The answer to “Who knows who started the fire…” at the Spanish Embassy

[On January 19], a national court sentenced the police officer in charge of the operation; his goal was to guarantee that no one leave the diplomatic headquarters alive.

By Rodrigo Veliz Nómada
Translated by: NISGUA

Original article in Spanish can be found here.

[In 1980] a campesino organization, the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC) and a group of students, the Robin García Student Front (FERG), took over the Spanish Embassy to call attention to the beginning of the massacres of entire communities in the highlands of Guatemala.

It was the time of military dictatorships, of guerrilla organizations, of mobilizations and massive marches, of political assassinations every day. These were the years of crisis, when groups – for good or bad – looked for change, while others sought to preserve the way things were through the use of terror. It was the last day of January 1980.

Neighbors and passerbys in zone 9 besieged the police and military, asking them why they were not lifting a finger to save the victims who were crying out. The faces of the police wearing civilian clothes and uniforms remained stone cold. The firefighters looked to break the blockade maintained by security forces. In the background, the cries came out of the top of the two-story building. Screams of agony. The occupants – campesinos, students, Spanish diplomats and other embassy staff – pleaded to be let out while they were being burned alive. For minutes, nobody was able to do anything. Some, out of a sense of helplessness. Others, because they were under direct orders not to do anything. The order was this: not even one person gets out alive.

For years, it was impossible to know who was responsible for the massacre. The intellectual authors backed the official truth provided by the dictatorship: the occupiers of the Spanish Embassy killed themselves in an act of protest. It had nothing to do with the State or its security forces, said the military. The most prestigious conservative historian, Jorge Luján Muñoz maintained for years that Gregorio Yujá Xona, the campesino who survived the burning, only to be killed one day later and left dead on the USAC campus, stated while in the hospital: “who knows who started the fire?” [Muñoz] expressed his position in books and during his testimony at the trial. With this, the truth about one of the biggest urban massacres in the history of Latin America was left in darkness.

The search for the 5 main pieces of evidence

The case opened in 2001 – almost 15 years ago – thanks to the diligent work of Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Peace Prize winner and daughter of campesino leader Vicente Menchú who died in the massacre. But her path remained blocked: the Guatemalan justice system would not allow for any advances.

It was only on Monday, January 19th, 2015, that an answer [to the question of who started the fire] came in the form of a verdict. The decision to burn the Embassy came from the highest command: then-president Romeo Lucas García, Minister of the Interior Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz, Director of the National Police Germán Chupina Barahona, and Pedro García Arredondo, Head of Command 6 of the National Police ordered that no one get out alive.

1. The occupation was to denounce massacres

At this time, the occupation of embassies was a well-known and effective strategy that was used to call national and international attention [to a particular cause]. In 1980, there were no social networks or telecommunications capable of quickly transmitting what was happening in communities in the western part of the country. If someone was killed, it was possible that nobody would know about it. Other embassy occupations supported by the same organizations were carried out successfully, such as the occupation of the Swiss and Brazilian embassies. In these cases, the results were the same: no one was killed. The take-over on January 31, 1980 was the exception.

The campesinos had been in meetings in the city for days working to get their allegations published. The current director of La Hora, Óscar Clemente Marroquín, testified to that fact during the trial. As then-director of the daily El Impacto, he met with the delegation from the Committee for Campesina Unity (CUC), but wasn’t able to publish anything because of censorship at the time. A visit to the Organization of American States (OAS) bore the same luck. Nobody wanted to hear about massacres of entire communities.

The only support they received was from urban organizations, and particularly from university students who made up the FERG. Students accompanied the campesinos on visits, they hosted them in the wings of the national university and in the end, they accompanied them in the occupation.

In fact, two days after the massacre, thousands of university students met at the Paraninfo University in the center of the city to hold a memorial for the victims. According to a witness who testified during the trial and corroborated by documents from the National Police Historic Archives, García Arredondo and his Command 6 encountered a group of students who were leaving the Paraninfo University and killed two of the student leaders.

2. A witness to the meeting where the decision was made

The meeting was held around mid-day in a special room at the National Palace. Present at the meeting were President Romeo Lucas García Castillo, his Interior Minister Donald Álvarez Ruiz (currently a fugitive), and the head of the National Police, Coronel Germán Chupina (who was arrested but died before going to trial). They had just found out about the occupation of the Spanish Embassy by campesinos and students, although they already knew that it was being planned. Now, they had to decide what to do about it. There had been other embassy occupations during the government of Lucas García , but now, with the victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1979 and the growing presence of campesino and guerrilla organizations in the highlands, the situation had changed. Hence, the forcefulness of the orders given to Chupina to be relayed to Arredondo: Get them out of there by any means!

That was what journalist Elías Barahona was referring to when he testified at the trial that finished [on January 19]. Barahona was a spy for the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), who little by little, had won the trust of Álvarez Ruiz, eventually becoming one of his closest collaborators. He was there when the murder of almost 40 people was decided. Lucas García’s order was quickly relayed via radio to García Arredondo, who together with his Command 6, was responsible for ending the occupation by “leaving no one alive,” according to the verdict emitted by the Court.

This evidence was close to being lost. Days after testifying, Elías Barahona died at 71 from an illness that had been affecting him for years.

3. The chain of command