God Help Guatemala

This is so very, very, disturbing. Not content to leave his chance of running for President of Guatemala to the opinion of the usual five judges sitting on the Court of Constitutionality, Efraín Rios Montt managed to get two judges added as substitute judges (the law mandates seven judges to hear this type of case) in his final appeal to determine whether he would be allowed to run. Not content to have just any substitute judge, he managed to have one selected who used to be his lawyer. I suppose judges are not required to recuse themselves in Guatemala . . .

To no one's surprise, Rios Montt has managed to get the result he craved: the court ruled 4-3 in his favor, both of the substitute judges voting in Rios Montt's favor, without even the pretense of impartiality.

Here's a little of Rios Montt's handiwork:

Armed guerrillas typically harassed army troops and then slipped back into the mountains. The army, frustrated by these attacks yet undeterred by any moral consideration for their civilian victims, responded by attacking entire villages. By the early 1982 peak of terror, troops regularly burned villagers’ houses and crops and killed their farm animals in a "scorched earth" policy designed to depopulate the zones of guerrilla operations (Americas Watch 1982). What had been a selective campaign against guerrilla sympathizers turned into a mass slaughter designed to eliminate any support or potential support for the rebels, and included widespread killing of children, women and the elderly. It was a strategy that Ríos Montt called "draining the sea that the fish swim in."

Here's a graphic view courtesy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science:

Clearly the major spike took place during Rios Montt's tenure in the early 1980's. God help Guatemala.

Comments

[Thomas Locke Hobbs]

If Rios Montt is such a monster, why does he have any chance of being elected President? What sectors of Guatemalan society find him appealing?

[Randy Paul]

Thomas,

He doesn't have support in the countryside, especially among the Maya who live there, but he does have support among the elite and among these who are fed up with crime.

What is ironic about this is that under President Portillo, corruption has increased (especially narcotraficante-influenced corruption) and yet, Portillo and Rios Montt belong to the same party, the Guatemalan Republican Front. I have heard that Rios Montt polls very low in Guatemala City, but I also hear that the press really hates him, so you can't be too sure as to how badly he has polled.

This is one of those incredibly maddening things about Latin American politics: there most assuredly are second acts. Fujimori is attempting a comeback in Peru and has some support, I can't tell you how many people I know in Brazil still speak highly of Collor, Menem still has a sigificant element of supoort in Argentina (although one wonders how much now) and I read recently that Salinas is trying to make a comeback in Mexico!