In the second article below this one, “Will Obama Release ‘Avalanche of Dollars’ to ‘Kill Our Babies?” Siglo Vientiuno of Guatemala blasts the US and its government, and holds up Guatemala as an exemplar of high morals for …”Among the good things we have in Guatemala is a constitutional mandate to defend life from the moment of conception.”
He goes on to say how “human dignity does not depend on culture, race, sex, intellectual capacity or age.” He writes further: “The most elementary is that violence against the most innocent, as those still unborn are, is an attack against the basis of true democracy and the genuine rule of law.”
What is left of the Indian tribes of Guatemala will not likely be able to read nor respond to the premises put forth in the article. Yet there are significant parts of this story of valuing of human life… that are not stated.
Having lived in Guatemala, and loving the souls there, having been part of the santuario movimiento, I’d just gently say this, not to the writer, but to the old guard in government and those of the old guard ensconced in the wealthy churches in Guatemala… any of those who pretend outrage and piety about ‘life’ … their way late and sudden ‘protection of life,’ is too precious by half:
It seems good that life is so protected and so deeply in Guatemala.
But now, does this mean Guatemala’s old guard government who so valued life,’ will now return the tens of thousands of lives of Indians murdered by Guatemalan government troops?
Does it mean there will be an absolute end to systematically slaughtering in the highlands, the Mam, the Kiché, the Kachiquel in order to take their lands?
Does it mean no poor person nor sympathetic helping person would be murdered and mutilated for their merely existing?
Does it mean the death cult of murders not just recently, but for decades, over two centuries, will now cease?
Because of the internet and because so many in all nations are educated today, because so many can read and write instead of being told what to believe… few are ignorant of the Guatemalan government’s long, long record of indecency toward life… toward the lives of the living—
… including the repetitive and vicious murders of pregnant tribal women and the slaughter of their children in poor villages. Not once, not twice. Thousands and thousands of times.
Does the constitution of Guatemala valuing life, mean the highest government in Guatemala who bore false witness against the Indians by saying they were resisters, insurgents will now recant?
Does it mean the truth will be told in honor of the living and the dead, that for decades during their slaughter, los indios only weapons were only their copal, their weaving shuttles and their planting sticks?… against the Guatemalan government’s canons, tanks, and guns, those firearms, oddly and often enough, US issue M-1 carbines.
The Guatemalan constitution holding life dear… does this mean Guatemala will now aright decades’ of overdue justice for the thousands and thousands of desaparacidos (the disappeared) and return the dead bodies of kidnapped, ambushed and brutally tortured Indians back to their families for proper and sacred burial?
Does the constitution that values life also mean the government soldiers who murdered entire villages– entire villages of generations of Mayans– in the 1970s, 80s, 90s and in this 21st century, will finally be charged and brought to justice?
Does it mean the previous murders and land grabs by United Fruit Company interests will finally be set right and the stolen lands given back to their original owners… and with profound apology?
Does it mean the government will finally return the breasts and tongues and ears and hands soldiers severed from the bodies of the terrified poor?
Does it mean billboards will be put up to mark the places along all roads where the well fed, beefy Guatemalan soldiers from the government, threw down the mutilated bodies of Indians who were tribal people of such tiny stature, they were often not even five feet tall? From malnutrition. Because the government and the wealthy, systematically stole their farm lands and forced the Indians to the least resources?
The people of Guatemala are good, I can attest to the huge hearts and pure souls of many Guatemalans. But legions have suffered terribly at the hands of the vicious, unprincipled, and monied few… and literally suffered under the wealthy and ‘connected’, for centuries.
Any black hand that reaches from Guatemala to point so disparaging at other nations, at any other nation, has to point back to itself if it is not just grandstanding about it having ‘the high road,’ rather than, instead, being sadly and painfully truthful.
If life is truly valued in Guatemala’s constitution, it seems the constitution, by fiat also, would require that all citizens, all presidents, all comandantes, all the wealthy and priviledged, all people be ordered by law to hold the lives of the living as sacred… as well as the lives of the unborn.
Until such day, a Guatemalan constitution with a clause that utterly values life of the unborn and yet utterly erases the purposeful murders of the living, is as vacuous and empty as a bell with no clapper.