Sanford shares local fears in Guatemala
By GEOFF BRODIE
News Writer
Reading a section from her current project entitled "The Grey Zone of Justice," Victoria Sanford of the Kellog Institute and the department of anthropology told of the military stranglehold that has been choking the life out of the ethnic Mayan communities of Guatemala for many years Thursday afternoon.
As military bases began to spring up throughout the nation, paramilitary Civil Patrols called "Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil" [PAC] were established. The Civil Patrols is an institution that was installed by the military in the early 1980's in order to maintain control over the rural areas as a counter-insurgency measure.
Civilians "voluntarily" have to spend several days a month patrolling their village. Their arms are supplied by the military. These Civil Patrols wreaked unspeakable havoc and committed horrible atrocities across the country, Sanford said.
One such event was the Rio Negro Massacre. On March 13, 1982, 80 women and 100 children were ordered to march up a mountain and were brutally murdered.
Upon later exhumation of the gravesite, three of the victims were found to have been pregnant and many had been raped. Others had suffered gun shot wounds, head trauma, and machete wounds.
This was just one example of the horrors committed by the Civil Patrols and their military officials. According to Sanford, the military was responsible for 93 percent of all human rights violations in Guatemala, including the destroying of 626 towns and the displacement of 1,500,000 people.
According many human rights leaders, those responsible for Rio Negro and other massacres sit unscathed in their untouchable government positions. Many witnesses or survivors were too afraid to testify against those responsible because of death threats. Even judges chosen to hear the case against those officials who were named fled the country in fear of losing their lives as well. It began to seem that justice would never be served. But that was exactly the goal of the military and Civil Patrols.
"Social peace has priority over justice," said General Garcia, leader of military forces in Guatemala.
Finally in 1999, three military officials were found guilty of the Rio Negro massacre. Many human rights activists believed that this was meaningless because those who gave the orders were not held responsible. Sanford's perspective is much different.
In her 24 months of fieldwork in Guatemala from 1994-1999, Sanford was able to get the views of everyone involved, from peasants to prosecutors. She believes in what she calls "lateral impurity," those most responsible were those on a local level, because they had the most to gain.
"Local leaders are the ones who try to stop social changes in the community," said Sanford.
Those in charge of patrolling their own town received more benefits from ratting out their neighbor than a general residing at a military base far away. The peasants feared their local military commissioners much more than those on a national level.
"Military commissioners were usually the town butcher, because they were the ones who stole the cattle," said Sanford.
The struggle in Guatemala is one that is ongoing. And like most major problems, especially with human rights, change is going to have to come from the bottom on up.
All News Stories for Friday, March 30, 2001
