Chris and Sara Theule-Lubienski Report on Guatemala
In Guatemala over Christmas break on a Witness For Peace
delegation, we just happened to run into Jennifer Harbury. It
wasn't a planned part of the trip. In fact, in view of WFP's mission
and non-alignment philosophy, we were asked not to have contact
with her, since she would be the first to admit that she was under
constant surveillance by agents of the Guatemalan military. Any
association with her could impugn WFP's standing in Guatemala
and could get some of the long-term volunteers (there on tourist
visas) kicked out for political activity.
Still, some of us wanted to speak with her. Jennifer Harbury
is an exciting character. She is a Texas attorney, educated at
tlarvard. She was working with Guatemalan refugees fleeing to
the U.S. in the mid-1980s when she decided to go down to Guatemala
to see for herself what was happening. She ended up getting quite
involved in the movement for social justice there and married
Efrain Bamaca, a rebel leader with the ECP (the Guerrilla Army
of the Poor).
After a short stay in the U.S., they returned to Guatemala
and rejoined the struggle. Bamaca disappeared. Harbury had a miscarriage.
Bamaca was presumed dead until an escapee reported seeing him
alive in a military torture camp. Harbury began her crusade to
find out what happened to her husband. After much frustration,
she launched a hunger strike in front of the Guatemalan National
Palace, during which time armed men in passing cars pointed shotguns
at her, Mike Wallace and "60 Minutes" interviewed her,
and the U.S. embassy continued in its insistence that it had no
knowledge of what had happened to her husband.
After 32 days, Harbury was persuaded to end the strike and
instead begin discussions with the U.S. government about what
it knew.
After another four months of frustration, she began a second
hunger strike -- in front of the White House. It was then that
Rep. Torricelli (NJ), from the House Intelligence Committee, disclosed
the fact that the U.S. government knew that her husband had been
taken alive, that he had been tortured and murdered in captivity,
and that this atrocity had been presided over by a Guatemalan
officer -- Colonel Alpirez --who was being paid by the CIA. (Alpirez
was also implicated in the murder of U.S. citizen Michael DeVine.)
When we saw Harbury, she was in Guatemala to lay the legal
basis for litigation to find and recover her husband's body --
something the military was opposing at every turn. While she was
there, on January 5 of this year, her lawyer's car was bombed
in Washington, D.C. Later, Guotemolon children: Sacrificed to
Corpotrte ProtiC someone opened fire with an automatic weapon
on her residence in Washington.
In another chance meeting on the street, next to the shelter
for street kids, we asked her about the recent attacks (perhaps
we should have picked a more discreet spot). Apparently, the news
of the attacks had been blown out of the headlines by the big
snowstorm in the U.S. Still, she saw the attacks as a definite
message from the Guatemalan military (not the CIA -- "the
CIA's not stupid") to silence her. But, after losing a husband
and a pregnancy, she felt that she didn't have anything else to
lose.
Her case illuminates the need for a more complete disclosure
of our government's activities and knowledge about the situation
in Guatemala and other parts of Latin America. In another instance,
Sister Diana Ortiz, an Ursuline nun from Texas, was raped and
tortured by the Guatemalan military (by men under the command
of CIA "asset" Gen. Gramajo Furthermore,Sister Ortiz
said that a North American, someone connected to the U.S. Embassy,
presided over her torture before she escaped from his custody.
We asked the embassy official in charge of human rights about
her allegations. Of course he denied any embassy involvement,
but U.S. embassy staff and the Guatemalan military have been documented
in a Campaign to discredit Ortiz (part of a bizarre lesbian love
affair, they claim).
How can Guatemalans have any hope for democracy if we are
financing the torture and murder of political opponents in their
country? How can we have a democracy if our government is covertly
supporting undemocratic policies - without our consent - and the
torture and mur der of U.S. citizens?
In addition to a few U.S. citizens (we also saw the blood
stains of Father Stan Rother of Oklahoma, killed by the military
in Santiago Atitlan), hundreds of thousands of Cuatemalans have
been tortured, disappeared, and killed. To what extent has our
government been complicit in this travesty? We do know that some
of the leading architects of the violence in Latin America - including
Guatemala's Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas -- have been trained
at the taxpayer funded "School of the Americas" in Fort
Benning, CA. As Jennifer Harbury searches for her husband's body,
we need to know to what extent agents of our government have been
directing this slaughter.
On the School of the Americas --
Call your congressional representative and ask him or her
to support HR 2652 or
Contact Fr. Roy Bourgeois at S.O.A. Watch, PO Box 3330, Columbus,
GA 31903 (706)682-5369.
On Disclosure of CIA activities in Guatemall --
Call Sen. Arlen Specter (Chair, Senate Intelligence Committee)
(202)224-4254
by Chris Lubienski
Call Anthony Lake (National Security Advisor) (202) 456-9481
