After Guatemala's former ruler, Gen-eral Jose Efrain Rios Montt, was sentenced to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity on May 10th, a crowd in the courtroom broke into song. They cheered the judge, Jazmin Barrios, chanting her name and shouting: "Yes it was genocide!" To many of the Ixil Mayan people who told the court of barbarous massacres and rapes by soldiers during General Rios Montt's 1982-83 dictatorship, the verdict represented an unprecedented triumph against impunity. The jubilation spread abroad. In Washington, which only dimly recalls how the United States once backed the jailed 86-year-old evangelical Christian, a State Department official hailed the chance for "true reconciliation".
展开▼
