I call the chief several times; mailbox full.
Prensa Libre carries more news and commentaries about the National Civil Police, publicly identified by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Philip Alston, for carrying out “social cleansing” operations. The Rapporteur adds: “This is a good country in which to commit a crime.”
I call the chief again; he does not answer.
Afternoon.
The afternoon newspaper La Hora says: “Agents from the Division of Criminological Investigations commit extrajudicial executions, asserted the Rapporteur for the United Nations.”
For almost fifty years Benedicto Tun directed what would perhaps have been the equivalent of this division for the old National Police. Again, I ask myself: Could this have been a “decent” man?—at least in the Orwellian sense? I wonder if I will have a clearer idea about this after my interview with his son.
Saturday morning.
Last night, again, a terrifying nightmare. In the dream, I am at my parents’, in the bedroom that we used to call “Grandpa’s room.” I am awake but lying in bed in the dark. I hear noises and get up to investigate. I walk without turning the lights on, then continue toward the living room and dining room, where the noises are coming from. When I enter, I stop, frightened. A little man, evidently a thief, is leaning on the other side of the table, his back to me; he is searching for something in the cabinet with the glassware. I switch on the lights; the little man turns. He has the face of Mark Rich, a painter (I believe, ultimately, a frustrated one) whom I met in Morocco and who later became a friend in New York but whom I have not heard from in over twenty years. It is him! I think—but a lot thinner, and as if in miniature. He seems to be furious, his nose reminiscent of a bat’s. I look around me, in search of a blunt object with which to attack him or defend myself. He takes a big flower vase that sits on top of the cabinet where he is snooping around and makes as if to hurl it at me. I let out an inarticulate noise, half scream, half moan, that barely comes out of my mouth. I wake up drenched in sweat. I get up to assure myself that I am all alone in the apartment, then check the main door to make sure it is locked.
I call the chief again. He answers his cell phone and tells me he cannot speak much. He is at the Archive with an “archive guru” who is giving a lecture for the researchers of the Project. The chief sounds very excited. The workshop ends next Monday, and Tuesday there will be a general meeting with the directors and consultants for the Project. He proposes that I start visiting the Archive again on Wednesday morning.
I take a look at elPeriódico. More news from Philip Alston: “Rapporteur’s findings point to social cleansing,” states the headline on the front page. Among other statistics, it mentions that, in the year 2006, a total of 5,533 violent deaths were recorded in Guatemala, with only 5 percent of them, approximately, investigated by the authorities, and that sixty-four human rights advocates have been murdered in Guatemala in the last five years.
Another interesting news item:
Jaime Gonzales, the police-doctor, flew from Costa Rica to Venezuela last week on COPA Flight 223, the day after tendering his resignation, and just hours after visiting the police officers detained in connection with the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen at El Boquerón prison—but no record of his arrival at the Simón Bolívar International Airport has been found. In other words: the deputy chief of the National Civil Police has managed to vanish.
Tuesday.
Argument over the phone with B+ (on account of my being late for a date). I tell her she is out of it. She tells me that I do not understand anything. We agree that it is not advisable to talk any further for the time being, and I will call her later. Old story, I tell myself.
I have lunch at my parents’. I read in elPeriódico an open letter from Jaime Gonzales, where he justifies his departure from Guatemala and his “disappearance.” He says: “My death in those circumstances [the scandal surrounding the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen and the execution of their murderers—high-ranking police officers, under Gonzales’s command in a high-security Guatemalan prison] would have personally damaged me in the eyes of public opinion.” Jesuit logic?
Saturday, Puerto Viejo, Iztapa.
Visiting the T’s, overlooking the Chiquimulilla canal. Luxury home, Santa Fe–style, five-star service. But the extreme comfort, along with JL’s bonhomie and the company of B+, do not make me completely happy; they don’t even put me slightly at ease. (And what about them, how do I make them feel? I could ask myself this question. Have never done it.) Although it is not exactly about “feeling guilty for still having a bit of pure air to breathe [as Adorno used to say] in hell,” there is an element of that. Perhaps B+ is right, in what I call her prejudice against the use (however discreet or moderate) of possibly left-linked benzoylmethylecgonine, under the effects of which, and with a slightly trembling hand and a bitter taste in the mouth, I write these lines, stretched out under the blazing sun, by the canal, with the rolling, shimmering sea in the distance.
Sunday afternoon.
In the press: one of the police officers involved in the murder of the Salvadoran congressmen, who is now a protected witness, states that there are “evangelical death squads” composed of National Civil Police agents who belong to various religious sects.
“We are waging,” he says, “a battle against Evil. That is how extrajudicial executions are justified.”
Monday.
I leaf through my mother’s journal telling about her abduction, which I borrowed from her on Thursday. During the six months that she was held captive, my mother was allowed to keep a diary, but they took it away from her when they set her free. A few days after her return home, she started to write down her memories of the events in a hardbound journal, with a fabric cover decorated with very small roses against a bone-colored background. Tucked between the pages of the journal are three sheets of paper typed by my mother (who was a secretary in her youth and an excellent typist until recently). She left the work half-finished, but the first few pages are not without interest:
June 28, 1981. Janila K’ay (her ceramics store).
6:45 p.m. Mario calls to let me know that he will be late for dinner because he has a special meeting at the bank. I take advantage of this to write a note to “Guayito” to order a few items from the factory. At 7:15 Lelo Ungaretti comes by with a message (I do not remember what about) for Mario. I load into the car the defective lamp base to be returned to the factory, along with a wooden fish from Birmania that Rodrigo sent from New York as a gift for Magalí (whose birthday was yesterday), and which I brought to the store to have wrapped. When I get into the car, I see a young man staring at me from across the street, pacing in front of the store. I exit on Seventh Avenue and, as is my habit, I use the access lane on Plazuela España to avoid the red light. I am in a hurry, because I want to have dinner before the 8:00 movie they are going to show on Channel 3. When I turn on to 12th Street, a white van cuts me off. I think it’s backing up to park. I see another vehicle in my rearview mirror. Four or five men get out of the van. There is a woman with them. A man I had not seen, and who I imagine got out of the car behind me, breaks the window on the passenger side of my car (I always keep that door locked) with the butt of his gun. I hear gunshots. I scream.
Tuesday.
Long, instructive interview with Benedicto Tun.
The Pasaje Suiza building, which connects 9th and 10th Streets, is today a somber place that still has some of the glamour of the fifties. Tun’s office is on the third floor, at the end of the hallway, a hallway that has high wood panels and several waiting benches built into the walls between one office and the next. A Kaqchikel family with two small children and a baby sits on a bench under high windows, with the sunlight filtering in through a film of dust and dirt, eating a snack of black bean soup, avocados, and tortillas. When I walk by them, they offer me lottery tickets. A handwritten note with Tun’s cell phone number is stuck to the door of his office. I call him. He tells me he is almost there. I sit on a bench and take notes.
Tun arrives a few minutes late. He has big slanted eyes, a peaceful countenance, and straight salt-and-pepper hair, abundant and well groomed. He makes me think of a slightly overweight, Guatemalan Humphrey Bogart. Through the door that leads to the hallway, there is another door with iron grating. As he gestures to me to go first, he explains that he is remodeling. The office is divided in half with a plywood partition that is missing several panels. He invites me into his office, on the other side of the partition. I sit on a white divan in front of a desk cluttered with papers. I tell him that I assume he has a lot of work and that I do not want to impose on him. He nods with a slight smile of resignation. He goes to his desk and picks up a few old, damaged audiocassettes (which he assumes his father recorded during the last few months of his life), then hands them to me and sits down in an armchair next to the divan. I tell him that before giving them to me, he should listen to the recordings. I remember that I left the tape player in the car. I offer to get it at the end of our interview and loan it to him.
He explains that he found his father’s papers to be in a big mess, for which—he confesses—he feels a bit guilty. It seems to me that he is pleased by the interest that I show in the work of his father, of whom he speaks with obvious affection. He shows me a certificate of his father’s appointment as chief of the Identification Bureau.
“My father started earning the salary of a simple street agent, but he was serious and ambitious in his scientific pursuit. He was also not dogmatic. He was a practical man, and a scholar who was constantly studying. He created the Identification Bureau practically single-handedly.”
I ask him to tell me about the ruling on the death of Castillo Armas, former president of Guatemala, which he had mentioned during our early phone conversations.
Benedicto seems to relax a bit. He starts to tell me in a confidential tone, as if I know the story well, about the case of the soldier Romeo Vásquez, accused of the assassination of President Armas—involving Trujillo, president of the Dominican Republic. He tells me that—as everyone knew from press coverage at the time—this soldier kept a diary. He lets me see photocopies of the diary, with its good, albeit very cramped, handwriting. The notes repeatedly mention the arrival of a “great day” and a “new revolution.” Although many have questioned the authenticity of the dairy (including Norman Lewis in his article “Guatemala: The Mystery of the Murdered Dictator”), Tun believes that these circumstances determined Vázquez’s fate: to be chosen as the scapegoat by the plotters, likely extreme right-wing people, and not left-wing, as it was claimed at the time. They had masterminded a plot, supposedly an escape plan for the assassin. The soldier was betrayed (the door for his escape from the Presidential Palace was locked from the outside). When he found himself cornered, he shot himself under his chin, with the same rifle he had used to kill the president, according to ballistic tests done by Benedicto Senior. The son shows me photos of the soldier lying on the floor, his head blown apart, with the rifle between his legs.
He starts to talk of another case, the death of Mario Méndez Montenegro. The older Tun pronounced it a suicide (he again talks about the circumstances as if assuming that I know the case well—which flatters me.) “But the people above wanted him to change his pronouncement and say that it had been a homicide,” he tells me.
He explains that Méndez Montenegro, presidential candidate and former Police director, killed himself with a revolver. The weapon was a gift from a military man a few years before his death and the bullet that pierced his heart was also of military issue. These facts lent themselves to a hypothesis of political assassination, which was exploited by his supporters. But given the ballistic tests and other circumstances surrounding the death (which took place at his home, after an alcoholic crisis), Tun refused to change his ruling, in spite of the pressures he was subjected to when Mario’s brother, Julio César Méndez Montenegro, was elected president of the republic.
“This almost cost him a jail sentence,” he assures me. “Given the pressures, he submitted his resignation, but they did not accept it, and he had to continue to work at the Bureau for another three years, until he retired, following an accident.”
He comments that his father had an “iron constitution,” although at the end he suffered from chronic insomnia.
“He rarely got sick. He used to swim an hour daily, very early, and take cold showers at night or early in the morning,” he tells me. He was taking one of those showers when he slipped on a bar of soap and fell to the floor. The impact to his head caused an internal brain hemorrhage, for which he was hospitalized.
He gives me a copy of the resignation letter to read, addressed to the president of the Justice System (as Tun was also the official expert for the courts). I transcribe it below.
Mr. President,
Seeing myself unable to attend to my obligations as Chief of the Identification Bureau of the National Police for over a month, due to a postoperative period following brain trauma that I recently suffered, I consider it my duty to indicate, precisely because the Courts are not completely informed regarding the duties held by subordinate personnel in this Bureau, and due to the fact, since if truth be told, the various obligations related to that position cannot be delegated to a single person, the necessity of a division of labor among the personnel at the Identification Bureau, as follows:
—Examination of fingerprints, palm prints, and footprints found at the crime scene, as well as the identification of cadavers using the post-mortem records.
—Chemical confirmation of gunpowder deflagration, using paraffin gloves.
—Determination of blood stains and other vestiges: sperm, excrement, hair, and various human, animal, or synthetic fibers.
—Analysis of inks and paints, by means of macro and micro-photography, which are indispensable for these studies.
—Analysis of all kinds of handwriting, in every sense, manuscripts, dactylographic transcripts and authentic or “doubtful” signatures, the study of which is the most requested by the Courts.
—Analysis of photographs.
—Voice analysis.
In addition to “committing himself” to assist the agents or staff members that he recommends to carry out these duties in certain cases, he awaits the attention and response of the president of the Judicial Body.
I tell Benedicto that I do not want to take any more of his time—it is now past noon—and we agree to another interview after Easter, upon my return from my trip to France.
He assures me that over the holidays he will have time to continue to review his father’s documents, and he promises to set aside those that he thinks might interest me. We get up and Benedicto goes to open the grate door that leads to the hallway, which he keeps locked—he explains again—“for peace of mind.”
Down below, at the end of the hallway and outlined against the glare of the sun coming in from the street, the silhouette of a police pickup truck can be seen. I have a bad feeling when I see two agents get out of it. They stare at me as they approach me, but they do not detain me.
I go for the tape player in the car, which I left in a public parking lot, and return to Tun’s office to give it to him.
Afternoon.
I read Prensa Libre until it’s time to pick up Pía to sleep over at my apartment: yesterday the president of the republic accepted the resignations of the minister of the Interior and the director of the National Police, following the scandal related to the Salvadoran congressmen. Adela de Torrebiarte, the newly appointed minister, belonged to the Anguished Mothers and, later, the President’s Security Advisory Council, and was also friends with my parents.
I call JL to talk about the trip I want to make to Río Dulce with Pía and my mother, in a small plane belonging to their construction company. In passing, I make some comments about what Benedicto told me regarding the death of Méndez Montenegro, who was JL’s relative. Then—and this surprises me a bit—JL tells me that he has a long-distance phone call and needs to hang up, but that he will call me later. He does not call back.
Nighttime.
Pía is asleep. I speak again with JL. I allude to our conversation from this afternoon. He tells me he does not want to talk about “that” over the phone—causing me to see that I have not been very discreet. I believe he is overreacting, but I say nothing about it, and we change the topic of our conversation.
Wednesday morning.
Chaotic violin concerto by Pía and her school friends. I had agreed to go to the Archive after the show. I call the chief to confirm my visit, the first since the “suspension.” He tells me a new difficulty has arisen and that he will have to be present to ensure that I will be allowed into the Archive. He will call me—he says—a bit later on my cell.
Afternoon.
No news from the chief. I call him. He answers. He apologizes for the cancellation and explains that more problems have come up. He does not want me to return to the Archive without us speaking first—in person, he insists, not over the phone. He gives me an appointment for tomorrow at five in the afternoon at the usual café, next to the Taco Bell on Avenida de las Américas.
Early in the evening, I visit my parents—I bring some therapeutic icepacks for my mother, who has a sore knee. I keep them company while they have supper (they eat very early, around seven). I describe my interview with Tun in broad strokes.
“You’re playing with fire,” my father says.
I respond that I do not think it is that big of a deal, that a lot of time has elapsed (since the Castillo Armas case, for example).
My mother remains silent. It’s an indulgent silence.
Thursday, early evening.
The chief arrived twenty minutes late to our five o’clock appointment, but he was extraordinarily cordial—almost apologetic—about his delay. “Traffic,” he said. “I haven’t had lunch yet.”
While he gobbled down a burrito, he remembered that in a futuristic movie he recently saw, the Taco Bell logo appears at a restaurant where they serve tacos and other snacks made of human flesh. He did not have good news for me. There have been a series of issues, “work-related in particular,” at the Archive Recovery Project. Some have been caused by my presence there. At the general meeting they just had (at La Bodeguita on 12th Street), he explained, there was “a sea of long faces” among the Project directors and workers for granting me, not a part of the Project, the privilege of visiting the Archive.
I reply that I am not surprised at all and that I expected something like this, since other people’s privileges tend to cause discomfort.
“As a matter of fact, I do not really need to go back,” I tell him, “although I would like to.”
He assures me that I will be able to go back; he just does not know when.
I ask if I could have access to some documents that I had started to look at: the Police Yearly Reports, which have already been digitized and are public documents, in fact.
That could be a problem, he says; he would have to provide explanations in order to obtain that material. However, he promises to loan me the Yearly Report from the Archive Recovery Project to read, which he himself created, and which could be useful as a source for the book I may write.
A bit surprised, I tell him that I would like to take that report with me on my next trip to France. We agree that he will give me a CD with that text in a few days.
“Take good care,” he tells me as we say goodbye with a strong handshake in the parking lot.
Tuesday afternoon.
The chief calls. He tells me that he is revising the text for his Yearly Report, that he has found some errors he wants to correct, and that he will not be able to do it for another three or four days. So, we agree that I will stop by the Archive upon my return from Río Dulce, on Holy Wednesday (and before dropping Pía off at her cousins’ in a condominium on the Pacific coast, where Pia’s mother Isabel will be spending Easter Week).
By chance, I find the photocopies of the article by Marta Elena Casaús, in which she talks about Fernando Juárez Muñoz, a contemporary of Miguel Ángel Asturias who, influenced by theosophy and by authors such as Madame Blavatski, Annie Besant, and Jiddu Krishnamurti, maintained that the Maya did not belong to an inferior race and forecast, back in 1922, that in order to form a true positive nation, it would be essential for the indigenous people to fully incorporate into the citizenry with the same rights and duties as any other Guatemalans, and that their cultural richness should be recognized. . . . Of course, Miguel Ángel & Co. did not agree. At that time, the future Nobel laureate wrote: Truth be told, the Indian shows signs of psychological degeneration; he is a fanatic, a drug addict, and cruel. Or: Let us do with the Indian as with other animal species, such as cattle, when they present symptoms of degeneration.
Holy Saturday, before dawn.
New quarrel with B+ after dinner last night. In reality—I believe—she is upset over my upcoming trip to France. She complains about my lack of empathy, my problem with “feelings I cannot handle.” It is clear, I think: what cannot be handled is usually problematic.
JL’s pilot calls to tell me that we will leave with a delay of three hours.
Ten in the morning.
We are leaving for Río Dulce in one hour. Magalí, who I spoke with a moment ago, warns me that Luisa is accompanying my mother. “It is the first time the poor thing will fly. If I were you, I’d have plastic bags handy in case she needs to throw up.” Clear skies.
La Buga, Río Dulce, afternoon.
I read in W. H. Auden (The Dyers Hand): “The unacknowledged legislators of the world: the secret police.”
I think again about the young female archivist who told me about the action radiograms a few hours before my “suspension.” When they asked me her name I said I did not know, which was true. I regret not memorizing it when we introduced ourselves. As much as I try, I am unable to remember.
From the east bank of the river, snippets of music drift over the deep, dark canyon of oleaginous water: evangelical songs, hymns bastardized with Mexican corridos and American spirituals.
I start reading Paseo eterno. It is, I think, the best book by Javier Mejía, but at the same time it is the worst. The best because he has removed the mask and he talks and writes just like he thinks; the worst because, as always, or perhaps here more than ever, he takes too much pleasure in his own version of himself. A crude criticism, perhaps, but I say it with an unexpected enthusiasm and with the certainty that if he stopped looking at himself with that odd and inexplicable self-complacency, he might become an interesting writer.
Time makes people change their minds—Voltaire.
Sartre, in Nausea: “I believe that is the risk of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you have expectations, and you exceed the limits of truth.”
Wittgenstein: “But is this not the unilateral consideration of tragedy that it only shows that an encounter can determine our entire life?”
Schnitzler: “Every truth has its moment—its revelation—which tends to be short, such that, like existence itself, it is the glow, or just a spark, between nothing or between the lie that precedes it and the one that follows, between the moment that seems paradoxical and the moment that begins to seem trivial.”
Wednesday.
Upon returning from Río Dulce, this time by land (my mother’s chauffeur came to pick us up), we stop by La Isla, which is at the beginning of the highway that links the capital with the Atlantic coast, to pick up the CD with the Yearly Report from the Archive Recovery Project that the chief said he would leave for me with one of the guards. This way I will avoid crossing the city from one end to the other twice tomorrow.
It is almost nighttime when we arrive at La Isla, and in order to get to the Archive we have to go through two security checkpoints. Armed guards are everywhere. My mother, whom I had not sufficiently warned about these circumstances, looks at me with alarm, and I think she is impressed when they let us in after I talk to the guards. Further down, at the gate to the Archive, the guard on duty, after confirming my identity, hands me an envelope with the CD promised by the chief, and, in addition, a small cardboard box with four CDs, on which I read in longhand: National Police Yearly Report. I seem to recognize Luis Galíndez’s handwriting from the envelope he gave me with the elimination list from the military archives.
“This is also for you,” the guard tells me.
As we leave:
“Do you work here?” Pía asks.
I laugh, and say sometimes.
“Are you a policeman?”
“No.”
“So then?”
“I investigate them,” I answer and laugh again.
“Why?” Pía insists.
“It’s part of my job.”
“You investigate them?”
After thinking about it for a moment, I improvise:
“I want to make sure they are behaving.”
Pía stops asking. Out of the corner of my eye I see my mother, who stares at the darkness outside the car, smiling faintly in silence.