Indigenous survivors recount horrors in Guatemala genocide trial

Guatemala. “Only a few bones and ashes remained,” the indigenous Juan Brito said through tears this Monday, recounting the deaths of his wife and four young daughters at the hands of the military on January 20, 1982, in a trial against a general for genocide. of Mayan villagers in Guatemala.

They shot them to death and then burned their bodies inside the humble wooden house in a remote Mayan village, Brito said on the second day of hearings in the case against retired general Benedicto Lucas García, 91.

During the Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996), the Ixil Mayan population was accused by the military of serving as a support base for leftist guerrillas and dozens of indigenous villages were decimated in the western department of Quiché.

Dressed in a beige shirt and brown sweater, Brito, 70, is one of the survivors of a massacre in the village of Pexlá who appeared before three magistrates in a court in the Guatemalan capital. He spoke in the Mayan language, assisted by a Spanish translator.

“The soldiers killed quite a few children, women and pregnant women,” said Brito, who noted that the soldiers broke into the village early in the morning, while his four daughters, the oldest seven years old, were sleeping.

Previously convicted of other crimes against humanity, Lucas García followed the hearing dressed in a white coat from a room in a military hospital where he is serving his 58-year prison sentence.

The general faces this trial for his role in the massacres of more than 1,200 Ixil Mayan indigenous people between 1978 and 1982, while his brother, then-president Romeo Lucas García, governed Guatemala. The latter died in Venezuela in 2006.

The soldier is accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and forced disappearance, for which he risks more than 100 years in prison.

This is the second trial for genocide in Guatemala, after on May 10, 2013 a court sentenced General Efraín Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for the massacre of almost 2,000 Ixil Mayan indigenous people under his de facto regime (1982- 1983).

However, the sentence was annulled 10 days later by the country’s highest court.

Brito regretted not having been able to bury his wife and daughters, as he hid in the mountains to escape from the military. Some neighbors put the remains in a plastic bag and buried them.

Catarina Chel, an indigenous survivor of another military incursion in the same village from September 9 to 11, 1981, said that her two children, ages 14 and 15, were murdered by soldiers when they were harvesting corn, the main food of the Mayans.

“Diego’s only skin was holding his head back,” Chel said, while Miguel survived, but died days later after succumbing to his injuries.

The 87-year-old woman said that when she heard gunshots from the soldiers, she got scared, hid and then fled to the mountain with other residents.

But 15 villagers were detained and taken by the military to a chapel, where they were shot and burned.

“There were three dead people in the same hole, all three were stabbed, they were cut like a scourge [especie de calabaza]”said Lorenza Santiago, 75, another survivor who lost her husband, Jacinto Gómez.

The soldiers “burned their clothes, their crops [de maíz y frijol]his chickens, his house”, in that military raid in September 1981, he said.

“We went to pick him up [el cuerpo del marido]”He was bloody, they lowered him into the hole like he was an animal, I’m crying and I’m sad,” the woman added, sobbing.

In the trial, which will last until June, more than 80 expert reports from exhumations and military documents will be presented, and about 30 survivors will testify.

Along with Lucas García, a former head of military intelligence, retired general Manuel Callejas, was also due to be tried, but he will face another trial behind closed doors and without his presence due to mental incapacity.

The Guatemalan internal war left some 200,000 dead or missing, according to a commission sponsored by the UN.