i-will-post-abo.html#comments Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:18:43 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=136748 Please read this excellent FAQ, written by actual archaeologist (and my former professor) John Hoopes. I did an interview with Dr. Hoopes last year about the 2012 as a phenomenon, but the new FAQ covers, in detail, why a 2012 apocalypse is bunk, and what sources you can check out to find further accurate information about the confluence of ancient Mayan mythology and modern Western mythology. And that is all I have to say about this for the rest of the year. Coming in 2013, though: Lots of stories about Mayan archaeology. Just to mess with you.]]> http://boingboing.net/2012/01/02/the-last-thing-i-will-post-abo.html/feed 20 http://boingboing.net/2011/12/23/no-nobody-found-mayan-ruins-i.html http://boingboing.net/2011/12/23/no-nobody-found-mayan-ruins-i.html#comments Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:27:51 +0000 Maggie Koerth-Baker http://boingboing.net/?p=135786

I hate to lend any dignity to this story by commenting on it, but it's making the rounds, so here goes. Two things:

1. Nobody found Mayan ruins in the U.S. state of Georgia. An article posted on The Examiner claimed this was the case. That article is full of it. So full of it that even the scientist cited in the article is (in a more polite way) publicly calling out The Examiner for being full of it. Mark Williams of the University of Georgia does do research on North American archaeology. He has spent 20 years excavating sites in Georgia's Oconee River valley. But these sites are not Mayan. Instead, they're part of what are broadly known as "Mississippian cultures," a conglomeration of ancient North American peoples who built a lot of earth mound structures and whose cultures are distinct from those of the Mayans and other Central Americans. 

2. Do not automatically trust anything you read on The Examiner website. The Examiner is a content farm that allows anybody to write whatever they want about anything with absolutely zero oversight or fact-checking. The guy who wrote the bogus story on Mayan artifacts in Georgia appears to have just made up the entire Mississippian/Mayan connection out of his own imagination. As archaeologist Mark Williams told ArtInfo, "No archaeologist would defend this flight of fancy." (Again, this is polite scientist speak for, "Oh, my god. That guy is full of it.") While you're at it, apply the same level of skepticism to anything that comes from Hubpages, which has a similar model to The Examiner and was the source of that bogus "There's a secret cure for cancer!" story  earlier this year. In general, remember that just because it's formatted like a newspaper story, with a dateline at the beginning, does not mean it has been written according to any kind of standard of quality. Check the sources of the article. Check what you read against what Wikipedia and other people have written on the same subject. 

Thanks to John Hoopes for bringing this foolishness to my attention. 

Image: Herb Roe, used via CC