Verdict in Guatemala Expected for Massacre from Ros Montt Years

Sergio Ortiz Borbolla

Wednesday, August 16, 2023
Jo-Marie Burt and Paulo Estrada


The trial in the Rancho Bejuco massacre case, in which 25 Indigenous Mayans, including 17 children, were allegedly killed by the Guatemalan Army, is nearing its conclusion. Four of the women killed were pregnant; their unborn infants are not tallied in the official victim count. On Thursday, August 17, a Guatemalan court will hear the closing statements of the nine defendants and could recess and convene for the verdict either the same day or on a later date.

The massacre took place on July 29, 1982, in the tiny hamlet of Rancho Bejuco, in the village of Pacoj in Santa Cruz El Chol, department of Baja Verapaz, during the de facto government of General Efraín Ríos Montt. It exemplifies the genocidal scorched-earth policies implemented during his 17 months in power, between March 23, 1982 and August 8, 1983. This was the most violent period of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war, according to the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH).

The surviving families of the victims filed charges in the case in 1997. The Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) carried out exhumations in 1999 and unearthed the remains of 15 people. The remains of the other victims were not recovered, as one the FAFG experts explained in court, because some of them were so young that their bones were not fully formed and had deteriorated over the years. Others were likely ravaged by dogs or other wild animals.

Thirty-five years later, on February 2 of last year, the first arrests in the case were made. Six of those on trial are allegedly former members of the Civil Defense Patrols (PACs), created by the army during the internal armed conflict to control the civilian population. Two are allegedly military commissioners who coordinated between the PACs and the Guatemalan Army during the conflict. The CEH attributes approximately one out of every five crimes committed during the internal war to the PACs. The ninth defendant is retired army lieutenant colonel Juan Ovalle Salazar, who was already in custody. He was arrested and formally charged in the mass forced disappearance case known as Creompaz in 2016, which remains mired in a legal morass due to judicial inaction on a series of appeals and other legal motions. Prosecutors accuse Ovalle Salazar of direct responsibility in the forced disappearance of 80 men from the hamlet of Pambach, in Alta Verapaz, in June of 1982.

More:
https://elfaro.net/en/202308/centroamerica/26987/verdict-in-guatemala-expected-for-massacre-from-rios-montt-years





Guatemalan leader, and fundamentalist christian preacher, and Ronald Reagan ally, General Efraín Ríos Montt