Reply #13: If he found this one funeral fulfilling, he would have loved this event

[Judi Lynn]

One of Reagan's favorite right-wing dictators, Efraín Rios Montt:

Massacre at Río Negro
The Annihalation of a Village Along the Black River on March 13, 1982


According to testimony, in the early part of 1982 over 70 men, accused of guerilla activities, from Río Negro were murdered. They perished in the hands of the Civil Patrols (PAC - "Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil" - paramilitary organizations that are subordinate to the army) from the neighboring village of Xococ. Due to this incident the rest of the men fled the village in fear that something similar would happen to them. They left their women and children behind, assuming nothing would happen to them.
The Civil Patrols are an institution which was installed by the military in the early 1980's in order to maintain control over the rural areas as an counter-insurgency measure. Civilians "voluntarily" have to spend several days a month patrolling their village. Their arms are supplied by the military and usually consist of old WWII US M-1 Carbines.

On March 13, 1982 some 80 women and 100 children were
led by the military and Civil Patrollers to the top of the
mountain, where they were brutally assassinated. Their bodies
were thrown into a ravine, which drains the rain water during
the rainy season (from May to August).

During the investigation conducted in the lab from December
1993 to April 1994, the lab analysis resulted demonstrating
that the victims were exclusively women and children. Most
of the skeletal remains were found disarticulated due to years
of erosion and scavenging. Therefore, the calculation of the
minimum number of individuals, which is 143, differs from the
numbers obtained from testimony, which lay above 180 people.
Especially difficult turned out to be the analysis of the many
child and infant remains.

The most frequent causes of death were the following: blows to
the neck, blows to the cranium, gunshot wounds and stab wounds from knives and machetes.
(snip/...)http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~sss4407/RioNeg.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think silence always contributes to genocide everywhere in the world. It happened in Rwanda, it happened in Bosnia until the international community decided to respond. In Guatemala, the international community responded really too late. We began going to the U.N. General Assembly in 1982, exactly in the first year of the Rios Montt regime. That was the first General Assembly where different Guatemalans living in exile brought the case. There was a good response. There was interest in it. There was sort of a lukewarm resolution, but there was no clear condemnation of what was happening. The Reagan government in Washington was saying that the press in Guatemala and the international press were giving Rios Montt a "bum rap" — literally, that was his phrase — and it was unfair because Rios Montt was doing whatever he could to establish law and order... by killing everyone.

In the case of the U.S. government, it's interesting that the Carter Administration had actually canceled military assistance to Guatemala. And it was Carter's policies, as much as they were criticized later, that saved the U.S. from a direct participation in this effort of genocide. One of the reasons why the Guatemalan military was so violent and so bloody was because they had very little resources. They couldn't fight from Monday through Friday and then fly back home for the weekend, like they could in El Salvador. And so the army in Guatemala decided to compensate with violence for what they didn't have in resources — especially air resources, helicopters and planes. This is why the campaign was a campaign of terror, of organized terror from the state. You have to terrify the population into absolute fear so they respond to what you want.

And I would say the U.S. did not participate directly, to the extent that the Carter policies had canceled the aid. But the U.S., in the Reagan years, would be responsible for the cover-up, with Reagan himself trying to defend Rios Montt, folks at the State Department during those first years trying to deny what was happening in Guatemala. Twenty years later you have the U.N.-sponsored Truth Commission saying there was genocide in Guatemala between 1981 and 1983. So now it's an unchallengeable truth.
(snip/...)

http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/discoveringdominga/special_witnessfl.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reagan supported the brutal, genocidal Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt. It was during the same time period that Saddam Hussein was killing Shiites.

Rios Montt killed many more "of his own people" than Saddam did.

A UN-sponsored Truth Commission held the Guatemalan army responsible for 85 percent of all violations in the 30 year war, which ended in l996. Some 200,000 died, more than 80 percent of them unarmed Maya, including women and children.

". . .after meeting Rios Montt in Honduras later that month, President Reagan insisted that the regime was ‘getting a bad deal’ from the accusations of massacres and deserved renewed military aid from the United States (which he granted the following month). Had not the White House received a flood of letters calling for renewed arms sales to Guatemala after Pat Robertson appealed to his 700 Culb television show for prayers and money for the regime?
- Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, HarperCollins Publisher, 1995, p. 818-19
(snip/...)

http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/reagan.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a new D.U. poster:

According to Amnesty International, in just four months there were more than 2,000 fully documented extrajudicial killings by the Guatemalan army: 'People of all ages were not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disembowelled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death.' The Catholic bishops said: 'Never in our national history has it come to such extremes.' US President Ronald Reagan, visiting Guatemala on a swing through Latin America, hailed Rios Montt as 'totally dedicated to democracy'.
(snip/...)

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Efrain_Rios_Montt.html