Augusto Pinochet in the hands of international justice

Electoral preludes

The legislative proposal for the national budget

A second autopsy in the Gerardi case

AUGUSTO PINOCHET IN THE HANDS OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

General Augusto Pinochet has been arrested by British authorities at the petition of the Spanish Judge Baltazar Garzón on charges of having committed crimes of lese humanité. There are sufficient reasons that Pinochet should submit to a trial: in the last analysis, he was responsible for forced disappearances, torture and assassinations of thousands of Chilean citizens. His dictatorship was bloody; the fundamental liberties of the Chilean people were abolished by the brutal military officer; opposition to progress and enlightenment together with fear took hold of public and private life, blocking the most elemental dissent or criticism of a regime that endowed a man with autocratic powers —Pinochet— for whom everything had to bow to his will. It was his will that was imposed —even within the context of the democratic transition— when he decided to name himself senator for life. This decision was the culmination of his exercise of power over Chilean society; with this action he wished to demonstrate to everyone —critics and sympathizers alike— that the only absolute power in Chile from 1973 to date, was he himself.

Pinochet not only struck down the fundamental liberties of the Chilean people, he installed a bloody regime and undermined the foundations of one of the most consolidated democracies in Latin America; he also flouted the institutions which arose once he tired of being lord and master of Chile and which fought fiercely to rebuild what the dictator had destroyed: respect for legality, renewal of citizen confidence and restoration of democratic values laid low by his dictatorship. Pinochet was an open enemy of democracy; he was not only in disagreement with its rules and values but he flagrantly violated them. He did not hesitate cynically to name himself senator for life, and in so doing he perverted one of the most basic functions of democracy: the senatorial function. A mortal enemy of democracy converted into senator —this is one of the most laughable, and at the same time, most dramatic paradoxes of the Chilean transition to democracy.

The champions of democracy in Chile had to accept —out of fear or political convenience— Pinochet’s rebuff. The dictator ended up, as always, getting what he wanted. Nevertheless, facing the international community, presuming upon all the attributions that he could, Pinochet continued —and continues— to be an assassin who continues, as well, to have pending accounts with international justice. These are the debts which now, with the help of international justice, will be laid to his account as a result of the initiative taken by Spanish justice. As with the Nazi assassins who are still being persecuted and brought to trial, criminals such as Pinochet will not succeed in avoiding or suffering the same fate. These examples, along with his activities in terrorism, torture and collective assassinations, violated fundamental human rights whose guarantee and protection are the responsibility not only of national societies, but also of the international community. In the specific case of Pinochet, to appeal to his assumption of the position as senator for life in order to declare immunity for himself is an aberration because his crimes are not pardonable.

It is still not clear how far the judicial proceedings against Pinochet will go. Although international law supports Judge Garzón’s initiative, for these proceedings to be successful, he will need the support of Spanish President José María Aznar, who surely will take into account, before making a decision, given the political implications of a decision which includes bringing Pinochet to trial. However this may be, an important step has been taken: the formerly untouchable dictator, whose designs were imposed upon the life of thousands of Chileans, was arrested by British authorities as a prelude to being brought to trial. If he evades international justice it will not be because he is free of guile —he is recognized internationally as a criminal— but because of political interests alien to the realm of law and justice.

On the other hand, the "Pinochet Case" is instructive for the Salvadoran experience. El Salvador, although it has not had a figure such as Pinochet during the last four decades, still has had its little dictators, apprentices to be dictator. And who are these? They are, stated without beating about the bush, the higher level officers of the military apparatus which during the decade of the 1970’s committed acts of repression against the popular organized movement and which during the decade of the 1980’s directed the war against the FMLN. These former "little tin dictators" must accept responsibility for forced disappearances, torture and assassinations the execution of which were inspired not only by the same anti-communist ideas proclaimed by Pinochet, but also arose out of their very own practice in the implementation and functioning of a repressive apparatus —the "carabineros"— at the service of the dictator.

In El Salvador, those responsible for crimes of lese humanité have not paid their debts with national or international justice for the atrocities they committed. There is even the risk that their names and their past activities might be forgotten even though they have not been tried and sentenced for their crimes. Salvadoran war criminals find support in the thesis of slandering in order to defend themselves from those who name their names, and by this act the accusers become the accused. Likewise, our war criminals do not become "deputies for life" or achieve positions of importance anything like it, but rather assume more modest roles, although these are not necessarily of lesser civil value: political analysis, radio commentators, university bureaucrats, sports leaders… So it is that they present themselves not as the mortal enemies of democracy which they once were, but as the principal mentors of democracy. And the worst of it all, they do not lack for those who praise them, and many of these who now praise these enemies of democracy were once persons who were politically persecuted by them.

Those who praise the criminals of war who have become converts to democracy do not wish to recognize that the best service that these people can give to the installation of democracy is to recognize their crimes and submit themselves to justice. Must we wait for international justice to oblige them to pay their debts for their criminal acts?

ELECTORAL PRELUDES

The electoral campaign is about to officially begin. Next November 7, the country will begin to witness the publicity competition which constitutes the final and definitive stage of an electoral process which began several months ago. One can, then, construct an hypothesis about what is visible on the horizon for this new pre-electoral period, as it relates to the experience of 1997. Will there be anything new, or, can we expect that in the upcoming electoral campaign, that the slogan "the more it changes the more it stays the same" will apply? What novelties will accompany the preparations that the political parties are implementing for the electoral competition?

From the beginning it was obvious that one of the characteristics of past elections will be maintained intact during this one, and that is polarization. The small parties did not succeed in configuring any of the alliances which had been projected in order for them to confront the two major parties in any significant way. This was easy to foresee. What could, indeed, have become a novelty was that the FMLN might have strengthened its possibilities or becoming a real option for change —one of the expectations which the FMLN triumph in 1997 brought to the fore. But what happened in the last few months seems, rather, to have signified a movement backwards more than an advance forward for the FMLN in its race to occupy the presidential seat.

If, at first, it was thought that the FMLN might become the strongest possibility for substituting ARENA in the executive office, that possibility now seems remote. The official party seems to be functioning well with its strategy of a young, moderate, reformist intellectual candidate who is not confrontative and who seeks solutions to the national problem. With much caution, ARENA has been attempting to deal with the difficulties that have been the fallout for choosing Mr. Francisco Flores as their presidential candidate. All of this, together with the lack of skill demonstrated by the FMLN leaders, has provided the governing party with the appearance of stability with which its adversary, doubtless, will have to deal during the campaign.

The optimism which flourished after the election of the mayors and deputies seems to have given the FMLN more confidence than it should have, given that the party in power was not just a run of the mill opponent. One has perhaps already taken note of the fact that ARENA would do all in its power to stay in office. And this is exactly what happened. But, the FMLN, on top of this —and paradoxically— has made this job easier for its rival in an extraordinary way. If, after 1997, the analysis was that the lack of advantage between ARENA and the FMLN had diminished, it now appears that the challenge which the FMLN confronts is the same or greater than the one it faced in the 1997 elections.

It has been mentioned, as well, that the best strategy the FMLN could follow in order to become a really dangerous rival contender with ARENA was to demonstrate that its work in the new posts to which they were elected in the Legislative Assembly and in the municipal governments was outstanding —or , at least not worthy. But this has not been the case. In the Legislative Assembly the FMLN has not made a systematic effort to consolidate its advantageous position as the opposition. In fact, far from having done this, its participation has been characterized as poor and ambiguous. In the municipalities —especially in the decisive case of the San Salvador mayor’s office— that left party has had to confront the fact that a good municipal administration is not built simply by taking the place of another administration —as anachronistic and conservative as the former administration might have been; nor can a good municipal administration be built even with the best of intentions to outshine the other.

So then, if it is a question of evaluating its governmental achievement or its talents for strategy, the FMLN will surely not pass muster. The principal left party, instead of strengthening itself, has weakened itself and with this situation obtaining, its position as it faces ARENA has become almost as uncertain as it was in 1997. Given this state of affairs, the instability of the alliance with the Social Christian Union (USC, for its initials in Spanish) turns out to be a little more than inconvenient. It is a known fact that the USC is not in agreement with the presidential formula which the FMLN finally decided upon. And although, ostensibly, the FMLN has not given much importance to the difficulties accompanying the formalization of the alliance and has decided to begin the campaign with or without the USC —what, in the final analysis, is left for them to do?—, it is clear that at this precise moment of uncertainty with regard to the coalition this is yet another point against the FMLN.

One might imagine, however, that the number of votes which the USC will bring to the alliance would not present a major cause for concern as one contemplates the possibility for the formalization of the alliance or not. But one might also imagine that the advantages which would accrue to the FMLN in such an alliance with a left-center party have less to do with the number of votes to be gained than with the possibilities of chalking up points for a moderate position or stance. Let us not forget that the greatest challenge confronting the electoral campaign itself is the huge majority of voters who are undecided because they have lost confidence in political parties —or because they never had confidence in them in the first place.

The political climate on the eve of the electoral campaign can be summed up in a definitive manner in the following way: as in March, 1997, there will be polarization and ARENA will begin from an advantageous position as compared with the FMLN; the presence of small, minority parties will be scant or minimal and not decisive; there exist few probabilities that one of the two principal political forces of the country will win in the first round, and this means that the competition will be close, especially if the FMLN carries out a good campaign and succeeds in consolidating its alliance with the USC. What might be new in the upcoming campaign is that, this time confrontation and belligerence will not win out over serious and pertinent proposals.

Something in which this campaign will coincide with the last campaign almost two years ago is in the similarity of what is offered by the two major parties. If, in the last campaign, the FMLN and ARENA coincided in sloganeering —superficial and pamphleteering as it was— during this campaign, they will coincide in a programmatic offering. At least something was won as a result of the beating the official party took in the last elections and as a result of the criticisms brought to bear against campaigns with no content and irrelevant to the real concerns of the population. It appears to be the case that, finally, propaganda will stop being a mere publicity strategy and provide more space for the presidential candidates to express their viewpoints with respect to the way in which the country’s problems should be dealt with.

Because —this is clearly the case— all are in agreement in pointing them out. As much the principal right-wing party as its principal left rival have mentioned the need to reactivate agriculture as the central priority of their potential governments. When Mr. Facundo Guardado, Secretary General of the FMLN and also its presidential candidate, was questioned about what points in common his party’s proposals had with ARENA’s proposals, affirmed that the difference lay "in the willingness to implement them", because the government party "has had eight years trying to do so."

And it has not done it: this is clearly evident. So then, a prudent position might be to observe the unfolding of the campaign and wait for the results of the elections, because the FMLN seems now to be at a disadvantage with regard to ARENA, although ARENA has knitted up its schisms in one way or another and, although its presidential formula appears convincing, the general lack of conformity with its achievements in the executive office continues to be latent and there is no guarantee that surprises such as occurred in the last elections might occur in next year’s March elections.

THE LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL FOR THE NATIONAL BUDGET

During the present decade the debate concerning the distribution of funds in the National Budget has become more and more frequent and intense. Unfortunately, this discussion has still not been translated into significant changes in content which might favor a greater investment in areas requiring social spending. During the last three decades, the National Budget has been inclined to apportion funding in a deliberate way towards the areas of combating violence as well as attention to the secondary effects which are a result of that violence.

During the first period, 1975 through 1992, the intensification of the political military conflict provoked a marked tendency towards increasing spending in defense and public security. During the second period, 1992 to present, defense spending, although it has diminished, remains an important component of the budget while the line items for spending in public security and the administration of justice have notably increased.

On the other hand, the areas of the budget involving social spending remain lower, percentage-wise, than they were during the 1960’s. This in spite of the fact that the very government recognizes the need to develop social compensation in a way which presents alternatives to the implementation of policies for the dismantling of the state and the opening up of the economy.

The legislative proposal for 1999 contemplates an increase of some 875 million colones over and above the budgetary allocations for the year 1998 and reveals that, within the conglomerate of institutions, the areas of public security, the administration of justice and health will receive the greatest absolute percentage increases. Other categories will receive significant percentage increases, but which, when translated into absolute figures, reveal the fact that the increases are not so important, as in the case, for example, of the General Ombudsman’s Office of the Republic, housing and urban development and transportation.

In this way, the budget category for public security will be increased by 13.9% (180 million colones), while the category for the administration of justice will receive an increase of 27.2% (313.2 million colones). Together, the categories for public security and the administration of justice, with all of their components, will amount to 24.6% of the budget destined to the financing of the institutions and 16.8% of the total budget. If defense spending as a category is added, the percentage could reach up to 22.4% of the total budget.

On the other hand, social spending, made up of the categories of education, health, housing and work, social benefits will experience the following movements: education will be increased by 7.6% (207.6 million colones), health by 21% (278.8 million colones), housing, by 39% (12.7 million colones and work and social benefits by 19.6% (10 million colones).

Social spending will then represent 26.6% of the total budget, which, although it represents an improvement over the 24.5% for the year 1998, this situation reveals that we are still a great distance from the objectives posed by the social development plan which proposed in 1999 social spending of up to 50% of the total budget.

Other changes in the budget which merit special attention are the increases for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and for public works. In the first case, a heavy increase of 161.3% of the 1998 budget is reported (107.6 million colones) owing to the implementation of the upcoming March, 1999 presidential elections.

On the other hand, in the case of public works, the tendency has been slightly different because this category was reduced by 31.1% (543 million colones) which turned out to be the most significant change in the makeup of the budget. Evidently, this budget reduction will necessarily translate itself into greater levels of increasing jobs in the implementation of public works.

Moreover, in the category for state institutions it is important to review the behavior of other allotments, such as the general obligations of the state, service to the public debt and the financing of the government municipalities. Of these three categories, only the last will receive an increase of any importance as it will be increased by 73.3% (330 million colones). The category for the general obligations of the state, however, will be decreased by 5.3% (114.2 million colones) and the public debt by 3.8% (107.1 million colones).

One should take note of the fact that here the increase in the financing of the municipal governments can be useful for social spending when the municipal governments orient these resources towards work which favors the satisfaction of the basic needs of the most needy sectors. Doubtless, in this area significant advances have been achieved in the formulation of the budget, as opposed to the funds destined to social spending.

In reality, one should not be surprised that in recent years the greatest participation and political discussion inside the Legislative Assembly has not been translated into important changes in the pattern of social spending, nor in the manner of constructing public policies. The formulation of the budget responds more to the priorities established by the government administration currently in office or to the political parties and not so much to the requirements of social development. This does not imply, however, that there are not also limitations of an eminently economic nature.

It is not viable to increase social spending without thinking of a significant increase in tax income (75-100 percent). One way of contributing to this objective is to reduce tax evasion, which is estimated to be on the order of no less than 50% of total income. Nevertheless, the need to increase tax income even more is urgent, but this should be accomplished by means of taxes which do not directly affect the sectors with lower income. This necessarily implies swimming against the current of the current tax reform implemented by the two last governments which have been tailored so that the greater tax burden falls on the population of salaried workers.

There also exist other possible ways and these are related to the restructuring of the budget which does no necessarily imply greater requirements for financing for example, it might be possible to dedicate fewer resources to national defense. The case of Costa Rica is illustrative because in this country the elevated levels of social spending have notably bettered the satisfaction of basic needs, the cost of living and has reduced the public security and administration of justice needs of the general budget. At the same time, the elevated social costs were possible in the measure that, with the dissolution of the army during the 1950´s monies previously allocated to these categories were freed up.

The panorama of the present situation poses the necessity to study more carefully these and other options for financing social spending, which is not only justified by the immediate results of satisfying basic needs, but also by its possible medium-range needs for reducing violence and, consequently, the budgetary allotments assigned for combating it which, at the same time would free up financial resources which could be used for social spending.

A SECOND AUTOPSY IN THE GERARDI CASE

A second autopsy was practiced on the mortal remains of the assassinated Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi on September 17 and 18 of this year. The fundamental objective of this procedure was to prove or disprove the thesis maintained by the Attorney General Otto Ardón that Bishop Gerardi was attacked and bitten by a German Shepherd dog at the moment he was assassinated. This presumption led to the arrest, on July 22, of the priest Mario Orantes, who lived with Bishop Gerardi and had a German Shepherd dog named Baloo.

The following entities participated in the exhumation: the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese, five specialists (three of them North Americans: Jack Palladino, Norman Sperbert and Robert Box and two Guatemalans: Mario Iraeta and Mario Guerra). The Attorney General’s Office presented only the Spanish forensic medicine expert, Jose Manuel Reverte Coma, professor at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain, who five months ago sustained the thesis of the dog bite, basing himself on a photo taken of Bishop Gerardi. The autopsy consisted in a serial examination by section and other x ray examinations as well as a second intervention practiced by all of the professionals.

The afternoon of the 18 of September both sides presented the preliminary results of the studies. The Attorney General of Guatemala, Mr. Adolfo Gonzalez Rodas, maintained, in the press conference, that the results indicated that Bishop Gerardi received a blow from behind and was attacked by the dog in front. Also present at the press conference was the forensic expert Reverte Coma to present his conclusions. Reverte, however, had to admit that he had never personally examined the dog Baloo. When he returned to Madrid after completion of the procedures in Guatemala, Reverte Coma insisted in an interview given to the Spanish press agency EFE that "the key to this case is the pet [dog] of the priest Mario Orantes Najera, a German Shepherd named Baloo," who first bit Gerardi in the neck and, as [Gerardi] defended himself, he bit his hands as well. He then offered his own version of the facts in which he stated the following: "The Bishop entered his house through the garage and surprised the priest (Orantes) in some anomalous matter of his own, as a result of which he chastised him and the latter, furious, ordered the dog against him". Reverte hazarded the speculation, as well, concerning the criminal motive —basing his assumption entirely on the Attorney General’s Office— insisting that the motives were "domestic and not political", and concluded that the effort to link the military people with the crime was a result of "illegitimate interests" of groups who wanted "to continue the war because they had business interests".

The preliminary conclusions of the five specialists proposed by the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese were unanimous: there are no signs of dog bites. The odontologist Norman Sperbert, with more than 35 years of experience in all kinds of bites, indicated that a dog bite must leave impressions of the superior and inferior maxillary teeth and that the incisor teeth must have broken the skin and cranium of the victim, neither of which evidence was found on the body of Gerardi. He added that they had, at a previous date, taken a model of the dog Baloo’s teeth in order to confirm these conclusions. Afterwards, veterinary experts and dog trainers carried out several examinations and tests on the dog in the presence of functionaries of the Attorney General’s Office and confirmed that Baloo cannot jump nor stand on his hind legs because of multiple diseases and old age. The dog suffers from defects in his backbone, prostate and ears.

Finally, on September 29, Jack Palladino, one of the North American experts who participated in the Archdiocese Office’s autopsy, presented the final report of the three North American forensic specialists to the judge in the case, Judge Isaías Figueroa. In that report he definitively discarded the dog bite hypothesis. There are no indications of bites by dog’s teeth that, were there to have been a dog bite, would have inevitably penetrated the cranium and the brain of the bishop. Neither were there any indications of marks by the lower teeth of the animal. The report confirms once again what was known from the beginning: two persons using a stone and a cylindrically shaped object not found at the scene of the crime were responsible for the death of Bishop Gerardi.

Several days after the second autopsy, the Director of the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese, Bishop Mario Rios Montt, again ratified the results obtained and indicated that there were no signs of dog bites, accused the Attorney General’s Office of not doing its work accurately and of manipulating the information obtained in order not to respect the scientific rigor of the examinations carried out and to scorn the professionalism of the experts proposed by the Archdiocese Human Rights Office. Nevertheless, the controversy continues because the Attorney General’s Office refuses to accept the findings of the Archdiocese’s Human Rights Office, holding firm to the opinion of Reverte Coma and insisting on bringing Orantes to trial. On the other hand, the judge in the case refuses to take a decision on the findings of the autopsy. This is a real blind alley for the case, but a door to the truth must be found.

All of this controversy has naturally led to the question of how must weight and value could the opinion of the forensic expert Reverte Coma have for the Attorney General’s Office to have refused to take any of the findings of the other specialists into account? And another point: how objective is the conduct of the prosecutor Otto Ardón? The figure of Reverte Coma rapidly becomes the center of investigation and journalistic information. The findings have cast doubt on his credibility and the objectivity of his opinions. During the press conference offered by the Archdioces’s Human Rights Office after the autopsy, Ronalth Ochaete denounced his extravagancies during the course of the autopsy proceedings themselves. He maintained that the Spanish forensic expert tried to cut off the head of Gerardi and boil it in order to carry out other tests, but this proposal was met with strong opposition by other experts. The following day the Archdiocese office announced that it would present a complaint before the Medical College of Spain against Reverte because he lacked respect for ethics and the procedural legal codes "because he presented [during the press conference presented by the Attorney General´s Office] unfounded criteria with regard to the conduct of a presumed assassin of Monsignor Gerardi, without being an investigator..., and for having made declarations concerning what occurred at the scene of the crime on April 26, without having knowledge of the acts and for wanting to cut a finger off of the cadaver in order to take it as a collector’s item and to show it to his students at the university in Spain".

On September 25, the Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office of Guatemala, Mr. Julio Arango Escobar, declared that Reverte had been expelled from El Salvador in 1993 when he was working with the Truth Commission. According to Arango, Reverte had strong disagreements with some of the anthropologists from Argentina proposed by the United Nations during the exhumation of the massacre victims at Mozote. The massacre took place in the Department of Morazán where more than 300 people died at the hands of Salvadoran military personnel. Reverte, after having visited the site on two occasions, tried to disqualify the findings of the anthropologists and impose his own criteria on how to carry out the investigation. Mr. Belisario Betancourt, ex President of Colombia and President of the Truth Commission, who was, by chance, in Guatemala, confirmed to the Guatemalan daily PRENSA LIBRE the version offered by Arango and added that he personally asked the Spanish government to withdraw Reverte.

The Archdiocese Human Rights Office also complained, on repeated occasions, of the role which the prosecutor in the case, Mr. Otto Ardón, was playing because he publicly admitted to having relatives in the military and had been an active member of the army as well as having received salaries from the army recently. The Archdiocese Human Rights Office has criticized his lack of objectivity and, above all, his resistance to considering any other hypothesis —especially any hypothesis which involved the military.

The only thing missing was the establishment of the links between Ardón and Reverte. The contact between them had been Pablo Coello, a member of the Spanish Civil Guard and member of the Verification Mission of the United Nations in Guatemala, MINUGUA, who for a time acted in an advisory capacity to the Attorney General’s Office in the investigations of the murder, but was withdrawn at the request of the church. According to the Archdiocese Human Rights Office, Coello might have helped Ardón elaborate the hypothesis which involved Orantes and Reverted might have confirmed the version based on altered photographs sent to Spain. The rest is history.

The Archdiocese Human Rights Office has been studying the possibility of impeaching the conduct of Ardón before the Supreme Court and of withdrawing as a "friend of the court" if the prosecutor insists on presenting a formal accusation against Orantes. For his part, Orantes’s lawyers are preparing to request his freedom on the basis of the results of the autopsy.

Everything seems to indicate that the second act of the masquerade set up by the Attorney General’s Office is about to come to a close. The first act ended when, on July 29, the Public Ministry was obliged to free the first suspect, Carlos Enrique Vielman, for lack of convincing proof against him. In the same way, the freeing or Orantes seem now to be close. There seems to be no other option for the "brilliant" prosecutor Ardón nor for those with whom he is writing, from the shadows, this drama of death, impunity and scorn.

One might hope, then, that the hypotheses which indicate the participation of the military will again take shape once all of these ridiculous attempts to incriminate Orantes are over. In fact, the Commission for the Defense of Human Rights in Central America declared in Costa Rica, on October 6, that there exist "irrefutable proofs" that Bishop Gerardi was murdered by five members of the Presidential Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Archdiocese’s Office, for its part, has also said that it will shortly present a key witness that the day of the events two vehicles with official license plates were seen parked in front of the parish house where Bishop Gerardi was murdered and that a person without a shirt was seen getting out of one of them. As the curtain closes, the theme for the third act is announced. Hopefully this will be the last.

[Note: This article was written by Roberto Valdés of the "Equipo Envio" of Nicaragua.]