Fighting for justice in Guatemala
Two Ixil girls look at a banner with the faces of the victims of the Ixil genocide in the community of Chajul, Quiché, Guatemala in May, 2022. Photo: Cristina Chiquin.
Interview • Dawn Marie Paley • September 20, 2023 • Leer en castellano
Jovita Tzul is a Maya Kich'e woman from Totonicapán, Guatemala, who works as a lawyer in one of the most difficult contexts in the hemisphere. "As we like to say, we are not Mayan lawyers," Tzul said. "We are Mayans who are lawyers too."
It is from inside the courtroom that she supports land defenders, human rights activists, and victims and survivors of serious rights violations during the internal armed conflict.
Tzul has participated in some of the country's most high-profile cases, including the Diario Militar (Military Diary) case, as well as in less publicized cases supporting individuals and communities—most of them Mayan—who face criminalization for sustaining life in their ancestral territories.
Her work connects two periods in Guatemala: the period of the internal armed conflict, and that which followed the signing of the Peace Accords in the mid-1990s.
"We know that those 36 years of war sparked a continuum of violence that continues to be at the root of acts of criminalization, violence and disappearance today," Tzul told me in an interview from her office in Guatemala City. "We support the struggle for justice for the victims, as well as in defense of people who are unjustly persecuted, and those who are criminalized for their activism in the present."
I spoke with Tzul by videoconference in early September, and the result is a two-part interview. This is the first part of the interview, which has been translated and edited for clarity and length.
Dawn Marie Paley: I'd like to start with the Diario Militar case, on which you work as an attorney. What is the Diario Militar, and what is this case about?
Jovita Tzul: The Diario Militar case marks a key point in understanding the policy of enforced disappearance in Guatemala, and beyond: enforced disappearance was a strategy applied in various countries including Argentina, Chile, and Colombia.
The Diario Militar case deals with a document that is just that, a military diary. It is a collection of a series of records created by Guatemalan Army personnel who had formed what we call a clandestine structure, which was set up to carry out acts of enforced disappearance, torture, sexual violence and executions.
In Guatemala there are more than 45,000 people who are disappeared, of them approximately 190 are registered in the Diario Militar. When this document was made public around 1999, the demands of the families [of the victims] became even stronger. The documents show the date of detention, the place of detention, the place where the person was initially transferred and where they were sent after their detention.
All of this was carried out in a clandestine manner. Although they publicly declared that they had not detained anyone, in reality they had detained people in secret. That is what is at issue in the military diary case.
Our compañeras in Argentina, in Uruguay, and in Chile have spoken of the patterns used to detain a person and subject them to torture, with the goal of getting information to allow them to continue with further clandestine detentions. All of this is evidenced in the case of the military diary.
DMP: Who are the accused in this case?
JT: There are very high commanders, including people who in the post-war period held positions as Ministers of Defense and Ministers of the Interior.
Arrest warrants were initially issued for 15 people for enforced disappearance, crimes against humanity, murder and attempted murder. Attempted murder because there are survivors, people who are able to identify the perpetrators of their detention and torture, and who later managed to regain their freedom.
I tried to show the judge how in the case of the Diario Militar there were patterns of action. I represent one of the surviving victims, who was taken away when she was eight years old. She tells of the horrors she and her mother had to live through, how they used her so that her mother would provide information. The use of women's bodies in [clandestine detention] centers was a key strategy that is also being exposed in this case.
Part of the context of the case is that the people who are now on trial still hold a lot of political, economic and military power. During the intermediate stage of the hearings, there were threats, and the legal teams of the victims were under surveillance.
These were risky situations for the judge, the prosecutors, the victims and the victims' legal teams. Even so, on May 4, 5 and 6 [of 2022], Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez decided to send ten of the accused men to oral and public trial. Five of them are still pending.
Later, Judge Gálvez had to resign because of threats and legal actions filed against him after he sent the accused to trial. Now, we have a judge who does not understand the case.
In addition, in May of last year, Mr. Toribio Acevedo Ramirez was sent to trial. He was a civilian who participated in these actions, a member of the President’s General Staff. According to survivors, he was the most vicious torturer of all.
More recently he has been head of security for large companies that have attacked communities, as in the case of Cementos Progreso. Acevedo Ramirez was head of security for the cement company Cementos Progreso.
His hearing was really intense. Since he was called to testify, the threats have increased even more. He was released on November 28th of last year, he was the first one to be released and put under house arrest. It was one of the first resolutions issued after Judge Miguel Ángel Galvez left.
We appealed, and the court ruled in our favor. Acevedo Ramírez had to return to pre-trial detention. He filed a writ of protection before the Supreme Court of Justice and in 24 hours it was granted. Normally it takes, I don't know, two months to resolve a writ of protection, but he was able to do it in 24 hours. That gives us a sense of his power.
Now we are waiting for the court's ruling. That’s why the process is currently at a standstill. They are seeking to generate impunity. That is the status of the Diario Militar case right now.
DMP: What you are describing is a very clear portrait of what is often talked about in the abstract, the collapse and the corruption of the justice system in Guatemala. What is it like to be a lawyer fighting for justice in a system where many colleagues are having to resign or leave the country?
JT: I think there are two aspects of how we interact with the justice system that put us at risk. On the one hand, we continue to seek justice for crimes committed during the armed conflict. On the other, we are involved in the defense of criminalized people who are challenging the status quo in this country.
Together with another colleague, I represent Prosecutor Orlando Salvador López, who brought Efraín Rios Montt to trial [for genocide]. The persecution he is currently facing for his work as a prosecutor is clear.
Fortunately we managed to have him undergo trial in freedom. We went to a hearing in which the Public Prosecutor's Office wanted him to go to jail. The Public Prosecutor's Office presented a series of surveillance photographs that had been taken of him and of us.
Orlando's case makes us feel vulnerable… We took the position of: 'well, let them follow me, let them listen in, I am not doing anything illegal.' But of course this kind of thing has nothing to do with legality.
DMP: On August 28 the lawyer Claudia Gónzalez, who also defends prosecutors and others active in the justice system, was arrested, increasing the climate of fear. How do you continue working in this context?
JT: Our position is to keep going. The system is in place and it has its rules, and no matter how arbitrary they are, there are rules that cannot be changed. That is why we can continue to hope for a whisper of legality.
The intended goal of all these attacks on judicial independence, the attacks on justice, judges, prosecutors and lawyers is to generate impunity in all these cases.
I represent mostly women, and I used to tell them 'look, I don't want to be discouraging, but in this scenario I don't know when your case will move forward'.
And they would answer: 'We waited 40 years to be able to get to court, and we made it. If we have to wait, we keep waiting.' They continue to hope, and if they, who are the direct victims, maintain hope, then it is up to us to keep that flame lit.
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Read part two of our interview with Jovita Tzul, a Maya Kich'e woman from Totonicapán who works as a lawyer in some of Guatemala’s most high profile human rights cases.
