25-year quest for justice in fatal protest intensifies

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Mon, Jan. 31, 2005




GUATEMALA
25-year quest for justice in fatal protest intensifies

A 1980 Guatemalan upheaval, in which 37 demonstrators died during a clash with police, is the focus of a march today.

BY CATHERINE ELTON
Special to The Herald


GUATEMALA CITY - Rigoberta Menchú will march through the this city's streets today with a black and red scarf tied around her neck, just above her Nobel Peace Prize medal.

The scarf is just like the one her father wore 25 years ago today, when he was part of a Maya peasant group that occupied the Spanish Embassy here to denounce military massacres.Thirty-seven people -- including Menchú's father and three Spanish citizens -- died at the embassy later that day in a fire that began when police clashed with the demonstrators.

The Spanish warrant was not universally welcome. Jorge Palmieri, who was Guatemala's ambassador to Mexico in 1980, harshly criticized the conclusions of a U.N.-backed Truth Commission report that Guatemalan police used flamethrowers against the embassy occupiers.
(snip)
The conflict between leftist rebels and the military ended in a 1996 peace accord, after about 200,000 people, mostly Maya Indians, were killed or disappeared. A Truth Commission concluded that the military and paramilitary groups committed genocide during the early 1980s, yet no one has stood trial for those crimes to date.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/10775854.htm
(Free registration is required)

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Reagan & Guatemala's Death Files
by Robert Parry
iF magazine, May/June 1999



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 anticommunist 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 the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies.
(snip)


The report documented that in the 1980s, the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages. "The massacres that eliminated entire Mayan villages ... are neither perfidious allegations nor figments of the imagination, but an authentic chapter in Guatemala's history," the commission concluded.
The army "completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their livestock and crops," the report said. In the north, the report termed the slaughter a "genocide."
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/Reagan_Guatemala.html

[Erika]

1. One reason why I hated Reagan

He talked one story but acted out another story, just like Bush. He killed innocent children of a tyrant's family, invaded Grenada, and was responsible for the Iran Contra.

He dismantled social programs here and had the distinction of being the first president to say the poor are lazy, worthless, and eat from the productive while he gave the rich special privileges and almost royalty status.

I wonder if Alzheimers wasn't a payback for the damage he did to the lower income and working class in this country.

[acmavm]

2. For all the evil Reagan did, there could only be one payback that would

suffice. And I truly hope that he's experiencing it now.

I never thought that he ran the show (like Smirk who I think is probably just a front man), but I do know he was a petty, evil monster who didn't care what he did to his fellow human being as long as he got to play the role of 'president'. He made the choice to whore himself out for the bad guys. And some of the were really bad. And Smirk has brought them back into power.

[aikido15]

3. I couldn't believe the neocon

farce when he died. Christ Jesus! Could they have hauled his dead cold body around a little longer? It was sickening, esp. in light of his involvement in this and delaying the release of the hostages in Iran until after the election with Jimmy Carter...the day Reagan was sworn in, they were released...sick fuck.

[Judi Lynn]

4. The fact Bush has brought Reagan's criminals right back

when many people had hoped we were rid of them permanently tells us where he really lives, in his heart. There's no way anyone can justify the bloodbaths Reagan endorsed in Latin America, while praising the filthy murderous Presidents of those suffering countries.

Bush brought right back the same people who made it all happen at this end. People who knew what they had done were sickened. Bush is lucky that so few Americans have ever heard about those deadly events, or have been so misled by propaganda they really don't give a damn, anyway.