Once Rebel Supporter, Family Seeks Truth

Three generations of the Lopez family of San Antonio Huista in Guatemala’s northwest highlands risked their lives for Marxist rebels as union organizers, urban militia members and guerrilla fighters.

Wednesday, more than two years after the Guatemalan civil war ended, family members broke with that past by demanding that the attorney general investigate five former guerrilla leaders for the killings of two Lopez youths and a comrade.

The three slain youths--Carlos Morales Lopez, cousin Guisela Lopez and her friend, Marylu Castillo--were executed in Nicaragua in 1982 on the orders of rebel leaders in exile there, their families allege.

After more than a decade of investigation and two years of inconclusive negotiations with the former insurgents in an attempt to find the youngsters’ remains, the Lopez family has decided to seek justice from the government.

“Justice should be applied equally to all those who committed crimes,” said Frank La Rue, a human rights activist advising the family. “They should recognize what they have done and ask forgiveness.”

Most reports of human rights violations committed during the 36-year civil war have emphasized abuses by the government and army. The Lopez case is among the growing number of reports emerging that cite atrocities committed by the former rebels, who are attempting to convert themselves into a broad political movement known as the New Nation Alliance.

“The obvious beneficiaries of such actions are the political opponents of the New Nation Alliance,” said Pablo Monsanto, secretary-general of the former guerrillas’ political party, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, or URNG, which is part of the alliance.

“For that reason, we believe that we must defend ourselves on all levels, politically and in the courts,” said Monsanto, who is not accused of responsibility for the deaths.

The five accused former rebel leaders are Enrique Corral Alonso, Alba Estella Maldonado, Julio Barrios, Celso Humberto Morales and Yolanda Colom Caballeros.

None of the former commanders returned telephone calls seeking comment. The URNG has acknowledged in newspaper advertisements that the three young people “died victims of incorrect and unjust practices and procedures.”

The family wants a complete explanation, an apology and the return of the youths’ remains.

“The family no longer has any confidence in [the ex-insurgents] as an alternative,” said Guisela’s brother-in-law, Godofredo Echevarria, who lives in neighboring El Salvador with her sister. “If they were capable of doing this, what would they do if they got into power?”

Antonia Lopez, Guisela’s mother, has stated in several reports that she was told by a rebel commander in 1982 that her daughter had been killed by a guerrilla firing squad for “giving away the organization’s resources,” providing no further explanation.

Lopez, an organizer for an insurgent-linked union, refused to believe that her daughter could have betrayed an organization that recruited the girl at age 12. Guisela met the guerrillas when they used her grandparents’ home as a rest house.

Guisela, 19, had been imprisoned by government forces from February to May 1982 and had escaped along with Castillo, 21. The two women wrote detailed reports of their prison experience, including the names of guerrillas who had agreed to become army agents.

After the report was presented to rebel commanders, the young women were sent to Nicaragua to recover. Instead, companions of the women later told Antonia Lopez, they were submitted to interrogations as torturous as their prison ordeal.

“That was a paranoid time,” said La Rue. “Everyone who escaped from prison was suspected of collaborating with the enemy.”

Guisela’s cousin, Carlos, a member of the same guerrilla organization, insisted on looking for her body and openly disputed accusations that she was a traitor. He disappeared four months after she was killed.

His mother said she did not learn until two years ago that he also was sentenced to death by the Guatemalan rebel leadership exiled in Nicaragua.