dents, pro- ple stops ar nothing mbers of In June 68 people 75.
Natareno, had é ESA and n. no longer: called the chief hildren, example is ute Triarte they've killed Mendoya, teachers at. an Carlos, nanaged to the ing part in for the municipal Angel eare l c the sister and two lol tuc allalr chica. ine for these peoOn the morning of 14 July I was talking with minister Ruiz in his office when he was informed by phone that a police chief, one been. executed.
The minister flew into a rage and Vol Ine police, Manuél de Jesus. Valiente 'Manolo,' he said main Natareno. You know what you have to do."
Half an hour later about 40 hooded men armed with machine pistols arrived at the San Carlos university campus and began fir-. ing at the crowd of students who were getting off the buses to go Squadron® Death had claimed responsibility the Anticommunist Secret Army, on June 21 an ESA commando unit burst into the bf. fices of the National Workers Federation (Central Nacional de Trabajadores → CNT) which, is three blocks from the residential palace and alongside the headquarters of. the second corps of the national police In one room 35 leaders of the workers" sunions were holding. a meeting. The ESA force compelled the unionists atgunpoint to leave the bulding, ailes. Since ther nothing has beee destroyed the office heard of the 35 unionists, but it isn't difficult to guess their fate.
Intellectuals form persecuted group. In the month July alone 20 university teachers at San Carlos university were killed, most of them along their. wives. This was because the ESA struck when they were leaving home together to go to work.
Kecentty five priests
murdered, their sole crime being that of preaching the need for a land reform for the peasants.
-I've-made this brief summary of the massacre that is under way in my country so that the world may realise the size of the tragedy being suffered Guatemalan people. "This sanhunt, as far as I was able to %ascertain, is being carried out in" the framework of a "pacification - programme to eliminate com"munism".
The programme's inventors. were the president of republic, Lucas gang of generals, Anibal Guevara Rodriguez, Palomo, commander chief of the army and, of course, Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz, minister of the interior.
the ESA and police. Carter The eresen .care " WCIC pergovernment.
the Garcia and his -muster tole me. as well as He then the theory of TenSas the extreme right and They are the brains behind the Squadron of ea e ace e eve co. ding ordinators are finance minister, •Hugo Tullo Buscaro. colonels Hector Montalban and : Oscar Perucina, heads of-military intelligence and German Chupina superintendent of the national Wing 'pacification programme was suggested br the United States a short time before Tameceg his human rights policy. Its aim was to cut off all popular protest and power of the military government which had already been in control for 12 by years, thanks to electoral fraud •I learned of this plan in mid 19.78, when Ruiz called me to ask for some suggestions for a propaganda campaign that would serve to divert pople's attention Targe HUNC. murders which were already being openiy attributed to 'Elias. : think something that would explain so police school many deaths-without the blame falling on the government, the trained ficers forward his 'opposed and wnicn consists in at tributing killings and kidnapp of extreme left, thus making the Lucas Garcia government appear as a victim, and hence interested in finmeans carry out pacification.
In fact the 'struggle against the opposed extremisms' became trom that time the slogan used by the government both inside the couny ana tor international public opinion.
The governments of Israel, Chile and Argentina are also givlogistical, military and political support to the Guatemalan government. Chile Ruiz, the minister for the in1e9 ere he was decorated with: the Order of the Liberater decorated Pinochet minister returned from Chile en : thused by the school of Chilean carabineros and a little put-out by the fact that, whilè the Guatemalan army had 100 officers down there, undergoing training 'his' police had not even sent one.
.As a result he seconded 75 officers to Pinochet's so that they could b as well as the army of But that's not all: an almost equal number of police army officers Guatemala are presently in Argentina to learn interrogation techniques and the tactics of repression.