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Today's
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January 10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's
Non-existent WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo-Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A Record
to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the
Cuban Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red Alert
2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti-Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The Washington
Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David
Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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for More Stories.
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January
10 / 11, 2004
Exhumations
Unearthing
Guatemala's Macabre Past
By LISA VISCIDI
On March 13, 1982, members of the Civil Defense
Patrol (PAC) led by the Guatemalan Army entered the town of Rio
Negro, Rabinal, in the Departamento of Baja Verapaz. Encircling
the village women and children, the PAC, under the orders of
the army, began raping and torturing the women, and beating the
children to death. After the massacre, 70 women and 107 children
lay dead. The town was left in ruin, the attackers having destroyed
homes and burnt the harvests.
Eleven years later, forensic anthropologists
unearthed the abandoned corpses, and the victims' relatives buried
their loved ones according to Mayan and Christian tradition.
The exhumation at Rabinal was one of the first carried out by
the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team (EAFG), which had only
begun to uncover the country's estimated 500 clandestine cemeteries.
Trained by international forensic anthropologists and financed
by the international community, the EAFG based their work on
that of Argentine anthropologists who had recently begun exhuming
corpses of the disappeared in their country's "dirty war."
The EAFG--now the Guatemalan Foundation
for Forensic Anthropology (FAFG)--has since completed 330 exhumations
and discovered some 2,500 corpses. Since 1997, other forensic
teams have emerged to participate in the massive task of unearthing
the victims of Guatemala's 36-year civil war and returning the
remains to hopeful relatives.
The Exhumation Process
The exhumation process begins with the
presentation of an official denouncement of a massacre or forced
disappearance to the Attorney General, who then solicits an exhumation
from one of the country's independent forensic teams. Almost
all denouncements have been issued by family members, often with
the assistance of a popular organization or the Catholic Church.
The forensic team conducts interviews
with the petitioners in order to determine the site of the clandestine
grave, usually at a military base or village where a massacre
occurred. Based on survivors' testimony, the team gathers information
about the height, age, and sex of the victims. They also ask
whether or not a victim underwent any dental work or had suffered
any injuries. The information provided in these interviews allows
the team to identify the bodies.
Once the general grave site has been
delineated, anthropologists search for rectangular indentations
in the ground and other evidence of burial, then begin digging.
The number of bodies recovered can vary from three or four to
several hundred, many bearing signs of torture. Bodies are often
found face down with hands tied behind their backs. The ropes
are still visible, bound around their heads and necks, and their
clothing is torn with bullet holes.
After days, weeks, or months of digging,
the remains are taken to a laboratory for further analysis. Forensic
anthropologists examine a victim's bones, searching for injuries
and the possible cause of death. They also try to determine the
individual's identity, corroborating their findings with the
information obtained from interviews. Based on their findings,
the team writes a report and presents it to the Attorney General.
The Attorney General, the state's judicial
representative, is ultimately responsible for investigating the
victims' identities and exercising legal action. Many investigations,
however, have encountered resistance at this stage of the process.
Judicial institutions must often be pressured to comply with
their obligations, and have reportedly obstructed justice in
some cases. Victor Lopez of the Diocese of San Marcos, who works
with communities undergoing exhumations, has encountered difficulties
initiating the legal process: "The idea behind exhumations
is that they serve to probe further, to search for those responsible
for the acts, but the majority of the exhumations remain filed
away. Sometimes we have had to go three, four or five times in
one week to the authorities to advance the process. It is very
tiring."
As a result, many investigations do not
go beyond the point of exhuming the graves and returning the
corpses to family members. Once the authorities have received
the forensic report, the victim's family may claim the remains
and bury their relative according to their religious traditions.
Popular organizations often assist in the burial as well as providing
mental health support for communities coping with the loss of
family, friends and loved ones.
Why Unearth the Past?
The main motivation for requesting an
exhumation is to recover the victims' remains and provide them
with a decent burial. During the war, relatives of those massacred
or disappeared in Guatemala could not mourn their loved ones
or visit their graves. Condemned to live with their family members
buried unceremoniously in their own backyards, survivors could
not even speak of the existence of clandestine graves for fear
of losing their lives to the army. Raul Najera, a member of HIJOS,
an organization for children and friends of the massacred and
disappeared, explains that "Most of the people that still
haven't found their family members think that they are still
alive, or that the memory of the victim was lost or 'washed away'
by the army's torture practices. Once you find your family member,
you have a place where you can go whenever yo! u want to cry.
Before you didn't. The entire country had converted into a tomb."
In many indigenous communities, the memory
of decades of violence and repression still prevents people from
openly manifesting their suffering. Najera, whose organization
provides mental health support for relatives of massacre victims,
says that survivors "still feel like victims. They feel
persecuted, humiliated and guilty for not having had the strength
to do anything." Upon recovering the remains, survivors
find a certain spiritual peace. Exhumations have a cathartic
effect, allowing survivors to break the silence surrounding the
violent past and conclude their suffering.
Exhumations also help preserve the historical
memory of communities. When the army destroyed meaningful material
goods along with many of a community's members, the village's
collective memory was effectively destroyed as well. Returning
the remains to survivors and inquiring about their past in a
sense restores this collective identity. In a society where a
great portion of the population is illiterate testimonies constitute
something of an oral history.
Mental Health for
Affected Communities
Mental health services have become an
integral part of the exhumation process. Human rights workers
visit communities, explaining the process as well as the purpose
of the exhumations. They speak with families to recollect and
dignify the history of the victims, so that the memory of their
personality before death overcomes the specter of the remains.
The exhumation process can be very painful as survivors witness
the corpses of loved ones bearing the markings of torture. Many
survivors suffered the same physical or psychological torture,
and they often relive the experience upon seeing the open graves.
Essential to the healing process, mental
health workers educate survivors about the national and international
context of the conflict. Many survivors believe that the massacre
in their village was an isolated act of violence caused by local
problems and disputes. Most massacres occurred in impoverished
rural areas where inhabitants lacked a broader understanding
of events. Consequently, many victims believe their communities
suffered rapes and murder because of local problems, leaving
them with a terrible sense of guilt. Mental health support involves
helping the community understand what was occurring in the country
as a whole as well as their own experience. "What we want,"
insists Victor Lopez of the Diocese of San Marcos, "is for
people to understand that in the conflict the army tried to victimize
the entire community, and that th! ere was not repression because
Don Pablo or Don Juan was with the guerillas. We try to teach
people the real causes of the armed conflict, and that it was
not one community or one Departamento but was on a national level."
Supporting Guatemala's
Justice System
In addition to returning victims' remains
to their relatives, exhumations are intended to provide legal
evidence for investigations of crimes. However, communities are
often reluctant to persecute those responsible. Many lack faith
in their country's justice system or are afraid of encountering
further violence. "Many family members," notes Najera,
"don't want to initiate a legal process. They don't want
to have problems or to lose any more family." In many cases
the perpetrators of violence are still living among the victim's
family, in their very own communities, and survivors do not want
to instigate a confrontation.
The conflict between victims and victimizers
has become more volatile in recent years, since the outgoing
right-wing government has begun revitalizing the ex-PACs and
offering to pay them for their 'services' to the state. "Now
there is a greater danger of confrontation within communities,"
asserts Najera. "Those PAC that felt judged, persecuted,
now don't. They think what they did was just, respectable, has
the right to payment. These guilty people now don't have fear
of being judged."
Communities that have attempted to convict
criminals based on exhumation findings have been confronted with
the greatest obstacle to a functioning justice system in Guatemala--impunity.
The state has made almost no attempt to investigate or prosecute
those responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of
war victims, most likely because a large percentage of the criminals
still hold high government positions. In the few cases that have
ended in conviction, only the material authors--those at the
lowest level of the military--have been punished, while the intellectual
authors are entirely immune to prosecution.
Despite the lack of justice thus far,
exhumed evidence provides the possibility that one day, immunity
will break down and the rule of law will prevail in Guatemala.
The numerous death threats against forensic anthropologists and
human rights organizations working on exhumations are an indication
that the guilty feel they have something to fear. This intimidation,
however, has not deterred Guatemalans from continuing to perform
exhumations. Forensic anthropologist Marco Tulio Perez of the
FAFG testifies that "There is always the fear that something
will happen to us, but those who are not afraid have overcome
the threats. We continue because we know that before us many
people seeking justice were killed, and they continued on."
Lisa Viscidi
is editor-in-cheif of EntreMundos
newspaper in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. She can be reached at
lviscidi@yahoo.com.
Weekend
Edition Features for January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
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