The Other Americans: Guatemalan Congress Seeks to Grant Amnesty for War Crimes

“Reforming the law would be a step back for the culture of peace, a step back for the access to justice for the indigenous peoples, and a step back for the victims that were affected by the armed conflict.”

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Guatemalan congressional members are actively pursuing a reform to the country’s National Reconciliation law that will provide amnesty to military officials convicted or accused of committing war crimes. If passed, the reform would require the release, within twenty-four hours, of more than thirty military officials convicted of committing atrocities during the war.

The reform was first proposed by Congressman Fernando Linares Beltranena of the conservative National Advancement Party, and other congressional members in 2017. The measure, which the Guatemalan congress took up in February, changes the National Reconciliation law that was passed ahead of the signing of the 1996 peace accords. Guatemala’s civil war raged from 1960 to 1996.

The law granted amnesty for guerrillas for crimes against state forces, as well as for other crimes except torture, sexual violence, genocide, and forced disappearance. The new reforms would give a blanket amnesty to those already prosecuted and convicted, or those now under investigation.

Opposing the changes are the families of war victims.

“We are against the reforms to the National Reconciliation law and the implementation of amnesty,” Rosalina Tuyuc, the coordinator for the organization National Coordination of Widows of Guatemala, told me. “It would leave those material and intellectual actors responsible for violations of human rights.”

More than 200,000 people were killed during Guatemala's thirty-six-year-long internal armed conflict, with another 45,000 forcibly disappeared.

Tuyuc adds, “Reforming the National Reconciliation law would be a step back for the culture of peace, a step back for the access to justice for the indigenous peoples, and more so a step back for the victims that were affected by the armed conflict. It would be a negative message: that in Guatemala you cannot prosecute for crimes against humanity, that it remains in impunity.”

Sandra Moran, a congresswoman with Guatemala’s leftwing political party, Bancada Covergenicia, agrees the proposed reform would be a setback for the already fragile Guatemalan democracy.

“[The reform] would impede the continuation of the cases [against military officials],” Moran said. “Justice in Guatemala would lose.”

The United States Department of State is also wary of the proposed reforms.

“The United States is deeply concerned about the proposed amendment to the national reconciliation law in Guatemala,” Robert Palladino, the State Department deputy spokesman, said in a press statement.

“The trials held in Guatemala for crimes related to human rights violations and abuses have restored dignity to the victims’ surviving families, inspired increased trust in state institutions, and served as a positive example to other nations seeking to address a legacy of conflict,” Palladino said.

Yet the administration of Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales has rejected this criticism, saying “We Guatemalans should resolve our problems.”

Indigenous groups and associations of victims have filed injunctions against the reform in Guatemala’s Constitutional Court. One is on behalf of thirty-six Achi Mayan women who suffered violent rapes during the internal armed conflict by members of the Guatemalan government-backed civilian defense groups at a military base in the 1980s.

The women are currently part of an ongoing court case against six men that is scheduled for a hearing in late April. Their story is one of many that attest to the crimes against humanity that occurred in Guatemala at the hands of military officials.

More than 200,000 people were killed during Guatemala's thirty-six-year-long internal armed conflict, with another 45,000 forcibly disappeared. The United Nations-backed Commission for Historical Clarification determined that the Guatemalan military, with support from the United States, was responsible for 93 percent of the atrocities, and the guerrillas were responsible for 3 percent. Responsibility for the remaining 4 percent was not determined.

The commission also determined that 83 percent of the victims were indigenous Maya, while 17 percent were non-indigenous ladinos. As a result, the commission concluded that acts of genocide occurred during the war.

While the Guatemalan state has faced criticism in the twenty-one years since the signing of the peace accords for its failure to implement the agreements made between leftist guerrillas and the government that ended the war, it has made efforts to strengthen an independent judicial system.

“One of the important areas after the signing of the peace accords was the achievement of justice,” Moran said. “The cases that have arrived to the courts have contributed to knowing the truth [of what occurred].”

A number of high-profile cases against former military officials for crimes against humanity have occurred in the years since the end of the war that have exposed the brutality of what occurred in the course of the war.

The most famous of the trials occurred in 2013 against former dictator General Efrain Ríos Montt. The former U.S.-backed dictator was found guilty of committing genocide against the Ixil Mayan people between 1982 and 1983. Yet the decision was overturned in May of that year by Guatemala’s supreme court. Further attempts to convict the former dictator ended with his death in April 2018.

Many other cases have successfully convicted military officials, including sexual slavery of Q’eqchi Mayan women in Sepur Zarco, Alta Verapaz, the massacre of the village of Dos Erres, Petén, and the forced disappearance of fourteen-year-old Marco Antonio Molina Theissen in 1981.

Other cases are currently being investigated by Guatemalan prosecutors, including into the campaign of forced disappearance coordinated by military officials at the military base in Coban, Alta Verapaz, and into the rape of the Achi Mayan women. If the reform is passed, these cases will not advance and the victims and their families remain without justice.

“If justice and the truth are a step towards not repeating [the past], then impunity is one step for the repetition,” Moran said. “This is not about those leaving in twenty-four hours from prison, who are now old, but rather the impacts for future generations.”