Mock Tribunal Seeks to Focus Attention on Guatemala Abuses

It was a mock tribunal, a staged courtroom drama designed to bring justice to a world that has none.

But the tears the witnesses shed were real, as was the litany of horrors presented to the 150 people who gathered in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday to listen to tales of torture, murder and kidnaping that have become part of daily life in Guatemala.

There was Nineth de Garcia, telling of the day in 1984 her husband was kidnaped by military police and dragged off to a secret prison. He was a trade union activist the government accused of being a communist. He has not been seen since.

Son Arrested

And there was Margarita Garcia, whose son, Raul, was arrested by military police seven years ago while attending classes at a university. Like de Garcia’s husband, he has disappeared.

But recently, dozens of others victims have been found: shot, stabbed and mutilated. The recent upsurge in violence against civilians prompted some of Guatemala’s leading human rights activists to travel to Los Angeles last week to seek support for their efforts to end the bloodshed.

“We’re here to raise the consciousness of the American people to the pain and suffering being felt by the Guatemalan people,” de Garcia said during a break in the mock tribunal. “We’ve tried everything else, and nothing has worked.”

De Garcia is president of Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo, a human rights group she co-founded with four other women she met during the search for her husband. She said the women kept running into each other at morgues, prisons, churches and hospitals, so they decided to organize to streamline their efforts.

Today, the group has about 2,500 members, all of whom have had a relative killed, tortured, imprisoned or “disappeared.” The group was one of several represented at the mock tribunal, one of a series of political and cultural events sponsored by the Voices of Justice and Solidarity for Guatemala and the Guatemala Information Center in Los Angeles.

“We demand a stop to the oppression and a return of our civil and human rights,” said Marvin Perez, one of several speakers who said they had been kidnaped and beaten by the military police. Perez and others condemned Guatemala’s civilian president, Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, for doing little to halt the upsurge in violence and blasted the U.S. government for its “attitude of indifference” toward the plight of Guatemalans.

“We’ve been harassed and threated for the past five years, ever since they took my husband,” said de Garcia. “But even though we are worried about what will happen to us when we return home, we felt it was necessary to come here and let people know what is happening.”