GUATEMALA: GENOCIDE PLAINTIFFS TESTIFY

by Thaddeus al Nakba, Upside Down World

Guatemala has received much attention over recent violence and the impunity enjoyed by its perpetrators. Some organizations state that almost 15 people are murdered daily in Guatemala, mostly in the capital. These numbers are often compared to the levels of violence during the 36-year civil war in Guatemala (1961–1996). However, what many analysts forget to mention is that during the nearly four decades of internal armed conflict, the vast majority of the violence occurred under the brutal dictatorships of Efraín Ríos Montt and Romeo Lucas Garcia (1980–1983). These four years saw a military campaign of genocide perpetrated against the indigenous Maya populations. To compare the present with this past is unfair to the victims and survivors of the genocide. Thus far, only one perpetrator has been successfully prosecuted. The current situation of impunity has roots in the violence of the past. Guatemala will never be able to solve problems of the present without first addressing the violence of the past.

Judge Opens Suspended Court Case for Río Negro Massacre

What crime did the women and children commit? – Juan, 25 March 2008

On December 19, 2007, a landmark legal trial commenced in Salamá, Baja Verapaz, when a local judge announced the continuation of a case suspended since October of 2004, charging six former members of the Xococ Civil Defense Patrol (PAC) with murder for their roles in the March 13, 1982 massacre of 177 women and children from Río Negro. The six accused are being charged by the Guatemalan state-appointed public prosecutor (Ministerio Publico) and by a local war survivors’ organization, the Association for the Integral Development of the Victims of the Violence Maya Achí (ADIVIMA).

Previously, in the same court case, three leaders of the Xococ PAC were sentenced to death in October 1999, later commuted to 50 years imprisonment, for their roles in the massacre. It has marked the only time in which Guatemalan military or paramilitary men responsible for the violence during the scorched-earth campaigns under dictators Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efraín Ríos Montt have been convicted in a court of law. This despite the hundreds of massacres committed and tens of thousands of innocent indigenous people murdered during the regimes.

Since the reopening of the court case, the six accused have given their declarations and have been cross-examined by the prosecution and defense. According to ADIVIMA’s lawyer, Edgar Peréz, the accused attempted to paint a picture of their subordination to the Army and Commander [José Antonio] Solares. Essentially, they said in their declarations that they only followed orders. Some even claimed they never arrived in Río Negro, despite witness testimonies negating this claim.

Río Negro be Dammed
The majority of the witnesses in the Río Negro massacre currently call Pacux “home.” Pacux is a “model village” (also called “strategic hamlet” and “pole of development”) set up by the Guatemalan army and the National Institute of Electricity (INDE) for the residents transplanted by the large reservoir created by the mega-project known as the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam. The state never truly consulted the 23 affected communities throughout the planning and development stages, despite embarking on the project as early as 1975. It certainly never asked for their permission.

Through the influence of INDE, army incursions began almost immediately in communities to be affected by the mega-project. Supporters expected to profit immediately from the endeavor. The goal was simple: Get the people out as quickly as possible. The first massacre in Río Negro occurred as early as March 4, 1980, when a military policeman acting as a security guard for the dam opened fire on a crowd of campesinos protesting his presence in the region. Seven protestors were killed. The INDE security guard was lynched.

Army and state violence and terror only increased in the aftermath, especially against leaders of campesino organizations opposed to the project. The military often used the excuse of looking for the lynched soldier’s weapons when they raided houses and kidnapped outspoken residents, who were later found dead or remained missing. In fact, four months after the massacre, two leaders of the community, Evaristo Osorio and Valeriano Osorio Chen, went missing as they headed for a meeting in the capital with INDE officials. With them they carried their only copies of official documents of the promised compensation by INDE for the residents. They had previously handed over the property titles of the residents to INDE officials. Their bodies were found later with evidence of torture. The documents were stolen and INDE denied ever receiving the land titles.

The Guatemalan army and INDE labeled the rural Maya Achí people of Río Negro “subversives” and “guerillas” due to their refusal to be forcefully relocated for the dam. Río Negro residents quickly learned that not only would INDE and the Army not respect their civil rights; any democratic resistance to their displacement would only be met with terror and violence.

Most Río Negro residents attempted to avoid the increasing state terror by fleeing their ancestral homeland to other regions. This usually entailed resettlement to Pacux, with its cramped houses and poor, arid land provided by INDE in its “agreement” with the people. But when the residents saw the true conditions of life in Pacux, combined with INDE’s refusal to meet its part in the compensatory agreement with the affected residents, resistance only continued.

The state responded with four massacres in an eight-month period in 1982, which killed at least 440 Río Negro residents, the vast majority of the population (Historical Clarification Commission-CEH. Annex I: Book I. Illustrative Case No. 10: “Massacre and Elimination of the Community of Río Negro”).

When all residents were either dead, hiding in the mountains, or resettled in the military colony of Pacux, the construction of the hydroelectric dam began as planned, with the financial support and tacit approval of the “international community.” Throughout the violence directed at the Maya Achí population in Río Negro, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank continued financing the Chixoy Hydroelectric Dam until as late as 1985.

Scorched Earth and Genocide
The state violence directed at the Maya Achí people of Río Negro, Rabinal, Baja Verapaz was not an isolated policy in the region. The Guatemalan Foundation of Forensic Anthropology (FAFG) estimated that between September of 1981 and August of 1983 there were 5,000 extra-judicial assassinations by the Guatemalan military and its death squads out of 22,753 registered people living in the Rabinal municipality. Of the over one-fifth of the population murdered in the 28 massacres in Rabinal, it is estimated by the UN-sponsored truth commission, la Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), that 99.8% were indigenous Maya Achí.

On a national level, the State campaigns were also directed almost exclusively at the indigenous Maya populations of the Guatemalan highlands during the scorched-earth campaigns of the early 1980s under dictators Montt and Garcia. The CEH revealed that the majority of the 626 massacres committed in rural Mayan villages during the 36-year internal armed conflict were executed under these two brutal military regimes.

According to the CEH, some of the alarming results of the 36-year civil war included: 150,000 refugees in Mexico; 1.5 million internally displaced; 50,000 disappeared; and over 200,000 killed. Of the over 200,000 civilian murders, the CEH estimated that 132,000 were committed under the scorched-earth campaigns of Garcia and Montt. In their 1999 report, “Guatemalan Memory of Silence,” the CEH placed 93% of the blame in the hands of the Guatemalan army and its death squads and declared the state-sponsored violence against the indigenous Maya people to be “genocide.”

March 13, 1982: Desert March to Pacoxom
One of the most horrific consequences of the state violence against indigenous Mayan peoples occurred on March 13, 1982 in Río Negro. According to witnesses, at around 6 AM no less than 10 Guatemalan army soldiers, accompanied by 50 Xococ civil patrollers and military commissioners, invaded the small fishing and farming village of Río Negro. The battalion entered residents’ homes, carrying an array of weapons, including Israeli Galil assault rifles.

Once inside the homes, the armed militia demanded to know where the men were hiding and the guns stashed. There were no men in Río Negro that day. The patrollers tied up the women and beat them when they replied that the men had previously been killed in the February 13 massacre of 74 people attempting to collect their confiscated identification documents in Xococ. Some of the soldiers and patrollers raped the younger women inside their own homes while others dragged the residents out of their houses and led them to a local school, promising them a party.

Once the residents were forcefully gathered at the school, soldiers and patrollers led some of the women and children to nearby abandoned houses and gang-raped them. The patrollers and soldiers especially targeted young girls who had not yet given birth since they were considered “pure.” They also specifically targeted pregnant mothers and small children, especially if they complained of hunger, thirst, or exhaustion. The armed men had previously ransacked the houses and taken the residents’ food.

Many of the hostages and their captors waited at the school while the last of the residents were rounded up. When everyone was captured, the troops led them to a trail headed towards a mountaintop known by locals as Pacoxom. On the trail, some of the captives rested at a large nance tree, where one of the first recorded murders took place. Two Army soldiers brutally assaulted 94-year-old Andrés Iboy Uscap. They kicked him in the chest, wrapped him in a costal (coffee sack), and threw him into a deep ravine. According to witness testimonies, after the murder of Iboy, most captives understood their fate.

After their brief stay, the women and children continued walking along the path in a column heavily guarded in front and back by soldiers and patrollers. Most of the Río Negro residents were forced to walk to a large conacaste tree, about one mile from the school. While waiting at the tree for the arrival of the rest of the battalion, the armed squadron took out a stolen cassette player and played marimba music. According to one witness, the soldiers forced the women to dance, saying: “Now you are going to dance, like you have danced for the guerrillas.” The soldiers and patrollers next grabbed young girls out of the group and raped them.

Throughout the entire two-mile hike along the path to Pacoxom, under the sweltering sun with no shade, the hostages continually asked for water and food. The armed men responded by beating and whipping the women and children with sticks and ropes. Some of the hostages were tied up and mocked for their misery during the hike. Some of the raped girls were forced to walk naked. Witnesses spoke of both internal and external scars from the physical and emotional abuse directed at them by the patrollers, including the six men now accused of the crime. According to one testimony recorded by the CEH, “the majority of the women were naked, raped, and there were women who were only days away from giving birth, but these babies were born purely from blows.” (CEH, Book III, p. 31).

March 13, 1982: Massacre at Pacoxom
When the captives finally reached the mountaintop of Pacoxom in the scorching sun of the early afternoon, there was no food or water to be found—at least for the suffering Río Negro residents. Instead, soldiers dynamited and forced the women to dig into the rocky soil with pickaxes, creating a large hole centered in the small ravine. When the armed battalion was satisfied with its size, they turned their energy towards the defenseless civilians.

Army soldiers and Xococ patrollers separated the women into two groups. One group was organized into mothers and their young children; the other into older girls and young women not carrying babies. To ensure no one would escape, the perimeter was well guarded and many hostages tied up.

After insulting and torturing the civilians with clubs and whips made of tree branches and rope, the massacre began. All of the Río Negro residents were made to lie down on the ground, faced down, so that they could not witness the atrocities taking place around them. The men took women and girls out of the groups, usually four at a time, and brutally raped them, sometimes torturing and beating them unconscious if they weren’t deemed virgins. Afterwards they were slain.

The mass execution lasted hours. As it continued, the aggressors didn’t bother hiding the slaughter and permitted the children to watch their sisters and mothers raped and murdered. Throughout the massacre, the valley below echoed with the shouts, cries, and pleas of the women and children being insulted, tortured, raped, and murdered by their executioners. Witnesses hiding in the mountains verified this at the trial.

One witness, Jesús Tecu, described how one of the PAC leaders, the convicted Pedro Gonzalez Gómez, wanted to kill a young mother, Vicenta Iboy Chen, and became enraged when she tried to protect herself by throwing a rock in his direction. According to Tecu, Gonzalez took out his machete “and gave her two swings to her back” where she carried her baby. “Half fell to the ground, with the other half still wrapped around the back of its mother.” Vicenta fell to the ground where he “gave her two more machete blows to the neck.”

In February of 2008, Tecu also described the actions of another patroller, the accused Pablo Ruiz Alvarado:

He had one woman, Tomasa, faced down, with the rope fastened around her neck in the form of a tourniquet… but she didn’t die and her body quivered. So he killed her and continued beating her with a garrote, like she was a savage animal… Then he took her by the feet and dragged her to the ravine…

One of the other accused, the PAC leader Francisco Alvarado Lajuj, earned the nickname “don Quebrado” (the Severer) for his viciousness in killing innocent women and children in Río Negro. Their methods were so brutal that rumors circulated around the region that the Xococ patrollers licked the blood of their victims from their machetes.

Through witness testimonies and forensic evidence gathered at the Pacoxom exhumation, the variety of murder methods during the large-scale massacre has been well documented. Most of the young women and girls were killed by strangulation with rope and garrotes, by decapitation with machete blades, by blows to the head with sticks and clubs, or by bullets to the head with firearms. According to witnesses and forensic anthropologists at the trial, almost all of the young children were hung, beaten, bludgeoned by machete, shot, or had their feet tied together and were flung against jagged rocks and tree stumps.

After the executions, the bodies were thrown down a small ravine. According to some of the younger witnesses, a number of the victims were still alive, gargling blood and quivering when they landed on top of other bodies in the makeshift grave. The ravine was filled with bodies of the women and children by 5 pm. According to witnesses who arrived in the aftermath while hiding in the mountains, the dogs ate many of the remains before they could be covered with dirt.

At least three people escaped the butchery after their capture. Bruna left her 4-month-old baby, Jesusa, near her mother and successfully evaded her captors by running from the shots fired by the Army and the PAC. She hid for months in the forest. On March 5, 2008, she described her interaction with her mother and her thoughts of her fateful decision to flee:

[I said] “Mama. How it hurts, mama, what they are doing… Mama, I don’t want to die like this. I´m going to flee…” So I asked my mom to stay with my baby, but she didn’t want to receive her. I dropped her on the ground because she wouldn’t take her… And I fled… I still think of my girl, but I didn’t want to die…

Slavery in Xococ
After the mass execution, the Xococ patrollers carried 18 children as “virtual slaves” to their homes in Xococ. Some of the captives were as young as four years old. Many of the young children who were carried to Xococ survived because their mothers influenced their executioners to carry their sons and daughters away in order to raise them as their own. Most of the patrollers obliged, but only after executing the youngsters’ mothers in front of their eyes. One witness, José, recalls one terrible incident during his March 6 testimony:

My mom was already dead. So I began walking towards Río Negro, but was intercepted by a patroller… There was still the screaming of women and children and gunshots of the patrollers and soldiers… At 5:00 everything went silent. Everyone [from the PAC] selected their kid to carry to their houses, but one child was not elected… Jesús tried to bring his little brother [Jaime] but a patroller [Pedro Gonzalez Gomez] grabbed him out of his arms and tied a rope around his neck and carried him like that. He then threw him in the ravine against the rocks.

Along the path to Xococ, the children heard PAC members openly bragging about how many women and children they had killed. Meanwhile, the young captives remembered how they were hungry, thirsty, and tired during their forced trek. The young hostages recalled in detail how they did not eat until they arrived early the next morning in Xococ. According to the witnesses there was a meal prepared for all of the combatants, including Commander Solares, at the Catholic Church in Xococ, site of the February 13 massacre.

Adjusting to life in Xococ was extremely difficult for the young children of Río Negro. The kidnapped children were dispersed throughout the village, often living with the murderers of their family members. The children were depressed and had difficulties eating and sleeping due to their trauma. The Xococ patrollers arbitrarily changed many of their names and often instructed them to call them “mom” and “dad.” They weren’t allowed to go to school, and even the youngest were forced to labor in the fields or the house like adults. The Xococ families treated the children cruelly, beating and torturing them at a moments notice. One witness even showed his scars to prove the torture he endured.

While living with their “new” families in Xococ, Río Negro witnesses recalled how the accused and other Xococ patrollers returned to Río Negro shortly after the massacre to carry off “war booty,” such as animals, personal possessions, and other things of value. The Xococ PAC members often sold the animals or clothing in nearby markets or gave some of the goods to the military leaders in the Rabinal military detachment. One witness told the court how she was beaten in her Xococ home when she started to cry after seeing her murdered family members’ clothing being carried off to nearby markets.

Younger witnesses remembered how the men often had their wives pack food for them in the early morning so that they could go on “trips.” Witnesses remembered the men leaving for such “trips” on the morning of May 14 and September 14, the days of the massacres in nearby Los Encuentros and Agua Fría, where many refugees from Río Negro had fled.

When the men returned from their “trips” they often held meetings in their homes where the Río Negro children lived. Witnesses remember the men congratulating one another on their missions and then communicating with the military commissioners and local army commanders. One witnesses recalled being saddened after one of the accused bragged about decimating the community of Agua Fría. The witness had family members who had taken refuge there. At least 92 civilians were burned in their houses or shot on September 14 in Agua Fría, while on the same day, in the community of Los Encuentros, 79 people were murdered with guns and grenades and dozens more carried away in an army helicopter never to be seen again. Most of the victims were Río Negro residents attempting to escape the violence.

Many witnesses choked down tears as they described their time in Xococ as an absolute nightmare. Many lived for up to four years as virtual slaves in Xococ before being rescued by real family members living in the military colony of Pacux.

Justice?
In 1999, the UN-sponsored truth commission, la Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), declared that the five massacres of Río Negro residents and the extrajudicial and arbitrary assassinations of residents following the massacres demonstrated the cruel intention of the Guatemalan army to displace or obliterate the community of Río Negro. It further stated that the state’s intention to fully or partially destroy the residents and community of Río Negro was genocide, under Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CEH 1999: Conclusions, Chapter II: pp. 108-123).

The real architects of the repression, the assassinations, the violence, and the massacres of Río Negro and of other indigenous communities have not been charged with any crime. None of the military officials who planned, ordered, or participated in the massacres of Río Negro have had to face any court of law. Captain Solares and his commanders have not been arrested, despite a warrant issued in April of 2003. According to ADIVIMA, Solares continues to collect his pension check from the Guatemalan military at his house outside of Salamá, Baja Verapaz.

Neither Romeo Lucas Garcia nor Efraín Rios Montt, the architects of the scorched-earth campaigns during the early 1980s that resulted in hundreds of massacres of indigenous Maya communities similar to what took place in Río Negro, have had to give declarations in a court of law, despite two genocide cases against their high commands.

The Guatemalan state has thus far ignored its own culpability and responsibility in the massacres of Río Negro. The state-owned energy company, INDE, responsible for implementing the resettlement of affected residents and of other compensatory agreements, never fulfilled its promises after the written contract and land titles were conveniently stolen from the community during the violence. INDE, since privatized, has essentially ignored its commitment to the people.

Neither the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, nor the dozens of international governments on the boards that approved financing the mega-project, have had to pay any compensation or face any charges for their complicity in the massacre of innocents.

That’s not to say no justice has been served. Eight indigenous Maya Achí men (the convicted Carlos Chen López died of diabetes), perpetrators of one of the worst massacres during the scorched-earth campaigns of dictators Montt and Garcia, live in their Guatemalan prison cells.

However, the real leaders of the massacre and other massacres throughout the country enjoy the comfort of Guatemalan impunity. Many of the Río Negro victims believe this is because they aren’t indigenous Maya. Jesús Tecu declared in his closing statement on February 19 in the current legal trial: “There is only justice carried out against the indigenous people accused… [F]or those who are the material authors of these crimes, there’s nothing.”

Some of the names of the witnesses were changed due to reasons of security. The testimonies were translated and transcribed to the best of the author’s abilities.

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Thaddeus al Nakba is an international human rights accompanier for the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA).This article is dedicated to the Río Negro victims and their families, including little Jesusa.

This story first appeared May 7 on Upside Down World.

From our daily report:

Guatemala: convictions in Río Negro massacre
WW4 Report, June 1, 2008
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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingGUATEMALA: GENOCIDE PLAINTIFFS TESTIFY 

THE LANDOWNERS’ REBELLION

Slavery and Saneamiento in Bolivia

by Alexander van Schaick, Upside Down World

In recent weeks, cattle ranchers and landowners in Bolivia’s Cordillera province, located in the south of the department of Santa Cruz, resorted to blockades and violence in order to halt the work of Bolivia’s National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA). As a referendum on departmental autonomy for Santa Cruz draws near, the conflict calls into question the central government‚s ability to enforce the law in the Bolivian lowlands.

The dispute centers on the region of Alto Parapetí, south of the provincial capital of Camiri, where INRA is currently trying to carry out land reform and create an indigenous territory for the Guaraní indigenous people. Additionally, it claims various communities of Guaraní live and work on white or mestizo-owned ranches in conditions of semi-slavery.

For nine days landowners and their supporters blockaded major highways and virtually sealed off Alto Parapetí. The blockades continued until Bolivia’s vice minister of land, Alejandro Almaráz, left the region on April 18. At the end of February, Ronald Larsen, a major landowner in Santa Cruz, and other ranchers took Almaráz hostage at gunpoint for
several hours when he and other government officials tried to enter the region.

An Incomplete Land Reform
In the 1990s and up to the present, the Guaraní Nation and Bolivia’s other lowland indigenous peoples mobilized to force the national government to recognize their right to their ancestral territories. In 1996, the first administration of Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada passed a land reform law that gave Bolivia’s indigenous people the opportunity to claim their “communal territory of origin” (TCO).

The 1996 law—Ley No. 1715—reorganized the country’s land law and agrarian reform institutions. It also established INRA to resolve land conflicts and issue titles through a process called saneamiento. In this process, INRA would establish property limits, to look into whether property owners had obtained land legally and to investigate whether they were putting their land to socially or economically productive use. (Latifundios, or huge tracks of idle land used to speculate on rising land prices or as liens to obtain loans, are banned by the Bolivian constitution.) Finally, INRA would resolve land conflicts through mediation and legal processes, title TCOs for indigenous people, and establish parcels of state-owned land for distribution. In the end, landowners would own land with clear title. INRA was to carry out saneamiento throughout all of Bolivia between 1996 and 2006.

But after ten years, INRA had only completely finished the saneamiento process for 10% of its goal. Over half of the land INRA sought to have titled had not even begun the process. According to critiques from indigenous and campesino (peasant farmer) organizations, saneamiento was characterized by corruption, a lack of transparency and participation, and a bias in favor of large landholders.

In 2006, the administration of president Evo Morales pushed through several laws (particularly No. 3501 and No. 3545) in order to improve the saneamiento process for the benefit of peasants and indigenous people. Among other changes, the new laws attempted to improve the control indigenous and peasant organizations can exercise over the process, tightened restrictions on what constitutes the productive use of land, and gave INRA the authority to nullify property rights of landowners found to use workers in a system of servitude, captivity, forced labor, or debt peonage. INRA and the Vice-ministry of Land have also been much more active under Morales: in the first two years of his administration, INRA has finished the saneamiento process for 10.2 million hectares, as opposed to 9.2 million completed by the previous five presidents in the nine years since INRA’s founding.

One of the groups that has benefited the least from the saneamiento process has been the Guaraní people, Bolivia’s third largest indigenous group. Guaraní communities populate Bolivia’s Chaco, an arid region that spans parts of the Departments of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca, and Tarija. Only between 5 and 10 percent of the land demanded for TCOs by Guaraní communities has been granted, whereas other lowland indigenous groups have received much higher percentages of their demands for communal land.

The Asamblea del Pueblo Guaraní (APG) has made claims to INRA territory in Alto Parapetí since 1996. Only in February of this year did INRA start the process for the titling of a TCO “Alto Parapetí,” totaling 157,000 hectares of land. Through the saneamiento process, INRA will catalogue what of this 157,000 hectares is available for future Guaraní use and what land is being used in a legal fashion by existing property owners.

INRA also will investigate which landowners have workers in conditions of servitude. According Law 3545 and its governing rules, the state does not recognize the legal property rights of a landowners’ estate if he or she is found to have one or more persons working under conditions of modern-day slavery or servitude. If this is the case, the estate becomes state land that the government, in the case of Alto Parapetí, will include in the formation of a TCO. (Article 4e of Law 3545 requires that the state guarantee that people formerly subjected to a labor regime of peonage, captivity, forced labor, or servitude have access to land.) At the end of the saneamiento, INRA will give land titles to the Guaraní community and all existing, law-abiding landholders.

The APG, the national organization of the Guaraní nation, backed Evo Morales and his Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party during the elections of 2005. It hoped that a MAS government would respond to its demands for the territorial reconstitution of Guaraní ancestral lands. The results have been mixed: while Guaraní communities have received far more land than under previous administrations, the APG feels like the current government can do better. One of the key conditions for the Guaraní Nation’s continuing support of the Morales administration may be the successful titling of the TCO “Alto Parapetí” and the liberation of Guaraní “captive” communities in the region.

“Now Blood Will Run”
Conflicts in Alto Parapetí between INRA and large landowners began in February of this year. On February 12, INRA issued a decree committing to title a TCO “Alto Parapetí” for the APG. Beyond the recuperation of territory for the APG, the creation of a TCO would provide the base for the liberation of Guaraní families living in servitude on large landowners’ estates in the area. According to a report released by the Swiss Red Cross and the Bolivian Ministry of Justice in 2006, there are ten “captive” Guaraní communities in Alto Parapetí that live under a system of semi-slavery: Yaiti, Yapui, Yapumbia, Recreo, Itacuatía, Huaraka, Bajo Carapari, Alto Carapari, La Colorada y Tartagalito.

INRA initiated the process of saneamiento by another decree on February 26. Vice-minister of Land Alejandro Almaráz and the national director of INRA, Juan Carlos Rojas, came to Camiri to personally supervise the launch of saneamiento with the participation of the Guaraní community.

The reaction to the start of saneamiento from the landowning and cattle ranching sector was swift and severe. On February 28, a group of 50 to 100 landowners and their supporters forced INRA officials out of their office, which they preceded to sack. They demanded that the land titling process in Alto Parapetí be halted. After the incident, the Mburuvicha Guasu (Grand Captain) of the Guaraní community in Alto Parapetí, Félix Bayanda, condemned the ranchers for trying to stop the saneamiento process:

“This is [an] abuse from the cattle ranchers, who don’t want to recognize the existence of enslaved communities and who misinform the people,” he said. “The Guaraní people are prepared to defend our communities‚ demand to end once and for all the servitude and enslavement of our people. The Assembly of the Guaraní People will fight for their demands and we will initiate mobilizations in Santa Cruz, Chiquisaca and Tarija.”

In spite of the threats, INRA also reiterated its commitment to carrying out the saneamiento, as required by the law. Following the incident, on the evening of February 29, Vice-minister of Land Almaráz, INRA director Rojas, APG president Wilson Changaraya, and other INRA officials entered Alto Parapetí. Their goal was to notify property owners that the saneamiento process was commencing. According to an interview with Almaráz and accounts published in the press, as the INRA vehicle drove by the property “Caraparicito,” a large cattle ranch owned by an American, Ronald Larsen, they came across a tractor blocking the road.

A group of landowners surrounded their vehicle, led by Larsen, who was armed with a revolver and a rifle. Larsen proceeded to shoot out the tires of the INRA vehicle to prevent the escape of the land reform officials. He reportedly yelled, “Now we are going to carry out community justice on you.” He ordered the INRA vehicle to be dragged onto his property with the tractor. Later, he bragged to Almaráz that he had shot and killed three robbers that had come on to his property and no authority had ever found out. Another local landowner, Lino Medrano, allegedly threatened “No one is going to leave here alive, now blood will run.” Two members of the INRA team escaped to Camiri, where they obtained reinforcements who returned and freed the remaining INRA officials after their eight-hour ordeal.

Interestingly, no immediate action was taken against Larsen. According to Almaráz, witnesses are giving testimony before the public prosecutor of Camiri in order to bring a case against Ronald and Duston Larsen for sedition, criminal association, impeding and extorting official government activity, attempted murder, aggravated robbery, and kidnapping.

Conflicts Escalate
After being released, Almaráz and Rojas called for dialogue in an attempt to reengage the small producers of the region. INRA issued public statements explaining that the saneamiento would not negatively affect any property owners with under 500 hectares of land. They convened an INRA meeting on March 10 in order to engage all the actors affected by the saneamiento process. Most large landowners, however, boycotted that meeting, and are still refusing to participate in any INRA-sponsored dialogue.

On March 11, the President of the Unión de Productores Agropecuarios del Sur (the local cattle rancher and farmers association), Juan Carlos Santistevan, issued a press statement saying that the cattle ranchers of the Cordillera would give their lives to protect their land and to oppose the creation of a Guaraní TCO in Alto Parapetí. According to statistics published by the Vice-ministry of Land, Santistevan owns 1,885 hectares in the area.

Tensions boiled over again on April 4, when Almaraz, Rojas, representatives of the APG, and several dozen national police once again tried to enter Alto Parapetí through the municipality of Lagunillas. According to statements and testimonies from INRA, Guaraníes, and Almaráz, the group was on the way to participate in a meeting convened by the APG in the Guaraní community of Itacuatía. The week prior, over 450 Guaraní traveled to Itacuatía for the meeting before landowners essentially sealed off the area. Once again, the convoy was halted as they tried to pass by the property of Caraparicito. Duston Larsen, son of Ronald Larsen, and a group of people armed with sticks, rocks, and guns violently prevented them from passing. Police officers dispersed the crowd; however the convoy still could not pass.

On April 5, various sectors in Alto Parapetí allied with the landowners issued a declaration, “Cordillera de Pie,” which accused the government and INRA of attempting to violently enter Alto Parapetí the previous day. The document also demanded:

“That the vice-minister of land, national director of INRA, technical personnel and police contingents halt the abuses and illegalities that they come to commit against our people and that in the term of 24 hours they definitively abandon the province of Cordillera in order to avoid other consequences which, if they do occur, will be the unique and exclusive responsibility of the government.”

Almaráz, however, reiterated that government officials and the INRA team would remain in Camiri until the saneamiento process had been completed.

On April 9, landowners and their supporters blocked major interdepartmental highways between the city of Santa Cruz and Camiri, between Camiri and the southern departments of Chuquisaqa and Tarija, as well as all entrances into Alto Parapetí. Although the landowners originally declared the blockades would be lifted after 24 hours, they continued until April 18 when Almaráz finally left the region.

Both sides on the conflict mobilized their supporters. The APG issued a statement declaring a state of emergency for the Guaraní Nation and convoking representatives from all 26 Guaraní Capitanías (districts):

“The Guaraní Nation will not renounce its social, political, economic and cultural rights to the recuperation and consolidation of its territory, natural resources and Indigenous Autonomy; thus, it declares a state of emergency and calls the 26 Captains and the social organizations allied with the Guaraní Nation and other sectors, to join the fight to defend the Guaraní Nation‚s historic demand of Territorial Reconstitution and liberation of enslaved families.”

On the other hand, the government has reported that at least several hundred members of the proto-fascist Unión Juvenil Crucenista traveled to Camiri to support the blockades.). The Union Juvenil Crucenista is a “youth” organization widely considered to be the violent arm of the Comité Cívico Pro-Santa Cruz, a powerful association of the elites in Santa Cruz.

A little over a week after their first attempt, they tried to enter Alto Parapetí again. At 4:45 PM on Sunday, April 13, Almaráz, Rojas, Changaray, INRA officials, and several dozen Guaraní, without police escort, tried to pass a blockade in the town of Cuevo again trying to reach the community of Itacuatía. According to Almaráz, in Cuevo, a crowd of several hundred landowners, townspeople and members of the Unión Juvenil Crucenista threw a hail of rocks at the convoy to repulse them. As the convoy tried to return to Camiri, landowners and their supporters ambushed them, partially blocking the road and firing guns. They prevented several trucks from passing. Those people unfortunate enough to be left behind were forced out of their trucks, threatened, and beaten with sticks and rocks.

According to the mayor of Cuevo, Sonia Guthrié, a supporter of the landowners’ blockade, the group of INRA vehicles “entered firing their guns in the air. Later, with violence and slingshots, they managed to get beyond the first blockade. But, then we organized ourselves and in the Matadero zone we were able to stop them. They ran off towards the woods.” She displayed two rifles and six other guns taken from a vehicle carrying Guaraníes as proof of the group’s hostile intent. Members of her retinue have made press statements claiming that Vice-minister Almaráz is trying to form armed guerilla groups in the Chaco in order to “train a FARC in the Cordillera.”

Almaráz rebuked this claim saying, “nobody from the Vice-ministry or INRA had guns. I don’t know what the Guaraní had, but I didn’t see any of them with guns.” In response to the version of events given by Mayor Guthrié, Almaráz pointed out that the vast majority of people injured in the incident were Guaraní or government employees. The Bolivian state information agency, ABI, published a list of 46 people injured in the incident by hospital in which they received treatment; 11 suffered “grave” injuries and 35 “light” injuries. Juan Carlos Rojas, national director of INRA, was listed as gravely injured.

The government also published a list of five people who have “disappeared.” Several people, including the APG’s lawyer, testified to having been captured, taken back to Cuevo, and tortured, at least one of whom was whipped and beaten in the town’s plaza. The crowd also looted and destroyed several government vehicles. According to the landowners, five of their supporters in Cuevo were lightly wounded.

The government temporarily has suspended saneamiento activities and recalled Almaráz to La Paz. By doing so, it hopes to diffuse tensions and allow an inter-institutional commission of human rights organizations, the press, and the religious community to enter the region in order to investigate rights abuses and open dialogue. Nevertheless, a negotiated, peaceful resolution to the conflict will be difficult to achieve.

Freeing Slaves or Grabbing Resources?
Both sides in the dispute over the saneamiento of Alto Parapetí have very different views of why the conflict is happening. The government claims that the saneamiento process and the creation of a TCO represents the way in which various Guaraní communities living in a system of semi-slavery can be freed and assured a sustainable rural livelihood. The landowners and their supporters maintain that the issue of slavery is a red herring invented by the MAS government and that the saneamiento is part of larger processes by which the government hopes in the future to gain control over local hydrocarbon resources and dissolve the municipalities in the region.

Numerous Bolivian and international human rights organizations have published reports on the existence of systems of semi-slavery on estates in the Chaco. Estimates vary, but at least 600 Guaraní families live in such conditions in the departments of Santa Cruz, Chuquisaca and Tarija. These families have no land of their own and live in communities located on the estates of their masters. In the documentary “Quiero ser libre, sin dueño” (“I want to be free, without a master”), produced by the Bolivian Ombudsman’s office and the Ministry of Justice, dozens of Guaraníes give dramatic testimony to conditions on estates in Chuquisaca. Although treatment varies, interviewees testify to working for their masters over 12 hours a day for between ten cents to two dollars a day (far below what they legally should receive); sometimes workers receive no pay at all, only second-hand clothes and food. Debt slavery is common, where debts supposedly incurred by the Guaraní to their masters (sometimes passed down from their parents) effectively negate their pay. Child labor and corporal punishment are widespread.

Local Guaraní leaders express their frustration that they have nowhere to turn. Local authorities are either landowners or under the landowners’ influence, and previous governments turned a deaf ear to their plight. According to the Fidel Cejas, captain of Alto Parapetí, “In all of the district of Alto Parapetí nobody treats our brothers well and it’s sad to think about the abuse: psychological, physical, even the rape of the daughters of our brothers, and assassinations as well. Complaints have been made, but the authorities don’t carry out justice when such complaints are made.”

For many Guaraní interviewed in the documentary, a community’s access to its own land to cultivate represents the path to freedom, dignity, and the recuperation of culture and language. In the past, the Centro de Investigación y Promoción de Campesinado (Center for the Research and Promotion of Peasants, or CIPCA) and Catholic organizations have liberated several Guaraní communities in servitude by given them land purchased from landowners. Government and NGOs hope saneamiento will solve the problem.

The most vocal support for the landowners in Alto Parapetí has come from agricultural and cattle producers’ associations and local Cordillera politicians. They have also received full support from prominent figures in Santa Cruz. Given the sensitivity of the semi-slavery issue, these powerful politicians’ willingness to back the landowners indicates the extent to which the Cruceña landed elite occupies or influences the institutional spaces of power in Santa Cruz.

The Comité Cívico Pro-Santa Cruz, the strongest non-governmental political organization in Santa Cruz, has come out strongly behind the landowners in Alto Parapetí. Branko Marinkovic, president of the Comité, stated in reference to the events of April 13, “In no way do we accept this kind of violence, we ask the president to call back his functionaries because they will not conduct saneamiento with violence and the organization of paramilitary groups to make Bolivians fight each other.” Although different groups have played the deciding role in the Comité at different times, Gisela Lopéz, a journalist and former editor who covered land issues at El Deber, Santa Cruz’ paper of record, explains that:

“The Comité Cívico Pro-Santa Cruz has a long history of real civil struggles of the region and for the region, but in the last 20 years, it has been ‘taken over’ by the cruceño power elites, groups that have controlled the principle institutions in Santa Cruz (telephone, electricity, and water cooperatives, among others). And, now, the Comité Pro-Santa Cruz is lead by a huge landowner (Marinkovic) who utilizes the Comité for the defense of his particular interests and has been chosen to defend the landed elite from the current government of Evo Morales.”

Marinkovic is not only a major landowner in Santa Cruz, he also owns one of Bolivia’s biggest cooking oil companies.

Rubén Costas, the prefect (or governor) of Santa Cruz, also has supported the struggle of landowners in Alto Parapetí. Costas is one of the leading opponents of the Morales government and previously served as president of the Comité Civico. He counts on the political support of landowners and is considered to be close to Marcelino Apurani, the far-right sub-prefect of Cordillera province. According to reports by Bolpress, Apurani played a divisive role in a February meeting between INRA and landowners, where he attempted to sabotage dialogue and push landowners in a radical direction against saneamiento.

The landowners and their allies have presented their resistance to saneamiento as a fight to defend their land and to maintain Departmental control over hydrocarbon resources. They have seemingly successfully portrayed the conflict in the media as another struggle of the people of Santa Cruz against the impositions of the Morales government. They claim that if INRA creates a TCO for the Guaraní in Alto Parapetí, it will set the conditions for the Guaraní to later create an autonomous indigenous territory if the new Bolivian constitution passes its referendum vote. If these things come to pass, they argue that the Department or the municipality “lose control” over the oil and gas resources in the TCO and that the municipalities in Alto Parapetí would dissolve. These concerns are most succinctly put in the document “Cordillera de Pie”:

“WE WILL NOT ALLOW, under any circumstances, actions or activities of agrarian reversion, expropriation, reorganization or the creation of new community lands of origin supported in the illegal law 3545 and its regulations, that attempt to take control of the petroleum, aquifers and gas reserves of our department, cut and destroy municipal jurisdictions and confiscate individual and collective productive private properties.”

Government officials have responded that the creation of a TCO would have no effect on the amount of money the municipalities would receive from hydrocarbons. Subsoil resources pertain to the State, so the taxes on oil and gas exploitation that are redistributed to municipalities (such tax money also goes to universities, departments, and the national social security system) would not be changed.

Regarding the issue of servitude, the landowners and many of their allies claim there are no captive communities in Alto Parapetí and that such claims are merely stories invented by the MAS government to legitimize their hidden agendas.

Another landowner demand is that the saneamiento be halted until after May 4, the day of the vote on the controversial Santa Cruz “Autonomy Statutes.” Although in a July 2, 2005 referendum a majority of Santa Cruz’s residents voted in favor of regional autonomy, no legal framework exists for establishing what regional autonomy means or how it should be established. Nevertheless, a set of “Autonomy Statutes” were written up by a group of “legislators” appointed by the Departmental Prefect with the strong backing of the Comité Civico and agro-business associations. The Departmental Electoral Court in Santa Cruz set May 4 as the date when the statutes will go to referendum. The National Electoral Court, Bolivia’s highest decision-making body on such matters, ruled the referendum outside the law and ordered the departmental court to cease and desist its actions. The Departmental Electoral Court, however, has refused to comply.

Article 102, one of the articles relating to land policy in the Autonomy Statutes, states that:

“Property rights over land, the regulation of rights, the distribution, redistribution and administration of lands in the province of Santa Cruz are the responsibility of the Provincial Government and will be regulated through a Provincial Law by the Provincial Legislative Assembly.”

The authority to carry out saneamiento would thus be transferred from the central government to the departmental government and, by extension, into the hands of the landed elite. While it is doubtful that the government of Evo Morales will recognize the Autonomy Statutes’ legality, it is easy to understand why the large landowners of Alto Parapetí would seek to postpone saneamiento until after May 4. Effectively, the landowners may have won on this front. As this article goes to press, one week remains before the referendum and it appears unlikely that the government will restart saneamiento beforehand.

Ronald Larsen: Gringo Instigator of the Landowners‚ Uprising?
One of the more bizarre aspects of the conflict is the controversy surrounding Ronald Larsen, the landowner of US citizenship who reportedly sequestered Almaráz and others at gunpoint on February 29. According to documents released by government sources, Larsen’s story goes back to 1968, when, after fighting in the Vietnam War, he came to Bolivia where he has lived since without residency on a tourist visa. His son, Duston Larsen, who was captured on Bolivian TV leading the group that violently prevented INRA from passing Lagunillas on April 4, was chosen to be “Mister Bolivia” in 2004. Duston also appeared as himself in the popular Bolivian comedy “Quién Mató a la Llamita Blanca.”

The Larsens have been among the leaders of the resistance to saneamiento in Alto Parapetí. During the Banzer dictatorship of the 1970s, Ronald Larsen began consolidating properties in Santa Cruz, eventually becoming one of Santa Cruz’s biggest landholders. He and his family hold at least 57,145 hectares of land in Santa Cruz although discrepancies between records held by INRA and the Agrarian Superintendent may mean he own an additional 10,000 hectares. In Alto Parapetí the Larsen family holds at least 15,777 hectares of land in five different properties. According to Bolpress, Larsen also has strong links to the right wing in Santa Cruz, having wined-and-dined with Rubén Costas and Branko Marinkovic among others on his estate in the Cordillera.

Minister of Rural Development Susana Rivero claimed on Bolivian state TV that in preliminary interviews with INRA Larsen admitted that a Guaraní community lives on his property and performs services for him, apparently not knowing that such a labor relation means that this community is in “captivity” according to Bolivian law.

More Conflict on the Horizon
Larsen aside, the conflictive situation in Alto Parapetí has highlighted a disturbing trend that is becoming increasingly common in Santa Cruz: the willingness of the landed elite to use violence to halt land reform, and the central government’s inability to protect their supporters in the indigenous community as well as their own employees from such violence.

Thus far, the saneamiento has gone nowhere. Given the state’s weakness in Santa Cruz and the level of resistance put up by landowners over the past months, the Morales government will face an uphill battle if it again tries to carry out its land reform agenda in Alto Parapetí. Making matters worse, the May 4 referendum on the “Autonomy Statutes” will likely pass (although with high abstention rates; its opponents are boycotting the vote). This will give landowners additional rhetorical ammunition, even though the central government will not recognize its legality.

The government may be banking on the Inter-institutional Commission and a different Parliamentary commission to release reports verifying systems of servitude in Alto Parapetí. A clear, unequivocal statement from the commissions confirming the existence of captive communities might give the government the legitimacy to use force to carry out the saneamiento. Given the large landowners‚ trenchant resistance to losing their way of life and privilege, it seems unlikely that any accord that does justice to the Guaraní community will be reached through dialogue. More violent conflict may be on the horizon.

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Alexander van Schaick is currently a Fulbright Scholar in Bolivia. Until recently he also was an organizer for the IWW in New York City.

This story first appeared April 28, with footnotes, on Upside Down World.

See related story, this issue:

POLARIZING BOLIVIA
Santa Cruz Votes for Autonomy
by Ben Dangl, Upside Down World
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From our daily report:

Bolivia polarized on eve of autonomy vote
WW4 Report, May 4, 2008
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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, June 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE LANDOWNERS’ REBELLION