Impunity & The Murder of Monsignor Gerardi The brutal murder of Guate- malan Bishop Monsignor Juan Gerardi Conedera on April 26 was intended to send a message. Those who have brutal- ized the country for decades and have never had to answer for their crimes have made it clear that they will not tolerate any attempts to challenge the impunity that reigns in Guatemala. Monsignor Gerardi was assassi- nated outside his home just 48 hours after he led the public presentation of the final report of the Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI)-an historic effort led by the Catholic Church to help recon- struct Guatemala's dark and brutal past. The Church has been a fre- quent target of army violence-20 priests and thousands of catechists were killed during the 36-year civil war. But this is the first time a bishop has been killed-and Guatemala is supposedly at peace. The news of the murder had immediate repercussions, reviving the intense fear that Guatemalans know all too well. The self-censor- ship that dominated so much of Guatemalan public life, which had eased since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, immediately resurfaced. As the Guatemala City daily Prensa Libre noted, "Mon- signor Gerardi's murder shows that in just fractions of a second, the progress made over the past few years can go up in smoke." Monsignor Gerardi, an ardent champion of indigenous and human rights, was long a thorn in the side of the Guatemalan military. In the late 1970s, he was named bishop of Quich6, one of the areas most devas- tated by the army's scorched-earth campaigns. Monsignor Gerardi sur- vived an assassination attempt in 1980, and the army's relentless per- secution of the Church prompted him to close the diocese two years later. He was briefly forced into exile, and upon his return became a crucial actor in the country's long and arduous peace process. He was also the main impetus behind the REMHI project. The REMHI project is an unprecedented grassroots effort to document the atroci- ties committed during the war. Be- ginning in 1995, the organizers trained 600 promoters to gather the testimonies of the survivors of the war, the victims' relatives, and even the perpetrators of violence. The testimonies, along with an extensive analysis of the mechanisms of terror used by the Guatemalan state, were published in the 1,500-page report which Gerardi presented at the Metropolitan Cathedral. The report recounts 37,000 acts of violence against 55,000 victims-75% of whom were Mayan. The REMHI project was a direct affront to the wardens of impunity, and it was surely this threat that led to Monsignor Gerardi's death. The project's challenge lay in its meth- odology. The promoters-500 of whom were Mayan-traveled the Guatemalan countryside collecting testimonies in the native languages of the victims. By doing so, REMHI opened small political spaces at the local level in which those most affected by the violence could speak its name and challenge its perpetra- tors with the hopes of building a more just society. In this respect, REMHI was a radical project, remi- niscent of the literacy campaigns and Christian base communities of the past. Those projects, in which Gerardi was involved, were also bru- tally repressed. For Guatemalans, his murder has made it painfully clear that even in the 1990s, similar pro- jects will not be tolerated. In a very real sense, Monsignor Gerardi's death is the fruit of the impunity that has long reigned in Guatemala. For the underlying mes- sage of impunity is clear, both for the victims and the perpetrators: If there is no punishment, then there was, in effect, no crime. While some hold out hope that there may be convictions in some of the most heinous cases of human rights crimes in Guatemala, no significant convictions have occurred to date- nor are they likely to occur under present conditions. The Peace Accords establish no mechanism for bringing to justice the perpetra- tors of human rights crimes. The Truth Commission established by the Accords is toothless-it cannot name names, and its findings cannot be used in judicial proceedings. And while the National Reconciliation Law was not a blanket amnesty- individuals must apply for amnesty on a case-by-case basis-the possi- bility of convicting perpetrators of crimes that are not covered by the amnesty law (genocide, disappear- ances and torture) in the Guate- malan judicial system is minuscule. What better way to ensure impunity than to give the power to convict those guilty of such crimes to an ineffective and corrupt institution? The murder of Monsignor Ger- ardi marks a watershed for Guate- mala. The case must be fully and thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators and the intellectual authors must be apprehended and brought to justice for the country to move forward. If there is a white- wash-if Gerardi is portrayed as a victim of "common crime," as President Arzti has suggested, or the "lone assassin" theory prevails and the intellectual authors are not apprehended-then the reign of impunity will have triumphed.
