Guatemalan presidential candidate Otto Perez Molina and the Ixil Triangle massacres.
| Autor | Reynolds, Louisa |
The case against Hector Mario Lopez Fuentes, the former armed forces chief under the dictatorship of Gen. Efrain Rios Montt (1982-1983), who was arrested on June 17 and accused of genocide and crimes against humanity, has brought to light uncomfortable truths for presidential candidate Otto Perez Molina.
Guatemala's office for public prosecutions, the Ministerio Publico (MP), accuses Lopez Fuentes of being the intellectual author behind "Plan Sofia," a military strategy designed to crush guerrilla insurgents in the municipalities of Nebaj, Chajul, and San Juan Cotzal, in the highland department of Quiche, an area named by the Guatemalan Army the Ixil Triangle NotiCen, March 6, 2008.
Plan Sofia was part of the nationwide Plan de Campana Victoria 82, which aimed to destroy insurgents as well as the civilian population that purportedly harbored them, a strategy known as "quitarle el agua al pez" (draining the sea that the fish swim in).
During this period, the Fuerzas de Tarea were set up, temporary task forces made up of different military professionals--infantry, artillery, marines, and air force pilots--that were disbanded once they had concluded the specific mission for which they had been created and sent back to their original posts.
The Recuperacion de la Memoria Historica (REHMI) report published by the Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG) defines these task forces as "special counteroffensive units" and their history is a long list of massacres, extrajudicial executions, forced disappearances, and acts of torture.
The MP accuses Lopez Fuentes of "organizing the Guatemalan state in order to wage a counterinsurgency war, making each task force responsible for a specific geographical area, including the Ixil region, where the Gumarcaj Task Force was reorganized and strengthened."
The Comision para el Esclarecimiento Historico (CEH), Guatemala's post-war truth and reconciliation commission, says that the Gumarcaj Task Force was created during the early 1980s to "neutralize the populations suspected of supporting subversives in the Ixil region."
Stationed in the municipality of Chajul, Quiche, this task force was used to attack the following villages: Xix, Tisis, Xolcuay, Batzul, Chichel, Pery, Xemal, Ilom, Chel, Caba, Jua, Xecampanabitz, Sumalito, Juil, Chaxa, Sisiban, and Cajixay.
Survivors' accounts, compiled by the CEH, graphically illustrate the horrors that occurred in these villages: "After the massacre...
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