The Library of Congress is a nice place, cool and quiet. They tell me they do not have Yearly Reports from the police, that the library was destroyed by fire about twenty years ago and that few volumes survived the flames. They let me consult the card catalogs. I ask for several books.
From Justo Rufino Barrios Face-to-Face with Posterity (A. Díaz):
Names of criminals and known gangs in the New City of Guatemala at the end of the nineteenth century, when the National Police was founded (1881):
The Chicharrones
The Contingencies
The Gentle One
The Marimberos
The Roldans
El Tucurú (Ricardo Rodríguez), “the first prisoner executed by firing squad in the New City of Guatemala.”
Other “causes célèbres”:
The unresolved mystery of the Chinese man, Mariano Ching, who had his throat cut and was emasculated in his bed (1935).
The case of the beheaded woman (1945).
José María Miculax Bux, confessed rapist and strangler of twelve “white children” between the ages of ten and sixteen. Originally from San Andrés, Patzicía, he committed his crimes around Antigua and the New City of Guatemala. He was a survivor of the Patzicía massacre, which was shortly after the Kaqchikel uprising that was due to land problems; the government, in order to repress the uprising, sent in 1944 a punitive expedition that ended the lives of about a thousand indigenous peoples—among them, apparently, the parents and siblings of the young Miculax. Executed by firing squad in 1946 at the age of twenty-one. His skull is still preserved as a subject of (Lombrosian?) study at the School of Criminology at San Carlos University.
Saturday. Lake Atitlán. Evening.
In the morning, before going to pick up Pía at her mother’s, I asked B+ to call the number that I found in the phone book under the name of Benedicto Tun, a possible descendant of the Bureau’s director. I now call her from the hotel, to see if she has any news. The Benedicto Tun of the phone book is the son of the former, who was head of the Identification Bureau. B+ had a fairly long conversation with him, she tells me. On my instructions, she told him that she was working on a university thesis on the history of the National Police.
In principle, Tun is willing to talk about his father. B+ tells me that he is a bit annoyed at the state for the way they treated his father at the time of his retirement. When he requested his retirement, in 1964, he was given a pension of one hundred and twenty quetzals a month, which even then was a small amount. But he did not cash in on that pension because he continued to work. In 1970 he suffered brain trauma, which resulted in him giving up his job. They increased his pension a little, based on a decree-law by the military government of Peralta Azurdia. Then, the Bureau underwent some modifications; the divisions for criminology, ballistics, and graphology were separated, and in a few years the name of Benedicto Tun fell into oblivion. The son also told B+ that he keeps some official documents, rescued from the various raids and searches that the police conducted in his home after the death of his father.
After a few months of working at the Archive, every time I talk on the phone (especially on the cell phone), I think I may be listened to. Something the chief said the other day about it not being advisable to discuss my suspension over the phone reinforces my suspicion. So, I tell B+ that we better talk about this when I return to the capital.
Pía, who has been playing with her paints while I was talking, asks me:
“Who was it?”
I tell her:
“Beatriz” (which is also the name of her godmother). “But not your Beatriz.”
“Why is her name Beatriz?”
I laughed.
“How old is she?”
“About forty.”
“Forty!” Pía exclaimed, and kept playing and stopped asking.
Tuesday.
I call Benedicto Tun from a pay phone. His voice is that of a sixty-year-old man, perhaps a bit older. He is a criminal lawyer, and yes, he is willing to talk to me about his father. His voice sounds happy when he talks about the old man. “At one point, around 1961 or 1962, we thought about starting a private research laboratory together. I wanted him to leave the Bureau, but he kept postponing and postponing his retirement. Finally, when he actually retired, at seventy-four, we set up the laboratory. He died ten years later.” He mentions again the pension that his father received when he retired, and the lack of recognition by the government and the National Police for his work and career.
“That’s how the state has behaved with men like him. I was a little hurt, I can’t lie to you,” he says.
I tell him that it seems natural to me.
“I have a few things, but just scraps,” he continues to say, “of what he left written, apart from what he wrote for the Yearly Reports. I believe that he had even started writing his personal memoirs, but there is very little of that, because of the accident.”
He asks me for a number so that he can call me when he finds those papers.
“Although I don’t know if they will be of any use for what you say you are writing,” he adds.
I explain that I would like to write a history of the Guatemalan police in the twentieth century, and I think that his father’s biography could possibly serve as a connecting thread.
We agree to talk again in the near future to arrange for an interview.
Monday, February 26.
The front pages of today’s newspapers report the death of four high-ranking police officers. The policemen had been imprisoned two or three days earlier, charged with “credible” evidence, for the brutal murder of three Salvadoran congressmen and their driver, about thirty kilometers from Guatemala City on February 19 of this year.
The chief of the Archive Recovery Project, who returned from his trip a few days ago, had given me an appointment at the Ombudsman’s Office to speak about my suspension. Before leaving my home, I call to confirm our appointment.
“I’ve hit a snag, my friend,” he says. “A friend of my children was killed in an accident yesterday. They crashed on the road to Totonicapán. Everyone in the car died. A tragedy. I’m at the cemetery.”
He gives me another appointment for tomorrow at three.
Tuesday.
Ombudsman’s Office. It’s almost four in the afternoon, and I’m still waiting for the chief. One of his assistants just told me he’s on his way, but caught in a traffic jam. While I wait, I read the press and I take notes.
“Gang of policemen suspected of a crime against Salvadoran congressmen could have at least 12 members.
“February 19: The burned remains of Salvadoran congressmen to the Central American Parliament were found, along with their car and driver. Three days later, four agents belonging to the Office of Criminal Investigations were captured for the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen. They were sent to jail in Zone 18 by order of a judge; that same day they were transferred to the high security prison El Boquerón (Santa Rosa), where there are individual cells. However, the four agents were locked up in the same cell. Two days later, the four policemen were mysteriously executed in their cell.”
I see the wall clock; I decide to wait another fifteen minutes. However, the fifteen minutes go by and I do not get up. I must get an explanation about my suspension, I tell myself. I wait until five. The chief does not arrive.
Wednesday.
Two days ago—I read in today’s newspapers—there was an enormous collapse of land in Zone 6, where the Archive is located. “At least three people were swallowed by the earth and about 300 had to vacate their homes. In the last few hours, more residents had to abandon their homes when they heard the ground rumble.”
Apparently the “San Antonio Sinkhole,” a kind of cenote with a diameter of fifty meters and sixty meters deep, endangers not only the surrounding homes but also the facilities where the Archive is located, only 185 meters away. Yesterday, the press reports, the directors of the Archive Recovery Project discussed the immine
nt removal of the documents to keep them safe.
In part, that explains why the chief did not come to our last appointment. I decide to be patient.
Midday. Francisco Marroquín University Library. Nothing about the history of the police.
I browse texts at random. Cesare Beccaria:
In politics, the one who reaps is not always the one who sowed.
Lawmakers should direct public happiness. They should; that is, they do not.
All punishment that does not derive from absolute necessity is tyrannical.
Any man is at a certain moment the center of all the permutations on the globe.
Afternoon.
In the anthology of essays Intellectual History of Guatemala (Marta Casaús Arzú, 2001) that a young archivist lent me, I read:
Roger de Lyss, New Times, Guatemala, 1924:
The Indian cannot be a citizen. As long as the Indian is a citizen, we Guatemalans will not be free. Those poor wretches have been born slaves, they carry that in their blood, it is the heritage of centuries, the cursed fate that the conquistador imposed on them.
Benedicto Tun, who was the son of an Indian father and mother, created the Identification Bureau in 1922.
Thursday.
The chief again gave me an appointment at the offices of the Human Rights Ombudsman. And again, he was a no-show. I talk to him on the phone, I tell him that first of all I would like to know the reason for my suspension. He tells me he cannot go into details over the phone, but that the day they suspended me there was a general meeting, and “someone” said that I asked to see a box with radiograms of actions from the 1970s. Revealing these documents to me right away (the day they were found) would have violated, apparently, some confidentiality rule. The chief says he cannot explain anything else to me by phone, but not to worry, that it’s just a misunderstanding, that I will be able to go back to the Archive. We agree on a new appointment for next week.
Friday.
I return to visit the General Archive of Central America. I leaf through more National Police Yearly Reports. I ask for photocopies, which will not be delivered to me until Monday. I also request a university thesis on the police, which they will also let me read on Monday.
From the press:
“Today another agent sought for the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen voluntarily turned himself in to the authorities.”
Afternoon. Francisco Marroquín University Library.
Voltaire: The need to talk, the difficulty of having nothing to say, and the desire to be witty are three things capable of making the greatest man ridiculous.
Saturday.
The phone stared ringing at about two o’clock in the morning. I got up to answer, but there was no one on the line. This happened again at least five times. I figure it was a mistake, perhaps mistaken programming from some wake-up call service. Aside from that, a quiet Saturday. Pía and I had lunch at my parents’. We spent the afternoon at María Marta’s, the second of my sisters. I tried to read a bit while Pía watched a movie (The Pacifier). We had pizza delivered at home.
“Every text is ambiguous,” I say out loud, half asleep. I believe it.
Monday.
Telephone call from Oaxaca, Mexico. I’m invited to a roundtable of “international writers”—among them, my friend Homero Jaramillo.
Benedicto Tun has not called, as he said he would, once he had organized the papers from his father that he wanted to show me.
I read “A Defense of Ardor” by Zagajewski, the Polish writer that Homero recommended to me a few days ago in an email. He seems all right to me, but he does not quite convince me, as Dr. Aguado would say. It is true that I do not know many of the authors that he quotes, and that diminishes my reading.
The question that I think I should be asking myself about Tun and his work at the National Police is this: in such an environment, could he have been a decent man, or even more than that, an exemplary man?
It is necessary, says Pascal, that we explain to ourselves the amazing contradictions that conjugate in us.
Voltaire: There are no contradictions in us, or in nature, in general. What we find everywhere are inconveniences.
It occurs to me to go to Opus Magnum, the tailor shop, with the pretext of getting a suit made. I would like to talk with the owner, a former schoolmate of mine as well as brother of one of the police officers whose name has been in the newspapers lately, in connection with the crime that people call “the Salvadoran pork roast,” and who, as a result of this, has just resigned. Jaime Gonzales, the police officer and my tailor’s brother, graduated as a doctor in 1989, and practiced in the Police Hospital between 1991 and 1997. According to some reporters and columnists, he always had a reputation for being violent. I would like to ask the tailor what he thinks of this rumor. And if he knows why his brother decided to become a policeman.
Let us find comfort in not knowing what connections might exist between a spider and a ring of Saturn and let us continue instead to examine what is within our reach.—Voltaire.
Who was that contemporary of Asturias who argued that in order to think up a nation-building project valid for Guatemala it would be necessary to allow the indigenous people to become full citizens, not deprived of their rights as they were then—and in many cases, still are today? I fail to remember his name, and yet he did exist, that contemporary writer or historian unfairly forgotten. He is one of a few authors whom I have read who is not seduced by the idea of a “eugenic nation” and the absurd project of “importing European blood to improve the race,” advocated by Miguel Ángel Asturias.
Email from Homero Jaramillo, who asks me for a letter of recommendation for an asylum program in Canada. He attached this:
Case H. Jaramillo.
Date of threat: November 2005.
Nature of threat: Two midnight phone calls to my parent’s house, where I used to live, saying that I was going to be killed because of what I wrote in my book Profiles of the Underground published a few days before the threats.
Identity of persons carrying out threat: Anonymous. They did not identify themselves.
I write this letter, or rather, I recycle it, because I have already used the text on another occasion:
Dear Sirs at Canadian Cities of Asylum,
This letter is to attest that I am aware that Mr. Jaramillo has been the object of death threats in his country. I am also aware that his very critical views on the political state of affairs in Honduras has made him enemies on all sides, a situation which would make it very difficult to work in his field at the present moment in Central America. As you may know, in places like Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, where Mr. Jaramillo has worked in the past, the practice of silencing enemies—political or other—by death threats or, in many cases, by death, has again become commonplace.
Monday at noon.
The chief just called me to, once again, postpone our meeting. He assures me, however, that he is still interested, and still believes in the work that “we could do.” He tells me that he will call later so that we can agree on another appointment.
I call again, and I finally find Tun. He explains to me that the number I dialed a few days ago is the one in his office, but the call has been forwarded to his cell phone; he is out on the street and cannot talk. He asks me to call him later, around six. I agree to call him tomorrow at nine.
After lunch I go to the General Archive to pick up the photocopies, which are ready; not so the thesis. I’m asked to come back for it tomorrow, Tuesday.
Front page today: “High-ranking police chief leaves the country.” This is Jaime Gonzales, a former student at Liceo Javier high school. He left with his wife and children on a flight to Costa Rica. The “brief note” in Prensa Libre says: “Who is Jaime Gonzales? Profession: Doctor and surgeon. He joined the National Civil Police in 2005 as deputy director of health. Three months later he was appointed deputy general manager, in charge of the Division of Investigations. He was the boss of Victor Sot
o, one of the agents executed in El Boquerón.
“Passengers aboard the TACA 911 flight bound for Costa Rica described Gonzales as not having the beard and mustache that he used to have and that he no doubt shaved off in order to go unnoticed. They also reported that, when he went through the boarding gate, the former official carried a baby, only a few months old, in his arms. His wife and other children, aged nine and four, followed him. Gonzales and his family were picked up in San José by a private tourist service (although they had no reservations on the TACA flight that they took) and they did not say where they were going. Asked whether he left Guatemala out of fear, the former police chief shook his head and continued walking. Pro-justice advocacy groups of course lamented that the former official left the country before clarifying the involvement of the police group under his charge in the crime against the burned Salvadorans. They also expressed their surprise that no judge with authority had issued a travel restriction against Gonzales in the midst of the current scandal.”
Evening.
A bit bored at first and then with surprise, I read an email from Tracy Veal, whom I have not seen in several years, and who now lives in New York. It contains links to two press articles: one about the recent police-related events that have put Guatemala back in the pages of the New York Times, another from the Guardian Weekly about the Archive.
The Guardian: “The Archive sits in a former police base in Guatemala City, ringed by razor wire and a 24-hour armed guard. We were allowed access on condition we did not identify any of the 100 investigators working here. . . . The person in overall charge of the Ombudsman’s inquiry says there is psychological pressure on these workers, who know their lives may be at risk due to the political sensitivity of their work. He has received numerous death threats. There are some extremely ‘unhappy people’ in the higher echelons of government and the army—he says. And people still go missing here in Guatemala.”
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