How will Montt defend himself in Guatemala?

I have a new post up at Al Jazeera on How will Montt defend himself in Guatemala? I'll leave you with the conclusion.

If the former general believes that the murders, rapes and torture that were carried out under his command were necessary to combat the guerrilla insurgency, he should make that argument to the Guatemalan people.

If he believes that the thousands of civilians who were killed, while tragic, saved the lives of untold millions of Guatemalans who otherwise would have been forced to live under the iron rule of the communists had the military not done its job, he should say so. If that is what he believed, and still believes today, he shouldn't embarrass himself by remaining silent.

No one is going to take his defence seriously if he blames a few rogue officers or if he says that no massacres ever occurred. In the end, the only satisfactory outcome will be a guilty verdict that leads to Efraín Ríos Montt spending the remaining years of his life behind bars. How he gets to there remains up to him.

Guatemala's Human Rights Profile

Human Rights Watch put out a pretty accurate report on the human rights situation in Guatemala several days ago.

Guatemala’s weak and corrupt law enforcement institutions have proved incapable of containing the powerful organized crime groups and criminal gangs that contribute to one of the highest violent crime rates in the Americas. Illegal armed groups are believed to be responsible for ongoing threats and targeted attacks against civil society actors and justice officials.

Although impunity remains the norm for human rights violations, there were significant advances for accountability in 2011, including convictions of four former officers for a notorious massacre in 1982 and the first arrest of a top-ranking official for human rights violations.  

I see the situation in Guatemala as still very difficult but having come off its lows in 2008 and 2009. Arrests of high profile drug traffickers have increased. There have been some prosecutions and/or arrests of human rights violators from the civil war years. Murders of both men and women have declined two years in a row.

Guatemala has gone from a murder rate of 46 per 100,000 to 39 per 100,000 at at time when the rates of its neighbors are in the 70s (El Salvador) and 80s (Honduras). When CICIG first arrived in Guatemala, there were reports that 2% of all murders resulted in convictions. Today, it's between 5% (2010) and 9% (2011).

There's still too much violence and too much impunity, but statistically the country is heading in a better direction than its neighbors.

A Testament From Guatemala’s War Years

David Gonzalez at the New York Times has an interesting story about Jean-Marie Simon in A Testament From Guatemala’s War Years. Jean-Marie spent years documenting life in Guatemala during the war both in photos and in words.

I like her comment on Efrain Rios Montt's potential defense.

“I wish this trial would have happened 30 years ago, when he had a long life ahead of him in prison,” said Ms. Simon, who spent most of the 1980s photographing in Guatemala. “It is so disingenuous to say, ‘I didn’t know’ or ‘I wasn’t in control of the army.’ He was the commander in chief, he had command responsibility for the troops below him. Like a commander in the field once told us, there’s a very short leash between us and the National Palace.”

I agree and should have an op-ed on Al Jazeera stating the same thing soon. I submitted it on Sunday, but they don't seem concerned with the timing of Latin American stories so I don't know when it will go.

Go check out the NYT story, take a look at the photos, and buy her book.

Femicide in Guatemala (2001-2011)

President Otto Perez Molina recently formed a "task force to combat femicide" in Guatemala. Nobel prize winners Rigoberta Menchu and Jody Williams are traveling the region to help bring attention to the intentional killing of women in Guatemala and beyond. And the British Ambassador is organizing human chains around volcanoes. I hope that these three actions are going to help reduce femicide in Guatemala in the region.

In an article for IPS, Danilo Valladares cites statistics from the Presidential Commission Against Racism in Guatemala that indicates femicides increased from 675 in 2010 to 705 in 2011. I think that they are using INACIF numbers which includes murders and other violent deaths but I can't be certain.

However, when one looks at the National Civilian Police's statistics on murder over the last decade one sees that femicide more than doubled from 2001 to 2009 and then has declined in both 2010 and 2011. The increase and then decrease in murders doesn't look at the different from those of men.

This isn't to belittle the murders of Guatemalan women as a problem. It's just to point out that, according to the Guatemalan National Civilian Police's (PNC) murder statistics, the number of women murdered decreased in 2010 and 2011 and that's not even controlling for population increases.