49 operations unit within the EMP. If the EMP decided that a given operation, such as a murder or a kidnapping, must be carried out, the “Archivo” carried it out. The investigation demonstrated that the main feature of the intelligence apparatus was its corporate nature and integrity, not only during the 30 years of war, but also in 1990. The intelligence community per se was a type of brotherhood. The persons who worked in the intelligence units changed positions and transferred from one unit to another, despite the fact that the units carried out different operations and policies. The three military officers accused in the Mack Chang case were members of this intelligence brotherhood. They began their careers very early and worked in various intelligence units. General Godoy Gaitán was the director of the “D-2” and later on he was the director of the EMP. In 1990, when Myrna Mack Chang was murdered, Godoy Gaitán was the head of the “Estado Mayor Presidencial”, Valencia Osorio was the director of the “Archivo” and Oliva Carrera was second in the chain of command at the “Archivo.” It is impossible for Noel de Jesús Beteta Alvarez to have carried out the assassination of the anthropologist upon his own initiative due to the strict command structure and hierarchy within the Army. Therefore, it is inconceivable for a low-ranking soldier or “military specialist,” as Beteta Alvarez was called, to murder someone so well known upon his own initiative. The “Military Diary” is a document created by the “Archivo” that recorded the kidnappings, interrogations and murders of dozens of Guatemalans in the mideighties. This book contains photographs of the victims, notes on the “subversive” activities of the suspects, details on their kidnappings, the time they were detained and whether or not they were murdered. Given the lack of Guatemalan sources of material ascribing the responsibility for the murder of Myrna Mack Chang, she analyzed the United States documents on the topic. They attributed the responsibility to the security forces, to military intelligence, and to the presidential security commandoes. In this case, it was necessary to establish which military officers were involved in an order such as the one to murder Myrna Mack Chang. It is not true that the State of Guatemala does not have the documents requested by Helen Mack Chang, that they allege do not exist, were destroyed or cannot be supplied due to national security reasons or official secret. There is an example of the documents requested by the Mack family that were already made public without causing any damage to national security. These are general orders of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, consisting mainly of a list of staff, officers, and positions held during the time covered by said general order. In the declassified documents there are specific references to Myrna Mack Chang as a “leftist anthropologist” or as a member of the community of non-armed opposition that constituted a threat to the Government of Guatemala, together with other persons who sought to create new political parties, anthropologists or researchers who revealed matters that were inconvenient for the State of Guatemala. Some of the documents analyzed were contributed to the judicial proceeding. The Guatemalan judicial authorities accepted and attached validity to these documents, underlining their usefulness to determine the institutional structure of the Armed Forces, the importance of the chain of command, and the fact that the murder of Myrna Mack Chang was set within a pattern of selective violence that identified an objective considered to be a threat to the State.

Seleccionar párrafo de destino3

Conectar a un párrafo
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Añadir a la tabla de contenidos