More Alive Now Than Ever by Laura E. Asturias

Diario Siglo Veintiuno (Guatemala), 9/15/01
The tragedy that occurred on September 11, 2001 — as often happens with events involving the formidable global superpower that is the United States of America — overshadows whatever is occurring in the rest of the world. This intense focus on the United States is no doubt welcomed by the governments of many other countries who are weary of being constantly scrutinized by their national media.

In our Guatemalan newspapers, local events have become irrelevant while people are justifiably fearful of how the king of the jungle will react, now that his testicles have been viciously crushed. Don't misunderstand me: no one in their right mind or with any sensitivity could help but feel sorry for the profound pain that the United States is feeling today. But it is important to put things in a healthy perspective, because this tragedy did not just appear out of nothing.

We need to show solidarity with the people of the United States because they too are victims of their own government, both past and present (a story well known in our part of the world). I remember not too many years ago when this country, Guatemala, suffered the anti-Communist paranoia of various U.S. governments. Guatemala has still not recovered from it, and those individuals that managed to survive the massacres carried out by the local military, financed and armed by the U.S., with personnel trained in the School of the Americas, those persons fleeing the military extermination, people every bit as innocent as those occupying the Twin Towers in New York, they have still to see any compensation whatsoever.

This is certain: terrorism is atrocious and should be condemned wherever it occurs. But the criminals that perpetuate it are not only on the other side of the Atlantic. If "war criminals" are those that commit unacceptably barbaric acts even in times of war, then there are many U.S. officials who qualify as such, among them the current Secretary of State Colin Powell, for his leadership in the attacks on Panama and Iraq, and ex-President George Bush for killing thousands of civilians in those countries; William Clinton for 78 days and nights of bombing civilians in Yugoslavia and also in Somalia, Bosnia, Sudan and Afghanistan; Ronald Reagan for attacking El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Grenada and Libya; Gerald Ford for approving the genocide in East Timor. Also Richard Nixon, Wesley Clark, Norman Schwarzkopf, Elliot Abrams, Casper Weinberger, Oliver North, Henry Kissinger and so many others, all high level officials who supported, armed, advised and even put in power those who committed atrocities against their own people.

Today the Taliban, the fundamentalist government of Afghanistan, is front page news, suspected of harboring on their soil Osama bin Laden, presumed mastermind of the massacres in New York, yet it is not equally condemned for keeping all Afghan women under permanent house arrest. That is also an act of terrorism.

An important occasion that was overshadowed by the human and material destruction in the United States was the eleventh anniversary, to the day, of the murder of Myrna Mack. An anthropologist who worked among and cared about the less fortunate of Guatemala, she was one of the many victims of the anti-Communist paranoia fed in Guatemala by outside interests. On October 10 of this year, three military officials will go to trial, accused of ordering her murder: Juan Valencia Osorio, Juan Oliva Carrera and Edgar Godoy Gaitan.

The process getting to trail has been plagued by threats to public officials, corruption, delays, exile of witnesses and even the death of a police investigator, because here also there are many who want to protect their "vulnerable parts." And yet, even after eleven years since her death, Myrna Mack today is more alive than ever in the consciousness of those who seek peace and justice.

Afghan and Other Women's Statements