Banking on Violence?
By Barbara Rose Johnston
On July 7, 2006, Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz issued an international arrest order for two former Guatemalan military dictators, Efrain Rios Montt and Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, along with five others accused of genocide and other crimes against humanity during Guatemala's civil war.
His action follows an aborted effort to depose Rios Montt and others in Guatemala the previous week, and signals Spanish intent to proceed with the case filed by Guatemalan Nobel Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, whose father and 38 other people were killed during a government siege on the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in 1980. The warrant cites an array of actions and events including the Río Negro massacre, orders a freeze upon the financial assets of the accused, and has been lodged with Interpol and Europol making the warrants and financial freeze of assets effective throughout the world. Amazingly, this news of a renewed effort to prosecute parties responsible for genocide in Guatemala received scant mention in the Washington Post and no mention in the New York Times.
The lack of interest in reporting the news that a Spanish court had issued warrants for the arrest of three former Guatemalan heads of state who are charged with genocide is perhaps explained by the long historical friendship between the accused and the United States, as well as the fact that Guatemala is a very busy place these days.
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"In economic life there is extreme inequality and exploitation. Although colonialism no longer exists openly in the political and economic sphere, still it persists indirectly, and this should not be tolerated... In this respect you should remember that in economic life, we will have to guarantee the minimum requirements of life to one and all... There cannot be any sort of adjustment as far as this point is concerned. The minimum purchasing requirement must be guaranteed to all. Today these fundamental essentialities are not being guaranteed. Rather, people are being guided by deceptive economic ideas like outdated Marxism, which has proven ineffective in practical life and has not been successfully implemented in any corner of the world. Why do people still believe in such a theory, which has never been proved successful? The time has come for people to make a proper assessment of whether they are being misguided or not." |
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"Human beings have still not been able to form a human society, and have still not learned to move with the spirit of a pilgrim. Although many small groups, motivated by self-interest, work together in particular situations, not even a small fraction of their work is done with a broader social motive. By strict definition, shall we have to declare that each small family unit is a society in itself? If going ahead in mutual adjustment only out of narrow self-interest or momentary self-seeking is called society, then in such a society, no provision can be made for the disabled, the diseased or the helpless, because in most cases nobody can benefit from them in any way... in that case there always remains the possibility of some people getting isolated from the collective. All human beings must attach themselves to others by the common bond of love and march forward hand in hand; then only will I proclaim it a society." |