It was early in the evening on June 17 when Edgar René Ic Pérez was returning home in Guatemala City, Guatemala. The country was already under a curfew that had been declared to slow the spread of COVID-19, but Ic Pérez had a permit to be in the streets due to his work as a delivery driver.
He never made it home.
In recent years, police shootings are rare in Guatemala, due in part to the fact that officers are expected to replace any fired bullets with their own money, and they could face prosecution.
In a security video released on social media, Ic Pérez was pulled over by the Guatemalan National Civilian Police, who proceeded to remove him from his car and shoot him in the head. The Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s office is investigating the apparent execution, and according to prosecutors, the officer will face charges.
Police violence and violations of rights have become common during the curfews and current state of calamity. Videos circulated on social media show police destroying the products of vendors and arresting people just moments after the curfew began.
On September 11, Sonny Figueroa, a Guatemalan journalist who has worked to expose corruption, most recently in the administration of President Alejandro Giammattei, was walking past the National Palace in the Central Plaza of Guatemala City when he was detained by the police and imprisoned on false charges. Many think the journalist was targeted due to his investigations into corruption. He was released the following day after a judge ruled there was no evidence against him.
The recent violence carried out by Guatemalan police recalls the corrupt nature of previous police forces, which were disbanded following the signing of the 1996 peace accords.
“It appears to me that we are at the doors of the return to the levels of [problems] that the National Police had at the time of the dismantling for the failures and debilities that it had,” Iduvina Hernández, the director of the organization Security in Democracy (SEMDEM), says in an interview with The Progressive. “Specifically, the levels of corruption and the levels of the tolerance of violence used by the police with a political inspiration.”
The Guatemalan National Civilian Police was formed after the signing of the 1996 peace accords that ended the country’s thirty-six-year-long internal armed conflict between insurgents and the Guatemalan government. Throughout the war, especially in the 1980s and early 1990s, the Guatemalan National Police, which was a branch of the country’s military, were involved in grave human rights violations along with the military.
“We are not talking about police with the logic of community, but the countries that are training police are at war.”
In total, the war left more than 200,000 civilians dead, another 45,000 missing, and an additional one million displaced. The violence affected Indigenous rural communities the hardest, leading the United Nations backed Truth Commission to declare that acts of genocide had occured.
The newly formed and underfunded National Civilian Police faced a daunting task, especially as crimes due to gang violence skyrocketed. In recent years, Guatemala’s homicide rate has fallen to twenty-two murders per 100,000 residents; but extortion by police, theft of vehicles, targeted killings, and corruption within the police forces are on the rise.
“There is an institutional debilitation in the security forces,” says Carlos Menocal, the former Minister of the Interior in Guatemala during the 2008 to 2011 administration of Álvaro Colom,. “There are no internal controls within the Inspectorate General and with the professional officers, and it is evident that there is corruption and criminal structures that are within the police.”
Menocal and other former officials see the rise of corruption within the police as the result of structural changes that were led by Minister of the Interior Enrique Degenhart during the administration of former-President Jimmy Morales. Proposals to reform the Guatemalan National Civilian Police, in which Menocal had participated, were abandoned during Deganhart’s period in office. The Ministry of the Interior under Degenhart also fired officials who were professionally trained, contributing to a void in leadership on these issues.
“The previous administration contributed to this debilitation [of the National Civilian Police],” Menocal said. “This has induced officers to improvise.”
Poor pay and a lack of training have led to lawbreaking by police, including thefts and extortions. In November 2019, a gun battle broke out in the neighborhood of Zona 7 in Guatemala City between a patrol unit and the Police Inspector General's office. It left five officers injured and a patrol truck on fire.
In recent years, police shootings are rare in Guatemala, due in part to the fact that officers are expected to replace any fired bullets with their own money, and they could face prosecution. But, as the case of Ic Pérez shows, the killings have not stopped.
In 2014, police officers shot and killed three members of the Campesino Development Committee (CODECA) during an eviction in the village of Semococh, Alta Verapaz, to make way for a hydroelectric project. And, during a protest by local fishermen in May 2017, a police officer shot and killed Carlos Maaz Coc near the town of El Estor.
“The police have lost legitimacy before the Guatemalan society,” Hernández says. “There was no investment into the formation of officials, many of whom come from the [previous] National Police, and many of the police officials that were trained since the formation of the National Civilian Police were excluded and fired.”
In January 2016, residents of Santiago Atitlán, Sololá, burned police cars and attempted to expel the police from the Maya Tz’utujil community along the shores of Lake Atitlán. The uprising occurred after a drunken police officer shot and killed a store clerk who had refused to sell them more beer. But the uprising was unable to expel the police from the municipality.
Hernández argues that the problem is rooted in the use of the police for political means. This comes through the formation of an intelligence network within the Guatemalan Police that monitors union activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and even international organizations.
“Police violence is not just abuses or excesses,” Hernández says. “At this moment, it is a question that is institutionalized, that comes from the highest levels [of government].”
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on and fuels civil unrest, the Guatemalan National Civilian Police have purchased new equipment including 17,000 cans of tear gas, new launchers, and other items for possible unrest.
This militarization of police forces is taking place across the hemisphere. All of Latin America continues to suffer from the legacy of counterinsurgency as part of the cold war politics of the previous century. These militarized forces have utilized tear gas, “less than lethal” munitions, and even armored vehicles to put down protests.
Protests against police violence erupted in Colombia in early September after police killed an unarmed lawyer, Javier Ordóñez, in Bogotá. At least ten people were killed by police officers who opened fire on protesters during actions across the country, adding more fuel to the unrest. Police violence in Colombia is all too common.
In Chile, widespread protests that began last year have been met with numerous violent actions by the militarized Carabineros police unit. This has included purposefully shooting protesters in the eyes with rubber bullets and driving into groups of protesters with armored vehicles. Most recently, Carabineros were filmed throwing a protester from a bridge into a river.
These police forces have often received training from police units in the United States, other Latin American countries, and Israel. In January 2014, officers from the Guatemalan National Police were sent to Israel for training in a program called “Police and the Community.” The Guatemalan police have also purchased weapons from Israel.
“This is a troublesome period,” Hernández says. “We are not talking about police with the logic of community, but the countries that are training police are at war. Israel is in a state of war against the Palestinians.”
Guatemalan government officials, she adds, “have always chosen training from police that have a logic of repression, and not one that is concerned about the citizens.”