Update: Threats in case of El Jute

The newspaper, Diario de Centro América, reported on the 6th of January that relatives of the victims in the case of El Jute had been receiving threats. This comes after the passing of 53 year sentences against a former colonel and three former military commissioners last month for the forced disappearance of eight members of the community El Jute, Chiquimula in 1981. A few days prior to the Diario's article, came the news of the death of one of the recently sentenced former military commissioners, José Domingo Ríos Martínez.

Rising tensions in San Marcos

Wednesday last week (13th January) saw the second murder in three months of a leader in the campaign for the nationalisation of electricity provision in the department of San Marcos. The campaign is in reaction to illegal charges, the changing of meter readings, unjustified fines, and irregularities and interruptions in the electricity service provision by Spanish-owned Unión Fenosa and its subsidiaries DEOCSA and DEONSA.

The victim of Wednesday’s attack was 26 year old Evelina Ramírez Reyes, who was returning home after two days of meetings in the capital city when the car in which she was travelling was ambushed and she was shot dead. Two of the other passengers, Leonel de León and Jorge Lorenzo, were injured in the attack. The whereabouts of the fourth passenger, Freddy Rodas, were unknown at the time of writing. (1)

Tensions have been rising in San Marcos over recent months and years. Over 250 arrest warrants have been issued against community leaders. Last month the tensions culminated in the order of an “estado de prevención”(an emergency measure in which many constitutional rights are temporarily suspended ), alleged to be in part a reaction to the dismantling of a so-called “sabotage network” (2). Evelina had been meeting in the capital with various government authorities to discuss the debt of Q80 million quetzales which service users are to pay the energy company DEOCSA after having received a sabotaged service throughout last year. (3)

A sentence passed in November 2004 by the Guatemalan Constitutional Court determined that the company had been charging its customers illegal taxes amounting the sum of approximately 260 million dollars (US). The Court ordered that the company return the taxes it had collected to the service users. However, no money was returned and the company continues to demand these illegal taxes to this day. (4)

The group FRENA (the Front for the Defence of Natural Resources and the Rights of the People), of which Evelina Ramírez was a member, has been vocal in its campaign again Unión Fenosa, DEOCSA and DEONSA. However, sadly Ms. Ramírez was not the first FRENA member to be killed. In October last year a leader of the group, Víctor Galvez, was also shot dead. He was found with 32 bullet-wounds on his body. (5)

Following Víctor’s murder, in November the Barcelona-based Observatorio de la Deuda en la Globalización (Observatory of the Debt in Globalisation) sent an open letter to members of the Spanish government and the Board of Directors of Unión Fenosa to protest recent human rights abuses in Guatemala. (6)

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Sources:
- FRENA communiqué, www.jbcs.blogspot.com/2010/01/de-nuevo-corre-la-sangre-de-dirigentes.html
- For a Spanish definition of an “estado de prevención” see www.elperiodico.com.gt/es/20080508/pais/54494
- Prensa Libre, 4th January 2010, www.prensalibre.com/pl/2010/enero/04/366383.html
- Prensa Libre, 14th January 2010, www.prensalibre.com/pl/2010/enero/14/368606.html
- Open letter, November 2009, www.guatemalasolidarity.org.uk/?q=content/open-letter-spanish-president
- Prensa Libre, 24th October 2009, www.prensalibre.com/pl/2009/octubre/24/351400.html