Summer 2002 Research Report Pete Smith Latin American Studies "Myrna Mack Case in Historical Perspective"

 

Twelve years after Myrna Mack Chang was brutally stabbed twenty seven times by a man employed by the Estado Mayor Presidencial, (EMP – the Guatemalan secret service) in the twilight hours of September 11, 1990, the intellectual authors of the case were on trial. The military men who issued orders for her assassination and were members of a hierarchical chain of command that was readily traceable from the direct superior of the man who stabbed Myrna to the commander of a secret division called “el Archivo” to the commanding general of the EMP. The case was a symbol of a shattered justice system in Guatemala and the impunity offered to official perpetrators of the state. From September 2002 through October 3 2002 the case was heard, held the rapt attention of the nation. One man – a colonel no less and the head of “el Archivo” – was found guilty and condemned to 30 years prison.

Two weeks later however, the Guatemalan Supreme Court accepted the appeal offered by the military; the one intellectual author found guilty may yet get off. The case of Myrna Mack remains one emblematic of Guatemalan justice, and the questions surrounding the rule of law, impunity and justice whorl around the Guatemalan legal system.

This past summer I studied this symbolic case through the generosity of the Tinker foundation. The purpose of the research was fourfold: 1. to understand the historical background of the Guatemalan civil war 2. to place the Myrna Mack murder and case within historical context surrounding the Guatemalan civil war 3. to research the legal standing for the acceptance and continuance of the case and 4. to follow the progress of the case. Although the case itself was delayed from July to September, the background research I was afforded helped me significantly to understand the legal machinations, the context of Myrna’s assassination, and broader perspective of the Guatemalan civil war.

In February 1993, Noel de Jésus Beteta Alvarez, an ex-Sergeant of the Estado Mayor Presidencial (Presidential High Command – EMP) was sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing Professor Mack. The next year, the courts opened legal proceedings against three high-ranking (two colonels and one general) military officials, who were detained and released on bail after being accused of ordering and planning her death.

The investigation into the murder was marked by irregularities, controversy and violent attacks. The United Nations Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala (MINUGUA) confirmed in August 1996 that the case was “heard in a climate of insecurity” and that “some of those involved continued to be followed by unknown individuals” (taken from Amnesty International report on Guatemala, 1997).

In light of the contempt the Guatemalan military showed for due process, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights determined in 1996 that the case would be admissible in the Inter-American court:

39. The Commission has determined that although Helen Mack, one of the petitioners in this case before the Commission and family member of Myrna Mack, has had formal access to the domestic remedies, she has not had effective and real access to those domestic remedies. She has not been able to obtain a trial of all persons against whom there exist serious indicia of participation in the murder of Myrna Mack, as determined by the organisms of the State of Guatemala including the Supreme Court. (Myrna Mack v. Guatemala, Case 10.636, Report No. 10/96, Inter-Am.C.H.R., OEA/Ser.L/V/II.91 Doc. 7 at 125 (1996))

It appeared as though the Mack trial would continue. However, in January 1997, hopes of an eventual conviction were stifled when the three military officials applied for amnesty under the new National Law of Reconciliation granting immunity from prosecution to those responsible for human rights violations during the armed conflict. The case was renewed after the Report for the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) determined that in Guatemala, the policies of the government amounted to genocide. This designation made the case possibly subject to “complementarity” a term that describes national legal systems raising the bar of their internal human rights records and judicial processes so that the cases will no longer be acceptable in an international court because of a lack of access to due process.

By deeming the actions of the government “genocide” new legal possibilities were opened up for victims, in this case the sister of Myrna, Helen Mack, who is the pursuing the suit. In January 1999, after the US State Department issued a public statement raising the possibility of involvement of three superior officers, a Guatemalan Judge ordered General Augusto Godoy Gaítan, Colonel Juan Valencia Osorio and Colonel Juan Guillermo Olivia Carrera stand trial on charges of orchestrating the murder.

The Myrna Mack case was precedent setting. It was the first case in Guatemala’s history to go to trial challenging not just the authors of a politically motivated crime, but also the top military leaders who designed systematic policies of murdering civilians that stood in opposition to government policy. In this sense, the case set out to prove the entire military hierarchy as culpable, despite the broad amnesty enacted in the 1997. As the forthcoming cases brought against military leaders for the murder and disappearance of judges, union leaders, anti-war and land-rights activists are heard in the Guatemalan courts, the Mack case stands at the forefront of a legal challenge to the military’s long-standing impunity.

But the Mack case does not exist in a vacuum, and my studies placed it in historical context. The significance of the original murder of Professor Mack, and the consequent conspiracy to avoid judicial process, can only be fully understood with a thorough reading of Guatemalan history of the 20th Century. Sources not readily available in North America, such as the studies presented by AVANCSO, including Myrna Mack’s relevant study of displaced persons in Ixil, in Quiché Guatemala, and the consequent legal marginalization they faced upon returning to Guatemala from exile in Mexico have been important to my research. Other works available at both AVANCSO and the foundation have also been gathered and read. Resources became available from other organizations in Guatemala City, such as at the Department for Justice and Reconciliation (DEJURE) and the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH).