Jeff Abbott
De Lion's family has left a photo of the poet on the corner, but it has regularly disappeared. Each time, Mayari says, it is like he is being disappeared again.
Mayarí de León was seventeen years old when her father, , was abducted, tortured, killed, and disappeared by the Guatemalan armed forces on May 15, 1984.
De Lión was a renowned Indigneous Mayan Kaqchikel author and poet. His posthumously published book, El tiempo principia en Xibalbá, is considered to be one of the country’s most important works of literature.
“After everything negative that has been heard in this country, that there are sentences in a country like Guatemala at these levels, that there is a sentence that recognizes sexual violence.”
“The forced disappearance [of a loved one] never ends,” de León tells The Progressive. “The pain never goes away because of the uncertainty of what happened to your family member.”
De Lión is one of the 45,000 people disappeared by the Guatemalan military and paramilitary forces between 1960 and 1996, during the country’s thirty-six-year internal armed conflict.
“The military has remained silent,” de León says. “They limit the knowledge of where the bodies of our disappeared are.”
It wasn’t until a secret internal military log known as the “Death Squad Dossier” was uncovered in 1999 that de Lión knew what had happened to her father. The dossier showed a systematic campaign of disappearances of 183 people during the dictatorship of General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores (1983-1986), and included photos of the victims and descriptions of their political activities. It was the first official written record of a campaign of kidnappings and execution found in modern Central America.
Luis de Lión was listed as victim number 135. He was executed on June 5, 1984.
Jeff Abbott
A plaque marks the spot where Luis de Lion was disappeared on May 15, 1984.
Justice is on the horizon for the first time since the disappearance of de Lión and the other 182 victims; Guatemalan courts are currently trying eleven former police officers and military members for the forced disappearances, torture, and murder of those listed in the document.
“It is important for the advancement of this case to its end,” de León says. “It is important for the recuperation of memory, not only for the direct families of those disappeared, but for society.”
Early in the trial, the lawyers for the defendants resigned, a tactic used to draw out the trial. The case continues to be heard by judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez.
There are also currently other ongoing high-profile cases, including the Caso Rancho Bejuco, which accuses former paramilitaries for a massacre, and for the genocide committed against the Mayan Ixil communities during the dictatorships of Romeo Lucas García and Efaín Ríos Montt.
“These cases have been investigated for years, some at least a decade under investigation,” Haydeé Valey, a lawyer and member of Impunity Watch, tells The Progressive. “Organizations of the families of the victims and survivors have specialized in promoting these cases in the justice system. The advancement of these cases are the achievements of these organizations.”
In 2005, the government of Óscar Berger officially recognized the Guatemalan government’s role in the disappearance of de Lión. According to his daughter, the money promised to the family never arrived.
The current cases come after several recent successful trials against former military personnel for crimes against humanity during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict. Among these is the January 2022 conviction of five former paramilitary members to more than thirty years each for subjecting thirty-six Indigenous Maya Achi women to domestic slavery, sexual violence, and rape in the 1980s.
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Luis de Lión on the dossier.
“It’s extremely hopeful,” says Valey, who was one of the lawyers on the case. “After everything negative that has been heard in this country, that there are sentences in a country like Guatemala at these levels, that there is a sentence that recognizes sexual violence.”
The case is only the second such conviction in Guatemala for the use of sexual violence during the war.
Since 2011, Guatemala has seen the high-profile prosecution of former military members for crimes against humanity carried out during thirty-six years of war. The first case successfully tried in Guatemala was against four former soldiers for the massacre of hundreds of people in the village of Dos Erres in the northern department of Petén. They were sentenced to more than 6,000 years in prison.
Other soldiers were also convicted for their participation in the same massacre in 2012 and 2018. Another soldier currently faces charges after being deported from the United States in 2021.
In 2013, former dictator Ríos Montt was convicted of carrying out genocide against the Mayan Ixil communities in the department of Quiché. But weeks later, this conviction was overturned by the country’s constitutional court and the congress approved legislation that declares that there “was no genocide.” Ríos Montt died in 2018, but this has not dissuaded the Mayan Ixil communities from continuing their quest for justice.
Efforts to try other officials for genocide continue to this day.
Guatemala’s thirty-six-year internal armed conflict killed more than 200,000 people, disappeared at least 45,000, and displaced more than one million. The war came to an end in 1996 with the signing of peace accords between the government and the guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, or Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca.
The U.N.-backed truth commission found that 93 percent of all crimes against humanity were carried out by the military and paramilitary forces. The guerrillas only accounted for 3 percent of crimes against humanity, with the remaining 4 percent being impossible to determine who was responsible.
The majority of victims were Indigenous Mayan people, especially in the western highlands and north of the country. As a result, the commission determined that acts of genocide had occurred in Guatemala.
Efforts to locate those who disappeared during the war have gone on for decades, despite attempts in the Guatemalan congress to grant amnesty for war crimes to former military personnel. But the current co-optation of the Guatemalan judicial system has created fear.
In October, the lead human rights prosecutor, Hilda Pineda, was removed from her post. She had been a staunch supporter of the prosecution of soldiers for war crimes. Additionally, far-right activists and defenders of corruption and impunity have used the public prosecutor’s office to attack lawyers, investigators, and officials associated with the struggle against corruption.
As Valey says, “The picture in front of us is quite dark.”