Guatemalan court clears way for former dictator's candidacy

[dArKeR]

Guatemala's highest court cleared the way Wednesday for former dictator Efrain Rios Montt to run for president, just days after a rally by his supporters turned violent.

The Court of Constitutionality revoked an injunction blocking his candidacy in November elections.

Mr. Rios Montt, the current leader of Guatemala's ruling party, took power in a military coup in 1982 and ruled for 18 months before he was deposed in a military uprising.

A constitutional prohibition on former coup leaders kept Mr. Rios Montt out of two previous presidential runs.

But this year, the courts approved his candidacy.

http://theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20030731.wguat0731/BNStory/International/

http://www.geocities.com/darkerxdarker

[Judi Lynn]

1. Oh, really!

(snip) In Guatemala, after the "born-again butcher" Efrain Rios Montt implemented a scorched-earth military campaign that left thousands of Indian civilians dead, Reagan was furious. Not at our genocidal ally, but at Amnesty International and others who documented the depridations. Rios Montt was getting a "bum rap," Reagan whined. (snip/...)
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/3810

(snip) The LAT fronts word that 11 Guatemalan communities are going to file suit today against a former president, accusing him of genocide. More than 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during a civil war in the 1980s. According to the LAT, the suit charges that former President Efrain Rios Montt "presided over a brutal policy of racial extermination as the nation's dictator in the early 1980s." The charges have some basis. According to a 1999 United Nations truth commission report, the Guatemalan military, led by Rios Montt, committed "acts of genocide." One thing the LAT didn't mention: Rios Montt had a friend to the north. The last time he hit the front pages, in 1982, Ronald Reagan was celebrating him as "totally dedicated to democracy in Guatemala." (snip)
http://slate.msn.com/id/1007805/

An older article:
(snip) Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about General Efrain Rios Montt is his brother. In May 1998 Bishop Mario Rios Montt succeeded the assassinated Bishop Juan Gerardi as head of the Catholic Church's human-rights office in Guatemala. His task is to continue Gerardi's work, uncovering the truth behind the massacre or disappearance of upwards of 200,000 people during the prolonged and continuing 'civil war'- more accurately described as attempted genocide - against the indigenous Mayan majority of the Guatemalan population. The person who, in the early 19805, presided over the most vicious single episode in this genocide was none other than the Bishop's brother, the General. Efrain is also an ordained minister of the authoritarian, right-wing Gospel Outreach/Verbo evangelical church, based in California and one of several such churches that have been expanding fast
in the region, at the expense of the Catholic Church. General Rios Montt's evangelical zeal is linked to the military 'education' he received - like many of his peers in Latin America - from the School of the r Americas, run by the US military in Panama. From the 19505 onwards this notorious 'Coup School' taught its students how to contribute to US interests and the anti-Communist effort by usurping political power in Latin America by any available means, including assassination, torture and 'disappearance'. After a US-orchestrated military coup in 1954, Guatemala became a key component of US 'counter-insurgency' activity throughout Central America. So when Rios Montt grew to maturity and duly seized power in 1982 he set out to show what a good student he had been. He launched a 'Guns and Beans' offensive against Guatemala's persistent insurgents. A subsequent report commissioned by the UN found that at least 448 mostly Indian villages had been simply wiped off the map. The targeting of the Mayan peoples forced hundreds of thousands to flee to the mountains or to neighboring Mexico. Many of those who remained were corralled into 'hamlets' to produce cash crops for export.
According to Amnesty International, in just four months there were more than 2,000 fully documented extrajudicial killings by the Guatemalan army: 'People of all ages were not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disembowelled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death.' The Catholic bishops said: 'Never in our national history has it come to such extremes.' US President Ronald Reagan, visiting Guatemala on a swing through Latin America, hailed Rios Montt as 'totally dedicated to democracy'.
So excessive was Rios Montt's dedication to democracy, however, that he threatened to become an international embarrassment and after only 18 months was replaced as President by another general. This did not remove him from power. The political party he founded, the ultra-right-wing Guatemalan Republican Alliance (FRG), expanded rapidly and now controls a majority in Congress, and Rios Montt himself has been elected as its President. The current President of Guatemala, Alfonso Portillo - a former guerrilla - is Rios Montt's protégé. (snip/...)
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Efrain_Rios_Montt.html

(snip) Rios Montt took power in Guatemala in 1982, after civil war had been raging for decades. Yet on the orders of this fundamentalist Protestant general, hailed by Ronald Reagan as “a man of great personal integrity ... totally devoted to democracy,” the massacre of Guatemalans reached new heights. (snip)

(snip) ...in a tour of Central America, then-President Bill Clinton went somewhat further, designating the U.S. involvement a "mistake." Nonetheless, it was a far cry from an apology to the relatives of the 200,000 people killed. (snip/...)
http://www.studentdiscourse.com/040201/040201a.htm

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It might sicken and horrify, but it doesn't surprise us, does it, that he's getting back in the saddle again while Bush is in the White House?

Thanks for the information, dArKeR.

On edit: Interesting, isn't it, that rightwingnuts howl like banshees over Cuba's trials of U.S. funded "dissidents," yet nod approvingly while rightwing dictators seize power, as in this example, and slaughter thousands and thousands of people who are in the way, and condemn so many others to outright slavery. Astonishing, actually.