1991 - Jorge Serrano Elías
Guatemala's 1985 Constitution calls for election by universal suffrage of a one-term President, a unicameral Congress, and municipal officers; it mandates an independent judiciary and a human rights ombudsman, who was elected by and reports to Congress. Midway through his 5-year term, after rising street protests, President Jorge Serrano suspended several sections of the Constitution and dissolved Congress and the Supreme and Constitutional Courts on May 25. After extremely negative domestic and international reaction to this extra-constitutional move, Serrano was peacefully and constitutionally dismissed on June 1. Congress and the courts were called back into session, and on June 5, Congress, as prescribed by the Constitution, elected then Human Rights Ombudsman Ramiro de Leon Carpio to finish Serrano's presidential term, which ended in January 1996.
The human rights situation worsened in many respects in Guatemala in 1991, despite some encouraging developments in the prosecution of crimes in which the military or its agents are implicated and the replacement of some abusive military personnel. Although a new civilian president, Jorge Serrano Elías, came to office in January promising to respect human rights and end impunity for violators, the army, police, civil patrols and death squads continued to get away with political killings, torture and disappearances. The army and civil patrol leaders continued to compel participation in the supposedly voluntary civil patrols, especially in the highlands, and to exact reprisals against those who refused. A massive campaign of death threats against leaders of human rights organizations, unions, church groups, popular organizations, and the press added to the terror. On August 19, a powerful bomb was deactivated in a building that houses several news agencies.
The gravity of the threats was underscored by several high-profile political assassinations, such as the April 29 shooting death of Dinora Pérez Valdez, a social democratic candidate in the November 1990 elections for the national legislature; the stabbing death of Marist Brother Moisés Cisneros that same day; the slaying on July 15 of Julio Quevedo, the director of social action for the bishop of Quiché; the August 5 murder of José Miguel Mérida Escobar, the chief of the Homicide Division of the National Police, who developed evidence implicating military intelligence in the September 1990 murder of anthropologist Myrna Mack; as well as dozens more slayings of lesser known individuals. Two massacres were committed in August and another in October, at least one of them allegedly carried out by the army.
Entrenched repression in Guatemala had long prevented domestic groups from conducting on-site investigations into human rights abuses, which had made it difficult to measure accurately the level of violations throughout the country. Although some groups are beginning to conduct field research, their efforts are not systematic and are fraught with risk for investigator and witness alike. Various groups now produce statistics about human rights violations, but for the most part they are based on press reports and cases in which individuals come to the group's offices to provide testimony. The most conservative statistics are those published by the congressionally elected human rights ombudsman. In the first six months of 1991, the ombudsman documented 116 extrajudicial executions; another 172 cases are listed by the office as under investigation. The ombudsman also documented twenty-seven forced disappearances during the same period, with an additional thirty-four cases still under investigation. These figures undoubtedly understate the true number of violations, because fear prevents many victims and witnesses from reporting abuses. The tempo of killings appeared to rise in August and September, leading many observers, including Archbishop Próspero Penados del Barrio, to recall the carnage of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Torture remains a permanent aspect of Guatemala's human rights situation. Although most victims tortured by the security forces in Guatemala do not live to testify about their experience, evidence that the practice was common can be deduced from the condition in which bodies are found. In 1991 a handful of individuals tortured by the police or army survived and were able to provide detailed testimony about their ill-treatment.
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