9 of 312 DOCUMENTS

The Washington Post

September 06, 1998, Sunday, Final Edition

SECTION: OUTLOOK; Pg. C03

LENGTH: 1356 words

HEADLINE: A LOOK AT . . . A Murder in Guatemala: The Mysterious Death of Bishop Gerardi

BYLINE: Terri Shaw

DATELINE: GUATEMALA CITY

BODY:

On April 24, Bishop Juan Jose Gerardi stood in front of the altar of the capital's Spanish colonial style Metropolitan Cathedral to present to his nation the results of a report detailing three decades of horrific civil strife in Guatemala, with information about more than 400 massacres, thousands of murders, rapes and cases of torture. It concluded that 79 percent of the abuses were committed by government forces and 9 percent by the leftist guerrillas opposing them. Entitled "Guatemala: Never Again," the report was based on thousands of interviews conducted with survivors, witnesses and even perpetrators of the abuses.

Gerardi's message accompanying the report was hardly comforting to a nation where many prefer to forget the ordeal of the conflict that ended only two years ago. "Facing our personal and collective reality is not an option that can be accepted or rejected," he declared, knowing that the report would not be well received by supporters of the military, or by the many Guatemalans who have remained aloof from the conflict. "It is a requirement for every human being, for every society that hopes to become human and be free."

Two days later, the bishop was dead. His body was found in the garage of his parish house, his head bashed in with a heavy object. He was 75 years old.

Four months later, the country is still absorbed by Gerardi's death and the details of the murder investigation, which to date has yielded no clear culprit. Opinion is divided over whether the murder was an assassination or a common crime. Competing theories say that Gerardi was killed by members of the armed forces--the initial suspicion of many--or by a priest who lived with him and who has been detained for questioning but not formally charged. While the media here follow the case closely and Guatemalans discuss it avidly, the content of the church's report has largely been overshadowed.

One morning last month, a steady trickle of buyers picked up copies of the four-volume report, priced at $ 40, at the headquarters of the Office of Human Rights of the Archdiocese of Guatemala next door to the cathedral. But while every Guatemalan I encountered during a recent visit had something to say about the investigation of the murder, only one--a retired banker--said he had actually read the report.

Perhaps no one would have been more disappointed than Gerardi himself. Persuading Guatemalans to face the painful truths about the war was his personal mission. Born in Guatemala City to a couple of Italian descent, Gerardi became a traditional churchman who did not speak out on political issues until the late 1970s when violence between leftist guerrillas and government forces intensified in the mountainous province of El Quiche where he worked. Most residents of the spectacularly beautiful region are Indians who live on tiny subsistence farms and still practice their traditional cultures.

As various leftist rebel groups battled Guatemala's military-dominated governments, these Indians were caught in the middle--recruited by both sides and frequently the victims of harsh irregular warfare.

Gerardi began to take a more open political stand when the army and paramilitary groups allied with it targeted church workers, accusing them of supporting the guerrillas. In 1976, the Rev. William Woods, an American Maryknoll missionary who was working with a peasant cooperative, was killed. A church biography of Gerardi called this the "beginning of systematic persecution against the church in El Quiche." In the early '80s, according to Tom Quigley, a policy adviser to the U.S. Catholic Conference, "Quiche was the Wild West," and scores of priests and lay leaders were killed.

Gerardi tried to persuade military and government officials to moderate the army's brutal methods, but he was unsuccessful. In 1980, he took the unusual step of withdrawing all Catholic religious workers from the province after he himself was shot at.

Gerardi went to Rome for a conference and told Pope John Paul II about the attacks on Indian communities and the church. The pope issued a letter shortly thereafter condemning the violence and Gerardi flew back to Guatemala City, but was turned away at the airport. He went into exile in Costa Rica.

"It is not convenient for me to go back now," he told June Erlick, a reporter for National Catholic Reporter, at the archdiocese in the Costa Rican capital, San Jose, where he was living. "In two days, in four days, in two weeks, I would be dead. And if I weren't, someone close to me would be."

Two years in exile did not radicalize Gerardi, however. He spurned invitations to join groups backing the guerrillas and refused to support about a dozen priests living in Nicaragua who formed what they called a "Guatemalan church in exile." In 1982, when it was safer to work in Guatemala, he returned. In 1984 he was named auxiliary bishop, and in 1988 he joined a National Reconciliation Commission that encouraged meetings involving representatives of the guerrillas, the government and other groups, laying the groundwork for the peace accords that finally brought an end to the 36-year war in 1996.

In 1990, he formed the Human Rights Office of the archdiocese and in 1995 began the historic memory project. This effort, which was financed in part by European foundations, involved training 600 lay people who lived where the fighting took place to conduct interviews with witnesses, survivors and, in some cases, perpetrators of abuses. About two-thirds of the interviews were conducted in the languages spoken by the Indians who make up a majority of the Guatemalan population and who are a disproportionate number of the victims of abuses chronicled in the report.

The project--generally called REHMI, its Spanish acronym--was conceived in part as a supplement to the work of a Historic Clarification Commission formed by the peace accords. The commission's mandate was to investigate human rights abuses committed during the conflict, but not to name those responsible. The church's report, on the other hand, does name names and does assign responsibility to the leaders of the guerrilla organizations and of the army and paramilitary groups allied with it.

The REHMI report also demanded that both the army and the guerrillas publicly acknowledge responsibility for abuses and apologize. So far representatives of both groups have admitted only to "errors."

Gerardi's mission remains to be completed. Edgar Gutierrez, who directed the REHMI project, points out that the negotiations that ended the war were conducted by the leaders of the government and the guerrillas, not the people themselves. "The population, in general, remained divided," he said. "Since there is no reconciliation within the population affected by the armed conflict, the church now will work to bring about the reconstitution of the social fabric."

The REHMI report ends with recommendations of ways to help Guatemalans come to terms with their past and live together peacefully. These include concrete measures that could be taken by the government, such as financial restitution and humanitarian aid for survivors, attention to human rights cases in the courts and investigation of the cases of people who disappeared. The report also asks the guerrillas to "clarify the deaths and disappearances it was responsible for" and "recognize the murders of civilian noncombatants." And it recommends symbolic measures such as commemorative ceremonies and monuments to the victims.

It is a daunting agenda for a traumatized country of 11.6 million where it is easier to forget than forgive--but one that Gerardi did not flinch from promoting. He closed his last speech in the cathedral with a biblical quote that he said was brought to mind by the "memory of these painful facts":

And the Lord said to Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not; Am I my brother's keeper?

And He said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.

Terri Shaw is an assistant foreign editor of The Washington Post.

GRAPHIC: Illustration, Bob Gale for TWP

LOAD-DATE: September 06, 1998