|
||||||
Related Links:Guatemala Documentation Project |
Document 1
January 4, 1966
U.S. Public Safety Advisor John Longan, on temporary loan from his post in Venezuela, assists the Guatemalan government in establishing an urban “counter-terror” task force in the wake of a rash of kidnappings for ransom by insurgent organizations. During meetings with senior military and police officials, Longan advises how to establish overt and covert operations, including the design of “frozen area plans” for police raids, setting up road blocks within the capital, and creating a “safe house” in the Presidential Palace to centralize information gathered on the kidnappings. Longan’s strategy calls for the CIA to launch a new, long-range intelligence program, and urges U.S. police advisors to increase their influence on Guatemalan security forces. [Note: In the document, CAS is an acronym for “Covert Action Staff,”
the operational arm of the CIA Station in Guatemala.]
March 1966
The CIA Station in Guatemala reports the capture, interrogation and
secret execution of five persons who had crossed “illegally” into Guatemala
from Mexico in early March 1966. This document evaluates the accuracy
of the information extracted from the victims during two days of torture
following their arrest on March 3, and prior to their murder at the hands
of Guatemalan security officers the next day. Among those executed
is Leonardo Castillo Flores, a “top leader” of both the Guatemalan Workers’
Party (PGT) and the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), the military arm of the PGT.
March 1966
The CIA Station in Guatemala City reports the secret execution of several
Guatemalan “communists and terrorists” by Guatemalan authorities on the
night of March 6, 1966. The victims--the leader of the Guatemalan
Workers’ Party (PGT), Victor Manuel Gutiérrez, among them--are several
of the more than 30 PGT members and associates abducted, tortured, and
killed by Guatemalan security forces in March of 1966. This operation was
a direct consequence of urban “counter-terror” tactics designed by U.S.
officials in support of the Peralta government. It became notorious
as the first case of forced mass “disappearance” in Guatemala’s history--indeed
in all of Latin America—and served as one of the “Casos Ilustrativos” in
the 1999 report of the historical Clarification Commission.
December 3, 1966
U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Guatemala Viron Vaky forwards to Washington
the text of a cable the embassy received from the SOUTHCOM Commander-in-Chief,
General Robert W. Porter. Porter’s cable describes a request made
to him by the Guatemalan Vice Defense Minister, Colonel Francisco Sosa
Avila, for U.S. assistance in the covert training of special kidnapping
squads that would target leftists. Although Porter declines, he does not
hesitate to recommend that the United States “fully support current police
improvement programs and initiate military psychological warfare training
and additional counterinsurgency operations training.” Vaky is troubled
by these requests, noting that, “In present complicated situation we might
unwittingly contribute to instability rather than help when we extend aid.”
October 23, 1967
Thomas L. Hughes of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and
Research questions the current Guatemalan government’s ability to control
military and police forces in light of “accumulating evidence that the
counter-insurgency machine is out of control.” The document describes
some of the methods utilized in Guatemala’s “successful” campaign, including
“overt and covert operations by the Guatemalan security forces and right
wing civilian associates,” and the formation of clandestine counter-terrorist
units to carry out abductions, bombings, torture, and executions “of real
and alleged communists.”
circa November 1967
The CIA Station in Guatemala reports that SCUGA, the Guatemalan Army’s
urban counter-terrorist squad, plans to expand its operations to include
an intelligence-gathering network. The new unit will collect information
through the arrest and interrogation of “communist revolutionaries,” and
recruit informants from those captured. Its members will also carry
out “special assignments” upon occasion, including the assassination of
local civil authority figures deemed subversive.
February 1968
Members of the Fourth Corps of the National Police apprehend and execute
four suspected subversives: Rafael Tischler Guzmán, Cayetano Barreno
Juarez, Julio César Armas González, and Enrique de la Torre
Morel. In an effort to cover up the operation, the Guatemalan security
forces feed a false story to the press stating that there had been a gunfight
with the victims after the security forces discovered weapons and subversive
propaganda.
March 29, 1968
Viron Vaky, now back in Washington with the State Department’s Policy Planning Council, writes an extraordinary indictment of U.S. policy in Guatemala in a memorandum to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Covey Oliver. Vaky argues that the Guatemalan government’s use of counter-terror is indiscriminate and brutal, and has impeded modernization and institution building within the country. Furthermore, he writes, the United States has condoned such tactics. “This is not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as long as Communists are being killed it is alright. Murder, torture and mutilation are alright if our side is doing it and the victims are Communists.” Vaky urges a new policy in Guatemala that rejects counter-terror and represents a “clear ethical stand” on the part of the United States. In a news interview 30 years later, Vaky said he doubted anyone in the
State Department ever read his memorandum. In any event, Vaky went
on to a long and successful career as a professional foreign service officer,
serving in Latin America and elsewhere.
April 1968
The CIA Station in Guatemala reports that recent changes in the high
command of the Guatemalan army are part of a government effort to streamline
counterinsurgency operations and bring security forces under tighter control.
While the clandestine activities of the Fourth Corps of the National Police
are to end, the government plans to retain selected Fourth Corps personnel
for future operations. SCUGA (the Special Commando Unit of the Guatemalan
Army) will continue, but will be used on a “more limited basis.”
The government also hopes to disarm anti-communist civilian groups in the
northeast.
July 1968
A source tells the CIA Station in Guatemala that, in order to avoid
future “unfavorable publicity,” all insurgents who are killed by Guatemalan
security forces should appear to have died in an armed clash, regardless
of how they actually perished. A judge, the source insists, should
be called to the scene of the “encounter” as often as possible to confirm
these fabrications.
circa 1968/69
This analysis proposes that U.S. security assistance to Guatemala focus
on the internal security crisis posed by the insurgency, and evaluates
the capacity of the country’s military, intelligence and police units to
overcome it. Included is a description of the institutional precursor
to the Archivos – the “National Security Subversive Activities Group,”
staffed by officers “trained under U.S. programs” – which gathers intelligence
by infiltrating guerrilla groups, tapping phones, monitoring private mail,
and coordinating with other Central American intelligence services.
The document also recommends that a Joint Operations Center (JOC) be established
in the Presidential Palace to serve as a central facility “where all available
intelligence on insurgent personalities and their activities is collected
and collated.”
May 19, 1970
U.S. Ambassador Nathaniel Davis reports on the activities of a new “death
squad” that calls itself Ojo por Ojo (Eye for Eye), “the extreme right’s
response to the violence of the left.” Ojo is composed primarily of “the
vestigial remains of SCUGA,” and maintains a “largely military membership
with some civilian cooperation.” Motivated by disgust at what it
considers the government’s failure to act decisively against the guerrillas,
Ojo has brutally tortured and murdered at least 10 suspected subversives.
A handwritten annotation on the document by an unidentified U.S. official
says, “This is what we were afraid of with increased public safety support.”
January 12, 1971
In the midst of what would become a year-long state of siege imposed
by President Carlos Arana Osorio, this document reports that Guatemalan
security forces have “quietly eliminated” hundreds of “terrorists and bandits,”
mainly in the countryside, encouraging Arana “to extend the state of siege
indefinitely.” In Guatemala City, police apprehend or kill “about
30 suspected terrorists,” including a senior Communist Party member.
The bulletin also notes that the army has closed all roads leading from
the capital and is conducting house-to-house searches for suspected leftist
subversives.
June 13, 1972
A description of the organization and functions of the army’s intelligence
directorate in mid-1972, this report calls the G2 “small and ineffective,”
but notes that the government is reluctant to improve it due to its history
of “conducting investigations of a personal nature on high-ranking officers
and other key Government officials.”
December 17, 1974
This biographic sketch of the former chief of the Archivos under Arana
Osorio details his personal history and military career. As head
of the Presidential Intelligence Service, Ramírez Cervantes was
responsible for planning and conducting raids on insurgent groups, interrogation,
surveillance, and monitoring travelers coming into and leaving Guatemala.
According to the document, his background includes instruction at the U.S.
Army Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, Maryland.
November 1979
This intelligence report describes the efforts of President Fernando
Romeo Lucas García to deal with the growing insurgency at a time
when military relations with the United States have cooled due to Guatemala’s
poor human rights record. The document notes the resurgence of death-squad
activities and the increasing level of violence against political opposition
and labor groups in Guatemala City. The army has also conducted counterinsurgency
operations in the Quiché, “but has been unable to exert any real
pressure or achieve a decisive action.” U.S. insistence on linking
security assistance to human rights, the report suggests, has convinced
the Guatemalans to seek other sources of aid and equipment – including
aircraft from Switzerland, training from Israel, and new weapons from Belgium,
South Korea and France.
April 1981
The CIA provides an account of a massacre that occurred in the village
of Cocob on April 17, 1981. In an effort to track down a unit of
the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), believed to have ambushed an army
patrol two days before, a reinforced company of airborne troops entered
the village and encountered “a large and unruly crowd of villagers” that
“appeared to fully support the guerrillas.” Many non-combatants were
killed in the ensuing firefight. “The soldiers,” one source explains,
“were forced to fire at anything that moved.”
October 5, 1981
In a 1981 meeting with General Vernon Walters, President Lucas García
made it clear that, despite U.S. pressure on human rights, “the repression
will continue . . . and that the guerrilla threat will be successfully
routed” with or without U.S. military assistance. In this memo, Robert
L. Jacobs, an official from the State Department’s Bureau of Human Rights
and Humanitarian Affairs, argues that the U.S. should distance itself from
the Lucas government’s repressive policies. If Lucas is wrong, and
the failure of repression becomes evident over time, Jacobs suggests, the
government “will have no choice but to seek political and military assistance
from the U.S. more or less on our terms.” But if Lucas is right,
and successfully exterminates the guerrillas, “there is no need for the
U.S. to implicate itself in the repression by supplying the GOG [Government
of Guatemala] with security assistance.” Normal relations can then
be reestablished.
February 5, 1982
A special CIA committee report predicts that Guatemalan military operations
planned for the Ixil region of El Quiché are likely to produce “major
clashes” with guerrillas and “serious human rights abuses by the armed
forces.” General Benedicto Lucas García, the army chief of
staff, has indicated that “it probably will be necessary to destroy a number
of villages.”
February 1982
Army massacres continue in the final days before Lucas is ousted in
a military coup. This cable from the CIA Station describes a Guatemalan
army “sweep” operation through the Ixil Triangle in El Quiché.
The aim of the operation is to destroy all towns and villages suspected
of supporting the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP). According to
the cable’s author, the army has yet to encounter a major guerrilla force
in the area, and its successes have been limited to the destruction of
entire villages and the killing of Indians suspected of collaborating or
sympathizing with the rebels. The army’s belief that the entire indigenous
population of Ixil supports the guerrillas “has created a situation in
which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants
alike.”
April 16, 1982
In an effort to consolidate his power base within the armed forces and
prevent a possible countercoup against his nascent military junta, General
José Efraín Ríos Montt – who seized power in March
– issues General Order Number 10, reassigning approximately 400 military
officers. This cable identifies two groups of junior Guatemalan military
officers that remain dissatisfied with the present situation: 1) those
who supported Rios Montt’s coup but believe he is wavering over the call
for elections, and 2) those who did not support the coup and have suffered
as a result. The document also reports that the National Liberation
Movement (MLN), a right-wing political party, is courting both of these
dissatisfied factions in an effort to first divide the military “and then
take over the reins of government when the junta falls.” Other officers
– primarily those outside the capital – have remained outside the political
power struggle and are more concerned about the recent “lull” in offensive
operations against the guerrillas. A “serious division . . . within
the armed forces,” the document warns, would allow the guerrillas “to walk
into Guatemala City unmolested.”
May 10, 1982
Two months after seizing power in a military coup, General Ríos
Montt continues to strengthen his hand by rooting out those officers believed
to be involved in countercoup plotting. One particularly cohesive
group of officers opposed to Ríos is the Guatemalan Military Academy
promotion class number 73 – many of whom would later rise to positions
of leadership. They are united in their opposition to the mass reassignments
of General Order Number 10 and are suspected of plotting against the junta.
In an effort in intimidate these officers, Ríos orders the arrest
and investigation of three of its most prominent members – Captains Mario
López Serrano, Roberto Enrique Letona Hora and Otto Pérez
Molina – threatening to expose evidence of their corrupt dealings if they
continue to oppose him.
February 1983
There has been a recent steady increase of “suspect right-wing violence,”
with kidnappings – particularly of students and educators – increasing
in number, and bodies again appearing in ditches and gullies, a practice
that was associated with the previous regime. Since taking power
in March 1982, President Ríos has experimented with new legal mechanisms
for handling captured guerrillas and suspected subversives, but sources
report that in October 1982, officers of the Archivos were told that “known
guerrillas will no longer be remanded to the special courts,” and that
they were free to “apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected
guerrillas as they saw fit.” Sources also say that the unit is participating
in military operations against towns in the Quiché. Although
the cable reports no specific information linking the Archivos to extra-legal
activities, Ambassador Frederic Chapin, in a comment attached to the end
of the document, is “firmly convinced” that the recent upsurge in violence
is ordered and directed by “armed services officers close to President
Ríos Montt.”
May 23, 1983
This excerpted report examines recent restructuring efforts by the Guatemalan
military designed to streamline army control over “civilian government
personnel, police, reservists, Civil Defense Forces, as well as military
personnel at the department level.” The designation of smaller military
zones and the institutionalization of special army “Task Forces” in areas
of heavy guerrilla activity will provide army commanders with more flexibility
to assemble the proper collection of forces for his particular zone and
problems. Although it is thought that the reorganization plan will
substantially improve the army’s counterinsurgency efforts, the document
also warns that the increased military presence throughout the country
“might further entrench military rule at the expense of the democratization
process.”
June 30, 1983
As opposition to the regime of General Ríos Montt continues to grow, U.S. military intelligence sources become aware of a coup plot brewing within the armed forces and predict that Ríos will be toppled within the next 45 days. The president’s unpopularity is attributed to several factors including: 1) Widespread belief among military officers that his maneuvers have undermined army order and discipline; 2) Allegations of corruption within his administration; 3) Concern that his zealous evangelical beliefs are at odds with the country’s Roman Catholic heritage; and 4) Belief that Ríos does not intend to call for free elections. The document also recounts the story of how General Lucas was coerced
by the Ríos junta to resign in March 1982. Although prepared
to resist the coup, Lucas finally relented after he was led to the tunnel
where his mother and sister were being held with rifles to their heads.
August 1983
Just two weeks before President Ríos is ousted by his own defense
minister – General Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores – the CIA produced
this extensive intelligence assessment of his regime and its prospects
for the future. The document begins with a frank review of the history
and root causes of political violence in Guatemala, beginning with the
CIA-sponsored coup in 1954, an event that ushered in an era in which a
loose coalition of elites ruled Guatemala under the “tacit understanding
that unpredictable and unmanageable political processes – such as free
elections and greater popular participation – are inimical to their interests.”
Despite the fact that the military “used extreme violence against guerrilla-controlled
villages” during his tenure, Ríos is credited with having adopted
“a more enlightened counterinsurgency strategy” and with reducing the level
of “indiscriminate violence” that had characterized the Lucas regime.
The analysis predicts that “the present trend toward moderate government”
will persist in the near term if Ríos should remain in power for
the next two years – a likelihood that CIA analysts give only an even chance.
October 9, 1983
Although General Mejía is in de facto control of the Guatemalan
government after the August 1983 coup against President Ríos, a
new base of power has arisen “behind the scenes” led by Colonel Juan José
Marroquín Siliezar, chief of the Presidential Staff, and General
Héctor Alejandro Gramajo Morales, deputy chief of the Army General
Staff. This document reports that Guatemalan military officers are beginning
to suspect that Gramajo and Colonel Roberto Enrique Mata Gálvez,
the commander of military forces in the department of Quiché, are
working in collusion with the CIA.
November 15, 1983
U.S. Ambassador Frederic Chapin submits his comments on the deaths of
three persons working on a project sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International
Development. Chapin disagrees with the official version of events, and
proposes that “the incident was a prompt response by the Archivos under
Col. Juan José Marroquín Siliezar (chief of staff of the
president) to the vigorous human rights presentation made by Under Secretary
Ikle and Assistant Secretary Elliot Abrams on November 7.” Although
the case “cries out for justice,” Chapin recommends that the U.S. react
cautiously until the actual fate of one of the missing victims is known.
February 2, 1984
The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala reports the circumstances surrounding
two recent abductions in Guatemala City, suggesting that both appear to
have been the work of government security forces. The document describes
in detail how one of the victims, Sergio Vinicio Samoyoa Morales, was abducted
from a hospital by ten armed men just before he was scheduled to undergo
surgery for bullet wounds suffered earlier that day. In his analysis,
U.S. Ambassador Frederic Chapin notes that “these new shocking abductions
indicate that the [Guatemalan] security forces will strike whenever there
is a target of importance.” Chapin proposes that the U.S. can either
choose to overlook these kinds of atrocities and “emphasize the strategic
concept” or “pursue a higher moral path,” but should not continue to alternate
between these two positions.
March 28, 1986
This document is an extensive analysis of the root causes behind the
violence in Guatemala in an effort to explain the extraordinarily high
numbers of kidnappings and disappearances that have plagued the country
over the last nine years. Concluding that “government security forces
were behind the majority of the 6515 abductions between 1977-1985,” the
study finds that most of the victims have been ladino campesinos, Indian
farmers, students and teachers, who are normally taken to army interrogation
centers and then killed after hours or days of torture and interrogation.
Fearing that the new civilian government might investigate such charges,
the army took steps to conceal its involvement in these activities before
ceding power to civilian President Vinicio Cerezo in January 1986.
In late-1985, for example, the army transferred the secret files of the
Archivos to the army intelligence directorate (D-2) for safekeeping.
Archivos, the study notes, was “a secret group in the President’s office
that collected information on insurgents and operated against them.”
circa July 1986
The director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research,
Morton I. Abromowitz, reports to the chairman of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence regarding improvements in the government’s human rights
record under the administration of President Cerezo, Guatemala’s first
civilian president in over 15 years. Abramowitz asserts that the
level of political violence has diminished since Cerezo took office, but
notes that the president’s reluctance to open “Argentina-style investigations
into past human rights abuses was a calculated decision,” intended to appease
the military whose support he needs. As the previous document does,
the Abramowitz letter mentions that the army disbanded the Archivos before
ceding power to the civilian government, and transferred its files to the
army’s intelligence directorate.
February 1989
This cable reports that vigilante groups operating from within the Guatemalan
National Police and Treasury Police – frustrated by the perceived inability
of the justice system to adequately cope with the growing crime rate –
are “capturing and killing individuals with long criminal records.”
The author believes that these activities are being directed by the chief
of National Police “or possibly a higher authority.” A source also
alleges that the army has authorized a band of civilian military commissioners
to “round up criminals and undocumented persons” who are then turned over
to the military and killed since the army “has no legal means to prosecute.”
These groups appear to be different from the Jaguar Justiciero death squad,
a recently resurgent group thought to have “a current hit list of 200 individuals.”
August 31, 1989
U.S. military intelligence sources indicate that the army’s
Directorate of Intelligence (D-2) was involved in the latest wave of bombings
in Guatemala City, and may have used recent disturbances as cover to intimidate
opposition groups. It is reported that the D-2’s Special Operations
Section was responsible for grenade attacks at the headquarters of two
organizations – Peace Brigades International (PBI) and the Mutual Support
Group (GAM). Other bombings are attributed to the Revolutionary Organization
of the People in Arms (ORPA) and the president’s own Christian Democratic
party.
November 1989
A source tells the CIA station in Guatemala that the Directorate of
Intelligence (D-2) has investigated more than 500 reports of alleged human
rights violations and found that most are cases of common crime “unrelated
to political violence.” The majority of the “disappeared” are, in
reality, criminals, runaways or people who have joined the guerrillas or
illegally emigrated to the United States. While the CIA station agrees
that human rights groups sometimes distort or fabricate their reports,
the author is “almost certain that officials in the D-2 and military zone
commands . . . are involved in disappearances and extrajudicial killings.”
February 16, 1990
This document lists all known personnel assigned in early 1990 to the
Intelligence Directorate (D-2), an organization whose functions are said
to be comparable to the CIA, FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and the Drug
Enforcement Administration. The document describes a network of “formal
and informal control” exercised by the D-2 over “various organizations
capable of feeding the overall intelligence apparat,” and provides a profile
of the training and background of the typical D-2 officer. Primarily
a human source intelligence organization, the D-2 officers have conducted
“technical surveillance (wire-taps) and surveillance on U.S. citizens,”
and have gathered so-called “romantic intelligence,” whereby the “sexual
activity, proclivity, vulnerability of selected targets is collected” and
“exploited accordingly.”
September 12, 1990
Gen. Juan Marroquín Siliezar was one of Defense Minister Héctor
Gramajo’s chief rivals, and colluded with those plotting to overthrow President
Cerezo in 1989. He was not punished for his role, but was promoted
in a government effort to co-opt the remaining military hardliners.
By September 1990, however, under the new defense minister, Gen. Juan Leonel
Bolaños Chavez, the decision was finally made to oust Marroquín
ostensibly because of his ties to opposition political parties. This
cable describes how Bolaños lured Marroquín – who was then
the army’s chief of staff – to his office and met him with a contingent
of armed soldiers, while two platoons from the Honor Guard Brigade secured
Marroquín’s residence and captured his family. The document
notes that Marroquín appeared ready to fight for reinstatement and
that he would probably have the support of a significant portion of the
armed forces. Sources report that most in the military doubt that
Bolaños was behind the action, and that former defense minister
Gramajo may actually have orchestrated the removal.
May 10, 1991
Ambassador Thomas Stroock describes the strategy, tactics and modus
operandi behind a recent campaign of terror being waged by death squads
organized by government security forces. The wave of “selective violence”
– which over the year killed anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang and political
activist Dinora Pérez, among others – is intended to spread fear
among members of leftist organizations thought by the government to be
supportive of the guerrillas. Based on a variety of sources, Stroock
concludes that these attacks have been organized and carried out by “individuals
who are members of the security forces, often military intelligence (D-2)
but also others from presidential security, zone commands, and occasionally
the civilian police forces.” The ambassador is also troubled that
President Serrano “seems ambiguous on the topic, an ambiguity that fuels
the violence,” and notes that the administration may tacitly encourage
“efforts physically to eliminate the left as a remotely potential rival
to power.”
June 1991
Sources indicate that Minister of Defense Mendoza has launched a series
of verbal attacks against the Military Intelligence Directorate (D-2),
alleging that it has fallen “under the control” of U.S. intelligence.
In particular, Mendoza has accused D-2 of passing information to U.S. intelligence
agencies on the killing of American citizen Michael DeVine, a case that
provoked the suspension of U.S. security assistance. Sources speculate,
however, that these accusations are not sincere, and that Mendoza’s efforts
to weaken the intelligence unit are linked to his alleged involvement with
drug traffickers. D-2, the document notes, “is the only credible
organization in the country with an antinarcotics role.”
August 27, 1991
According to this cable, the “Tanda” phenomenon – the horizontal alliance that develops across a class of military academy graduates and persists throughout their careers – is no longer as influential in Guatemala as it is in other Latin American countries. Although “Tandas” were strong in Guatemala in the 1970s, they were severely disrupted during the military coups of the 1980s. During the move against President Lucas García, for example, military academy classmates with strong alliances were suddenly pitted against one another. While some saw their fortunes rise with the new regime, “those who had maintained loyalty to Lucas [were] being relegated to positions of lesser importance.” With the ouster of Ríos in 1983, the situation was reversed. Since that time, the old friendships have not been renewed, “and those horizontal classmate loyalties have not been effectively reestablished.” At the same time, vertical alliances came to replace the “Tanda,” forging
loyalties among officers within their particular fields of specialization.
One of the most important and influential of these groups is the Cofradía,
a “vertical column of intelligence officers,” that “represents the strongest
internal network of loyalties within the institution.” Another strong vertical
alliance said to share influence with the Cofradía is the “Operators,”
a group of commanders and operations specialists closely involved in the
planning and conduct of the couterguerrilla war. Similar cliques
also exist among elite airborne officers (paracaidistas), army rangers
(Kaibiles), and air force pilots.
June 8, 1993
U.S. military intelligence sources reports that General Jorge Roberto
Perussina Rivera and several of his officers confronted President Ramiro
De León Carpio at the presidential palace and coerced him into appointing
Perussina as Minister of Defense. Although the president had already
decided to give the job to General Mario René Enríquez Morales,
he acquiesced, asking Enríquez to accept a position as army chief
of staff “for a short period of time, and in the interest of the army.”
Perussina – a hard-line senior officer who had supported President Serrano’s
failed effort to forcibly dissolve the legislative and judicial branches
of government just one month earlier – agreed to step down after three
months. The author of the document comments that Perussina’s short
term as defense minister is a “good thing” since there will not be total
harmony in the military until he retires.
June 21, 1993
Intelligence sources indicate that General Perussina, the newly appointed
defense minister, has not been well received by the officer corps, most
of whom believe he should have retired after his involvement in President
Serrano’s failed autogolpe in May. Such dissention will make it easier
for President De León Carpio to remove Perussina when the time comes.
April 11, 1994
Sources tell U.S. military intelligence officials that from 1984-86,
the army’s intelligence directorate (D-2) coordinated the counterinsurgency
campaign in southwest Guatemala from the southern airbase at Retalhuleu,
using it as both an operations post and an interrogation center.
Small buildings that were once used as interrogation cells have since been
destroyed, and pits “that were once filled with water and used to hold
prisoners” have been filled with concrete. To dispose of the prisoners
after interrogation, D-2 personnel would fly them out over the ocean and
push them – sometimes still alive – out of the aircraft. “In this
way, the D-2 has been able to remove the majority of evidence showing that
the prisoners had been tortured and killed.” Officers currently stationed
at Retalhuleu wishing to grow plots of vegetables have been denied permission
to cultivate certain areas “because the locations . . . were burial sites
that had been used by the D-2 during the mid-eighties.”
April 20, 1994
The officers surrounding and supporting Colonel Otto Pérez Molina
– chief of the presidential staff – belong to the most democratic faction
in the military, despite having risen through the ranks of the army’s intelligence
directorate (D-2) during the worst years of the violence in the early 1980s.
As the author of this cable observes, “They are progressives that grew
up with blood stains on their hands . . .” Although there is no direct
evidence linking former D-2 director Pérez Molina to such activities,
it is unclear to what extent these officers are still “influenced by their
past.”
November 3, 1994
An informant attests that captured guerrillas must work with military
intelligence (D-2) against their former units or face summary execution.
Only those with significant “propaganda value” are paraded before the media,
while most all others are interrogated extensively, and then either recruited
by the D-2 or killed. The source adds that this has been a long-standing
practice that has not changed under the army’s current leadership.
November 24, 1994
A source within the Guatemalan military describes the army’s response
to increasing U.S. pressure to clarify the fate of captured rebel leader
Efraín Bámaca Velásquez – husband of U.S. lawyer Jennifer
Harbury. The army high command, the source states, has ordered military
personnel to destroy any “incriminating evidence . . . which could compromise
the security or status of any member of the Guatemalan military.”
The destruction of documents, holding pens and interrogation facilities
has already been accomplished at the Retalhuleu air base, and the army
has designed a strategy to block future “United Nations investigating commissions”
from entering bases to examine army files. The author of the cable
asserts that, “All written records concerning this case and probably a
thousand others like it have, by now, been destroyed.”
February 1, 1995
A source discusses whether Colonel Julio Roberto Alpírez was
responsible for the torture and execution of guerrilla leader Efraín
Bámaca Velasquez. The source asserts that Colonel Alpírez
“was fully capable” of the performing these actions, but believes that
he “would have probably delegated the final responsibility to eliminate
Bámaca to a junior officer or a specialist that he trusted.”
The source also believes that the army “would not offer up one of its own”
to reduce international pressure on the case, adding that anyone willing
to come forward with information “would have a great deal to lose if Colonel
Alpírez were to talk.” Alpírez was a paid intelligence
asset for the CIA until 1995, when then-Congressman Robert Toricelli revealed
his role in the cover-up of the 1990 killing of American innkeeper Michael
DeVine, and the torture and murder of Bámaca in 1992.
February 24, 1995
The army vice chief of staff, General Carlos Enrique Pineda Carranza,
has reportedly prevented an army historical commission – charged with writing
an official history of the internal conflict – from gaining access to the
Guatemalan army archives. In doing so, Pineda has defied orders from
his immediate superiors, and is said to be working with officers from the
Intelligence Directorate (D-2) “to keep ‘embarrassing’ events from reaching
public scrutiny.” The source is concerned “that some records may
‘disappear’ as a result of BG Pineda and friends [sic] efforts.”
September 14, 1995
In an effort to improve Guatemala’s human rights image, President Ramiro
De León Carpio has announced that he will disband the 35-year old
military commissioner system, an arrangement that has long provided the
army with “a steady stream” of intelligence information on “insurgent,
suspected insurgent sympathizer, and criminal activities.” However,
it is also reported that the army will secretly retain the commissioners
and their support functions under a different name and organizational structure.
Under the new arrangement, the Directorate of Intelligence (D-2) will compile
a master list of the top 25,000 “collaborators,” who will continue to play
an “invisible” role for the military. The new system is intended
to preserve “the valuable HUMINT [human source intelligence] collection
network critical for monitoring insurgent activity,” while allowing “deniability
if allegations about retaining the commissioners arise.”
|
home | about | documents | news | publications | FOIA | research | internships | search | donate | mailing list
|