Can Genocide End in Forgiveness?

In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson set up a special commission to investigate the causes of rioting in Harlem, Watts, Newark and Detroit in the mid-1960s. The Kerner Commission warned that the United States risked splitting into two societies, one black and poor, the other white and upwardly mobile. Not everyone was happy with the commission’s conclusion, but it marked a necessary step in a continuing effort to end inequality and racism in America.

Something similar may have taken place in Guatemala last month. In the wake of a four-decade-old internal war, the Commission for Historical Clarification issued “Guatemala: Memory of Silence.” Even for those who know the country’s history well, the report’s findings are shocking: More than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during the period of armed conflict. In particular, between 1981 and 1983, a deliberate policy of genocide against the Mayan population was carried out by the Guatemalan state. Can such inflammatory material, spread in a deeply divided society, promote the healing that Guatemala so desperately needs?

In accordance with its mandate, set by the U.N.-coordinated peace agreements, the commission assigned institutional responsibility for the massacres and other acts of violence. Most were carried out with the full knowledge, or by order, of the highest state authorities; 93% of all cases were attributed to the armed forces and paramilitary agents; 3% were traced to the left-wing Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. The U.S. government, including the Central Intelligence Agency, was closely allied with national political parties and elite sectors supportive of the repression.

Guatemalan human-rights organizations cheered the commission’s findings. Some conservative politicians called the report biased. Although there has been no public reaction to date by the government of Alvaro Arzu or the armed forces, the report has had a palpably unsettling effect on both.

Truth commissions are not designed to make everyone happy. But they have become an invaluable mechanism in parts of the world like South Africa that are emerging from long and bloody struggle. Their aim is to establish, through rigorous inquiry, a historical record of the human-rights violations that took place, to reveal fundamental truths about a painful period. Their purpose is also reparative--to honor the memories of the victims and support their families--and preventive--so that societies never have to endure such ordeals again.

The Guatemala commission greatly benefited from the efforts of forensic scientists, who exhumed skeletal remains and were able to reconstruct the circumstances of the massacres. Such techniques, first developed and applied in human-rights work in Argentina in the mid-1980s, are now commonplace in such investigations. Marshaling such incontrovertible evidence has lent inquiries of this sort increasing credibility.

Forensic evidence was effectively used in the trials of former military juntas in Argentina. But legal remedies for cases of genocide, which fall outside Guatemala’s prevailing amnesty law, are unlikely. Few think Guatemala’s judicial system capable of prosecuting those responsible. Instead, the machinery of the inter-American system will probably handle most of the cases brought forward.

The truth commission strongly recommended that the government carry out a series of institutional reforms to strengthen democratic practices and the rule of law, foremost among them restructuring the military, security and intelligence bodies that coordinated the systematic abuse of human rights. But it will fall chiefly to the next government--elections are set for October--to implement them.

It is critically important that the new government adhere to the framework of the peace accords signed in December 1996. The major test will be the extent to which Guatemala--its government and, most important, key sectors of its society--remains committed to building a more just and inclusive nation, with greater participation of the country’s majority-Mayan population. Guatemala already is headed in this direction: 10% of the congress is now Mayan, as is the mayor of Guatemala’s second-largest city.

Doubtless the commission’s findings will create unease in Guatemala, especially in the short term. Laying out a thorough record of decades of human-rights violations, some murderous, will inevitably expose open sores. But as the unfolding drama surrounding the detention of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet underscores, it is vital for polarized societies to arrive at closure on such traumatic episodes. Otherwise, genuine reconciliation will be impossible.

What of a U.S. role? The commission was surprisingly severe in its characterization of U.S. support for some state operations. Still, the U.S. government deserves enormous credit for a shift in approach, in favor of setting the history straight and promoting reconciliation in Guatemala. Its financial support for the commission’s work, along with its declassification and release of some 1,000 sensitive documents at the commission’s request, were positive developments.

In his visit to Guatemala next Friday, President Bill Clinton should praise the commission’s valuable service in clarifying the historical record. He should also convey the United States’ continuing support for reconciliation in Guatemala, a process that, as Clinton can confidently tell the Guatemalan people, no society can afford to let rest.