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Date:Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:03:49 -0700 (PDT) From: "amelia farrar-dixon"
Many of you have asked about Tad, our first accompanier. He was out of communication for over a month after he returned to the USA as his computer had been hacked into and his messages deleted. However, here is his final letter, fascinating reading and an interesting summary of his work as an accompanier.
As many people may already know, I recently ended my time as an international human rights accompanier in the traditional Mayan municipality of Rabinal , which sits in the middle of the valley in the Sierra Chuacas Mountains . Fourteen amazing months I spent visiting and accompanying war survivors who formed the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR). These brave men and women gave their public testimonies in the genocide cases against the high commands of former dictators Romeo Lucas García (78-82) and Efraín Ríos Montt (82-83), architects of the scorched earth campaigns that ravaged the rural highlands, home of the majority of the Mayan people.
Since returning to the United States , I have reflected a great deal on my time as an accompanier. Many friends and family have asked me if I felt my work as a human rights accompanier was effective. Did the work do what it was supposed to do? After 14 months I am just beginning to evaluate and reevaluate my time as an accompanier. Is this work needed? Is it healthy and empowering? Is it effective? I have concluded time and time again, if there is one thing that I am certain of, it is that there still is a real need for human rights accompaniment of Guatemalan genocide case witnesses. One only needs to understand a little about the current human rights situation in Guatemala to come to this conclusion.
The Guatemala state currently lacks the political will to create a safe environment for people struggling for human rights and justice. There are hundreds of violent threats and attacks annually against human rights defenders, agrarian reformers, labor activists, judges, prosecutors, and other characters of principle attempting to question the status quo which favors the rich, Spanish-speaking elite. It is the hope of accompaniment, in my case genocide case witnesses, that some measure of security was provided, thus creating space to organize in defense of their rights. This dissuasive presence against potential perpetrators of human rights abuses is essential because of Guatemala 's nonresponsive government which fails to protect its citizens. In Rabinal, I was never sure if it was this presence that was effective dissuading human rights obligations or other factors. And I'm okay with that.
Impunity
To date, Rio Negro is the only legal case, out of dozens initiated with forensic evidence, which has concluded with a conviction of men responsible for human rights abuses during the scorched earth campaign of the 1980s. It was during an 18 month period ending in 1982 that 132,000 mostly rural, indigenous Mayan civilians were killed in the Guatemalan highlands. And yet over 25 years later, only eight low-ranking civil patrollers have been convicted in a Guatemalan court; three in 1999 and five in 2008. Not a single military official who planned, ordered, or participated in the hundreds of massacres during the dictatorships of García and Montt has had to face the courts.
And this is where the impunity lays. Despite testimonies from surviving eyewitnesses, inspections of massacre sites, forensic evidence collected from exhumations, and international pressure from various human rights organizations around the globe, the Guatemalan state-appointed prosecutor continues to state that it needs a stronger set of evidence in order to arrest the charged men. The genocide cases have languished in the investigatory stage for eight years. And the potentially sympathetic world community has heard virtually nothing of these struggles.
To Río Negro massacre survivor, Jesús Tecu, it is no coincidence that the eight convicted men happened to speak Maya Achí. Tecu declared in the 2008 legal trial that convicted five Xococ PAC members, "There is only justice for the indigenous people accused…and those who are the material authors of these crimes, there's nothing."
Discrimination and Exclusion
Five centuries after the Spanish conquest of the Americas , Guatemala 's indigenous Mayan population continues to be marginalized and exploited by the Spanish-speaking minority. Throughout history, the Spanish-speaking elite have viewed the Mayan people and their distinct cultures and ethnicities with suspicion and disdain. Economic and social discrimination and exclusion are a horrific reality. The indigenous people disproportionately lack access to essential public services, such as potable water, health care, education, electricity, sewerage, and employment. Rural Mayans suffer from among the highest levels of illiteracy, malnutrition, hunger, infant mortality, and preventable respiratory and infectious diseases in the world.
While most indigenous Mayans are campesinos (rural farmers), whose livelihood and survival depends on the successful cultivation of their small plots of land, Guatemala continues to create land conflicts that are often resolved by force, with the government siding with the large Guatemalan landowners and the multinational companies in the mining and energy industries. The 1996 Peace Accords were supposed to implement land reform for poor farmers, and provide mechanisms for combating the rampant inequalities and discrimination entrenched.. The violent land evictions continue. As do the attacks and threats against folks struggling for human rights and justice.
War criminals are well protected and often hold important positions of political power. Rabinal is currently home to powerful criminals of the past, ensuring that hundreds of massacre survivors remain quiet because war criminals and their allies hold influential positions in politics, business, and the church Thus, like many Guatemalan communities, massacre survivors of Rabinal live, work, and greet the violent aggressors of the past.
In Rabinal, one name frequently mentioned by massacre witnesses is that of Lucas Tecú Xitimul, a former military commissioner during the worst of the violence. "Lucas Tecú was responsible for many massacres and assassinations, including those in my hometown of Xesiguan," stated genocide survivor Julia. A mother of seven children, active in the struggle for justice, Julia lost her entire family during the violent epoch. "Now he has a large following as pastor and claims his past actions have been forgiven by God." Julia added in a recorded interview with me:
But I don't forgive him. How is it that a man who has blood on his hands can call himself a man of God? I lost members of my family from this man of God. My family is buried underneath the earth while Lucas Tecú is above the earth, a free man. How is this fair? When will this man be called to testify? When will he face justice for his crimes?
There are other horrific stories. Venturo and María hid in the mountains for parts of four years during the violent epoch, living off whatever nature provided. In 1984 Venturo was captured as a "subversive" by soldiers and tortured for 10 consecutive days in the Rabinal military base. Venturo described how soldiers would urinate and defecate on the captives tied up underneath them in a dirt pit. He also described how some of the tortured were made to eat their cut off body parts, whereas some victims bled to death. "They wanted to show us how vulnerable we were…how dependant we were to the Army," instructed Venturo.
When asked if he still sees his torturers, Venturo described a former judicial that I knew. Mako is a loud-mouthed, portly man in his early 60s who runs the local bus terminal in Rabinal. Mako was especially notorious as a torturer who sliced open deep wounds on the skin of Venturo and other victims with a sharpened machete. Venturo states, “It is unfair that don Mako continues to live without a care in the world as a respected man of the community. The man is a murderer. And I have to see this murderer every time I travel."
Not the Chosen One
Whereas the indigenous people initially hoped that they had finally found a government sympathetic to their culture and a promoter for their civil rights, many now believe Alvaro Colom, and his centrist Unity of Hope party, was just playing politics. Before my departure, many folks that I visited stated over and over that "el gobierno no nos respetan (the government doesn't respect us)." As Luis, a genocide case witness from Plan de Sanchez, told me, "Colom is a career politician who took advantage of us. When he won the election, he turned his back on us, just like all the other ladino politicians. He doesn't respect the indigenous people. We are treated with the same contempt and discrimination as we were during la violencia.” I often was instructed to become messenger to the people of my country. "When you leave your home, Tad, you need to tell your friends and family of our situation and what we have been through," instructed Pedrina of Xesiguan. . A deep fear of being isolated in the struggle for justice, and a fear that the world may never know about the true atrocities committed during the violence, are driving forces for the people, that and a desire to achieve justice for these criminal acts.
"What I want more than anything," claimed indigenous genocide survivor, Teresa, of Chicupac, "I want justice for what was done. I want to move on with my life. There are enough problems we poor people must deal with today. But I can't move on until there is justice for the terrible consequences of the past."
Goodbyes I will miss the people immensely while adapting once again to the fast-paced life in the United States . It has been a difficult transition to say the least. It's interesting. As a privileged white North American, I have been reevaluating how I have been accustomed to thinking of impoverished slums and neglected and isolated rural communities. As a society, we have been told to pity the people who must grow up and raise a family in an impoverished environment, since the people lack access to a good education, health care, employment, or even possibilities upward mobility—a better life. Yet there is little spoken about the entrenched policies that continue to impoverish the Guatemalan communities still recovering from the scorched earth violence in the 1980s and the government neglect since.
Without romanticizing the poverty that I witnessed, there was something beautiful and empowering within the communities that I visited. There was a spirit and energy that is strong and rooted in the strong cultural, communal, and familial ties that I often don't witness in the United States . The strength of the people, despite the oppressive and even violent poverty and racist institutions imposed on them by an often uncaring government is something amazing indeed. The people I visited are witnesses to unspeakable events. The people of Rabinal will continue the struggle. They are survivors.
Thanks for your time and thanks for reading the letter. Below is what I will miss most of my time in Rabinal. – Tad
I will miss the weekly conversations and visits with the people in the communities. I will miss the homemade meals consisting of hand-made corn tortillas with black beans and queso fresco (fresh cheese), or with fried eggs and tomatoes, onions, and chili peppers on the side. I will miss the fresh fruits and vegetables put in my bag, especially the mangos, bananas, apples, manzanitas, malanga, peaches, corn on the cob, jocotes, and avocados. I will miss the greetings within the communities and in the streets of Rabinal. I will miss joking around with the families, and playing marbles with the children. I will miss the natural coffee harvested by the war survivors in Chichupac..
I will miss market days, when the plaza transformed into a packed maze of women selling produce from large woven baskets. I will miss the snacks and meals in the market, including the atol fed out of the guacales (the beautifully decorated half of large nut shells in which the locals drink their beverages and often eat their meals). I will miss buying fruits and vegetables from the indigenous ladies who traveled from the villages in the mountains, fully dressed in their traditional traje (clothing). I will miss the rides to the communities, located up in the mountains surrounding the valley of Rabinal , accessible by pickup trucks, minivans, and bicycle. I will miss walking for hours in the small footpaths within the communities or in between the communities. I will miss the rain in the rainy season, including the amazing thunderstorms with bright strikes of lightening, and the sun in the dry season, when all the vegetation in the valley turns to brown. But most of all I will miss the warm and caring people in the communities of Rabinal.
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