Jeff Abbott
Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez presides over a trial in Guatemala City in December 2015.
Guatemalan Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez is facing threats after sending a high-profile case against nine former military and police officials to trial on May 6. The defendants are accused of facilitating the forced disappearance of 183 people during the country’s internal armed conflict
The threats are coming from the Foundation Against Terrorism, which is made up of far-right activists and allies of the Guatemalan military. They’ve not only said they would file criminal complaints against the judge but issued outright death threats, with the goal of forcing Gálvez into exile. But the judge, who has presided over many high-profile cases in Guatemala, is undeterred.
The threats against Gálvez come as the independence of the judiciary and the public prosecutor’s office have come under attack and been co-opted, led largely by the far right.
“They threatened a judge after a resolution, so there they are attacking the independence of the judicial body,” Gálvez tells The Progressive. “The problem is that the issues in the [Death Squad Dossier] are being raised a lot, especially when it comes to the issue of the presidency, the general staff, and the archive. It is making them more vulnerable.”
These trials shine a light on the systematic and coordinated campaign of forced disappearances during the country’s internal armed conflict and stands to expose the economic elite’s involvement in the violence.
The Death Squad Dossier was uncovered in 1999 and exposed the forced disappearances carried out by the dictator General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores between 1983 and 1986. In total, there were 183 people listed in the dossier, which also detailed the alleged illicit relationships of those accused to guerrillas. The majority were abducted, tortured, and killed.
The families of the disappeared have fought for decades to know what happened to their family members.
The Foundation Against Terrorism is led by Ricardo Méndez Ruíz, the son of a late former general accused in the case, and Raúl Falla Ovalle, both of whom were included on a list of corrupt and anti-democratic actors in Central America created by the U.S. Department of State.
The Foundation Against Terrorism has filed numerous lawsuits against judges and anti-corruption and social movmement leaders that it declares to be communists, with far-right activists also accusing Gálvez of being a guerrilla sympathizer during the country’s internal armed conflict. Similar accusations were lobbed at Judge Erika Aífan, who was forced into exile in March 2022.
“It has been [this way] for a while, with Thelma [Aldana] and with Juan Francisco Sandoval, and after with Erika [Aífan], and now it is my turn,” Gálvez says. “In the 1980s it was death, today in 2022, it is exile. All of us who worked with the International Commission Against Impunity, who worked with armed conflict [cases]. We practically are being made enemies of the state.”
These attacks have brought Guatemala back to a new era of internal armed conflict, which had previously ended in 1996 with signing peace accords between the guerillas and the government of Alvero Arzu. Despite these accords, there has always been opposition from far-right, pro-military groups backed by the country’s economic elite.
Faced with threats, Gálvez has received support from civil society and Jordan Rodas, who is finishing up his six-year term as the head of the human rights ombudsman’s office and has faced threats from the same far-right activists.
Yet Gálvez has not seen any assistance from the country’s higher courts, explaining: “They are part of the problem.”
The threats against Gálvez come as the independence of the judiciary and the public prosecutor’s office have come under attack and been co-opted, led largely by the far right. Many of these forces were active voices in the expulsion of the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, commonly known as CICIG, by the administration of Jimmy Morales in 2019.
Since CICIG closed, the number of attacks against key anti-corruption actors has increased significantly. These efforts have managed to spread through the courts, the public prosecutor’s office, the Guatemalan supreme court, the constitutional court, and the Guatemalan congress.
Attacks against the independence of the judiciary emerged as the CICIG began exposing how corrupt networks of the economic elite were influencing the country’s political system.
“The accused actors tried to suffocate the anti-corruption mechanisms,” Juan Francisco Sandoval, the former head of the special prosecutor’s office against impunity in Guatemala, tells The Progressive.
In 2018, the Guatemalan Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations were forced to apologize for illegal campaign financing, resulting in a coordinated attack against oversight.
These efforts have sought to derail investigations led by the special prosecutor’s office against impunity in Guatemala, which took on the investigations of the CICIG after its closure. Sandoval was forced into exile in July 2021 after investigations began to circle in on current Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.
“The whole system of justice is taken,” Sandoval says. “[This comes from] a confluence of the interests of the policial class with the economic sector.”
Celebrated judges, such as Erika Aifán, anti-corruption prosecutors, attorneys general Claudia Paz y Paz and Thelma Aldana, and others involved in the fight against corruption have also been forced into exile.
The attacks against Gálvez tie into this, especially as the Death Squad Dossier detailed the economic elite’s role in the campaign of violence following the U.S.-backed coup d’etat against democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.
This connection is highlighted by Interpol’s detention of Toribio Acevedo Ramírez, a former member of Guatemala’s military intelligence in Panama, who was deported to Guatemala where he will face trial for his part in the campaign of forced disappearances. Ramírez had worked as part of the security apparatus of the Guatemalan Cement company, Cementos Progreso, which is owned by one of the country’s most powerful families, the Novella. The Novellas have long been viewed as one of the most powerful families in Guatemala and have long influenced politics in the country.
The Guatemalan far right is intent on derailing cases against former military officers and soldiers with the ultimate goal of consolidating power and influence while maintaining impunity.
“The existence of impunity is an incentive for corruption,” Sandoval says. “Because it will be understood that none of the serious crimes of corruption will be punished.”