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The Chris Hedges Report
'The Silent Holocaust' — The Israeli and CIA Sponsored Guatemalan Genocide (w/ Jennifer Harbury) | The Chris Hedges Report
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- [00:10]
Chris Hedges
When I arrived in Guatemala in 1983 to cover the wars in Central America, which I would do for the next five years, the regime of General Efrain Rios Montt was carrying out a scorched earth campaign, especially in the highlands of Kiche Weiwe Tenango and in Baja Virapaz. The campaign was modeled on the kill anything that moves tactics employed by the United States during the Vietnam War, an effort to eradicate and control the civilian population in areas dominated by the insurgents who until 1983 were beating back the Guatemalan army. The Guatemalan military savagely carried out massacre after massacre in the highlands against indigenous including including the wholesale murder of women, children and the elderly, and razed some 600 villages and towns. The number of disappearances and killings averaged 3,000 per month. President Jimmy Carter had cut most military aid to Guatemala in 1977. Israel, however, filled the void. It equipped the Guatemalan military with Israeli manufactured Galil automatic rifles and and Uzi submachine guns. Israeli advisors, estimated to be between 150 and 200, provided surveillance and interrogation training to police and military units. They assisted Rios Mon in carrying out the 1982 coup that brought him to power. They helped plan Guatemalan military sweeps that resemble their own erasure of Palestinian villages and massacres carried out in 1947 1948. Mott was convicted in a Guatemalan court in 2014 for genocide and crimes against humanity, specifically relating to a series of massacres against the indigenous population of the K' iche region between March 1982 and August 1983 that resulted in 1,771 deaths and the forced displacement of 29,000 people. The conviction, however, was later overturned. General Hector Lopez Fuentes, Rios Montt's chief of staff, admitted at the time that Israel is our principal supplier of weapons and the number one friend of Guatemala in the world. Guatemalan military commanders not surprisingly referred to the genocide as the palestinization of the indigenous Mayan population. Joining me to discuss the links between the genocide in Gaza and and the genocide in Guatemala is Jennifer Harbury, an attorney who did human rights work in Guatemala in 1985 and 1986. She exposed the complicity of the CIA in human rights abuses in Guatemala, complicity she uncovered while seeking to discover the fate of her husband, a Mayan rebel leader who was disappeared in March 1992 by the Guatemalan military and murdered. Harbury is the author of Of Bridge to Life, Stories of the Guatemala, Compaeros and Compaeras and Searching for A Story of Love War and the CIA in Guatemala and truth torture and the American way. So let's talk about the parallels between the genocide that took place in Guatemala and the genocide that's taking place in Gaza. Both, of course, are directed against indigenous populations. But I know that you've seen parallels. Perhaps you can explain what they are.
- [03:46]
Jennifer Harbury
There are very obvious parallels. Right. Both, as you've said, involve genocide against indigenous. The indigenous population, whether in Guatemala or in Palestine. In both situations, before Zionists arrived in Palestine, for example, and Guatemala, even with the arrival of the conquistadors, the populations were in the great majority. The indigenous people in Guatemala, that was the Mayans, and in Palestine, the Palestinians. In both cases, in order to make room and for outsiders to arrive and take over the whole country and to take over all of the minerals, the oil, the fruit, the sources of commerce, et cetera, et cetera, the goal was to basically displace and destroy the indigenous populations. That really reached a crescendo during the 1980s, as you were just saying, when the government of Guatemala ship, shocked by the popularity of a number of reform efforts, launched a military campaign of eradication up in the Mayan highlands, also of labor unions, also of church efforts, etc. Etc. But the obliteration of the Mayan population for commercial reasons, for political reasons, and because of racism as well, and because they wanted to take the country completely away. Palestine, that's exactly what we see happening now with Gaza. Not only are there two campaigns of genocide which involve the complete obliteration of the majority population, which of course is indigenous in both countries, but both Guatemala, the United States, the Guatemalan government, and also the government of Israel were willing to use any methods of barbarity, necessary daily acts of torture, terror, unjust imprisonment, cruelty, destruction of the, you know, any, any hope for a fair trial or, or reasonable liberty from unjust detention or taking away your land, whatever. They were willing to go down to the very last bit to make sure that everything stayed the way they wanted it to be. And as we've discussed before, I see huge similarities to the way they're dealing with this stage of the. The war in Gaza, the destruction of Gaza, which is in Guatemala, they were called the development polls, Polos de Desaroyo or model villages, which at the time were very obviously just about identical to the strategic hamlets that we saw in, in Vietnam, where all of the survivors were sort of rounded up. And if they wanted any food, any shelter, any safety of any kind, they couldn't look to the rest of the world. They were completely locked in they had to look only to the Guatemalan military. That was, that was, you know, holding their village hostage, basic basically, or holding them completely defenseless and with no other sources of or means of survival. That's exactly what I'm looking at right now. You know, much more than I do on that. But that's exactly what concerns me now about the fact that the boat with Gret Thunberg on it trying to bring supplies in because the Palestinians are absolutely at a state of starvation thanks to the Zionist government and the United States complicity. They were like not allowed in. They were in fact dragged off their ship and imprisoned or arrested. But, but if people do want any source of food for their kids, they have to go. I think it's called the Gaza Humanitarian foundation or whatever that's providing some places where they're able to get some assistance. But.
- [07:55]
Chris Hedges
Well, let me just interrupt. It's only four distribution points. UN had 400. It's not even a pretense of providing adequate food supplies. It's exactly what happened in the highlands. Because one of the tactics that the Guatemalan military used was destroying crops. It became impossible for indigenous communities to feed themselves unless they went to these model villages which were just armed ringed concentration camps. They were controlled not only by the Guatemalan military, but as you remember, these civil defense units which I ran into in the highlands and they had their faces completely covered with hoods. So it's exactly the same that you want to eat, then you have to crawl and beg for a paltry bit of food from your killers.
- [08:47]
Jennifer Harbury
I hold a pistol. Yeah. I'd like to describe what I saw in Guatemala at the model villages. I'll just be very direct on this because I stayed quite a bit of time in different model villages up in the Ishkan area at the Mexican border. Those had been malarial swamps and church leaders had led landless peasants there and completely rebuilt the area so that it was blossoming. But they were cooperatives and that was of course communist. So the scorched earth campaign went right through there. One of the priests was, who was an American, was shot down in his airplane when he trying to bring in supplies with three other Americans. William woods was the priest. They had burned a church down in Char Bal, but I could still see the edges of the wood frames and so could everybody else. And what had been the town community center was where the army was now based. There was a football field. The army was well fed and had medical supplies. All medical supplies coming in for the actual villagers there were taken Away and kept by the army. Same for the food. And I checked that out with many people. Villagers did talk to me after a while, mostly women, because they could take me down to the river to bathe, and the soldiers couldn't go with us. And then they could tell me what was happening. And they would say, yeah, if anyone goes to work in the fields without, you know, with a little bit too much food, you can be shot for taking food to the guerrillas. If you have a pair of dry pants or an extra shirt because of the heavy rainfall, you could be shot for taking stuff to the guerrillas. If you come back too late, you can be shot for being out with the guerrillas. You have to be at the flagpole in the morning to salute the flag, and you better be fervent about it, or you can end up in the water pits, or you can be shot for being with the guerrillas. Or the same at night. You have to be there at sundown, and you better be there. They'll take a roll call, and if you're not, you can be shot for being with the guerrillas. So the third time I was there, a baby, maybe 8 months old, clearly I'm thinking at a ruptured appendix. He was screaming on every exhale and was just dying. And the mother was hysterical, and the other villagers were running back and forth trying to see what to do. It's like you couldn't listen to it without going crazy. So they said, the officers won't give us any medicine. They won't let us go. You have to have a permit to go to the center where there is medical care at the military base, but you have to have a written permit to go there or they'll shoot you. And I said, well, can we get a helicopter? And it's like, no way. You go ask the military guy if he'll get a helicopter. So I took the baby and went down, because they had just given me a big lecture on how they were there to be the brothers of the people and take care of them. And I thought I could cash in on that a little bit. And with this child screaming his last breaths of air, the guy basically said, you got to be kidding. You know, the milk, you know, the food and medicines here, those are for soldiers. No, we're not getting a helicopter anywhere, and we're not giving you a permit. And at that point, the child vomited blood and died. And that was life in the model villages. And so I don't want to think what's happening in Gaza, because it seems pretty clear to me that we're following the same pattern, same foot, same blueprint, basically.
- [12:19]
Chris Hedges
Before we get into the resistance, let's talk about the role of the Israelis. They were very important, as I highlighted in the introduction, in consolidating the power of Rios Mont A, you know, brutal dictatorship, but also in terms of directing many of the tactics that were used to crush, especially urban resistance. Can you talk about that?
- [12:41]
Jennifer Harbury
Yes. Carter had. President Carter had, as you mentioned, gotten a lot passed with the great work of Senator Leahy that we could not give military aid to any government that was systematically violating human rights. Well, Guatemala at that point was known as the worst human rights violator in the Western Hemisphere. So Carter had the decency to cut off military aid. As I found out later, there were all kinds of ways for military aid to still keep coming in directly from the US and which did you know, under the guise of professionalizing and educating the forces there or assisting humanitarian projects, but most directly through the CIA. They didn't have to say who they gave it to or what. And we had a system of paid informants, spies that were in military intelligence. We paid them. They tortured people and got the information and gave it to us. Torture by proxy. We were a marriage made in heaven. But they still wanted to get back a lot more money than they were getting for arms and tanks and everything else. They were starting to fall into hard times. And at that point, the United States government, without Carter's approval, I hope, went to Israel and got them to send the weapons, the rifles, the Atavas, some of the tanks, I believe that went directly to Guatemala to take care of the military. And that when I was there, the national weapon for the army was the Galil. And as the daughter of a Holocaust escapee, my dad got out of Holland just in time before the Nazis showed up when he was 11. It gives me real pain to hear that the national rifle, the Galil, how great that is. It's like, what shame. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. The most horrible thing, though, that they did, the Israelis, doubtless on request of the CIA and the US Government, because that's how our relationship works. That's also how our. How our relationship with Guatemala works in other things. But what they also did was they arrived in Guatemala and set up an intelligence system that annihilated the urban underground and was very important in carrying death squad activities for the next many decades everywhere. One of the most important things was to develop the computer system used by G2 or the intelligence division so that everybody was in the computer with all kinds of notations and everything else. And that's in the national palace or was in the tower there, I don't know where it is nowadays. But they also brought these really frightening techniques for keeping track of everybody in the city and other places so that they could be grabbed, tortured, and then other places would go down. There were many safe houses, for example, in the capital city where different groups of the guerilla movement were hiding out and doing what they could. And at that point, the intelligence division learned from the Israelis how they could monitor the electricity and water supply in every single house. And if it was a house that was probably meant or designed for a family of five and was using enough water and electricity for a family of 20, they would go in there and massacre everyone in there. They got a little bit more adept later on and would drag out one or two survivors and torture them to get to the other houses. So of course the urban underground got extremely closed. But even then it was nearly impossible, even with the high security measures that they took, to escape the annihilation by the G2. Another thing that the army did thanks to Mossad assistance was they would monitor all of the phone calls. So if telephone A called telephone B, it might be a two second thing where they would say, oh, sorry, wrong number. But if the computer showed that within 10 minutes telephone C would call telephone D, and those would be public phones, not houses, then those two would have a lengthy talk. So very shortly they'd have that area surrounded. And if A made another call to B and said, sorry, it's the wrong number, they would grab everybody at the next the C and D telephones and torture them. And of course they learned very early on if take people's children and they'll break really fast and give you more information. I know one witness in one of my cases had already lost his father, his mother, his wife, his sister and his younger sibling to being disappeared by the military in a sweep. He had two children left alone, not his wife. And when he was caught and severely tortured, he didn't talk for quite a while. But then they knocked down a church wall and dragged out his in laws with the two children and brought them back to the base where he was being tortured and said, okay, now we're tying the 2 year old to the back of a truck. Talk or we're going to drag him to death. So he talked, he said where a clinic was. And they came back and said, wow, you know, we wiped everybody out in the clinic. You're the most important prisoner we've ever had.
- [18:25]
Chris Hedges
I want to talk about armed resistance. So I knew one of the founders of Hamas, and then after he was assassinated, Dr. Abdelaziz Rantisi, with his son, I knew his successor, Nizarayan. I spent a lot of time with Hamas. I have big differences with Hamas. But nevertheless, it's always the oppressor who determines the nature of resistance to oppression. Guatemala, starting with the 1954 coup that overthrew Arbenz, really shut down any route towards peaceful democratic reform. And I think you would agree I don't like violence. Whoever wields it, I've been around a lot of it. But I think you would agree there really wasn't any other choice that those who sought to build an open society or fair society in Guatemala had.
- [19:23]
Jennifer Harbury
I agree with that. I'd give two examples because, you know, I'm from the Vietnam generation. I was very seriously pacifist until I reached Guatemala, and then I wasn't. But the indigenous movement for equal rights had become stronger and stronger in Guatemala. Since they're 85, they're 80% or 85% of the total population, and they've carefully safeguarded their own culture. They speak 32 of their own languages, use their own clothing, the weaving patterns identify their ethnic group, and so on and so forth. But they had been reasonably pacifist in organizing and demanding equal rights and land reform, and no more military excursions and no more massacres like Panzols and others, which seemed pretty reasonable. And they organized a federation called the Kuk, the Campesino Unity Commission. And in 1980, they marched peacefully to the capitol, went to the Spanish embassy since Spain has been the ones that came with the colonialists and met peacefully with the Spanish ambassador. But they were occupying the embassy. The ambassador wisely radioed out and said, everything's fine in here. There's nothing going on. Security forces, stay out. We're having a conversation. So instead, the security forces stormed the building and is now known the people were all gathered into one room, and then they opened fire with white phosphorus, and people burned to death. All 48 campesino indigenous leaders burned to death but one and everyone in the Spanish embassy that worked there burned to death. But the ambassador and those two people jumped through a plate glass window and were rushed, badly burned and injured, to a hospital. That night, someone from the US Embassy came and grabbed the ambassador and said, they're coming for you, and took off. But they left the Mayan indigenous leader in his bed. He was found dead and mutilated in a cornfield later, the ambassador is in Spain, still horribly traumatized. The other is when I first arrived in 1985, the group of women looking for the disappeared, very much like the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, were peacefully going every, every Friday to the National Plaza and screaming for their husbands and uncles and parents to be returned. And they had their kids with them. And it grew really big and really popular because the leadership, the founders, were extraordinary. And that of course got military anger against them going. The first person to be killed was just before Easter week. It was one of the few men who was one of the founders, Hector Gamas, and he was a unionist looking for his brother. And he was killed with a blowtorch, among other injuries. And when all the women came in, including the indigenous women, out of the mountains with their kids on their back, going through multiple military checkpoints that were extremely dangerous. But they all came to the funeral and put flowers there and gave moving speeches and then everyone went home and started calling each other. It was almost Easter Day and they were trying to just keep track of each other as best they could. We never will know how many indigenous women were detained after that. There were no phones, there was no way to reach them. But Rosario Godoy de Cuevas, her husband had been the president of the student council at the National University. And he and almost everyone else in the student council had vanished, together with numerous people who were in the unions. And she had a two year old son named Augustine. I think he wasn't quite two. She was one of the people that spoke the most eloquently at Hector's funeral. And just before Easter Sunday, she and her 19 year old brother and her child drove to the drugstore for medicine for the baby who was sick. They found them hours later at the base of a shallow hill, all three with broken necks. And everyone in the army, everyone in the government, and also everyone in the US Embassy said it was a tragic car crash. Nothing else except the women from the gam, like Ninette, for example. They went into the morgue and they weren't allowed in until intelligence had left. But they went in and they saw bite marks and cigarette burns all over Rosario's breasts and her clothing. Her pants and underwear were covered in blood. An elderly nun then told us about going to the funeral for the three of them because she taught school with Rosario and was just freaked out about it. And she said Rosario and her brother were buried with their arms crossed like good Christians, but the baby was buried palms up like this. And she said, what's going on? Why didn't you cross the child's arms? And they said, the phone's ringing off the hook with death threats against the surviving young person in the family. Don't say anything. Just go look at the hands. So she went over and she turned the hands over and the child's fingernails had been pulled out. They pulled the baby's fingernails out in front of his mother so that the rest of the women in the group would understand. Look for your husband, we'll take your child. And I thought, no way they'll ever demonstrate again. I mean, who would even think of it? But more people than I've ever seen came out of the mountains after that, more with their children out of the hills, indigenous women, Latinos, people from the marketplace that were outraged. And they're still. They're still there, they're still fighting. So that's the one mistake the Guatemalan government and the CIA and everybody else also, also made. Always at that time period. If you push people too far, then nothing works for them, and they push people too far.
- [25:30]
Chris Hedges
In Guatemala, let's talk about the rebel movement, in particular, your relationship with it. I just. As a caveat, as someone who covered it as a reporter, it was extremely difficult for an outsider such as myself to make contact with any. I think there were four major rebel movements in Guatemala, unlike El Salvador, where we traveled with any of the groups of the FMLN almost weekly. That was not possible in Guatemala unless you went to Mexico and tried to set it up. But it took weeks, if not months, but you managed to get to at least once into. Were you in Atitlan? I can't remember.
- [26:12]
Jennifer Harbury
No, I know Tajmulko.
- [26:15]
Chris Hedges
Okay, I want you to talk a little bit about that and then talk about a little bit about your. Your husband.
- [26:23]
Jennifer Harbury
Okay. You want me to tell you what it was like up in the Frente? It was. It.
- [26:28]
Chris Hedges
I want you to. Yeah, I want you to talk about. Because not. Not many outsiders got got up there, as I remember. I mean, I may I.
- [26:37]
Jennifer Harbury
Not many got up there.
- [26:40]
Chris Hedges
And I think it took you quite a while.
- [26:42]
Jennifer Harbury
It took me a really long time. They knew me. Because if someone had been tortured and had black rings around their wrists and people knew they could go to my hotel room and we'd figure something out. I'd find some way to get to the Canadian embassy and out they go, no questions asked, I figured if they're in danger of torture or they've already been tortured, that's enough for me, and I didn't blab their secrets. And when I got back to the United States after two years down there. It was impossible to just not think about it anymore. And it was still called the silent holocaust because, as you know, it was impossible for journalists to really get stuff published. I had many people ask us for notes and everything and they'd get told, you know, no one's interested, story denied. But that's how I ended up getting up there after many years. I'd been working on Bridge of Courage, which is just short vignettes about different people I, I knew who I found out were in the guerilla movement and, and people would tell me their stories and one would just stay with me. And I started writing all those down, and those are in the book. But I wanted to interview women, indigenous combatants, not in some clinic in Mexico or Spain. I wanted to see what it was like up there in, in actual real time, you know, in action. So they thought about it for a really long time and then they said, okay, it's been quiet. Up where the radio is the VOS popular. Up in.
- [28:15]
Chris Hedges
This is the clandestine rebel radio station.
- [28:17]
Jennifer Harbury
Yeah, there'd been non stop combat for quite a while, but that had got combat going into that volcano. They decided it couldn't be worth it. Right.
- [28:26]
Chris Hedges
I just want to. As in El Salvador, the rebel radio station, which was called Radio Enzaremos, it drove the military crazy, as it did in Guatemala. They were constantly trying to search for it. I don't think they ever got it in Guatemala.
- [28:40]
Jennifer Harbury
Nope.
- [28:41]
Chris Hedges
And they didn't get it in El Salvador. In fact, the FMLN set up a fake radio station and this famous General Monterosa went up on his helicopter and gleefully loaded what he thought was all the radio equipment onto his helicopter, but it was a bomb and they all blew up and he was killed and. But we listened to it religiously in El Salvador, especially the radio dramas, which were hilarious, but these are important elements. Anyway, there's a digression, but Guatemala also.
- [29:12]
Jennifer Harbury
Had a radio stationary, public education stuff in there too, plus real news. So people did tune in and they bombed all over the place, but they stopped actually going up if they could avoid it with foot soldiers. So they said, you know, all right, it's quieter, you may be in a bombing, but you can go, we'll give you 30 days to interview people and then that's it, down you go. So I did get dumped off at the foot of the volcano at an agreed upon spot. And I remember, you know, it was like a very light pack and stuff, and I remember someone saying, okay, 10 minutes. Put on your black sweater. So I did. And then it was like five minutes, you know, take off your shoes. And then it's like two minutes. Lace your boots. And it's like. It's making me kind of nervous. But then it was like, we're here in a campesino that I would not for the world have thought twice of lugging bags of oranges. Like, pulled my car door open and said the code word, and I said mine back. And he hauled me right out of the car and took off into the bushes with me, pulled the rifle out and hauled me onto the trail, and we ran most of the night. We reunited with a group of four just straight up the volcano. And they were so professional, they knew exactly how to do it. It was all arranged. Needless to say, I don't exactly look like a villager from the San Marcos area, but they took me right straight up and they knew it was safer. They wouldn't have let me up. And so it was. They told me to get physically prepared, and I had done that. So it was an all night kind of trot. And I was pretty freaked out by the time we got there, but it was. It was stunning.
- [31:03]
Chris Hedges
Let me just interrupt you, Jennifer. I also had that experience of having to walk during the night and sleep during the day. It's because of the helicopters. So that's why oftentimes when I moved with rebel units in El Salvador, we walked at night.
- [31:19]
Jennifer Harbury
It just. There was no other way. We did, in fact, go right through a village and everybody was, you know, coming to talk to us. And I mean, it was friendly, but after a certain line, there were no more villages for a very long way. And I'm only comfortable talking about that village because it's been so long now. It's been 30 years, more than 30 years. But once I got there, where I just started going around meeting with different people. The commander of that, Luis Ismata was, who eventually became my husband. As you know, he was the commander of that whole region and was very busy, you know, going from, you know, post to post, checking in on everything. Came up, talked to me briefly, make sure. Make sure that I had what I needed, and then introduced me to the first person who became a very close friend. Emma and I started taking histories and that was like, I'd go spend time with the people, husking corn, and then I'd go spend time with the people at the cauldrons or chopping wood. And I tried to help chop wood and do what I could, too. Spent some Time with a physician. But, you know, just. I stopped and listened. But it was almost all indigenous. And you could. It was really striking at nightfall because everybody would come in from their duties. Not the post, of course, guard duty, had to stay out there. But they would all come in from their duties and they'd all sit around the campfire and they just loved each other. Right. I mean, that was, that's what kept everybody going. Everybody was indigenous brothers and sisters. There were ladinos that had come up, like a friend of mine that I mentioned to you earlier. I mean, if they couldn't stay in the city, up they went. Or they could go to Mexico, you know, it was their choice. Or go to the United States. But the great majority of the combatants were indigenous.
- [33:15]
Chris Hedges
I just, I just want to stop you. This was the. Was known as the ORPA. Yes, it was 90% indigenous. It was founded by the son of the. Guatemala's only Nobel Prize winning author.
- [33:29]
Jennifer Harbury
Yeah, and.
- [33:30]
Chris Hedges
And I just throw that out. Having spent so many years in Latin America. And I think that's a really key point about the ORPA is that they did not buy into the quote, unquote, foco theory peddled by Che Guevara, which was a myth. That's not how. You know, that's a small band of armed radicals that begin to carry out actions that is the nucleus of a revolution. They spent years and years organizing among indigenous communities to build a base. It was the completely. And the foco theory, of course, is what got Che killed in Bolivia. But they quite astutely realized that that didn't work. And that's why they were so powerful and that's why the genocidal campaign waged against them was primarily waged against their civilian support. Is that correct?
- [34:21]
Jennifer Harbury
Certainly. I mean, the scorched earth campaign was horrible and it was against their base of support. I mean, if you ever got caught with a can of soup, you shouldn't have, God help you. I'll get back to Everardo in a minute because his story is exactly that story of the seven years of organizing in secret in the son of the Nobel Prize winner and all of that. I don't know the full statistics of exactly how many in Louis Ichmata were indigenous. All I can say is there's definitely no Russian being spoken at the campfire. And I dare hear any Cuban accents either. It was Kachikel, Tsutuil, Kiche and mom that I heard the most. Everardo spoke mom, the leading official, but also other languages. And he spoke Spanish, spoken, understood Spanish. Most people had enough Spanish that they could go back and forth with each other because a sutuil person maybe couldn't talk to a mom person, right? So there had to be, there had to be a common denominator. What I really liked is the way the women combatants were treated. They were young and they had come up. They knew exactly what they were in the mountains for and why they were there and what they needed to do. They were disciplined, they knew everything they were doing. They could tell you what the doctrines were, etc. Etc. But then you talk to them just sort of in private, just hanging out, and it would be a very personal story. And you'd realize this person is really a very young woman, right? She'd be anxious about having a baby later or what her mother was doing. And those were some of the stories that ended up in Bridge of Courage. I saw a group of the women go out on an all woman mission in the middle of the night and there was no joking around, no one was talking personal stuff. They knew exactly what they were doing.
- [36:18]
Chris Hedges
I don't know if you did. In Guatemala we had comandantes in the rebel movement in El Salvador, women, Lydia Diaz.
- [36:25]
Jennifer Harbury
I don't think that happened. They were working and I'll get back to this later. They were working very hard to have high level indigenous leaders like my husband Everardo. But the fatality rate, let's just say, was extremely high.
- [36:38]
Chris Hedges
Right, let's just. You know, people are going to have to read your book, which I have here searching for Everardo. But eventually he comes to Mexico, you eventually get married, and then he's 17 years, which is amazing that he lasted that long as a senior Comandante. And he's eventually captured and it's a horrible story. Let's talk about that capture and what happened, because it's indicative of what happened to anybody who was picked up. In his case, it was probably worse actually. But people who were picked up who were part of the insurgency, as you.
- [37:26]
Jennifer Harbury
Said, he had survived 17 years in the mountains in combat conditions and had taken quite a few bullets and quite a bit of shrapnel. Which people would ask me later, what were the identifying scars? And it's like, well, let me make a list. He just by way of background, he was a campesino. He grew up starving on a plantation. He was indigenous. His first language was Mom. Gaspar. Ilom was Rodrigo Asturias. His father was Miguel Angel Asturias, the Nobel Prize winner. Gaspar wanted to form his own revolutionary group which eventually became orpa. And he wanted to make sure, he had a large number of of campesino and indigenous leadership and members, or it couldn't really be a valid revolution by his standards. Everardo had run away from the finca one day because he didn't like being treated like a donkey and found or came across this small encampment. Gaspar, realizing this young man has super intelligence, taught him to read and write, and gave him books. So they were like that forever. They were incredibly close. And Everardo stayed in the mountains. He refused to come down. Given how long he'd been up there, he could have come down and had an apartment and lived a little bit of an easier life, but he wouldn't do it. I mean, he knew exactly why he was up there fighting, and he stayed. On 3-12-92, he was captured alive by the Guatemalan army in a brief skirmish. By coincidence, that's the same day that at Santa Ana Berlin military base, all of the different military intelligence units had been called for a meeting to share information about what the Luis is mata frente, his frente were doing. He was captured the same day and flown directly over to the intelligence meeting. No one could see exactly what happened because it was such a quick clash. Everybody took cover. The person who was next to him trying to pull him to safety, was himself shot through the throat and woke up later. Planes were overhead, helicopters, but no one chased after them and they couldn't find Everardo. So there was all kinds of uproar. And the army said that they had found a body there at the Rio Iscakua river, where the compound where the conflict had taken place, and that they buried that person at Retulo Leo XX in the graveyard there and don't come looking for him. Meanwhile, they had all gotten together. Otto Perez Molina, former president of Guatemala, who wants to come back as another president presidential term. He was the head of intelligence. And they together all decided to place Everardo, given his tremendous intelligence treasure trove, into this secret intelligence program that only G2 had access to or knew about. It was for people like him who had special knowledge and were very valuable. They were tortured long term, with doctors standing by to make sure they could not be accidentally killed during the torture session. They wanted to hurt them long term enough that they broke completely and gave all their information. Father Pellisser did exactly that. You know, by the time he was released, all he could say is that, you know, the army were the brothers of the people and wonderful, except he was missing a lot of his teeth anyway. So Everardo was not killed in combat. He was sent directly to that meeting of all the intelligence divisions and then taken top secret after, you know, to a wing of Santa Ana Berlin, where he was immediately tortured. Several of the people from Orpah that were also prisoners saw him there. He was then taken to the capital to a place called the Commando Unit, which is right next to the Policia Militar Ambulante and where they've always said there were torture cells there. Well, there were. The Commando was the official but very secret Death Squad of G2. So he was tortured there for a very long time. And then I know he was taken back to San Marcos because the army wanted him to lead them up to the radio station and help them take it down. And what I'll do now is just tell you what the CIA files show, because after a whole lot of hunger strikes, I at least can tell you what happened.
- [42:20]
Chris Hedges
Yeah, let's just stop there. Just quickly. You staged a hunger strike in Guatemala City. Was it for 30 days on only water, is that right?
- [42:30]
Jennifer Harbury
The first one was in front of the Polytechnica, seven days water only. The second one was 32 days water only, with half a bottle of Pedialyte in the morning. And I stopped. It was to the death, but I stopped because the White House, after seeing the 60 Minutes bulletin with the CIA, right.
- [42:52]
Chris Hedges
They did a. They did a 60 Minutes did a program on your hunger strike.
- [42:55]
Jennifer Harbury
Yes. And at the very end they showed a bulletin that the CIA had sent to the embassy and also to the White House six days after he was captured. This was three years later, and everybody had said they had no information. But it says right there, we're informing you that Commander Everardo was captured alive on. On the 12th of March. It's dated the 18th of March 1992. He's lightly but not seriously wounded. And we're going tothey're going to fake his death in order to better take advantage of his intelligence without international uproar.
- [43:33]
Chris Hedges
And it's because of that hunger strike that you were able to obtain the information about what happened to Everardo, is that correct?
- [43:40]
Jennifer Harbury
Yes. I came back to D.C. and had to do one more hunger strike in D.C. but then there was an explosion of declassifications and I can tell you what I know happened to him because it's typical. The documents all confirm that that program for secret treatment of special prisoners existed. Other soldiers didn't know they were prisoners. They were dressed in uniforms like any other soldier. They had weapons but no bullets and they weren't allowed to talk to anybody else. And they were kept always and transported by always. Other members of the G2 and their family members were always very vulnerable. You escape, we kill your family. That was very effective. We know that Everardo was tortured at Santa Ana Berlin. We know that the commando death squad did take him back to the capital where he was tortured for longer. We know that then the people at the Santa Anna Berlin. I mean, the people at the San Marcos base wanted him to come there and be tortured so that he'd lead them up to the volcano, to the radio station. So he was very badly tortured there. That was Colonel Julio Roberto Alperez who led that torture session. He was one of several high level military intelligence officers who were also working for the CIA as paid informants. And he. Right during that time period when they were trying to go up into the volcanoes with Aarlo, he got $40,000 driven from the Capitol by a CIA agent way out to the remote army base where he was. The witnesses that I've talked to saw Bernardo strapped down, stripped of his clothes, raving. There was an unidentified gas tank next to the bed. He'd been injected with an unknown substance that had caused his entire body to swell tremendously, so that his face was very hard to recognize. But the witness was Everardo, one of Everardo's combatants. He knew him very well. His voice was hoarse. One arm and leg were heavily bandaged as if they'd ruptured. We know that he survived that session because he was seen a few days later in a regular soldier's uniform. And they were trying to make him explain a tape recording. The files also say they then set up a special unit to go up to the volcanoes and tried to drag him with him. But according to some of those reports, he dragged him into an ambush and some people got badly hurt in the military unit. And then he tried to escape and almost did. And the files start saying that guy is like a really smart Indian and like, but a terrible prisoner. So we have to take special precautions with him. That would have been 93 or spring of 93. He was still alive.
- [46:31]
Chris Hedges
So we're talking about that. They held him for what, about a year, maybe three.
- [46:36]
Jennifer Harbury
It's possible three years, the end of 93. 93. That would have been a year. A year and a half is when they gave up on him and San Marcos, you know, it just wasn't working. And then three lines of stories evolved, depending which one you find credible. The first one, people assume that because he was flown out of San Marcos with everybody really mad at him in an Intelligence helicopter that he's probably buried together with 2,000 other people at the San Las Cabanas military base, which is just a little outpost. There's nothing there but barbed wire and a couple of shocks. But the villagers say there's about 2,000 people buried there. So they assume he was taking their beaten to death and buried, but no proof. Maybe. Then another one assumes, because it was also very common, they took him farther down, put him into a thank you Israel, an Arava, and like all the other people who had been tortured long term or short term and needed to be disappeared, they threw him into the ocean. That's another version, but no proof. The third one, there is a witness. I don't know how credible, but a witness. And another person who claims he was there but later had a nervous breakdown and now can't talk, but that's that. He got sent back to the capitol to the commando death squad unit and was there and tortured for a very long time, still trying to break him. And he didn't break. I mean, he kept saying, yes, you know, there's all these arsenals and all these different places. And they'd go storming out there and find a rusty rifle or something. And he made up all these stories about where the guns were coming from. So they finally decided to kill him. It may have been late 93. It's possible even later, that they would have taken him down to Santa Lucia Comacs de Galpa. And again, even the witnesses that talked to me about that, it's like, Was it late 93? Might have been early 94, you know, somewhere in there, but. And that he was taken to a sugar cane field where they did a lot of executions, and that he was hacked into pieces so that he could never be identified, and that the pieces were scattered across the sugarcane field. And sugarcane is harvested by burning. They do that down where I live in Westlaco. And the. Obviously, it's a very useful place to disappear cadavers. And that place would have been a sugar cane field owned by a military sympathizer. So take your pick. I have a terrible feeling it was the last version, and I'd rather not think about that, but I think that's where he was.
- [49:30]
Chris Hedges
Let me ask, so what do we have from the, what, 30,000 Despadicidos people? We don't know what happened to them. Or maybe it's more. I don't know what figure, you know, you use.
- [49:43]
Jennifer Harbury
It's more than 200,000 either dead or disappeared. Okay, same result.
- [49:49]
Chris Hedges
Let's just close by the effect of that, the psychological effect, you endure it. But you know, many friends of mine from Guatemala and El Salvador endure it. They just, they don't know what happened.
- [50:03]
Jennifer Harbury
They don't know what happened. So in our minds that person is still out there screaming. You can hear them every night. A very close older woman friend of mine that was in the gun got up every night at four in the morning and started ironing her son's shirts. Twenty years had come and gone, but she still ironed her shirts. So it's recognized as the UN as one of the worst forms of psychological torture. I certainly have it pretty easy compared to my Guatemalan friends. My closest and first friend in Guatemala, Eva, had 17 people missing in her family and they didn't come back. She was 17 when I met her. The reason she wasn't disappeared or dead is because when she was 12, the army stormed the house and put her and her 80 year old grandmother and her 4 year old brother in prison for running a bomb factory. And while they were in there, a tank rolled up on the front lawn and blew the house off the block and everyone else disappeared. How they survive I don't know, but they do. They get up and they fight and they go look for people and they're in front of the national palace and they're just amazing. One woman was nine months pregnant and her husband had been from an area similar to my husband and she was stabbed through the belly at nine months. Got out of the hospital and came to the National Square where I was on my hunger strike and stood watching over me all day, every day in the heat. And it's like, where does that come from?
- [51:40]
Chris Hedges
I just want to say that the, you know, Israel does not allow any, that's one of my dogs, sorry. Israel does not allow any foreign press into Gaza because of course it's about not allowing. And the murderous campaign against Palestinian journalists, it's about erasure, it's about not only just denying the genocide, but erasing the actual physical evidence of the genocide. Just to close, that has also happened in Guatemala where they have exhumed these mass graves in an attempt to hide the, the, the atrocities that they committed.
- [52:26]
Jennifer Harbury
There are in the CIA files that were declassified after the three hunger strikes. There are several reports by the Minister of Defense giving an order to go through and check every single file you've got. There should be nothing left in the files that applies to the Bamaka case or any of these other cases that were part of the genocide. And also giving a general order to Wipe out all of the. Like, the water pits where people were held with water so deep they'd have to hang on to overhead bars to keep from drowning while they were waiting for their torture session. It's like fill us up with cement, the torture cells, you know, knock them down with bulldozers. You know, erase them. And the mass cemeteries were supposed to be bulldozed open, burned, and the ashes carried away. That has been really hard for some of us have gone to where we've heard that our loved one is buried. And you open up, open it up, and maybe there's, you know, maybe there's a tiny bit of fabric left or a little bit of ash, but that's it. Forever. I get it. That's my punishment, right? It's like I exposed the Guatemalan military to not be the glorious patriots, you know, saving the country from communism. It turned out they were lack paid lackeys of the CIA getting money, Right? And it's like my penalty is I don't get a body back. I got it, but doesn't mean I won't keep trying to. Great.
- [54:02]
Chris Hedges
Thanks, Jennifer. And I want to thank Diego, Victor, Sophia, Thomas, and Max, who produced the show. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com thanks, Chris.