Trial in Spanish Embassy massacre begins in Guatemala

A trial opens this morning in Guatemala City against Pedro García Arredondo. The former police chief is accused of having ordered the massacre at the Spanish Embassy in 1980. Thirty-seven people, including Rigoberta Menchú's father, Vicente Menchú, died in a fire allegedly begun by the security forces.

Soldiers and police set fire to the embassy with the protesters inside, killing 37 people – most of them indigenous Mayans. Human rights groups called the attack one of the worst atrocities committed by the armed forces during the civil war, which lasted from 1960-1996. More than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during the war, according to the United Nations.

Spanish Consul Jaime Ruiz del Árbol also was killed in the embassy attack, along with Guatemala’s former Vice President Eduardo Cáceres and former Foreign Minister Adolfo Molina.

“We want them to give us the opportunity to close a chapter that’s been open for 34 years, because I’m completely convinced that if we don’t close the open wounds that thousands of Guatemalans still have, it will be difficult to create peace,” said Menchú, a plaintiff in the case.

The only person to survive the embassy fire and its aftermath was then-Ambassador Máximo Cajal, from Spain. An indigenous protester survived the fire, but was later kidnapped from the hospital and murdered. His body was dumped on the campus of the San Carlos University.

Cajal died last April, but his testimony in the case has been documented in order to present it at trial, Menchú said.

García is already serving a seventy-year sentence for enforced disappearance and crimes against humanity in the 1981 disappearance of Édgar Enrique Sáenz Calito.

Honestly, I haven't followed the details of the case but I don't know how they are going to convict the former police chief unless there's a paper trail, Protesters occupied the Embassy on January 30th. Instead of negotiating with the protesters, Guatemalan forces entered the Embassy. During the siege, a fire began which led to the thirty-seven deaths. Some claim that the protesters' molotov cocktails were ignited during the siege which led to the deaths but I'm not sure there's hard evidence for that scenario or for a different scenario in which the security forces were more directly involved in starting the fire.

The security forces on the scene do not seem to have made any effort to allow the protesters to escape the building but instead refused to allow the firemen to extinguish the blaze and to enter the building. This is where it appears that García comes into play. Knowing / believing that security forces were to blame is different from proving it.