Guatemala: Heartbreak and Hope

Some in Guatemala would rather disappear into the grave than not try to change the way things are.

When gangsters shot Estella Garcia’s teenage son dead before her eyes, she vowed to make the killers pay — in court.

She needed to get tortillas for Sunday dinner and Herbeth, 17, decided to tag along. Herbeth loved playing soccer. He studied hard, hoping to become an accountant.

As they walked, gang members mistook Herbeth for someone else. They passed once, then came back shooting. On the ground, Herbeth pleaded for his life. They shot him in the head.

When they rolled Herbeth over, one said, “This isn’t him.”

Garcia knew the killers, all young men from the neighborhood. She promised detectives she would testify.

Instead, a judge quietly set the killers free, ruling that in spite of the mother’s eyewitness testimony, there was no evidence.

Garcia only found out when she saw one of the killers in the street. She confronted the judge.

The woman in black robes told Garcia to be quiet. She reminded Garcia that it would be a small thing to make her disappear into prison.

“Thank God I didn’t lock you up,” the judge told her.

Garcia demanded that prosecutors do something, and they did right away.

The killers were tossed back into jail. Two weeks later, her phone rang with death threats. Her house was peppered with bullets. She didn’t flinch — in public.

After two years of struggle, her son’s killers were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

“I did it more than anything because of my pain,” Garcia said. “I knew my son was not involved with anything bad.”

Garcia’s story made headlines in Guatemala, where few have been willing to risk their own lives to challenge crime and corruption.

It was a costly victory. She no longer leaves home in the company of those she loves, fearful that if the gang members start shooting at her, the bullets may kill more innocents.

“I have to look out for the lives of my children,” Garcia said.

Newspaper editor Jose Rueben Zamora understands. He’s risked the safety of his own family pursing truth.

El Periodico is Guatemala’s leading newspaper for investigative reporting.

Zamora’s made a career out of exposing the institutional graft that helps to concentrate 50 percent of Guatemala’s wealth among 10 percent of the population.

In 1993, one of the war-era governments disbanded congress, banned demonstrations and generally suspended civil rights.

Zamora fought back by going to press each day with the text of his newspaper blacked out as protest.

When the six murders were found at the cave, he sent reporters to cover the story.

Unlike most of their colleagues, el Periodico’s journalists talked to the victims’ families. They learned that none of the dead had criminal records. They tracked down a key witness who watched the killers round up their victims. The kidnappers appeared to be wearing uniforms and claimed to be police.

Nobody from the government had asked what she saw.

Zamora has reported about the connections between narcotrafficking, organized crime and people who, until recently, have exercised iron-fisted control over Guatemala’s government.

In June 2003, those in power wanted to make Zamora stop. Gunmen claiming to be detectives forced their way into his home. They held the journalist and his family captive.

The invaders tortured Zamora. They put a gun to his head and three times pulled the trigger on an empty chamber, simulating his execution.

He begged to be taken into his garage, so his children wouldn’t have to watch him die. The gunmen eventually left, but not before telling the editor to stop publishing articles that angered their bosses.

Zamora sent his family to live in the U.S. for a while.

He then published stories identifying the people who had invaded his home and who he could prove ordered the attack.

Some of those he accused were part of the nation’s law enforcement apparatus. In February, a trial convened based on the journalists’ accusations. One man was convicted and sentenced to prison for 16 years.

Zamora worries for himself, his family and for his country.

After years of war, Guatemala is keeping itself weak and letting organized criminal groups become ever more ingrained into the society.

The journalist said he holds scant hope that the rule of law will triumph soon. Nothing would have happened in his case if he hadn’t taken matters into his own hands.

“I had to investigate this, identify the people and put it on the front page of the paper who was responsible,” Zamora said. “The only thing I didn’t have to do was arrest them.”

Zamora has his newspaper.

“What happens to the ordinary person with no resources?”

The cave's dead were taken to the morgue. They rested on gurneys, stowed in a room next to the autopsy theater. A 4-foot crucifix was on one wall, Jesus’ death depicted as bloody agony. At Christ’s feet were bouquets of plastic roses, one red, one pale yellow.

Weeping families came to identify the bodies, sobbing out names. A morgue worker, in flowing script, carefully added them to the thick book that records Guatemala City’s violent deaths.

One man’s aunt recognized reporters she saw at the cave. She nodded: It was OK to be there.

Sometimes there is power in bearing witness. Sometimes grief must be seen and smelled and touched for murder to become real.

Tell the world, the woman said. People are dying in Guatemala. People are dying and their killers are walking free.