2 December 2009, National Security Archive: Operation Sofia: Documenting Genocide in Guatemala
30 December 1999, NYT: Guatemalans Formally End 36-Year Civil War, Central America's Longest and Deadliest
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/americas/04guatemala.html
DEC. 3, 2009
Court Papers Detail Killings by the Military in Guatemala
By ELISABETH MALKIN
MEXICO CITY -- There are almost 200 pages of platoon reports, and they each repeat a similar story: A military patrol enters a Mayan village in the Guatemalan region of El Quiche in the summer of 1982. The soldiers capture anybody who does not flee in time and "eliminate" anybody who tries to escape. Then they burn the houses, destroy the crops and kill the livestock.
"A woman was found hiding in a ditch and realizing her presence, the point man fired, killing her and two 'chocolates,' " one report reads. According to a witnesses, the "chocolates" were two children she was protecting.
The reports are part of a secret Guatemalan military file entered into evidence this week in a genocide case against Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, the former Guatemalan dictator, and seven other top military and civilian officers. The case was filed in Spain almost a decade ago by a Nobel Peace laureate, Rigoberta Menchu, and other survivors of military attacks during the nation's long conflict.
In clipped, military language, the records document Operation Sofia, [1] one element of the counterinsurgency campaign waged against leftist guerrilla forces. The offensive sent hundreds of soldiers from different bases against the guerrillas, whose numbers the military estimated at fewer than 100 in the Ixil area, where Operation Sofia was centered.
About 200,000 people died during Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which formally ended with a 1996 peace agreement. [2] The violence reached its peak under Mr. Rios Montt, who took power in a coup in 1982. A United Nations commission found in 1999 that the Guatemalan Army had committed "massacres, human rights violations and other atrocities" against Mayan communities that "illustrated a government policy of genocide."
The reports entered into evidence this week offer terse summaries of the actions that summer in El Quiche. The soldiers go looking for guerrillas but seldom find any. Occasionally, they take fire from the guerrillas, who almost always seem to get away.
Instead, they find what they call irregular local forces -- unarmed civilians including women, children and the elderly -- all of whom, the reports conclude, have been indoctrinated by the guerrillas.
"All of the people who live in this area are totally convinced that the guerrilla struggle is good," concluded one report, which went on to recommend that "after burning the houses and destroying the shelter of the guerrillas and their sympathizers, they should be talked to and made to understand why they were victims of this abuse."
But these forces do not carry weapons. "The point man indicated an individual who on seeing the patrol tried to flee, but he was eliminated," one report states. "He was carrying only supplies (juice, rice and salt)."
One commander recommends that the military continue aerial bombings around the region to flush out the guerrillas and asks for the area to be mined.
"It is the record of a deliberate policy of murder and mayhem," said Kate Doyle, an analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, who obtained the document from military intelligence sources in Guatemala. "For years I have listened to the survivors tell their stories, but the military has always been allowed to remain mute."
When the courts there have asked the military to produce its records, the armed forces have stalled, turning over only one document and claiming the rest no longer exist.
The genocide case in Madrid, filed under Spain's universal jurisdiction law for crimes against humanity, has proved to be an important source of evidence for cases that survivors' groups have filed in Guatemala, said Almudena Bernabeu, a lawyer with the Center for Justice and Accountability, [3] which represents several of the victims' families.
"The Spanish case has the ability to push the case forward in Guatemala," she said.
Ms. Menchu, a Quiche Indian who lost much of her family in the violence, and the other survivors who brought the Spanish case, argued that the genocide charges were justified because Mayans were singled out as an ethnic group.
The military files also show how the reports went up the chain of command. They include the initial order to begin the operation from the military chief of staff, and documents aggregating the patrol reports that were systematically sent to top commanders.
"As a lawyer, this is one of the moments we have every 10 years," Ms. Bernabeu said.