Guatemala Starts Trial on Disappearances

By Gabrielle Meury
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

CHIMALTENANGO, Guatemala - Guatemala’s first trial for enforced disappearances began on March 10. Felipe Cusanero, a former paramilitary, was accused of participating in the enforced disappearance of civilians with the complicity of the army. Cusanero collaborated with the army as a “military commissioner,” recruiting local civilians to provide information and intelligence on other villagers. The term “forced disappearance” refers to state-sponsored abductions in which the victim is never seen again or accounted for.  According to prosecutors and victims’ families, Cusanero was responsible for the disappearance of at least six people in the village of Choatalum, farming village of mostly Mayan inhabitants. Choatalum is one of the regions hit hardest by the civil war in terms of human rights violations.

Cusanero’s trial began in 2003 when six villagers filed a legal complaint before the public prosecutor’s office.  According to the complaint, the six missing people were illegally detained in the village and never heard from again. When families asked for information about their missing loved ones, Cusanero refused to tell them anything and threatened them. On the 10th, Plaintiff Hilarion Lopez testified that his 24 year old son was taken away by 30 soldiers at 11:00 one night. When he asked about his son, the soldiers responded that “the work was done,” and told him to stop asking around because otherwise he “would get it too.”

An estimated 600,000 to 1.4 million Guatemalans participated in “Civil Auto-Defense Patrols” organized to patrol towns in search of potential leftist guerrillas. The army trained and armed the civilians in the Patrols to assist the military. As a result of the 36 year internal armed conflict, an estimated 200,000 people are dead and 45,000 have disappeared. The military’s scorched earth campaigns reduced hundreds of Mayan villages to cinders in hopes of choking off civilian support for guerrillas. Hostilities ended with a peace agreement in 1996.

For more information, please see:

BBC News- Seeking Justice in Guatemala- 11 March 2008

Amnesty International- Guatemala Disappearance Trial Begins- 18 March 2008

IPS- Rights- Guatemala: Trial on Disappearances Marks a “Before” and “After” – 11 March 2008

Jurist- First Guatemala Civil War Disappearance Trial Opens- 11 March 2008

AP News- Guatemala Starts Landmark Trial- 11 March 2008