Latin America confronts state atrocities of cold-war past

Ex-Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt faces genocide charges as presidents in El Salvador and Colombia apologise for massacres

guardian.co.uk, Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent, Wednesday 25 January 2012

Efraín Ríos Montt, pictured in 2003, is due to appear in court in Guatemala
City on Thursday in a case which could lead to his prosecution for genocide.
Photograph: Tomas Bravo/EPA

Latin America is confronting past civil wars and dictatorships this week with a series of prosecutions and apologies which are shining a light on decades-old atrocities.

Governments and courts in Guatemala, Argentina, Colombia and El Salvador moved to acknowledge and possibly punish state-sanctioned violence during cold war-era campaigns against leftwing insurgents.

Human rights campaigners welcomed the initiatives but warned that the current violence of the drug war in central America overshadowed the prospect of overdue justice and accountability.

Guatemala's former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt is due to appear in court on Thursday in a case which could lead to his prosecution for genocide during his 17-month military rule between 1982 and 1983.

The former army general, who seized power in a coup, presided over a US-backed campaign against guerrillas which unleashed army massacres and scorched earth policies against indigenous communities in the Maya highlands.

It was one of the bloodiest periods in a 36-year civil war which claimed 200,000 lives and ended in 1996. The UN said the slaughter of indigenous villagers suspected of sympathising with guerrillas amounted to genocide.

Survivors' decade-long quest for justice bore fruit last year when prosecutors opened cases against two other retired generals. Ríos Montt, 85, was immune from prosecution since his election to congress in 2000 but his term expired earlier this month.

A judge, Carol Flores, will decide whether to charge him with genocide, the prosecutor Manuel Vasquez told AP. "We have sufficient evidence for charges of genocide and crimes against humanity."

Ríos Montt's lawyer told the Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre his client would appear in court, adding: "We are sure that there is no responsibility since he was never on the battlefield."

As president the general, who was also an evangelical minister, vowed to fight communism with the Bible and a machine-gun. In a 1982 visit to Guatemala City Ronald Reagan praised the US ally as a man of great personal integrity.

Ríos Montt's fate will be politically sensitive for Guatemala's new president, Otto Pérez Molina, also a former general, who was inaugurated on 14 January after promising voters an iron fist against the bloodshed of the drugs trade which exceeds civil war death rates. Pérez Molina, a mid-ranking commander in a highland region during Ríos Montt's rule, has denied any wrongdoing during that time.

The president promised to back the justice system's pursuit of civil war-era human rights abuses but at the same time ordered the army back into the field – not to hunt Marxist guerrillas, but to "neutralise organised crime" that has made central America the world's deadliest region.

The government said Mexican drug cartels, notably the Zetas, had infiltrated Guatemala's police force and that only the military could re-establish control. Critics of the move said Mexico and Honduras had deployed troops against the gangs only to see violence worsen.

Last Saturday six gunmen killed eight people and wounded 20 in an attack on a nightclub near Guatemala City.

Across the region, attempts to recognise state crimes gathered pace this week. On Monday President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, which endured its own brutal civil war, wept and apologised for a 1981 army massacre of almost 1,000 men, women and children in El Mozote. The leftwing president, speaking on the 20th anniversary of his country's peace accords, told the military not to honour or promote those suspected of atrocities.

But days later human rights groups criticised Funes for appointing an army general to head the police force, a common government tactic in the region to signal a crackdown on crime.

Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, sought forgiveness for the state's role in a rightwing paramilitary massacre of around 50 people in El Tigre during a 1999 offensive against leftwing guerrillas. The paramilitaries are officially disbanded but the conflict continues.

In Argentina, where the government and courts have been bolder in confronting its "dirty war" legacy, prosecutors for the first time charged a businessman with collaborating in dictatorship abuses.

Marco Levin, the owner of a private bus company, allegedly helped state agents abduct 12 drivers and other employees whom were subsequently tortured and questioned over trade union activities. A court hearing was scheduled for next month.

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