Human Matter
Page 3
Argentine dictatorship: 30,000 disappeared in ten years.
Guatemalan dictatorship: 45,000 missing (and 150,000 executions) in thirty-six years.
The Guatemalan army—according to some reports like REMHI* and the CEH†—was responsible for about 95 percent of deaths and forced disappearances, while the guerrillas, for less than 5 percent.
After 1966, the authorities in Guatemala do not report any more political prisoners; then begins the period of forced disappearances, clandestine prisons, and extrajudicial executions.
Belatedly, political prisoners were granted typewriters to “render reports” (denunciations). Possibilities: invention and buying time.
Measures imposed by the insurgency on its members in case of capture:
—Resist for a prudent amount of time to allow for dismantling of structures (then restructure them differently).
—Do not reestablish contact with any members in case of escape or liberation, under threat of death.
The doctor cites the well-known case of two young guerrilla women who were captured and then used as “sex servants” by state agents for several months. After a somewhat doubtful “escape,” they went into exile in Nicaragua, where they reestablished contact with former guerrilla comrades. They were tried for treason (“from within the subversive ranks”), found guilty, and executed.
Afternoon.
Ricardo Ramírez and the 1967 “March Document,” in which the decision is made to change the “combat scenario,” and on which is based an attempt to involve the Mayan population—previously excluded—in the armed struggle. “The action must be localized away from government influence and close to the Indian communities.” The previous strategy, which had failed, was one focused on urban guerillas, with other centers of guerilla activity in uninhabited areas or areas inhabited by “non-indigenous” people.
Wednesday. Eight in the morning.
During a question-and-answer session, I make the mistake of asking the following:
Given the fact that the Mayan people are the base of the Guatemalan social pyramid, a revolutionary struggle in their favor could be justified; but as the majority of the Mayan peasants are illiterate, it can be assumed that they did not share the Marxist ideology of the revolutionary leaders. At the time of this decision to change the “combat scenario”—following the Vietnamese experience and knowing the new counterinsurgency strategy of “taking the water away from the fish”—it was natural to think about the possible risk of a government reaction that would determine the extermination of broad sectors of the Indian population. Was this—the fact of endangering that particular sector of the population with extermination—a subject of debate?
The answer is no, this had not been the subject of debate. After delivering the answer with disgust, Dr. Novales characterizes my question as “extremely unfriendly.” Another of the course attendees adds that my question seemed paternalistic, that he had known some Mayan people who did want to fight.
Afternoon.
I do not know if it is as an indirect retaliation that the doctor then speaks in a tone of confidence of a “bourgeois friend” who, in the late seventies, resigned from the board of directors of a family business “because in one of the meetings, they proposed the murder of a union leader.” I think I know who that is. I can think of three friends of mine (one of them disappeared) who were members of boards of directors at powerful companies, and who, because of their leftist tendencies, became involved in a revolutionary movement and ended up in exile for some years. Two things occur to me. First: although it is likely—as has been proven in more than one case—that some of the directors of large companies felt threatened by the trade union movement at the time and planned and carried out the murders of trade unionists, it’s hard to believe that they would have discussed these murders in a general session. Second: if it is the friend whom I think it is, it seems reasonable to me that she would resign from the board of directors, but should she not also have relinquished all stock in a company that was clearly criminal? Should she not at least have opted to sell those shares? As far as I know, she did not.
Thursday, January 18. B+’s birthday.
Today I resume note taking after several days of apathy.
I have finished reviewing the files of the Identification Bureau. I ask to see lists of official executions, whistleblowers. . . . For some reason, I cannot have access to those documents “yet.” They move me back to the hospital, to a room on the second floor, where half a dozen archivists are dusting off meeting minutes and other documents before they are digitized. While they are working, they listen to boleros.
This (Area 2, Room 2, Section 3, Wall B) is the old Police Library. I take a look. I ask to see three or four volumes of the collection of Yearly Reports from the National Police, titled Memorias de Labores de la Policía Nacional.
Sandra Gil, an older archivist who resembles a stern teacher, has just handed me the volumes. She chews gum, loudly. A female colleague comments without addressing anyone in particular:
“There are those of us who think, and those who chew gum.”
The other responds:
“Oh, Lord, illuminate them, or eliminate them.”
From the Yearly Report, 1938, Chapter XXVI: “It has been said that our body is actually a given amount of compressed air that lives in the air. Could it not be said that the soul is an embodied fragment of society that lives in society? . . . A criminal would then be a social microbe.”—Professor G. Tarde, criminologist.
In Chapter XXXI, I find a “Report from the Identification Bureau,” headed by clerk Benedict Tun, “whose participation in the investigation of criminal acts has been invaluable in the most important inquiries carried out by the Police . . .”
Afternoon.
Lunch with B+ in a trendy restaurant. Mediocre food. Then, in my apartment, prolonged lovemaking session, extraordinarily intense and pleasant—at least for me.
Is it possible to know whether it was the same for both of us? I do not think so.
Very brief nap.
Notes
* Mano Blanca (White Hand) was the name of an organization linked to the army and dedicated to the extermination of communists and their sympathizers.
* Recovery of Historical Memory, conducted by the Catholic Church.
† Commission for Historical Clarification, at the request of the United Nations.
PAGES ATTACHED TO THE FIRST SKETCHBOOK
I keep leafing through the Yearly Reports, while I wait to be allowed to see more interesting documents.
Personal characteristics of criminals apprehended in 1943:
Between 21 and 30 years old: 36%
Single: 81%
Males: 82%
Workers: 28%
Mestizo: 11%
Suicides:
Between 21 and 30 years old: 36%
Single: 70%
Workers: 23%
Mestizo: 96%
I find an entry in Google under the name of Tun. According to an article titled “The Smell of Blood,” by Alfredo Sagastume, Benedicto Tun was also a “bloodhound auditor” during Ubico’s dictatorship and had orders to punish public treasurers who were either over or under in their balances. (Obviously a confusion of names: during Ubico’s era, there was a public accountant named Aquilino Tun, who drafted a proposal for new income tax legislation.) Sagastume also tells us that whenever someone was accused of being a criminal, Ubico’s personal motto was: “Execute him. We’ll find out later.”
Possible expressions:
Historical sadism. Sadistic realism.
Third Notebook: White Cover
Evening.
“The sultan did not really want Shahrazad to tell him stories; he was no doubt the one telling stories to her,” Borges once told Bioy. Something similar happens to me now that I have become a regular at the Archive. I talk about that to B+ at all times—at dinner, while walking, or while staring at cracks in the plaster on the ceiling of my room. I tell
her what I have seen there, what I have read—records and more records, identifying traits in a long series of obscure lives. That is to say, I bore her.
Power, as Borges says, always acts according to its own logic. The only possible criticism of this power is perhaps History. But since History is written from the present, and thus encompasses it, it is not probable that an impartial critique can be made.
I commit to reading, or at least thumbing through, Guatemalan “period” authors: for example, the “Generation of 1920,” to which Asturias belonged.
February 5, 2007.
Cloudy day. I’m alone on the second floor of the Archive, alone with Sandra Gil and the policewoman watching over us. Radio music: “Lying Eyes.” Sandra gives me a 1961 document that I did not ask for. She says that it may interest me: “Branch Inspector’s Record Book.” I take a quick look at it—nothing noteworthy.
Suddenly, I wonder what kind of Minotaur can hide in a labyrinth like this one. It may be a hereditary trait to believe that every labyrinth has its Minotaur. If this one did not have its own, I might be tempted to invent one.
I continue to browse Yearly Reports. Clerk Tun was in charge of the 1939 edition. In addition to the police reports from various departments, the series for that year includes “A Pro-Police Apologia” by Gregorio Marañón and a text titled “In Praise of Fouché” (anonymous, but I sense penned by Tun himself ).
Afternoon.
In the volumes for the years 1937, 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1943, I discover that the pages for the reports from the Bureau have been ripped out. I alert Sandra Gil about this, as well as the archivist on duty who delivered the mutilated volumes to me.
Tuesday.
In the Yearly Report from 1944 (published in January 1945, during the Revolutionary Government), I read the following in Chapter XXVIII, corresponding to the Identification Bureau: “This Bureau was, as in previous years, led by clerk Tun, who collaborated with tireless dedication and efficiency on the investigation of various criminal acts.”
And further down, this letter from clerk Tun:
Guatemala, January 22, 1945
Mr. Director General of the Civil Guard, Delivered by Hand. Before providing specifics, which detail and demonstrate the efforts of the Identification Bureau under my leadership this past year of 1944, I deem it appropriate to expose, more justifiably than ever now that a new era is opening up for our country and we move toward the implantation of democratic norms, what the Identification Bureau’s work is within the organizational structure of the police.
The work of the Identification Bureau covers two broad areas. One concerns the human matter that enters Police Headquarters day after day for crimes or serious misdemeanors, and who need to be identified by means of the record card, which constitutes, so to speak, the first page in their criminal record, where the details of all future recidivism will appear. The other area where this Bureau acts is in matters pertaining to the laboratories of the Department of Technical Investigations itself: that is to say, the investigation by scientific means known today for the purpose of, on the one hand, identifying a criminal by the traces he might leave in places where he operates, and on the other hand, once identified or captured, furnishing evidence of his guilt.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007.
Today archivists on the second floor listen to salsa music. They give me more Yearly Reports to read. I find more mutilated pages (almost always in the pages corresponding to the report from the Identification Bureau, and rarely in other sections).
In the Yearly Report from 1938, a whole chapter, Chapter XI, is devoted to cases of folk medicine and witchcraft.
Thursday.
Pop music in Spanish: Arjona, Jarabe de Palo, Juanes, Manu Chao.
During the midmorning break, a female archivist, young and funny, who had spoken to me about my books on two or three occasions, approaches me to tell me that she is digitizing a series of “action radiograms”—stenographic copies of communications between police dispatch centers and patrol cars—dated 1970. She shows me one on the sly, which I copy immediately.
Guatemala, 7/4/70
It is possible that as a consequence of the accusations made in Escuintla by Pedro Matus, the police carried out a house search near Escuintla. There was resistance from the people in it, a total of six, who, protected by their weapons, took off to the hills. The police only found a young man in the house, about 19 to 22 years old, tall, blonde, who was arrested without offering resistance. Along the way, near San Andrés Villa Seca, he indicated that they would not get anything out of him, and that they might as well save themselves the trouble and kill him off, which “special” police Prudencio Aguirre did, shooting him between the eyes. This was witnessed by Colonel Carlos Sandoval, Head of the National Police of Escuintla, who finished him off with 14 shots from a .30 caliber gun.
The corpse was left hidden in the underbrush. Aguirre has been a bodyguard for several “anti-communist” leaders.
After the break, I ask Sandra if I could see those documents once they have been cataloged.
I start to get bored from looking through Yearly Reports. I snoop around the library, I kill time, while waiting for permission to see the documents I have requested, and especially the radiograms.
Document 1415 (requested at random):
Telegraphic codes of the National Police
Orders:
RABUA: I require from you immediate capture and safe delivery of . . .
RAFUD: due to lack of merit from the actions requested, cancel the order to capture . . .
ROGUE: report criminal records on . . .
Crimes:
DABUB: prosecuted for homicide
DAFUF: for threats
DEHOH: for fraud
DEGOG: for abduction
DIBIB: attempted murder
DOXEX: infanticide
General:
GADRO: known thief
GECHE: curly black hair
GISBI: well dressed
GISMA: dresses poorly
GISET: sex worker
GULGA: thin body
KABAB: proceed actively to their capture
KIFUZ: criminal was captured
VERAP: substitute will arrive
VIVAR: proceed tomorrow without fail
VOMIF: went today to . . .
VUMAG: sailed today for . . .
ZAHOH: for having venereal disease
ZAJUN: expel him from the country the way he came in
ZAGAB: you are no bother
ZEGUC: look closely
ZUVIV: it is not possible to meet your request
Lunch break.
While I eat lunch at El Altuna with Lucía Morán, I get a call from the chief:
“Where are you?”
“Having lunch.”
“Are you inside, or outside [of the Archive]?”
“Outside, but nearby,” I say.
“Very good. What I want to tell you would best be said in person, but I’m leaving on a trip tomorrow and I will not be back for ten days. A problem has come up. You have to suspend your visits. Do not return to the Archive, please,” he tells me.
“Agreed. I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“I’ll call you when I get back. Bye.”
I hang up and, through the window, I see a trio of schoolgirls in uniform, leaving the high school across the street. They roll up their checkered skirts at the waist, giving them two or three turns and making them into miniskirts—quite provocative.
“What happened?” Lucía asks.
I stop looking out the window. I have the fleeting thought that perhaps it is a lucky thing not to have to return to the Archive.
“They just suspended me,” I say.
“Why?”
“In ten, maybe eleven days, I’ll find out.”
I have not stopped wondering what the reason could be for my suspension. Could it have to do with the pages torn from the Yearly Reports? Or was it my request to see the action radiogr
ams? Or perhaps, though less likely, was it the “unfriendly” question that I asked Dr. Novales at his lecture series in the Ciudad Vieja? In any case, my interest in the Archive as novelistic material, which was beginning to fade, has now been reawakened because of this call.
Second Sketchbook: Don Quixote
Such is the spirit of the human heart: where it finds the most resistance, it is there that it tends to put the most effort.
Friday.
First visit to the General Archives of Central America (whose long gray exterior walls are impregnated with the smell of urine from countless incontinent citizens), in search of more Yearly Reports by the National Police, while my “suspension” lasts.
Me: Visitor number 13.
I come across a curious coincidence: in the old and rustic filing cabinet of the library at the General Archives, the Yearly Reports are missing for the years that interest me: 1937, 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1943, the ones where the chapters for the Identification Bureau were missing.
I requested to see Yearly Reports for other years, and the woman in charge served me with two whole boxes containing the decades 1930–1950. And that is where I found the volumes I had been seeking, which did not appear in the card catalog, and whose pages for the Identification Bureau had not been mutilated. I asked them to make me photocopies of the pages that were missing from the Police Archive, even before reading their contents.
Second visit. Monday.
While I wait for the librarian to deliver more volumes to me, I leaf through an issue from the Gazette of the Police dated October 15, 1944 (five days after the Guatemalan Revolution). I am struck by the picture of a French reporter.
A slain soldier, his hands tied to a post, has been shot by a firing squad for treason. Another soldier, his arm outstretched, revolver in hand, is leaning next to him. (“Coup-de-grace in Grenoble, France,” reads the caption.)
Upon turning the page: “Louis Renault, car manufacturer, arrested in Fresnes prison, accused of collaborating with the Nazis.”
Tuesday.
I visit the Library of Congress. On the street, on the sidewalk, congressmen come and go. Physically, they look like Guatemalan peasants, but they are dressed in three-piece formal suits, wearing designer sunglasses, and accompanied by men who look like them, bodyguards who have something of a cowboy air about them. Here and there, interspersed with the diesel smell of pickup trucks, you sense the strong smell of expensive perfume, or perhaps of a knockoff.