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Justice in the dock
Robert Nowell reads a sobering account of horrors in Guatemala
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The Art of Political Murder: Who killed Bishop Gerardi?
Atlantic Books £16.99 (978-1-84354-737-2) Church Times Bookshop £15.30 IN APRIL 1998, the office of human rights of the archdiocese of Guatemala, known by the acronym ODHA, published its four-volume report on the “disappearances”, massacres, murders, torture, and violence that marked the decades of war that the Guatemalan army had waged on much of the country’s population under the pretext of rooting out left-wing guerrillas. ODHA had been founded, and was directed, by Bishop Juan Gerardi, whom Archbishop Penados had brought back from exile to be his auxiliary and vicar-general. Two days after the report’s publication, Bishop Gerardi was murdered. Francisco Goldman, an American novelist whose mother came from Guatemala, has written a sober account of the murder, the enormous effort (and courage) needed to put those responsible on trial, and the perhaps even greater effort needed to ensure that the guilty verdicts were not overturned on appeal. Those investigating the case were subject to continuous harassment, if that is not too weak a word: the prosecutor’s wife — a young lawyer with a year-old child — received anonymous telephone calls suggesting her husband would not be coming home. After the guilty verdicts, the prosecutor found it wisest to go into exile with his family when he learned his security detail was being withdrawn while he was asked to take the investigation into the higher echelons of the military responsible for the murder. Goldman recounts all this dispassionately, and thus brings the reader face to face with the complexity of seeking justice in a society in which, it seems, prisoners were free to go in and out of prison provided they paid a small bribe; and where it was normal for judge and witnesses to wear bulletproof vests in court. Goldman tells this complex story with impressive lucidity, providing also a list of the dramatis personae, and a chronology. The result is a book that has to be read by anyone wishing to understand the injustice embedded in many similar societies, and the heroic efforts some people make to overcome this. To order this book, email the details to Church Times Bookshop |
