[Imc] otra vez

[John Martirano]

for those that know jes or are interested in guatemala,
please read below and post where appropriate. 
	-john

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Date: Thu, 6 Jun 2002 17:58:57 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jessica Pupovac <pupovac at bust.com>
Subject: otra vez

June 2, 2002


Dear Friends and Family,

I was in the United States.  I came home just in time for Christmas and 
spent a few nights in Minneapolis watching little Eli graduate from college, did some construction work with a bunch of stinky boys, spent some q-time on the beach with my sister, a couple weeks out on the east coast doing a speaking tour, a week in DC marching around, and not nearly enough time in Champaign and Chicago hanging out with cherished friends and family.  In this way, I never quite readjusted to any one place and still felt slightly uncomfortable in the land of plenty when I received that fateful phone call in late April.  I had dinner with Dad later that evening.   
 
“Let’s get another round of shots before we order, Pops.”

 “What’s up with you today, Jes?”  my father asked suspiciously.  I took a deep breath and pondered how to put this, fidgeting with the salt shaker and lime.  “Did you get the job in DC?” he asked hopefully.  “Are we celebrating?”

“Well, maybe,” I answered, trying to muster up my most charming smile.  “Salud.” 

My father gave me that sideways, apprehensive smirk of his.  “You’re either pregnant or you’re going back to Guatemala.”  

“Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not pregnant.”

“Just what I was afraid of.”

Thus began my send-off.  An hour or so prior to this little visit, while relaxing at my mother’s home in St. Charles, I was informed that the civil trial for the 1995 massacre in Xamán would be beginning in five days.   I agreed to leave immediately to help accompany the witnesses to trial.  
 

OCTOBER 5, 1995

The day had been filled with anticipation.  Unyielding rain clouds hovered above as community members in the town center were hard at work constructing the galera, under which the big dance would be held in two days in celebration of the first anniversary of their peaceful return to Guatemala.  The soccer teams practiced for their imminent competition with neighboring rivals while young girls dreaming of becoming the next Reina Communitaria, or Community 
Queen, put the finishing touches on their huipiles.  

The community of Xamán is comprised predominantly of returned refugees – survivors of Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict.  The majority of them fled the country at the height of la violencia in the early 1980s, many losing family members and loved ones either to massacres in their former communities or along the treacherous path to Mexico.  In 1992, a group of representatives negotiated the terms of their return with the Guatemalan government.   

One year after the community of Xamán was settled, a military patrol entered unannounced.  “We have come to participate in your celebration,” some of the soldiers claimed, while 
their leader, Lt. Camile Antonio Lacan Chaclan, explained that they were on assignment.  A group of skeptical community leaders reminded 
the soldiers of their history and their consequent fears, informing them of their intentions to call MINUGA (the UN Mission in Guatemala) to verify the presence of the soldiers and mediate the situation.  More and more community members began to assemble around the soldiers, next to the elementary school.  

The climate grew increasingly tense.  The soldiers claim that an elderly woman grabbed one of their guns, an allegation ardently rejected by the community.  Regardless of what happened next, what cannot be contested is that the Leiutenant at one point ordered his men to fire upon the unarmed crowd and the lives of everyone there were changed forever.  The community members ran.  Many began to fall, dead or wounded.  The terrified flight of screaming men, women and children did not halt the shower of bullets and grenades.  

On their way out of the community, the soldiers encountered 
a young, 8-year-old boy returning from fishing in a river 2 hours outside of town.  Not knowing what had just happened in his community, and not having survived la violencia of the 80s, the boy did not know to run away.  One of them hit him and another shot him twice – once in the head and once in the chest.  

Next to the school, no longer in session, people began to assess 
the damage.  The accounts are horrific.

In the end, 11 people died and 27 suffered serious physical injuries.  The emotional and psychological damage is immeasurable.  

The eight-month-long criminal trial ended in 1999 and was subsequently thrown out by the Guatemalan Supreme Court due to “irregularities” (one of them being that the judge and some of the witnesses were being paid by the military).  Only 14 of the 25 soldiers originally charged are currently in jail awaiting retrial.  Those 14 were called 
to testify in the civil trial, which began April 30.  The rest are currently at-large.

The civil suit is not concerned with sentencing or punishing the criminals, but rather with securing reparations for the afectados 
(or affected parties) as well as the community at large.  In a country where impunity for crimes, particularly lose sponsored by the state, there is little hope that this will actually happen.  We shall see.

APRIL 28, 2002

No one received much notice of the commencement of the trial, myself included.  Two and a half days after being asked to return, there I was: hung over (lovely going away party), half asleep, with $400 in my bag, heading out of the country indefinitely.  I felt like a fugitive rushing to O´Hare hours before the sun came up.  

The next morning, I woke up in Guate and set off for Cobán  to meet up with Efraín, a community member whose declaration the next morning would officially begin the trial.  His mother was killed in the massacre and his father and brother were wounded. He almost lost 
his life and spent 8 months in the hospital.  He was accompanied by representatives from the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Foundation (FRMT), a Guatemalan NGO (non-government organization) providing legal council.   

As we sat in Cobán eating lunch, meanwhile, in Guatemala City,  Guillermo Ovalle, the 28-year old accountant for the FRMT,  lay on the floor of a neighborhood restaurant, shot through 
the chest.  The secretary in their office down the block hung up the phone after listening to an anonymous caller playing a funeral march.  The Guatemalan papers immediately linked the crime to the commencement of the Xamán trial the following day.  

Since February, there has been a significant increase 
in Guatemala in the number of threats, attacks and acts of intimidation 
directed towards people or organizations that work to bring past crimes 
to justice and put an end to the impunity that defines the Guatemalan legal system.  Many are saying that things haven’t been this bad since years before the Peace Accords were signed in 1996.  Five days after the murder of the FRMT accountant, a man who works for the National Coordination of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA) was kidnapped, beat up, tortured and interrogated, and then later released.  Teams of forensic anthropologists who are working on exhumations of clandestine 
cemeteries created during the war have recently received a “death list” along with numerous threats.  David Herrera, a journalist who has worked for NPR and has assisted in various investigations into human rights issues was attacked.  Two women from the Archbishop’s office on Human Rights in Guatemala (ODHAG) were threatened a couple weeks ago with a pistol as they were leaving the office. Unfortunately, the list is far longer than I can recount in this brief letter.  In this midst of this heightened climate of insecurity, the US will be discussing removing it’s ban on military aid to Guatemala this month.  God bless America.  For those of you who would be interested in a more in depth look at these situations and would like to take action, I will offer the following websites:  www.nisgua.org,  www.rightsaction.org and Amnesty International also stays relatively up to date.  

BACK IN THE SADDLE


In Xamán, although these news reports concern the community members greatly, and those directly involved with the case are obviously a bit more tense, life goes on.  The dry season is coming to a much welcome close, fields are being burnt down and then replanted for the new crop cycle, and the arrival of old friends is still a call for bustin’ out the good stuff.   It was a fantastic welcome.  I was showered with gifts of pineapples, coconuts, zapote, cushi, grenadas (all regional fruits) and even got to watch a duck get slaughtered, degutted and boiled in my honor. Yeah.  Don Lucas, one of the elders of the community, ceremoniously offered me a sip of his homemade boj, a traditional Kek´chi fermented sugar cane beverage, which I have always dreamt of being cool enough to partake of.  

TRIAL UPDATE:  BEARING WITNESS

What has gone on in the trial is worthy of volumes.   I have seen grotesquely blatant racism, amazing courage and contemptible dishonesty and it has left me at times inspired, at other times irate and, at others, deeply discouraged.  Where to begin...

One week ago all 37 of the wounded along with representatives of the fallen were called together to testify.  The group was for the most part nervous, although they had purpose, and not declaring was never considered an option for any of them, at least not that I know of.  As one community member said, “I saw these things and I survived them.  It is now my duty to tell the story.”  At 7:30 am we began 
walking to the courtroom as a group, the women all in their finest woven traje, bearing the traditions of the  Quiché, Ixil, Qanjobal, Mam and Kek’chi women before them.  We walked in solemn silence.  The various ethnic groups in Guatemala have historically been at war with one another.  However, in recent history racism, exclusionism and poverty, brought about by Guatemala’s colonial legacy, and recent attempted genocide, have given them the shared experience that requires them to fight, and in Xaman, live, together. As we approached the court building, I, walking towards front, turned around and see all 37afectados, the colorfuldiversity of their ethnicities contrasting the unity of their resolve, walking together to go tell the world, for the record, that they still have not forgotten, that they will never forget.  It was a powerful sight.   

In the lobby we met the judge, her assistant and two UN observers, along with the Lieutenant and his  lawyer.  There was barely enough room for everyone to stand.  The pregnant and elderly 
women were given what few seats there were while everyone else crammed into the remainder of the space.  One of the wounded couldn’t stand for long and so he sat on the floor for about an hour until a court employee  finally brought him a chair. After 3 HOURS of checking everyone’s identification papers, the proceedings began.  

There were only 3 translators, meaning that two of the ethnic groups would have to declare in Spanish (declaring in a civil trial in Guatemala involves answering a series of questions written 
by the other side with a ‘yes, no, or I don’t remember’ response).  As it is their legal right to declare in their mother tongue, they refused to declare in Spanish, afraid of giving the wrong answer, per the advise of their lawyer.  The lawyer for the defense stated that once the envelope with the questions was opened, it had to be presented to every person consecutively, lest the sanctity of the questions would be destroyed.  Therefore, if certain members were going to 
request to testify at a later date, then he would object to anyone testifying at all.   

After much discussion about this (in 4 languages, mind you) 
the judge declared that there would be no declarations on this day and suspended the trial.  Until when, we do not know.

That afternoon, morale was at a definite low.   Some people had spent their savings to travel to Cobán for this.  Many began to express their financial inability to go through this again.   Not only were they spending their money, but missing three days of work during planting season.  They have families to feed.

The lawyer from the FRMT told them that if they wish to denounce their rights to pursue this case, they can individually sign desistimientos. “This will be a long journey,” she said, “and we can’t have this conversation after every minor defeat.  If you are going to quit, quit now.  But if you decide to quit today and one day we do encounter justice, you will not be able to join us there, either.”  One of the community leaders pleaded with everyone to think it over, as they were all so very exhausted.  

One woman began telling the group about her infirmity.  She was shot and her husband killed and she had moved to another community after the massacre.  She has no money and would not be able to come to Cobán again with the mere hope of testifying – and who knows how many times they will want us to do this?  She wanted to sign away her rights.  The group looked on as she put her thumbprint on the legal denouncement.  “Perfect.  This is exactly what they want,” one of the other accompaniers whispered to me. Luckily, no one else signed that day.  

 “Here in Guatemala,” one community leader explained to me, “Justice is something that is bought and sold, and unfortunately, we don´t have any money.”  But yet only one person signed.  The mere thought of the possibility of justice, along with a commitment to their fellow afectados, kept the others from following suit.  That day. They intend to continue, and are forced to muster up enough hope to do so.  That they are still able to do that after all they have been through is nothing short of amazing.  Their fortitude humbles and inspires me, although the challenges they face and the injustices they have historically lived with break my heart.  

“You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief.  But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.”  - Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)


SO WHAT NEXT

I will continue to keep you all posted periodically every couple of months until you ask me to stop sending these little Pupovac Quarterlies.  For updates on the trial, please refer to the NISGUA website (www.nisgua.org) 

I appreiciate all of the support and encouragement I have received from all of you in the past.  For those of you who would like to make an additional contribution to GUAPA to help us offer accompaniment to the witnesses of Xamán, checks can be made out to ‘Peaceworks’ with GUAPA in the memo and sent to:

GUAPA
c/o Bob Kresofsky
140 Raymond Ave
South Orange, NJ  07079

I would also love to hear from you and can receive letters, packages and singing telegrams at:

Jessica Pupovac
3-48B 3a calle
Zona 2
Cuidad de Guatemala
Guatemala, C.A.

 If you assume that there is no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope.  If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, that there are opportunities to change things, then there is a possiblity that you can contribute to making a better world. – Noam Chomsky

I am going to stay in Guatemala at least until early August, doing some 
research, occasionally accompanying organizations and individuals receiving threats in the capital, and visiting Xamàn after the current accompanier leaves at the end of June.  Honestly, I am not sure exactly where I´ll go or what to do after that, put am keeping my eyes and ears open for clues.  Some of you expressed concern and confusion at my split-second decision to return to Guatemala. Although I admit that plumbing is more wonderful than many of us ever stop to appreciate, and although I truly cherished the opportunity to spend time with all y’all in the States, it never occurred to me as a realistic possibility to say no to this.  I keep on thinking of a cheesy, but poignant aphorism I heard recently.  Life is like the surf, so give yourself away to it, like the sea.  I feel that I am exactly where I should be right now.  

I hope all is well up there.  Let me know.

Hasta la proxima,

Jessica




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