The history of Guatemala is a repetition of the crushing, time and time again, of official institutions against its own population. But in the history of the Central American country there are also rays of light. One of the few Latin American societies that has rebelled to protect an international organization sees its history reflected in the comic The Warning: a story of impunity, a story drawn by the illustrators Francisco de la Mora and José Luis Pescador. It arises from the eponymous podcast that goes from the United States' support to the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and his subsequent conviction for genocide; until the mandate of former president Jimmy Morales, who clung to his chair and expelled the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) from the country.
The presentation of the comic last Thursday at the Casa Creatura in Mexico City was a reunion for a dozen Guatemalan exiles. They raise their voices, now, against the continuous attacks against the elected president of the Semilla Movement, Bernardo Arévalo, whose inauguration on January 14 is in the air due to a judicial persecution that asks to annul the last elections. Arévalo accuses the Public Ministry of carrying out a coup d'état.
The same story sounds familiar to Miguel Pulido, executive director of the project, who explains that the podcast, and later the comic, were born from an anecdote. “On a trip to Guatemala I saw how many people told me with great passion and intensity about the closure of the CICIG. It was relevant because society defended the institution. It is a unique effort in Latin America, I would say even in the world,” explains Pulido with emotion.
Like any story in which reality surpasses fiction, it seemed to him that “the script was already written.” From there emerged the podcast narrated by Diego Luna, which they decided to turn into a six-chapter comic that begins with the fall of Jacobo Árbenz, former president of Guatemala who suffered a coup d'état in 1954.
Thanks to the support of the United States, which had agricultural interests in Guatemala, Árbenz was relieved by a military junta. A prelude to what was experienced in stories of authoritarianism and impunity throughout Latin America: Pérez Godoy in Peru (1964), Pinochet in Chile (1963) and Videla in Argentina (1976), among many others.
Guatemala began an armed conflict in 1960 that reached its peak of horror 21 years later. The former dictator Montt, who was head of state for a year and a half, and his paramilitary army, killed 10,000 people of the Mayan Ixil people between 1981 and 1983.
On the pages of the comic, there are burning villages that were attacked under the “scorched earth” policy. The illustrator José Luis Pescador admits the advantages of a comic over photojournalism for these scenes. “I think it was necessary to make all the violence graphic. It is necessary to tell it as it is. Drawing softens it more and you can talk about very critical topics,” he explains.
Then came a peace agreement in 1996 that ended 36 years of conflict. It was signed to end impunity, the arrival of democracy and a reform of institutions. But the victims were left out of the role. In 2006 the UN created the CICIG to support the weak Public Ministry of Guatemala and in 2010 a key character for the comic appears on the scene due to her testimony: the attorney general and head of the Public Ministry, Claudia Paz (2010-2014). . Her stories of how she took Ríos Montt to trial in 2013 take the story to its climax, the one where it seems like the good guys are going to win.
In the trials against Montt, which are recorded in the podcast, the women of the Mayan Ixil people declare in their own language that they were raped during the war. “They declare in the Mayan language. Audio has a lot of power. But the comic reflects the colors of the typical dresses, which is fundamental in the story,” explains the executive director.
The ecstasy comes with the sentence handed down by Paz, which the illustrator Francisco de la Mora experienced as a victory. “That page is very well drawn, it is very powerful. It's like when you watch a sports movie and you feel above the script,” he explains. The emotional downturn comes immediately, as Pescador expresses: “You feel anger knowing that this historic sentence is not completed.” Montt was declared genocidal and sentenced to 80 years in prison, but he never set foot because the Constitutional Court of Guatemala annulled the sentence months later.
A hard blow that Guatemalan society was not willing to repeat. In 2015, the CICIG was commanded by Iván Velásquez, who speaks directly to the reader in the comic about what the corruption process of the then president of Guatemala, Otto Pérez Molina, was like.
The case, known as La Línea, is the name of the chapter in which thousands of protesters are seen in the Constitution Square of Guatemala City, and which led to the resignation of Pérez Molina that same 2015. That was the notice of society that they were not going to let impunity run rampant.
The last chapters summarize with powerful images the CICIG's fight to accuse President Jimmy Morales (2016-2020) of corruption, who expelled Velásquez from the country with different maneuvers that ended with the criminalization of this UN commission and its dissolution in 2019. Also about the current sources of power in a country in which drug traffickers do what they want and in which, according to the comic, the greatest influence in the country is held by big businessmen. No political party has been in government again in Guatemala's 40 years of democracy.
Molina would have liked to include more characters in the story. “We are missing voices that we understand were silenced by repression, that were murdered. And many voices of anonymous heroes who were very difficult to track,” explains Pulido.
Around 20 people worked on the production of the comic, edited by El Antifaz and La Corriente del Golfo Podcast. Thanks to a patronage campaign in which people from Mexico and, above all, Guatemala collaborated, they were able to tell a drama that is repeated throughout Latin America. “The issue of impunity is the other scourge of this country,” says Pulido about his native Mexico.
The presentation of the comic was preceded by a talk about the current situation in the Central American country. The journalist Gabriel Wer, the former prosecutor of the Public Ministry Julio Prado and the representative elected by the Semilla Movement Cinthya Rojas presented the problems of their Guatemala in 2023.
Like the social demands of 2015 drawn in the comic, protests are now shaking the country so that the elected president, Bernardo Arévalo, can take office. And Pulido explains why the comic is called the warning, that of the highest powers to civil society: “If you [los guatemaltecos] They continue to confront this corrupt elite and attack the groups in power, they are going to have consequences. That is the warning, and what we are experiencing now is the fulfillment of that warning.”
#warning #fight #impunity #Latin #America #Guatemala