A Truly Monstrous Man

Efraín Rios Montt was interviewed by the Associated Press recently:

On Tuesday, Rios Montt said he believes Guatemala can battle soaring crime rates, stamp out corruption and improve a sluggish economy by following the Christian code.

He refused to give specific policy examples, saying only he "would not impose anything," but added that he would ensure Guatemalan society was "based on strict values, because if we don't put fundamental norms in place, we lose our way and go backward."

While in office, Rios Montt enforced a curfew, ordered restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol, and gave podium-pounding television addresses every Sunday, singing the praises of evangelical values for an audience that was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

Apparently this Christian forgot about the Sixth Commandment . . .

And just to remind those who want to put Reagan's image on Mount Rushmore,

Washington was openly supportive of Rios Montt's dictatorship. In December 1982, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan called him "a man of great personal integrity" who was "getting a bum rap on human rights."

During the interview, he sat next to a black-and-white photo of him sitting with Reagan.

There is some good news here, however:

Rios Montt is trailing in the latest polls behind Oscar Berger, a conservative former Guatemala City mayor supported by the business community, and Alvaro Colom, a former interior secretary running on a left-leaning ticket.

But Rios Montt has gained ground recently in large part because potential voters see him as the most capable of reversing a crime rate that has skyrocketed since the end of the war.

"If you look at my past in a legal light," he said, "You see I followed the law."

I guess he must have forgotten about this graph

which clearly shows the huge spike in killings and disappearances when he was in power.  The election's next month.  Keep your fingers crossed, hope and pray.

Comments

[Derek]

I am not a big expert on this area, but I was wondering if Reagan knew what kind of a evil bastard this guy was? Did he later distances himself from the real crap starting coming out? Durning the 80's right in this country suffered from "My guys are not evil thugs" world view that the left so often does with left wing dictators. Sense I keep on forgiving lefties for not realizing right away how very evil some of their comunest buddies were, it only seems fair I do the same for Reagan.

Derek

[Herman]

I'm an evangelical Christian and stories like this are always a tough read for me. I once had to confront one of the elders at my church when he praised Fredrick Chiluba's regime which was in charge of Zambia at the time.

While not this bad, it was nothing I would be happy to associate with my faith or my God.

[xavier]

Randy:
Remember the pope's visit to Guatemala and asked Rios Montt to spare the lives of some prisoners but orders them executed instead?
I also remember one of those bone chilling moments in life. There was a video of Rioss Monnt and his camerilla. I mean junta and he gave one of those fiery speeches about how he was goint to wipe out the communist rebels etc etc.
Rios Montt is one rationally deranged guy
xavier

[Randy Paul]

Derek,

If Reagan didn't know, then he was in denial. Every NGO that deals with human rights issues was reporting on how horrible Rios Montt was.

The difference with Reagan (the man who claimed that the SS soldiers buried at Bitburg were also "victims" of the Nazis) was that he ignored anything that didn't confirm his preconceptions about things. He was willing to distort reality (in the case of the El Mozote Massacre), have his Secretary of State smear people (Alexander Haig saying that the four nuns raped and murdered by the Salvadoran military were "running a roadblock"), engage in an end-run around the Constitution (Iran-Contra) and act like he knew nothing about it.

The sole exception was with Pinochet in 1986. When it became abundantly clear that Pinochet would not willingly let democracy return to Chile and with the full knowledge that Jeane Kirkpatrick's support for Latin dictators like Pinochet was becoming an embarrassment, they finally started pressuring him.