Ixil region, Guatemala - Yes, Augusto Pinochet, poster child for Latin American dictators who murder and torture thousands and then enjoy impunity and power for decades afterward, has finally been laid to rest.
But his ignoble legacy lives on in a lesser-known Guatemalan general whose regime, during its bloodiest period, averaged more deaths and disappearances per month than Pinochet's entire reign: Efraín Ríos Montt.
So who is this Ríos Montt?
He's not exactly a stranger to everyone.
Christian Broadcasting Net-work personality Pat Robertson repeatedly praised Ríos Montt and held a telethon to raise money for his military campaign against "insurgency." Ronald Reagan proclaimed him "a man of great personal integrity" and furnished him with indispensable financial and political support. And the congressman who only recently gave up the vice-chairmanship of the most powerful committee shaping U.S. policy in Latin America, Rep. Jerry Weller, R-Ill., is Ríos Montt's son-in-law.
Today marks 25 years since Ríos Montt, then an evangelical minister and army general, seized Guatemala's helm in a military coup. Thereafter, he oversaw the estimated murder of 70,000 people - mostly Mayan - in less than a year and a half.
But Ríos Montt's days of influence are far from over.
On Jan. 17 of this year, he announced to the world, "I will reach the highest rank. It could not be any other way … I will be president of Congress from 2008-2012." The fact that Ríos Montt is secretary general of the Guatemalan Republican Front, the largest political faction within Congress, lends alarming credibility to his claim.
I came to know Ríos Montt's ghastly legacy when, after graduating from UT last May, I moved to Guatemala's western highlands to work with a Mayan human rights coalition, the Association for Justice and Reconciliation. My companions in the AJR told me vivid stories of their lives under the Ríos Montt regime.
Bonifacio was tortured by the military and kept in a hole in the ground for five months. Diego, along with his family, was enslaved on a plantation and later forcibly recruited, at the age of 14, into an army-led militia. Juana fled into the wilderness, and had to subsist without clothes, forage for food and elude army search squads and aerial bombardments for years afterward.
None of these individuals were guerrillas. Each of their villages had been burnt to the ground. All had lost immediate family to army massacres or the subsequent starvation, if not both.
Despite the terror, Bonifacio, Diego and Juana persevered, summoning the courage in 2001 to file charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against Ríos Montt. The case, however, has languished in the initial "investigative phase" since its filing, despite overwhelming evidence gathered by AJR's legal team and findings by a U.N.-led truth commission that Guatemala was indeed subject to acts of genocide.
This stalling is primarily due to a lack of political will on behalf of Guatemalan Attorney General Juan Luis Florido. Interestingly, if Florido takes an initial declaration from Ríos Montt regarding accusations cited against him in the genocide case within the next six weeks, it would disqualify him from elections.
Conversely, if Ríos Montt is able to register as a candidate on May 3, his possible election would secure at least four more years of impunity, on account of Guatemala's parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
Already, clandestine efforts are underway to disrupt the case from proceeding. Last month, an organizer from the legal association that advises the AJR in the case was kidnapped. The head lawyer for the case received a written note threatening his wife and children.
Meanwhile, two Congressmen representing Austin - Michael McCaul and Ron Paul - sit on the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, the premier legislative task force responsible for shaping U.S. relations with Latin America. Representatives McCaul and Paul are now faced with a defining moment that will speak volumes of their political ethics and personal integrity.
Will they stand with justice by demanding that Florido finally subpoena Ríos Montt, letting the survivors testify to the horrors they have lived? Or will McCaul and Paul be complicit in the continued silencing of courageous victims who yearn to speak their truth to power?
Their turning a blind eye to a genocidal dictator's reconquest would again allow a true terror to overtake Guatemala.
Buckley, a UT alum and former Texan columnist, is a human rights accompanier with the Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala.
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