Guatemalan Secret Police Archive

I want to call your attention to this article in Monday's New York Times about the secret police archives recently discovered in Guatemala. The National Security Archives has an even more comprehensive look at this record of state terror against the state's own citizens here.

Imagine the brazenness of this operation! Files marked "disappeared, assassinations, homicides." The reason for the brazenness is obvious:

Heriberto Cifuentes, a Guatemalan historian who was among the first outsiders to lay eyes on the files, said the fact that the government did not destroy them reflected a simple fact of Guatemalan life.

"Impunity reigns in Guatemala," he said. "So whether there are documents or not, people responsible for crimes do not expect to pay for them. They have always enjoyed blanket immunity."

Impunity remains one of Latin America's greatest curses.

Comments

[Russell]

As I wrote in a post on Rulablog yesterday, National Security Archive has a good story about this with pictures of documents, etc.

[Randinho]

I mentioned it at the end of the first paragraph above.