Warning: This article contains details of violence that may be upsetting.
Guatemala City, Guatemala – Jesús Tek remembers wrapping his arms around his 2-year-old brother, trying to protect him from the horror unfolding around him.
It was March 13, 1982, and the village of Rio Negro, a Maya Achi community located on a river in central Guatemala, was attacked. Guatemala is in the midst of a brutal civil war, with the military and militia raiding the countryside and razing indigenous villages.
Tek's parents were already among dozens of Rio Negro residents massacred in another village just a month earlier. But now there are soldiers and paramilitary patrols in town, and 10-year-old Tek wants to protect his younger brother from the murders and rapes they are witnessing.
The patrol officer decided to take Taek in as a domestic servant, but didn't want to take the toddler home with him either. Ignoring Tek's frantic pleas, the patrolman grabbed the 2-year-old by the arm, slammed him against a rock, and threw his body into a ravine.
An estimated 107 children and 70 women died in Rio Negro that day. Tek and his other 16 children were able to survive only because they were chosen as servants.
Now, Tek is hopeful that criminal proceedings in Guatemala will provide some accountability for the atrocities experienced by thousands of indigenous people during that period.
“We have never stopped pursuing justice,” said Tek, who has spent the past 30 years as a human rights activist and advocate for community reconstruction.
On Friday, former Guatemalan military commander Manuel Benedicto Lucas García is scheduled to stand trial on charges of genocide. This is the latest chapter in the country's ongoing efforts to achieve justice for the systematic killing of indigenous peoples in Guatemala.
The war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996, killed an estimated 200,000 people. More than 80% of him was indigenous Mayan.
A UN-backed truth commission found that the military committed acts of genocide against five of the country's 22 different Maya tribes between 1981 and 1983. That period coincided with Lucas Garcia's tenure as Army Chief of Staff.
For seven months in 1981-1982, Lucas García commanded the Guatemalan military as part of the administration of his brother, President Romeo Lucas García. He is currently accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, enforced disappearance and sexual violence.
But Tek points out that time is running out for survivors to find justice. Several decades have passed since the war ended. The alleged perpetrators, like 91-year-old Lucas Garcia, are older and often deceased.
“The significance of this case is that an intelligent writer is alive,” Tek told Al Jazeera. “He needs to be held accountable for what happened with the deaths of so many children, women and men.”
delay tactics
However, Lucas Garcia denied any wrongdoing. Rather, in a live video feed on March 25, he said in Guatemala's High Risk Courtroom A, “I'm a national hero,” which he later said was in reference to accomplishments unrelated to armed conflict. revealed.
The public hearing on March 25th was held after a one-year postponement. In anticipation of the trial, survivors of the genocide had gathered outside the courthouse in Guatemala City, holding a ceremony in support of the trial.
However, one of Lucas Garcia's two attorneys announced his resignation days before the hearing, and the other subsequently resigned as well. Critics believe this was a tactic to further delay the trial.
Ultimately, Lucas Garcia accepted the use of a public defender and was allowed to continue attending hearings via video conference while recovering from surgery. The trial start date was moved to April 5 to give the new lawyers time to prepare.
“We know that these are all tricks and strategies that Benedict Lucas García is using,” said Diego Seto, leader of Maya Ixil, which supports witnesses and survivors during the trial. said.
Speaking to Al Jazeera on the steps of the courthouse shortly after the adjournment, Seth explained that other defendants had similarly used stalling techniques to avoid trial.
In the end, one of Lucas Garcia's co-defendants, a former military operations chief, died in 2020. And in January, another former military intelligence chief will face another lawsuit after being found mentally unfit to stand trial.
“They are looking for some kind of justification to avoid starting a trial,” Seto said. “Nevertheless, as Ixil, we will continue to advocate the pursuit of truth.”
From the Ixil region and beyond
Seth's hometown is at the center of an ongoing case. Prosecutors are focusing on crimes allegedly committed in the Maya-Ixil region, 225 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of the capital.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs said more than 30 massacres were carried out under Lucas García's command, and at least 23 Ixil villages were completely destroyed. Prosecutors plan to bring more than 80 experts and 150 witnesses to court as part of the trial.
The evidence also includes forensic reports from the excavation and military documents, which lawyers say will help establish the genocidal intent behind the crime.
Atrocities in the Maya-Ixil region were the centerpiece of another historic trial. It is the trial of the late military ruler Efrain Ríos Montt, who usurped power from Romeo Lucas García in a military coup.
In 2013, Guatemala made history when a court convicted Ríos Montt of genocide. But the verdict was quickly overturned in a widely questioned ruling, illustrating the difficulty of prosecuting such cases.
Rios Montt died before a partial retrial could be completed in 2018. On September 27 of the same year, a court ruled that the military had committed genocide, but no one was convicted.
But advocates say the atrocities continued by Ríos Montt and others extend beyond the Ixil Maya people, targeting other indigenous peoples, unions, clergy, student movements and other groups. I'm emphasizing it.
For example, in another case in 2018, Lucas Garcia was convicted of rape, enforced disappearance, and crimes against humanity for acts committed against an activist and his family. He was sentenced to 58 years in prison.
However, in June 2023, the Court of Appeals ordered the release of Lucas Garcia and his co-defendants. However, he remained in custody under a pretrial detention order in the genocide case.
In another case that has not yet been tried, Lucas Garcia is among several former employees charged with crimes related to more than 550 remains exhumed from a mass grave on a military base. There is only one person.
“Currently we are dealing with the Ixil case, but the destruction was not only in the Ixil region,” said Eleodro, head of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR), which is made up of survivors and relatives of five of the most troubled regions. Osorio said. – Attacking indigenous areas.
The power of grassroots movement
Osorio's group was formed in 2000. In the same year, Romeo filed formal legal charges against his Lucas García for genocide, and the following year also filed charges against Ríos Montt. These legal actions ultimately led to the indictment of Ríos Montt and military leader Benedict Lucas García, who is currently under indictment.
AJR is co-plaintiff in Lucas Garcia's case, allowing its own defense team to intervene on behalf of the victim alongside prosecutors.
Naomi Roth Arriaza, a law professor at the University of California School of Law in San Francisco, said the group's participation increases the prospects for a successful conviction.
She noted that grassroots movements could help put pressure on Guatemala's legal system, where judicial and prosecutorial independence has eroded in recent years.
“That's exactly what happened in the trials we saw in Latin America. It was basically the victims' lawyers who did most of the actual work,” Rios said in Spain.・Roto Arriaza, who served as legal advisor in a similar case filed against Montt, said:
She sees the pursuit of justice in Guatemala as part of a broader regional phenomenon.
“I think Latin America has led national trials for large-scale human rights violations. So it's not just Guatemala. Argentina, Chile, Colombia. [and] To some extent, it’s Peru,” she told Al Jazeera.
Most genocide prosecutions occur in international rather than domestic courts, said Mark Berlin, a political science professor at Marquette University in Wisconsin, whose research focuses on accountability for human rights abuses and war crimes. Is going.
He explained that “atrocity crimes,” including genocide and crimes against humanity, are usually committed by state actors and are unlikely to be prosecuted by states themselves.
Therefore, when a country prosecutes genocide within its borders, it is often the result of changes in power relations within the government itself.
“It is normal for previously targeted groups to seize power and use that power to target those previously in power for prosecution,” Berlin told Al Jazeera. He cited the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide as an example. That dynamic.
But the situation in Guatemala was different, he said. “Given that such circumstances do not exist in Guatemala, it is highly unlikely that Guatemala will be able to pursue genocide prosecutions.”
Still, Berlin said other factors, such as foreign aid and forensic work, helped move the genocide prosecution forward.
“There was kind of a perfect storm of other kinds of factors in Guatemala that made it possible to carry out these prosecutions,” he said.
“One of them is the presence of a very active and well-organized social movement, a very tenacious and tenacious social movement that has been demanding accountability for decades.”
half the battle
But now that Lucas Garcia is about to go to trial, the effort to secure a conviction faces new hurdles.
Prosecuting genocide is considered more complex than other human rights violations and crimes against humanity due to legal elements set out in the 1948 Genocide Convention and incorporated into Guatemala's criminal code in 1973.
“You have to prove that the actor or defendant had the intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part,” said Geoff Dancy, a political science professor at the University of Toronto.
“It's very difficult to prove, and in fact it's only been successful in a small number of cases.”
According to Dancy, there are approximately 105 trials related to genocide in 15 countries around the world, and Dancy is the lead researcher on a research project that collects and analyzes global data on transitional justice mechanisms, including human rights prosecutions. It is.
But even if prosecutors are not successful in convicting someone like Lucas Garcia of genocide, a trial can still be a useful tool for justice, Dancy said. .
He said the case remains of great importance, even though leaders such as Guatemala's Ríos Montt, Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Chile's Augusto Pinochet died during prosecution efforts. He said it helped expose fraud and put it on public record.
Ultimately, Dancy said, “it's really important to get these things on the map and build evidence and have them considered in court.”
