Part
4 - Belligerence at the border
The Israeli
military-security complex casts a long, intercontinental shadow over
Guatemalans who are still fleeing the consequences of the dirty war.
In some
areas along the US-Mexico border, such as in Texas, the numbers of
migrants hailing today from Central America (but only from the
countries combusted by US intervention – Guatemala, El Salvador,
Honduras) – has begun to outpace the number coming from Mexico.
According to
information provided to this author by the Pima County Medical
Examiner’s office in Arizona, many Guatemalans who have perished
while crossing these desert borderlands originated from among the
indigenous Mayan areas hit hardest by the 1980s genocide: El Quiché,
Huehuetenango, Chimaltenango.
Southern
Arizona has also seen a spike in undocumented Guatemalan migration.
US firms and institutions have been collaborating with Israeli
security companies to up-armor Southern Arizona’s border zone.
The Israeli
weapons firm Elbit won a major government contract to provide 52
surveillance towers in Southern Arizona’s desert borderlands,
beginning with the pilot program of seven towers currently placed
among the hills and valleys surrounding Nogales, a border town split
by the wall.
More towers
are slated to surround the Tohono O’odham Nation, the second
largest Native American reservation in the US. Already the number of
federal forces occupying permanent positions on Tohono O’odham
lands is the largest in US history.
Alan Bersin,
a senior figure in the US Department of Homeland Security, described
Guatemala’s border with Chiapas, Mexico, as “now our southern
border” in 2012. That “southern border” was heavily militarized
during Barack Obama’s eight years as US president.
We can
safely expect that militarization to continue during Donald Trump’s
presidency. Trump’s anti-migrant rhetoric during the presidential
election campaign suggests it is likely to be intensified.
During the
dirty war, tens of thousands of Guatemalans fled over this border
into Southern Mexico. Today, Israel assists the Mexican authorities
in Chiapas with “counterinsurgency” activities largely targeting
the indigenous Maya community.
Though media
reporting on Guatemala’s connection with Israel has dissipated,
Israel’s enterprising efforts in the country have never diminished.
Today, Israel’s presence in Guatemala is especially pronounced in
the private security industry which proliferated in the years
following the so-called Guatemalan peace process of the mid-1990s.
Ohad
Steinhart, an Israeli, relocated to Guatemala at this opportune
moment, originally working as a weapons instructor. Roughly two years
after his 1994 move to Guatemala, he founded his own security firm,
Decision Ejecutiva.
Steinhart’s
modest 300-employee company is small compared with the colossal Golan
Group, Israel’s largest and oldest private security conglomerate in
Guatemala.
Founded by
ex-Israeli special forces officers, the Golan Group has also trained
Department of Homeland Security immigration agents along the
US-Mexico border. The Golan Group has employed thousands of agents in
Guatemala, some of whom have been involved in repressing
environmental and land rights protests against mining operations by
Canadian firms. The company was named in a 2014 lawsuit by six
Guatemalan farmers and a student who were all shot at close range by
security agents during a protest the previous year.
Guatemala’s
use of Israeli military trainers and advisers, just as in the 1980s,
continues. Israeli advisers have, in recent years, been assisting the
current “remilitarization” of Guatemala. Journalist Dawn Paley
has reported that Israeli military trainers have shown up once again
at an active military base in Coban, which is the site of mass graves
from the 1980s. The remains of several hundred people have so far
been uncovered there.
The mass
graves at Coban serve as the legal basis for the January arrests of
14 former military officers. This past June a Guatemalan judge ruled
that the evidence is sufficient for eight of those arrested to stand
trial. Future arrests and trials are likely to follow.
Scholars
Milton H. Jamail and Margo Gutierrez documented the Israeli arms
trade in Central America, notably in Guatemala, in their 1986 book
It’s No Secret: Israel’s Military Involvement in Latin America.
They worded the title that way because the bulk of the information in
the book came from mainstream media sources.
For now,
Israel’s well-documented role in Guatemala’s dirty wars passes
largely without comment. But Guatemalans know better than most that
the long road to accountability begins with acknowledgment.
Yet it is
unclear how long it will be before we hear of Israeli officials being
called to Guatemala to be tried for the shadowy part they played in
the country’s darkest hours.
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