By Carlos Figueroa
At the express question of journalist Hans Salazar at the morning press conference on May 15, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador expressed himself about the situation of César Montes as follows: “We do know what it is about, he is a person, a leader, who participated in Guatemala and is accused of some crimes, is in prison, he is already an elderly person, and they are looking with Guatemala to see the possibility of him being pardoned, and that he come to Mexico, that he be give asylum We are already seeing it.” As is well known, César Montes, a former commander of the Guatemalan insurgency, was detained and deported in an anomalous manner by Mexico’s National Institute of Migration. He is accused of the death of three sailors in September 2019 in the Chajmayik village also known as Semuy II in El Estor, Izabal.
I will repeat what I have already expressed previously: César Montes could not have been the material author of the crime committed against the three sailors because he was hundreds of kilometers from the place, nor could he have been the intellectual author of the murder because he did not have any communication with the inhabitants of Semuy II neither before, nor during, nor after the bloody event. The presence of the sailors in Semuy II was not known in advance, so the events occurred suddenly. In addition, there is no telephone signal in the place, so it was impossible for César to communicate with the residents by that means.
The approach of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has already been officially answered by the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry in the sense that no request has been received from the Mexican government. It is very foreseeable that when the official request from Mexico reaches Guatemala (if it is in the sense of what López Obrador expressed), the answer will be that in Guatemala there is no presidential pardon, because according to what I am informed, this is only considered in case of those sentenced to death.
What has not been long in coming is the vociferous reaction of the extreme right in Guatemala, this time in the voice of the neo-fascist presidential candidate Zury Ríos Sosa, daughter of former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt who was accused of genocide and sentenced on May 10, 2013. It is known that ten days later the Constitutional Court annulled part of the trial alleging failures in due process. Five years later the trial ended and the court concluded that there had indeed been genocide, but by then the former dictator was not impeachable because he had died.
The candidate Ríos Sosa has made the response to López Obrador one more act of her electoral campaign, which in recent days has been on the decline: “President Manuel López Obrador, César Montes is a terrorist guerrilla and convicted murderer who vilely executed three of our brave soldiers, your intervention seeking clemency for this criminal is an insult to Guatemalans who yearn for peace. In our government there will be no hugs for criminals, there will be security and justice for our citizens. In Guatemala we Guatemalans decide and no one else”.
It is absurd to describe the eventual request of the Mexican President as interventionist, which would be a legitimate act in international relations. In addition, one can see in the far-right candidate the old heavy-handed refrain repeated by the right-wing, alluding to López Obrador’s motto (“Hugs, not bullets”) about the need to resort to social policies as a means to prevent crime. Let Ríos Sosa not be confused, the appeal to social measures to contain crime does not imply the absence of measures of another type: today the National Guard has 130,000 troops and almost 300 barracks have been built throughout the country in addition to the participation of the army and the navy. The rates of criminal violence in the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador have dropped in almost all areas.
In addition to reiterating the useless reactionary solution to the crime problem, Ríos Sosa ignores who his father was: the head of state of a government that mercilessly applied state terror. According to the Historical Clarification Commission, the vast majority of the 626 massacres committed against the Guatemalan people were committed between 1981 and 1983. It is necessary to remember that most of that period, Guatemala was governed by his father. If we talk about terrorists and murderers in Guatemala, perhaps the greatest exponent is Efraín Ríos Montt.
In the sixty-three words of his campaign ad, Ríos Sosa told many lies. One of them is to say that César Montes is convicted when his case is still on appeal. Ríos Montt was convicted as a terrorist and murderer (genocide is mass terrorism) and even though that sentence was suspended, the verdict of the court that tried him was later confirmed. Even though having died saved him from condemnation, the most important thing is that Efraín Ríos Montt was condemned by history. A terrible fate awaits Guatemala if the lady wins the elections.
Carlos Figueroa
carlosfigueroaibarra@gmail.com
PhD in Sociology. National Researcher Level II of the National Council of Science and Technology of Mexico. Research Professor of the Meritorious Autonomous University of Puebla. Professor Emeritus of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Guatemala headquarters. Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of San Carlos. Author of several books and specialized articles on political sociology, sociology of violence and Latin American political processes.
Source The Time
