From: jd@homxc.att.com (John A Dinardo)
Subject: 6 WBAI: Harvard Harbors the Adolf Eichmann of Guatemala: Heinous Hector
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Keywords: Tell Harvard's Steve Reifenberg your opinion of holocaust-helpers.
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 19:56:08 GMT

     [Steve Reifenberg's number at Harvard is (617) 495-2133.
      Incidentally, I told Steve Reifenberg that I protest 
      Harvard's assistance to genocidists.    

      All it takes is the angry opposition of enough people 
      of conscience, acting in concert, to stop the next Hitler.
      It's too bad that there weren't enough of us to stop the
      original Hitler, and the most recent one. You know, George Bush.]

Many thanks to Kerry Miller for transcribing a very special program
by Dennis Bernstein, broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
                           WBAI-FM Radio
                           505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
                           New York, NY 10018       (212) 279-0707

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
                        ~~ FOREWORD ~~
                      (followed by Part VI)
DENNIS BERNSTEIN:
Hector Gramajo is about to graduate from Harvard University,
the Edwin S. Mason Program in Public Policy and Management at the Kennedy
Center. We've heard a lot about the rape at the Kennedy compound down in
Florida. Here's a mass murderer, rapist, who has been overseeing horror in
Guatemala for many years. In my hands, I'm holding the graduation program;
they list Hector Gramajo, but they don't talk about him as Defense Minister,
as head of the Army, doing the things Allan is talking about. He's Director 
of the Center of Strategic Studies for National Stability. This is Hector
Gramajo, and Allan Nairn is confronting him face to face at Brown University
about his death squad activities.


                              PART VI
ALLAN NAIRN [pre-recorded]:
     In a press conference afterwards, Gen. Rios Mont was asked, "What about
the policy of `scorched earth?'"  He replied, We do not have a policy of
scorched earth. We have a policy of scorched Communists." Gen. Gramajo, who
coordinated this campaign, as Deputy Army Chief of Staff and head of TOSO (the
Westen Zone theatre of operations), praised this campaign, as, in his words,
"a campaign of national stability," using, as he put it on Army Day, June 30,
1988, "new, incredibly flexible tactics." Gen. Gramajo and his colleagues, in a
statement issued August 12, at the Camino Real, said, "The army had a clean
conscience, regarding this campaign."

     After this, in 1986, Gen. Gramajo became commander of the Quartel General,
which serves as one of the largest military bases and also a torture and
interrogation center of the victims of G-2. To give one illustrative case,
Luis Fernando de la Roca Arias was abducted on December 12, 1985. His mother
traced the license plate of the car that abducted him. What happened was, the
cars came up, dragged Luis Fernando away. Three days later, they returned,
and broke back into the de la Roca apartment. Luis Fernando was drugged and
bleeding. They took out Mrs. de la Roca as well as her young granddaughter, and
put them in [one] car, Luis in another. They drove to another site and then
tortured Luis inside the car and his mother and the granddaughter looked on.
The car holding Luis then disappeared. Mrs. de la Roca was able to record the
license plates: they were P-253217 and P-75177. These were traced to the
Quartel General, commanded at the time by Gen. Gramajo.
     Now when Gen. Gramajo was asked about this, and his responsibility for
this abduction, he offered several explanations. First, he said the license
plates had been lost, had been inadvertently misplaced, and were simply used
by those who had committed this abduction. So they took the used license
plates, put them on the car, came in and abducted him, then came back later,
also using the used plates.
     Later, he changed that explanation, to say they had been stolen;
presumably, by one of the most courageous car thieves in Guatemalan history,
who lifted them from military vehicles and used them in this abduction, then
returning to the scene of the crime. In fact, no report was ever issued of
stolen license plates; in fact, these very same plates were re-issued to
Defense Ministry cars the following year, something you would obviously not
do if they were stolen and at large.
     In 1986, the General became Army Chief of Staff, and from 1987 through
1989, he serves as Guatemalan Minister of Defense. In that position, he
presided over the decapitation of Guatemalan labor, student, and human rights
organizations. Now, it's impossible to go through a detailed summary of all
the cases, because there were thousands of them - but just to give you the
flavor of it, Bishop Pinados, the Archbishop of the Guatemalan Church, on
dozens of occasions (the archbishop told me this himself) brought cases of
disappearance to Pres. Felicio Cerezo, the civilian president occupying what
is, in effect, a ceremonial position. Cerezo would say, "I can't help you.
That is not my department. You have to bring it to the Army. I cannot
investigate Army disappearances."
     AI presented 222 cases of disappearance during this period, and got the
same results. Indeed, in 1987, the National Police itself investigated 104
cases of disappearance. In each case, they stopped their investigation when
they found it had been perpetrated by the Army, and they, of course, had no
power to proceed any further.
     During this period, starting in 1988, there emerged in the Northwest
Highlands, a group called the CERJ -- a group of exceptionally courageous
people, descendents of the Mayan Indians -- who were organizing against the
"civil patrols." [*] The civil patrols are forced labor units, which every
male is obliged to give 24 hours weekly service to, at no pay, and they are
used by the Army to surveil the members of the village, and also in many
cases, they are obliged to commit massacres against their neighbors. Since
CERJ began its organizing campaign, which consists simply of helping the
peasant villagers to file petitions asking that they be relieved of civil
patrol duty, 19 of their members have been assassinated or disappeared.
     To give an example of how the Army works, in Naboc in 1988, a town
meeting was told by an officer, according to AI, if the people did not join
the civil patrols, in the officer's words, "You're dead." On September 23,
1989, the commander of patrols in Senache, Cheniche el Quiche, publicly
threatened to kill 60 people who wanted to dissolve the local patrol. Emile
Hernandez, the founder of CERJ, has been receiving death threats throughout
this period. In August 1988 for example, he got a note with a skull and
crossbones on it that said, "It's just a matter of time and opportunity, but
we will get you." Shortly after that, his close friend and associate, Pedro
Pablo Ramos, was assassinated. Ramos' wife said that military commissioners
had done it. And Gen. Gramajo's army began circulating a video -- which would 
be brought from village to village with a portable TV, and played for the
villagers -- denouncing Emile Hernandez as a subversive, and warning them that,
if he came into town, they were to immediately report this to the army, which
would take action.
     What was Gen. Gramajo's response to these 19 assassinations and
disappearances of CERJ members? Well, he said they had been subversive, and 
he said the civil patrols were "the highest expression of the exercise of
democracy," to give you some context to what he and others mean when they
talk about the "dawning of democracy" in Guatemala.
     DGAM, a group of the Relatives of the Disappeared, led mainly by the
women -- extraordinarily courageous women -- who had lost sons and daughters
and husbands and other loved ones to more than 40,000 Guatemalan Army
disappearances, marched silently .. [TAPE INTERRUPTED] Their demand was, they
wanted an accounting of what had happened to their loved ones. Gen. Gramajo's
Army issued a statement after this, saying if anything were to, in their
words, "accidentally happen," to Ninette Garcia, or other members of the
group, the Army would not be responsible, because "the Army, before the
people of Guatemala and international public opinion, hold Mrs. Ninette
Montenegro de Garcia and those behind her responsible for whatever 
eventuality her intransigence and blindness might provoke."

|{hm           kerry miller   <ASTINGSH@KSUVM.KSU.EDU>
                          (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

    You have to visualize women and children being decapitated
    --babies being strangled and crushed to death, in order to
    sense the terror and the fury felt by these innocent victims.
    Then ask yourself: If it was my wife, my sister, my baby who was
    being so heinously murdered, would I lift a finger to protect
    them? And if you would, then conscience dictates that you protect
    these thousands upon thousands of suffering peasants.  
    All we have to do is galvanize our sovereign individual political 
    power, endowed to us at birth under the Constitution. All we have 
    to do is to focus that galvanized political power upon those
    scoundrels who occupy The People's Congress of the United States,
    so that the tortured people of Guatemala can, at last, celebrate
    their rescue from their national mortuary.

    There are organizations already formed, waiting for our help.
    One of these organizations is the Christic Institute which combats
    these U.S. Government atrocities by wielding the most powerful
    societal instrument that we have: the law under the Constitution.

    What laws is the U.S Government desecrating?
    ... The Nuremburg Principles
    ... The International Treaty Outlawing Genocide, signed by 
           President Reagan on November 4, 1988
    ... The Fourth Geneva Convention
    ... Our state laws prohibiting murder

    When somebody violates the law, you get an attorney to prosecute them.
    You'll find no more courageous an attorney than Daniel Sheehan.
    Please write him just a brief note stating that you want to
    stop the genocide in Guatemala.

            Daniel Sheehan, Lead Attorney
            The Christic Institute
            1324 North Capitol St., N.W.
            Washington, D.C. 20002

    Help to keep hope alive by keeping the Christic Institute alive.

    What's in it for us?  The most valuable possession you could have,
    besides your health: A renewed sense of pride and self-esteem;
    and it only costs a 29-cent stamp and about ten minutes of writing.

John DiNardo
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~
If we seriously listen to this "God within us" ["conscience",
if you will], we usually find ourselves being urged to take the
more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less.
.... Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold
back from this work. .... Like every one of our ancestors before
us, we are all lazy. So original sin does exist; it is our laziness.

                                        M. Scott Peck
                                   THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED
~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~


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