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September 2,
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Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
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The Real Vietnam
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[Redacted]
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2004
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The
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Poor Larry Franklin
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Kerry's Litmus Test
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Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
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Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
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Kindergarten Night at the RNC
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War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
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Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
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Escapism
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Beyond
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Kerry and the Middle East
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Bush
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NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
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Opening Night: Playing the War Card
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CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
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The
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The
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Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
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Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
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USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
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Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
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August 28 /
29, 2004
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Zombies
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Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
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The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
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Ali Tonak
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New York Says "No"
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Poets' Basement
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Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
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Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
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Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
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Akiva Eldar
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Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
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August 24,
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The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
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September 2, 2004
Et
Tu Menchu?
Extrajudicial
Executions and Clandestine Graves in Guatemala
By
MAX GIMBLE
A clash between police officers and
armed campesinos occupying the Nueva Linda plantation in Champerico,
Retalhuleu, left nine dead and many questions unanswered as investigations
begin.
Mid-day on August 31 approximately
800 police officers descended on a group of farming families
that have been occupying the land since last September in protest
of the disappearance of campesino leader Hector Rene Reyes. At
least three police officers were killed in the confrontation,
and at least six campesinos were shot dead, including two minors.
Twenty-four individuals suffered injuries, at least twenty-five
campesinos are still missing.
Homes were illegally entered
and burned. Journalists, who were beaten and threatened by police
during the forty-minute skirmish, allege that three of the six
campesinos were executed extrajudicially, and campesinos leaders
report that their missing family members are buried in a clandestine
mass grave.
Interior Minister Carlos Vielmann
immediately blamed the incident on the presence of clandestine
groups, and classified the campesinos as "members of organized
crime." Nobel Laureate and current Goodwill Ambassador,
Rigoberta Menchu agreed with Vielmann's position and added that
the farmers are "bandits." Her comments were poorly
received by many Guatemalans who feel that the human rights defender
and peace activist is a turncoat.
Vielmann and Menchu's statements
reflect the fact that the Nueva Linda farmers were allegedly
armed with automatic rifles. According to a Prensa Libre editorial
from Sept 2, authorities knew as early as last December that
the campesinos were armed with AK-47s, but chose to send in police
regardless.
A statement released by the
Mutual Support Group, claims that campesinos may have purchased
the weapons to protect themselves from heavy drug trafficking
that takes place in the region.
Campesino organizations strongly
denounce the claim that the evicted families have any ties to
organized crime, and insist that the government is to blame for
not investigating the September 5, 2003 disappearance of campesino
leader, Hector Rene Reyes. Rene Reyes was allegedly abducted
by the private security of the owner of the Nueva Linda plantation,
Spaniard Carlos Vidal Fernandez Alejos. In protest to the disappearance,
the campesinos occupied land on Nueva Linda and stated firmly
that they would stay there until the Rene Reyes case was clarified.
The government did not attempt to negotiate with the campesinos,
but rather issued a court order and deployed police to violently
evict them from the land.
Further consequences of the
conflict were the arrest of thirty-two campesinos, including
one women, Julia Cabrera, a single mother of ten children. According
to Cabrera she was selling vegetables on the plantation when
the police arrived and started throwing tear gas canisters. She
witnessed her sixteen-year-old son David Natanael Lopez shot
twice in the back and killed. "But I did not see who took
my six-month old baby, because the police grabbed me by the hair
and began to hit me," Cabrera stated.
When she came to, she found
herself inside a car and in police custody. Cabrera has been
denied the right to attend her son's funeral and she is concerned
for the health and safely of her infant child.
On the national level, congressional
representatives passed a resolution yesterday condemning the
acts of violence, most of who believe that the police "acted
in an erroneous manner." Independent congressman, Pedro
Palma Lau, expressed that the confrontation left the 1996 Peace
Accords behind. Today, congress will hear reports on the Nueva
Linda incident from Vielmann, Defense Minister Cesar Mendez Pinelo,
and Human Rights Ombudsman Sergio Morales.
Mass Graves
and Extrajudicial Executions in the "Victory" at Nueva
Linda
So far in the investigation,
authorities have names, photos, and possibly know the whereabout
of the few armed campesinos, and one weapon has been recovered.
Yesterday, with a court order, representatives from the Human
Rights Ombudsman's Office (PDH) and three congressmen visited
the site to verify the existance of a clandestine mass grave.
Alexander Toro Maldonado from the regional PDH office in Retalhuleu
received the allegation from campesinos that, "within the
plantation a mass grave was dug where they [the police] buried
the bodies of the campesinos and children killed in the confrontation."
Sergio Morales said, "[the
campesinos] showed us a place where the earth has been moved.
They say that it is a grave and that between seven and twenty
people are buried there." While no graves were found, Damian
Vail from the National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinator (CONIC),
directed justice of peace Hugo Flores and congressmen Raul Robles
(UNE), Luis Arguello (GANA) and Alfredo de Leon (ANN) to an area
where they found an arsenal of weapons and a septic pit covered
over with heavy machinery.
Morales added that campesinos
had claimed bodies were thrown in a river but investigators had
found no evidence of that. Toro Maldonado, announced that the
PDH will request a court order to investigate four sites on the
plantation for mass graves.
In addition to investigating
claims of mass graves, authorities will investigate allegations
of at least three extrajudicial executions on the part of the
police. One journalist witnessed an elderly man being shot in
the head after he was captured. Police proceeded to shoot the
man five more times, kicked and trampled the body and then according
to the account, officer Boris Morales yelled, "Victory!"
while standing over the dead body. Journalists recount two other
incidents of extrajudicial executions.
Reporters claim that after
the police discovered that members of the press witnessed them,
they chased the reporters down, and beat and verbally abused
them. One reporter was hospitalized. Police stole their equiptment
and destroyed it, most likely to erradicate evidence of extrajudicial
execution.
A History
of Nueva Linda and Agrarian Conflict
Three years ago, in need of
land, a group of campesinos originally from twenty-two different
communities, occupied territory by the side of a highway between
the towns of Retalhuleu and Champerico (on the Pacific coast).
After two years and with the assistance of a number of land rights
and campesinos organizations, the roughly 1,500 campesinos were
granted rights to the Monte Cristo farm by the Guatemalan Land
Fund.
Among the farmers that received
access to Monte Cristo was Hector Rene Reyes, who, in spite of
working as the administrator for the Nueva Linda Plantation,
became a campesino leader not only at Monte Cristo, but also
throughout the region. The owner of the Nueva Linda Plantation,
Carlos Vidal Fernandez Alejos, opposed Rene Reyes's decision
to live and work at the Monte Cristo farm.
On August 5, a few days after
the Monte Cristo farm was turned over to the campesinos, Fernandez
Alejos' private security visited Rene Reyes with the pretext
of picking up shotguns and other arms that were on the Nueva
Linda plantation. The security officers asked Rene Reyes to accompany
them on a visit of the plantation. Hours later the bodyguards
returned without Rene Reyes, saying that they had left the campesino
in the nearby town of Retalhuleu.
Since then Rene Reyes has not
been seen again. The crime was not investigated, and in order
to pressure the National Civil Police and the Public Prosecutor's
Office, the campesinos took action by settling on the Nueva Linda
plantation. Authorities never attempted to negotiate with the
campesinos, or to further investigate the disappearance. Instead,
the plantation owner and authorities sought out a court order
to evict the campesinos.
Guatemala has a long history
of agrarian conflict, and on June 8th, the country was paralyzed
by a nationwide strike organized by a diverse coalition of groups
to protest recent violent evictions of indigenous families from
disputed land which left 1,500 families homeless. The protesters
surrounded government buildings and blocked roads in twenty of
the twenty-two departments of the country.
Although the strike was originally
planned to last two days, only eight hours into the strike an
agreement was reached, ending the strike peacefully. In the agreement,
the Supreme Court, agreed to investigate the legality and process
of the recent land evictions. President Berger agreed that his
administration would promote concrete measures to deal with the
agrarian conflict. President Berger also promised to halt land
evictions during a ninty day period to review agrarian policy.
In exchange for these concessions, the protesters agreed to a
moratorium on protests and strikes during those ninty days, after
which time they would reconvene with the government to evaluate
what, if any, progress that had been made.
While Berger's promise to halt
evictions was broken on August 7 when 113 families were peacefully
evicted from a plantation in Escuintla, the eviction at Nueva
Linda will redefine relations with campesino groups. The violence
in Champerico took place just over a week shy of the ninty day
evaluation period. President Berger responded yesterday that
this group did not belong to any of the campesino groups who
negotiated the moratorium, tacitly implying that this justifies
the eviction.
The events of August 31 will
intensely shake Guatemala, its internal security policy, and
the way it reacts to land takeovers and agrarian conflict. There
is supposed to be a march today by the campesino sector and campesino
groups have also stated that they will return to the use of massive
blockades next week (when the 90 day period ends) to pressure
the government to work out a solution that does not include violent
evicitons.
While investigations are underway,
various land and campesino rights groups have requested that
investigations be conducted with transparency, and that the Berger
administration settle the root causes of the conflict: the lack
of investigation into the disappearance of the Rene Reyes, and
poor land distribution and agrarian policy. Unless the latter
is reconsidered and readjusted, Guatemala may find itself in
another internal conflict that reflects 1980s era mass clandestine
graves and extrajudicial executions.
Max Gimbel is the Director of Research at the
Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA. GHRC/USA is a nonprofit,
nonpartisan, humanitarian organization committed to monitoring,
documenting and reporting on the human rights situation in Guatemala
while advocating for victims of human rights violations. For
more information visit www.ghrc-usa.org
or write: mgimbel@ghrc-usa.org.
Weekend
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Mickey Z.
Kid
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Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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