Guatemala to open mass grave in search for war dead

[G_j]

Source: Reuters

Guatemala to open mass grave in search for war dead

By Sarah Grainger
Reuters
Sunday, March 22, 2009; 12:55 PM

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Guatemala's biggest mass grave may give up its secrets this year when bodies from a massacre during the 1960-1996 civil war are exhumed after decades of mystery.

Following years of work in rural graves and battling for clues, official permits and funding, rights groups will start digging at a cemetery in Guatemala City, part of a healing process as Guatemala unearths victims of the long conflict.

Around 1,000 bodies in a mass grave at the La Verbena cemetery are thought to be the victims of extrajudicial killings by the army and police during some of the most violent years of the conflict.

"These are people who were taken to be questioned, interrogated, probably tortured," said Fredy Peccerelli, an activist leading efforts to exhume the bodies later this year with $1 million in aid from the United States and Europe.

"If they knew very little, (they were) killed quickly. If they knew a lot, they were held first for three to six months," added Peccerelli, who runs the non-governmental Forensic Anthropology Foundation and who worked in Bosnia after the 1992-95 Balkan conflict.

Almost a quarter of a million people were killed or disappeared during the conflict between leftist guerrillas and the government. Over 80 percent of the murders were committed by the army, according to a U.N.-backed truth commission.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/22/AR2009032200692.html

[stillcool]

1. A while back I read a book..

"The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed The Bishop?" by Francisco Goldman. Kind of freaked me out that a country the size of Guatemala couldn't go up against the brutal right-wingers. Even though they leave government positions they still call the shots, and pull the strings.

[EFerrari]

3. Sort of like here.

[stillcool]

7. but we're so big...

I suppose that it doesn't help that we back up the right-wing regimes in Central/South America, but I figure if they can't do it, what chance do we have?

[EFerrari]

9. The right wing regimes couldn't survive without US government support.

Look what's happened since BushCo got busy elsewhere.

But I agree that our size is used against us. What happens in Topeka isn't very real to me sometimes. Lots of space to hide abuses.

[Judi Lynn]

8. They've been controlled by the right wing since 1954, and it shows!

# 1954 - 1996 U. S. Support for Guatemala's Dictators

# During the 1960s and 70s, American military aid and training made Guatemala's army the strongest and most sophisticated in Central America. Between 1966-68, during the Johnson presidency, the Green Berets were sent to Guatemala to transform its Army into a modern counter-insurgency force and to conduct a Vietnam-style war there...Death squads, never before seen in Latin America, were started during this period. Army leaders, government officials and the businessmen who supported andoften bankrolled the death squads, had close ties with many US. administrations...Journalists, lawyers, teachers, members of opposition parties, and anyone who expressed sympathy for the anti-government cause was machine gunned...American planes and pilots, flying out of Panama, dropped napalm on suspected targets A "killing field" in the Americas: U. S. policy in Guatemala
# 1977, as a result of international publicity which revealed thepattern of torture and killing, U. S. President Jimmy Carter cut off overt military aid. However, money and arms still got to Guatemala through the CIA. Argentina and Chile also aided the Guatemala Army. "And Israel has played a very important role in Guatemala since 1977, supplying weapons, building munitions factories, and training soldiers." A "killing field" in the Americas: U. S. policy in Guatemala
# 1980. Sources close to the Lucas Garcia regime report that the death squds are staffed and directed by the Guatemalan Army and Police under the command of President Lucas, Interior Minister Donald Alvarez Ruiz, and a group of top-ranking generals, with the assistance of Lucas' right hand man, Colonel Hector Montalban, and national Chief of Police, Colonel German Chupina. Private businessmen provide the payrolls for the squads, and often assist in "compiling" the lists of troublesome labor, professional and political leaders as well as other suggested victims. Allan Nairn, "Reagan Administration's Links to Guatemala's Terrorist Government", Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 1989

# April 1980, Guatemalan speculator and right-wing activist Roberto Alejos Arzu, who made his plantation available as a training site for participants in the CIA's Bay of Pigs invation in 1961, sponsors trip to Guatemala for top executives of Young Americans for Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority, Young Republicans' National Federation, the American Conservative Union, Conservative Digest, Howard Phillips of the Conservative Caucus and John Laxalt, president of Reagan's campaign organization "Citizens of the Republic" and brother of Reagan campaign chair, Senator Paul Laxalt....before his election Reagan met personally with two leading spokesmen of the Guatemalan right and ...conveyed the details of what one U. S. businessman calls his promised "180 degree turn" in U. S. Policy toward Guatemala...high level Guatemalan officials say that Reagan's assurances may already have led to an increase in the number of death squad assassinations. Allan Nairn, "Reagan Administration's Links to Guatemala's Terrorist Government",Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 1989

# In the early 1980s, the Guatemalan army unleashed its scorched-earth campaign," a counter-insurgency drive to destroy the Guatemalan guerrilla forces' civilian base of support. By its own count, the army destroyed 440 rural villages. In addition to tens of thousands of civilian deaths, one million people were displaced internally in a country of about nine million. About 200,000 Guatemalans also fled to neighboring Mexico. Some 50,000 of these refugees organized, settled in refugee camps and eventually began to negotiate with the Guatemalan government for group returns to Guatemala. The first such return took place in January of 1993. © 1998, Piet van Lear, A War Called Peace

# 1982, Colonel Francisco Luis Gordillo Martinez, School of the Americas Graduate, (1961 Infantry weapons and tactics, 1974 Command and General Staff College. ) In 1982, aided General Efrain Rios Montt in the violent overthrow of the Guatemalan government, an event which initiated a period of immense brutality on the part of the military toward teh poor and indigenous peoples of the Guatemalan countryside. (NYT 5/28/95); . (School of the Americas, Notorious Graduates
# General Hector Gramajo, School of the Americas Guest Speaker, 1991. Six weeks before speaking at prestigious SOA graduation, had been found guilty by default of numerous war crimes in a U. S. Court (The Bayonet, 1/3/92) Former SOA Commandant Jose Feliciano claimed Gramajo inspired many SOA policies. (The Benning Patriot, 2/21/92). Architect of genocidal policies which essentially legalized military atrocity in Guatemala throughout the eighties. (School of the Americas, Notorious Graduates
# Trotter, John C., Consultant on Guatemalan affairs for the American Security Council's film Attack on the Americas". The ASC is a private ultra-hawk U. S. military lobby whose visit to Guatemala in December 1979 began the Reagan camp's courtship of the Guatemalan right. Trotter had been manager of Guatemala City's Coca-Cola bottling plant franchise. Trotter has been implicated in the death squad murders of a number of workers and union leaders at the bottling plant and was removed from management by Coca-cola headquarters after an international union and church-led boycott of Coke protesting the situation at the plant in Guatemala. Trotter is also a director of the Guatemala Freedom Foundation, a pro-Lucas international lobby group founded by Roberto Alejos, which is more extrme than the Amigos del Pais organizagtion. Allan Nairn, "Reagan Administration's Links to Guatemala's Terrorist Government", Covert Action Quarterly, Summer, 1989

# The Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) report on human rights cases and the CIA's role in Guatemala, released June 28, 1996, shows that the CIA knowingly hired paid informants who were involved in assassinations, kidnappings and torture. Linda Haugaard, "Admissions and omissions--the CIA in Guatemala," July22, 1996, In These Times Magazine.
# The School of the Americas and the U. S. Army's Southern Command used instruction materials in training Latin American officers, including Guatemalans, that "appeared to condone practices...such as executions of guerrilas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment" (p. 32 of the 67 page IOB Report on human rights cases and the CIA's role in Guatemala, released June 28, 1996. Linda Haugaard, "Admissions and omissions--the CIA in Guatemala," July22, 1996, In These Times Magazine.

# CIA involvement in Guatemala death squads. "Several CIA assets were credibly alleged to have ordered, planned or participated in serious human rights violations such as assassination, extrajudicial execution, torture, or kidnapping while they were assets--andthat the CIA's Directorate of Operations headquarters was aware at the time of the allegations. IOB Report on human rights cases and the CIA's role in Guatemala, released June 28, 1996. The IOB had been ordered to conduct a government-wiode review of the DeVine and Bamaca cases, as well as any intelligence bearing on the torture, disappearance or death of U. S. citizens in Guatemala since 1984. These cases include the 1984 killing of Peace Corps volunteer Peter Wolfe, the 1985 killings of journalists Griffith Davis and Nicholas Blake, the 1989 stabbing of human rights worker Meredith Larson, the 1990 assault on social worker Josh Zinner, and the 1992 death of archaeologist Peter Tiscione." Linda Haugaard, "Admissions and omissions--the CIA in Guatemala," July22, 1996, In These Times Magazine.

More:
http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/guatemal.htm


http://www.yale.edu/gsp/guatemala/c1.html

Violence and Genocide in Guatemala<1>

By Victoria Sanford

[e-mail]

Senior Research Fellow

Institute on Violence and Survival, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

Assistant Professor

Department of Anthropology, Lehman College, City University of New York

CHART 1 (Responsibility for Acts of Violence): In its final report, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH- Guatemalan Truth Commission) concluded that army massacres had destroyed 626 villages, more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared, 1.5 million were displaced by the violence, and more than 150,000 were driven to seek refuge in Mexico. Further, the Commission found the state responsible for ninety-three percent of the acts of violence and the guerrillas (URNG-Guatemalan Revolutionary Union) responsible for three percent.<2>

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/guatemala/charts1.html

[IndianaGreen]

2. Obama must close the School of the Assassins at Fort Benning, Georgia

That's where the trail of blood leads to. That's were the murderers were trained by the US. That's the biggest terrorist camp in this continent.

About the School of the Americas / Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

The US Army School of Americas (SOA), based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American security personnel in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. SOA graduates are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1996 the Pentagon was forced to release training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians. (See Grads in the News).

In an attempt to deflect public criticism and disassociate the school from its dubious reputation, the SOA was renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001. The name change was a result of a Department of Defense proposal included in the Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal 2001, at a time when SOA opponents were poised to win a congressional vote on legislation that would have dismantled the school. The name-change measure passed when the House of Representatives defeated a bi-partisan amendment to close the SOA and conduct a congressional investigation by a narrow ten-vote margin. (See Talking Points, Critique of New School, Vote Roll Call.)

In a media interview, Georgia Senator and SOA supporter the late Paul Coverdell characterized the DOD proposal as a "cosmetic" change that would ensure that the SOA could continue its mission and operation. Critics of the SOA concur.

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works through creative protest and resistance, legislative and media work to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America, to close the SOA/WHINSEC and to change oppressive U.S. foreign policy that institutions like the SOA represent. We are grateful to our sisters and brothers throughout Latin America and the the Caribbean for their inspiration and the invitation to join them in their struggle for economic and social justice.

http://www.soaw.org/

[G_j]

4. Notorious Guatemalan School of the Americas Graduates

http://www.derechos.org/soa/guat-not.html

[IndianaGreen]

6. And each of of them were trained by US military, who are themselves criminals

for training assassins and death squads. The murderers and their American trainers should be tried for human rights abuses and crimes against humanity.

[Judi Lynn]

5. They stumbled across a room filled with police records in 2005

which was discussed at the time here. This mass grave was part of the material:

Guatemala: Digitising Police Archives to Clarify Past Abuses
Written by Julio Godoy
Monday, 20 August 2007

http://upsidedownworld.org.nyud.net:8090/main/images/stories/August2007/nsaarchives.jpg

(IPS) - With international support, experts in Guatemala are salvaging and digitising millions of National Police records discovered two years ago in a munitions depot. Thanks to their painstaking work, light could be shed on the tens of thousands of murders and forced disappearances committed during the country’s bloody 36-year civil war.

The vast collection of documents, comprised of roughly 80 million pages, was found by accident in mid-2005 in a half-finished building on the north side of Guatemala City. The messy bundles of records were stacked floor to ceiling in dozens of rooms infested by rats, bats and cockroaches, and many of the files were in an advanced state of decay.

~snip~
A cross comparison of Identification Unit documents and records on the 45,000 people "disappeared" in Guatemala City and its surroundings, many of whom were buried without a name in the local La Verbena cemetery, could finally lead to the identification of some of the remains.

~snip~
According to the United Nations Truth Commission -- the Historical Clarification Commission -- the army and other security forces like the National Police were responsible for over 90 percent of the atrocities.

~snip~
A sub-category of documents includes records kept by the notorious National Police Second Corps’ Commando Six, which operated as a death squad during the bloodiest years of the repression, from 1975 to 1985.

The archive project also attempted to obtain police documents on the northwestern province of Quiché, where 344 of the 669 documented massacres were committed.

"But the National Police did not leave a single piece of paper on El Quiché," said Fuentes.

In the massacres, more than 400 villages were completely destroyed and all of their inhabitants killed by the army and the "civil defence patrols", paramilitary bodies formed at military behest that operated under military orders.

~snip~
The PDH investigators have also found inexplicable gaps in the National Police’s documentation and investigation of high-profile political crimes.

For example, the archives contain no report or information on the Oct. 20, 1978 murder of university student leader Oliverio Castañeda de León, who was chased down by several vehicles, one of which had government licence plates, and shot and killed by a death squad in broad daylight just 100 metres from the seat of government.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38932

[Judi Lynn]

10. History of Guatemala's Death Squads

History of Guatemala's Death Squads
by Robert Parry
consortiumnews.com, 1/11/05

Though many Latin American governments have practiced the dark arts of "disappearances" and "death squads," the history of Guatemala's security operations is perhaps the best documented because the Clinton administration declassified scores of the secret U.S. documents in the late 1990s.

~snip~
Human Rights Warnings
The mounting death toll in Guatemala disturbed some American officials assigned to the country. The embassy's deputy chief of mission, Viron Vaky, expressed his concerns in a remarkably candid report that he submitted on March 29, 1968, after returning to Washington. Vaky framed his arguments in pragmatic terms, but his moral anguish broke through.
"The official squads are guilty of atrocities. Interrogations are brutal, torture is used and bodies are mutilated," Vaky wrote. "In the minds of many in Latin America, and, tragically, especially in the sensitive, articulate youth, we are believed to have condoned these tactics, if not actually encouraged them. Therefore our image is being tarnished and the credibility of our claims to want a better and more just world are increasingly placed in doubt."
Vaky also noted the deceptions within the U.S. government that resulted from its complicity in state-sponsored terror. "This leads to an aspect I personally find the most disturbing of all -- that we have not been honest with ourselves," Vaky said. "We have condoned counter-terror; we may even in effect have encouraged or blessed it. We have been so obsessed with the fear of insurgency that we have rationalized away our qualms and uneasiness.
"This is not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as long as Communists are being killed it is alright. Murder, torture and mutilation are alright if our side is doing it and the victims are Communists. After all hasn't man been a savage from the beginning of time so let us not be too queasy about terror. I have literally heard these arguments from our people."

~snip~
The Reagan Bloodbath
As brutal as the Guatemalan security forces were in the 1960s and 1970s, the worst was yet to come. In the 1980s, the Guatemalan army escalated its slaughter of political dissidents and their suspected supporters to unprecedented levels.
Ronald Reagan's election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.
The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency against leftist enemies.
In the late 1970s, when Carter's human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its "dirty war" -- tens of thousands of "disappearances," tortures and murders -- then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should "walk a mile in the moccasins" of the Argentine generals before criticizing them.
After his election in 1980, Reagan pushed to overturn an arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by Carter. Yet as Reagan was moving to loosen up the military aid ban, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were confirming new Guatemalan government massacres.
In April 1981, a secret CIA cable described a massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17, 1981, government troops attacked the area believed to support leftist guerrillas, the cable said. According to a CIA source, "the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas" and "the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved." The CIA cable added that "the Guatemalan authorities admitted that 'many civilians' were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants."
Despite the CIA account and other similar reports, Reagan permitted Guatemala's army to buy $3.2 million in military trucks and jeeps in June 1981. To permit the sale, Reagan removed the vehicles from a list of military equipment that was covered by the human rights embargo.

No Regrets
Apparently confident of Reagan's sympathies, the Guatemalan government continued its political repression without apology.
According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981, Guatemalan leaders met with Reagan's roving ambassador, retired Gen. Vernon Walters, and left no doubt about their plans. Guatemala's military leader, Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, "made clear that his government will continue as before -- that the repression will continue."
Human rights groups saw the same picture. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981, blaming the Guatemalan government for "thousands of illegal executions."
But the Reagan administration was set on whitewashing the ugly scene. A State Department "white paper," released in December 1981, blamed the violence on leftist "extremist groups" and their "terrorist methods," inspired and supported by Cuba's Fidel Castro. Yet, even as these rationalizations were pitched to the American people, U.S. intelligence agencies in Guatemala continued to learn of government-sponsored massacres.
One CIA report in February 1982 described an army sweep through the so-called Ixil Triangle in central El Quiche province. "The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and eliminate all sources of resistance," the report stated. "Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed."
The CIA report explained the army's modus operandi: "When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed." When the army encountered an empty village, it was "assumed to have been supporting the EGP, and it is destroyed. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees in the hills with no homes to return to. The well-documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike."
Rios Montt
In March 1982, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup d'etat. An avowed fundamentalist Christian, he immediately impressed official Washington, where Reagan hailed Rios Montt as "a man of great personal integrity."
By July 1982, however, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign called his "rifles and beans" policy. The slogan meant that pacified Indians would get "beans," while all others could expect to be the target of army "rifles." In October, he secretly gave carte blanche to the feared "Archivos" intelligence unit to expand "death squad" operations.
The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army conducting Indian massacres. On Oct, 21, 1982, one cable described how three embassy officers tried to check out some of these reports but ran into bad weather and canceled the inspection. Still, the cable put a positive spin on the situation. Though unable to check out the massacre reports, the embassy officials did "reach the conclusion that the army is completely up front about allowing us to check alleged massacre sites and to speak with whomever we wish."
The next day, the embassy fired off an analysis that the Guatemalan government was the victim of a communist-inspired "disinformation campaign," a claim embraced by Reagan when he declared that the Guatemalan government was getting a "bum rap" on human rights after he met with Rios Montt in December 1982.
On Jan. 7, 1983, Reagan lifted the ban on military aid to Guatemala and authorized the sale of $6 million in military hardware. Approval covered spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and A-37 aircraft used in counterinsurgency operations. State Department spokesman John Hughes said political violence in the cities had "declined dramatically" and that rural conditions had improved too.
In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" with kidnappings of students and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and gullies. CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt's order to the "Archivos" in October to "apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit."

Sugarcoating
Despite these grisly facts on the ground, the annual State Department human rights survey sugarcoated the facts for the American public and praised the supposedly improved human rights situation in Guatemala. "The overall conduct of the armed forces had improved by late in the year" 1982, the report stated.
A different picture -- far closer to the secret information held by the U.S. government -- was coming from independent human rights investigators. On March 17, 1983, Americas Watch representatives condemned the Guatemalan army for human rights atrocities against the Indian population.
New York attorney Stephen L. Kass said these findings included proof that the government carried out "virtually indiscriminate murder of men, women and children of any farm regarded by the army as possibly supportive of guerrilla insurgents."
Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies were raped before execution, Kass said. Children were "thrown into burning homes. They are thrown in the air and speared with bayonets. We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destroyed."
Publicly, however, senior Reagan officials continued to put on a happy face. On June 12, 1983, special envoy Richard B. Stone praised "positive changes" in Rios Montt's government. But Rios Montt's vengeful Christian fundamentalism was hurtling out of control, even by Guatemalan standards. In August 1983, Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores seized power in another coup.

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/HxGuatemala_DeathSquads.html

[Judi Lynn]

11. From early in Reagan's Guatemalan adventures. His early contact called Jimmy Carter "Jimmy Castro."

REAGAN ADMINISTRATION'S LINKS
TO GUATEMALA'S TERRORIST GOVERNMENT
by Allan Nairn
Covert Action Quarterly magazine, Summer 1989


Local businessmen and government officials involved with Guatemala's notorious death squads say they have struck a deal with Ronald Reagan which provides for restoration of U.S. weapon sales and training facilities to the Guatemalan military and police, curtailment of State Department criticism of the Guatemalan regime's massive human rights violations, and the ultimate prospect of U.S. military intervention to shore up that beleaguered Central American government.

Before his election, Reagan met personally with two leading spokesmen of the Guatemalan right and also through a series of visits to the country by aides and associates conveyed the details of what one U.S. businessman calls his promised "180 degree turn" in U.S. policy toward Guatemala. These visits include one at the time of the Republican Convention to offer Reagan's "salute" to Guatemalan president General Romero Lucas Garcia and inform him that "things were going to be changing."

High-level Guatemalan officials say that Reagan's assurances may already have led to an increase in the number of death squad assassinations and a senior leader of Guatemala's moderate Christian Democratic Party-already decimated by more than 34 assassinations of its top leadership in the last year-fears for his life.

~snip~
The Death squads

Guatemala's death squads with such names as "Secret Anti-Communist Army" and "Eye for an Eye" specialize in "disappearances" of their political opponents, routine torture, and high-noon machine-gun executions in downtown Guatemala City as well as the countries' outlying provinces.

Sources close to the Lucas Garcia regime report that the death squads are staffed and directed by the Guatemalan Army and Police under the command of President Lucas, Interior Minister Donald Alvarez Ruiz, and a group of top-ranking generals, with the assistance of Lucas's right-hand man, Colonel Hector Montalban, and national Chief of Police, Colonel German Chupina. Private businessmen provide the payrolls for the squads, and often assist in "compiling" the lists of troublesome labor, professional and political leaders as well as other suggested victims.

Cotton grower Raul Garcia Granados-a leader of the Guatemalan right who is the brother of Lucas's Chief of Staff and co-owner with Lucas of an estate in the northern Franja Transversal region-traces the lineage of the current death squads back four administrations to the late 1960s.

"Of course when they were organized, they were organized under the patronage and the approval of the government and the army," he said in a transcribed interview. "They have lists of people that are suspected to be communists of whatever kind, and they kill them. It's a war, you see, a war between the communists and the anti-communists. They have the sympathy of most of the Guatemalan people."

Elias Barahona, former press secretary to Interior Minister Alvarez Ruiz, who controls the national police, fled the country, declared he had become a member of the EGP (Ejercito Guerrillero del Pueblo) an anti-government guerrilla group, and in a Panama City press conference issued a 15 page statement detailing how Lucas and the generals run the death squad from the fourth floor of the National Palace Annex. He listed the address of houses used by the government for detention and torture of its kidnap victims.

Despite such mounting evidence, and the near-universal recognition that Guatemala is one of the worst human rights violators in the entire world; both Arano Osorlo, known as "the butcher of Zacape," and former Guatemalan vice-president Mario Sandoval Alarcon, generally considered high commander of the death squads, were invited to the Reagan inauguration.

Guatemala and the Carter Administration

To the Lucas regime and the businessmen who support it, President Carter's human rights policy was an anathema. Lucas called Carter "Jimmy Castro." Feeling increasingly isolated and betrayed by Carter State Department policy in Guatemala, officials there chose to ignore Washington's urging that human rights violations be corrected.

Businessman Roberto Alejos complained: "Most of the elements in the State Department are probably pro-communist-they're using human rights as an argument to promote the socialization of these areas. We've gotten to the point now where we fear the State Department more than we fear communist infiltration. Either Mr. Carter is a totally incapable president or he is definitely a pro-communist element."

Milton Molina is a wealthy plantation owner who is reputed within Guatemala to have funded and ordered death squad attacks on dozens of peasants and workers. When asked about the squads in a transcribed interview, Molina replied, "Well, we have to do something, don't you think so?" Molina says he and his friends back Reagan "one hundred percent."

The death squads' defenders base their faith in Reagan on direct conversations with him and his top military and foreign policy advisors. According to a Reagan fundraiser, Reagan told ambassador-to-be Carrette, "Hang in 'til we get there. We'll get in and then we'll give you help. Don't give up. Stay there and fight. I'll help you as soon as I get in."

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Global_Secrets_Lies/GuatemalaJul89_Nairn.html

[Judi Lynn]

12. The Secret Government: U.S. Involvement in Guatemala Death Squads

The Secret Government: U.S. Involvement in Guatemala Death Squads
Posted on March 12, 2009 by gm

~snip~
Just two months after Longon's report, a secret CIA cable noted the clandestine execution of several Guatemalan "communists and terrorists" on the night of March 6, 1966. By the end of the year, the Guatemalan government was bold enough to request U.S. help in establishing special kidnapping squads, according to a cable from the U.S. Southern Command that was forwarded to Washington on Dec. 3, 1966.

By 1967, the Guatemalan counterinsurgency terror had gained a fierce momentum. On Oct. 23, 1967, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted the "accumulating evidence that the counterinsurgency machine is out of control." The report noted that Guatemalan "counter-terror" units were carrying out abductions, bombings, torture and summary executions "of real and alleged communists."

Bill Moyers: The CIA had called its covert action against Guatemala, Operation Success. Military dictators ruled the country for the next 30 years. The United States provided them with weapons and trained their officers. The Communists we saved them from would have been hard pressed to do it better. Peasants were slaughtered. Political opponents were tortured. Suspected insurgents were shot, stabbed, burned alive or strangled. There were so many deaths at one point that coroners complained they couldnt keep up with the work load. Operation Success.

Roettinger: What we did has caused a succession of repressive military dictatorships in that country and has been responsible for the deaths over 100,000 of their citizens.

Moyers: Success breeds success, sometimes with dreary repetition. Mario Sandoval Alarcon began his career in the CIAs adventure in Guatemala. Today hes known as the Godfather of the Death Squads. In 1981, after lobbying Ronald Reagans advisors for military aid to Guatemala, Sandoval Alarcon danced at the Inaugural Ball.

More:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5267&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

(video at link, haven't had time to examine yet.)

[G_j]

13. thank you!

for all the important and vital information.
This history is crucial for Americans. I wish it was taught in our schools.