Efraín Ríos Montt, the former Guatemalan dictator who in the 1980s approved the massacre of Indians and refugees during the country’s civil war, has been convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.
Judge Yasmín Barrios sentenced General Ríos Montt, 86, to 80 years in prison. His co-defendant, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, who served as the director of intelligence under the general, was acquitted of the same two charges.
“We are completely convinced of the intent to destroy the Ixil ethnic group,” Judge Barrios said as she read the hourlong summary of the ruling by the three-judge panel. Over five weeks, the tribunal heard more than 100 witnesses, including psychologists, military experts and Maya Ixil Indian survivors who told how General Ríos Montt’s soldiers had killed their families and wiped out their villages.
The judge said that as the commander in chief of Guatemala’s armed forces, the general knew about the systematic massacres of Ixil villagers living in hillside hamlets in El Quiché department and did nothing to stop them or the aerial bombardment of the refugees who had fled to nearby mountains.
Rios Montt is the first former leader indicted and tried for genocide by the government of his own country.
Those inclined to romanticize former president Ronald Reagan as a great champion of freedom need to be aware that while his rhetoric was often excellent when it came to the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, his record was mostly shameful when it came to Central America.
The involvement of the United States in Guatemala’s politics received scant attention during the trial.
The American military had a close relationship with the Guatemalan military well into the 1970s before President Jimmy Carter’s administration cut off aid. When General Ríos Montt seized power in March 1982, President Ronald Reagan’s administration cultivated him as a reliable Central American ally in its battle against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and Salvadoran guerrillas.
Those interests influenced the way American officials treated evidence of the massacres. They were quick to accept military explanations that guerrillas had carried out the killings, said Kate Doyle, a Guatemala expert at the National Security Archive, a Washington research group that works to obtain declassified government documents.
By the end of 1982, however, the State Department had gathered evidence that the army was behind the massacres.
But even then, the administration insisted that General Ríos Montt was working to reduce the violence. After a regional meeting, President Reagan described him as “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.”
