Randy Paul links to this NYT’s Op-Ed by Francisco Goldman, author of the forthcoming novel, “The Divine Husband.”
Goldman reviews the past atrocities of Guatemala’s General Ríos Montt and ties them into present day events which have culminated in Montt’s being included on the upcoming ballot for president, despite the Guatemalan Constitution forbidding anyone who has participated in a coup from running.
Montt circumvented this roadblock by utilising mob action against the initial court ruling upholding the law including attacks upon journalists and judges who were anti-Montt. The ‘higher court’ days later reversed the ruling, paving the way for his candidacy.
It brought to mind this article I first read in August 2003 which submitted the following for consideration as to why the Bush administration, in these days of pre-emptively ousting tyrants, has chosen to regard this situation as merely ‘problematic’.
So why is Washington being evasive?
Some observers believe that lack of resources like oil in Guatemala condemns it, and, for that matter, the entire Central American region, to perpetual neglect. Others think that former President Ronald Reagan’s influence on the Bush administration guarantees that the mass graves of Guatemala will not see the light of CNN, though such sites were being uncovered at about the same time as those in Iraq.
Declassified State Department documents released by the Clinton administration in 1999 reveal that high-level U.S. officials knew that Guatemala’s mass graves were created after “executions ordered by armed services officers close to President Rios Montt.” On Dec. 4, 1982, President Reagan visited Central America and met with Rios Montt, whom he described as a “man of great personal integrity and commitment” who had been “getting a bum rap.” Forensic anthropologists later found that three days after the meeting, Rios Montt’s military slaughtered more than 300 villagers in the hamlet of Dos Erres.
A month after the massacre, Reagan managed to free military aid to Guatemala that had been frozen in Congress because of human rights concerns.
Many of the same people who crafted Reagan’s policies and pronouncements in Central America now shape Bush policy in Iraq. The high moral tone of current Bush administration discourse has its roots in Central America policy by way of high-level policymakers such as former Reagan administration assistant secretary of state Elliot Abrams, who was largely responsible for U.S. policy in Central America in the 1980s. Abrams is now senior adviser on the Middle East at the National Security Council.
The re-emergence of Rios Montt puts the Bush administration in a quandary. Silence in the face of his past crimes looks bad. But bringing attention to Rios Montt’s legacy risks the exposure of decades of U.S. support for genocide in Central America.