6
circumstances of the violations in the Case of the Plan de Sánchez Massacre. Thus,
the Court’s judgment has ordered a series of other types of reparation (paras. 93111) to rehabilitate the surviving victims, to combat impunity, to ensure the public
acknowledgement of State responsibility so as to make reparation to the victims, to
preserve the memory of the victims executed in the massacre, to preserve the
collective memory of the Maya Achí community, to promote and disseminate the
Maya Achí language, and to implement a widespread development program for the
members of the communities affected by the facts of this case (including health,
education, housing, production and infrastructure).
24.
I consider that measures of reparations designed to preserve the collective
memory are particularly significant. As I indicated in my previous separate opinion in
the judgment on merits in this same Case of the Plan de Sánchez Massacre:
"The collective conscience of the members of the Mayan people has given eloquent
testimony of its spiritual, individual and collective existence, which identifies, connects
and distinguishes them. The fate of each one of them is inescapably linked to that of the
other members of their communities" (para. 43).
In summary, as I have stated in so many opinions in different cases decided by the
Inter-American Court, I consider that the human conscience is the material source of
all law.
25.
Whether the reparations ordered in this judgment of the Court are called
punitive damages – which should evidently cause those who deny the existence of
State crime to shudder – or “exemplary reparations,” or any other expression of this
type, their basic purpose remains the same: they recognize the extreme gravity of
the facts, punish the State responsible for the grave violations committed,
acknowledge the extreme sacrifice of the victims who died and alleviate the sacrifice
of the surviving victims, and establish a guarantee of non-repetition of the harmful
acts. Whatever they are called, their basic purpose is always the same, they are for
the benefit of the victims (direct and indirect) and the population of the defendant
State as a whole, because their purpose is to rebuild the damaged social fabric.
26.
The Westphalian international jurists of our days need to awaken from their
mental lethargy: the Plan de Sánchez massacre was but one of the 626 State
massacres that comprised an explicit pattern of extermination, executed over a brief
period of time, and, up until today, it is the only one that has been filed before an
international tribunal, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. How many more
massacres have been perpetrated over recent years, and are still being perpetrated
in different latitudes, without us knowing anything about them, in the face of the
criminal indifference of the State, 7 which was historically conceived and created to
achieve the common good (not for political repression or the satisfaction of private
financial interests)! How is it possible to deny the existence of State crime?
IV.
7
.
Epilogue: The Primacy of Law of Brute Force
And the media.