Evidence for Hope by Sikkink Kathryn

Author:Sikkink, Kathryn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

GUATEMALA

It can be difficult to discern human rights improvements in Guatemala as well. After the transition to democracy in Guatemala in the 1990s, two different truth commissions, one sponsored by the United Nations and the other by the Guatemalan Catholic Church, took extensive testimony on repression under the dictatorship.99 Using the information from those commissions, the UN, with the assistance of Patrick Ball, arrived at much more precise estimates for the number of deaths and disappearances that had occurred in Guatemala than those that had appeared in AI or State Department reports. These estimates allow a year-by-year comparison of event-based data (in this case, actual counts of killings and disappearances) with the standard-based data produced by the CIRI and the PTS scales. While repression was severe during this entire period, there was a marked surge in killings and disappearances from 1980–1982 (during the Ríos Montt government), with 1982 being the worst year by far. Guatemala logged 25,928 identified and unidentified deaths and disappearances in the years 1980–1983, roughly seventy-nine percent of all deaths and disappearances that occurred between 1970 and 1995. This figure, large as it is, is likely an undercount; undoubtedly, some violations went unreported to the commissions.

Amnesty International and the State Department were not able to capture an accurate picture of the repression as it was occurring, despite the fact that they wrote their reports at nearly the same time as the events. The score based on the AI reports reflects the actual trend of repression, giving its worse possible score for the period of the genocide in 1980–1982, but the State Department reports, for reasons of political bias during the Reagan administration, failed to document the genocide as it occurred. Even so, the scales based on both the AI and State Department reports are “sticky” and not able easily to record a subsequent decline in deaths and disappearances. The repression in Guatemala in the period 1980–1982 was also so severe that the government eradicated or silenced human rights organizations, thus eliminating an important source of information about repression.

In the mid-1980s, domestic human rights organizations began functioning again in Guatemala, although they still faced intense repression. The process of re-democratization in Guatemala after 1985 contributed to a more information-rich environment. Human rights organizations in turn did a better job documenting ongoing repression and that better documentation was reflected in the standard-based measures. According to the actual counts of deaths and disappearances, the number fell from 17,000 people affected in 1982 to 350 in 1993. Looking at the CIRI and PTS scores, however, it appears that there was virtually no improvement. A human rights activist might argue that, as long as there are 350 dead and disappeared, we should not speak of any improvements. But a social scientist would say that movement from 17,000 dead and disappeared to 350 constitutes improvement. The inability of the CIRI and PTS scales to reflect such changes complicates their usefulness for social science research.

The use of these standard-based measures influences quantitative studies on

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.