[Marxism] The Guatemala Rosenberg case

[<jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

I don't understand why this hasn't been the top news item around the world
the last couple of days.

In Guatemala, a prominent attorney is murdered while out for a Sunday
bicycle ride. Soon thereafter, on a newspaper web site and youtube, there is
a video from the dead lawyer stating point blank that the reason he is dead
is that the President had him killed.

This is not a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is what is going on on the
front pages of central american newspapers right now. If you search for
"Guatemala" and "Rosenberg" --the lawyer's name-- on youtube you can hear
the video, in two parts. It is a long and intricate tale he spins about the
murder of a couple of other folks supposedly in connection with a cover-up
of an alleged fraud and embezzlement at a putative rural investment bank
that is so convoluted that --frankly-- the impression one gets is that this
guy is crazy. Especially because there's no hint anywhere in the video of
actual verifiable evidence, documents, reports or testimony to back up what
he says.

On the other hand, what seems to be the strongest possible corroboration of
the charges has emerged: his assassination. 

The reaction of the government of President Alvaro Colom was, at first, to
issue a communiqué denying the dead lawyer's accusation. Then the president
himself recorded a message Sunday night or perhaps just after midnight, with
the entire cabinet standing behind him.

Incredibly, what was broadcast by what I'm told is the leading private
channel was an EDITED version of the President's statement. What had been
left out? Just the president's explanation that this was part of a
conspiracy by narcotraffickers and ultrarightists against the government and
its social programs. 

And this claim from Colom isn't absurd. In case you haven't been following
Guatemala closely, while nobody has accused president Colom of being another
Fidel, he has led what is by all accounts a progressive-minded national
government [in the political sense of "national," the same sense as the
government of the Kirchners in Argentina] that has enacted a series of
measures to help (or if you prefer, represent concessions to) the popular
classes in the areas of education, health care, housing and food/income
subsidies. 

Moreover, the President invited the truth and reconciliation commission
sponsored, I believe, by the OAS, to become part of the official
investigation into the Rosenberg and earlier assassinations. He also
specifically asked the United States for the collaboration of the FBI in
investigating the case. 

On Monday, President Colom held a press conference that went on until all
the reporters were too tired to ask another question. And then he spent
almost the full half hour of CNN en Español's flagship evening program
answering with tremendous calm and equanimity what some might consider even
overly-aggressive if not downright offensive questions by that network's
lead anchor. I mean, I'm as much for hard questioning as the next hack, but
it costs nothing to ask, "Mr. President, how do you answer those who say
that you're really Count Dracula reincarnated" instead of "Mr. President,
aren't you really count Dracula reincarnated," or even worse, "Mr.
President, why don't you just admit that you're really Count Dracula
reincarnated?"

Challenged point blank by CNN's Patricia Janiot (in essence) on how he could
possibly claim something as ridiculous as that this lawyer had arranged to
have himself killed to advance an anti-government conspiracy, Colom replied
that he did not understand the lawyer's actions or statements, but he
believed Rosenberg had been a victim of the conspiracy, not a central figure
in it. 

And THEN he invited CNN to send its own team to conduct its own
investigation, given how it is one of the world's largest news organizations
with the greatest resources. In fact, when I heard this part of the
interview and Colom started out about how large and prestigious CNN was
--pronouncing the letters in English, a subtle but exquisitely on target
point-- I thought he was about to let Janiot have it for adopting a tone
that verged at times on the inquisitorial. But instead he went on to say so
I want to invite you guys to HELP THE PEOPLE OF GUATEMALA by sending YOUR
OWN investigative team down here so we can get to the bottom of this --
which was about 10 times as effective as what I thought I was about to hear.

And you have to understand President's Colom's persona. He is completely
inoffensive, mild, understated, so much so that he makes Clark Kent seem
like a World Championship Wrestling maniac on a
steroids-and-testosterone-poisoning homicidal rampage. And that when Kent is
sleeping, or perhaps even comatose.

On Tuesday the foreign minister of Guatemala addressed an emergency session
of the OAS about the assassination of Rosenberg, making the case, in
essence, that the government faces a combined narco-oligarchic drive to
topple it and asking for the solidarity and support of the entire hemisphere
in unmasking who was behind the assassination of Rosenberg. 

This is a government that is so SURE of its truth, that history will absolve
it, that they have invited the ENTIRE HEMISPHERE, including even an outfit
like Lou Dobbs's CNN, nevermind the OAS so rightly denounced by Che as the
yankee ministry of colonies, to meddle in Guatemala's internal affairs.
Hell, he even invited the imperialist's own FBI to come on down to
Guatemala.

I do not believe anyone gets to be president, especially of one of the
war-torn central american countries, by being THAT naive. So I suspect the
president and his friends are being a little disingenuous: he actually has,
I suspect, a very clear idea of what happened and who did it. And the
authorities are probably not as bereft of hard evidence as their invitations
for cooperation might lead you to assume.

But they prefer that "the world," so to speak, discover the truth for
themselves, and perhaps build an even more solid case than the one based on
the information and evidence currently in the Colom government's hands.

Either that, or we have just seen the world's most awesome poker players
bluffing.

In the meantime, there have been noisy demonstrations in front of the
presidential palace in Guatemala City repeatedly chanting, "asesino,
asesino, asesino" and demanding Colom be jailed -- or worse. 

I should have mentioned that one of the measures Colom announced in his
Sunday night talk that somehow found their way OUT of the version on the
private TV channel that I saw was an announcement that the government had
lifted what he called, if I remember right from the transcript distributed
by the government's press office, a "state of public disturbance" or
something like that --I assume a mild version of a state of emergency or
state of siege-- because, Colom said, the government did not want anyone to
feel or claim that their right to speak out or protest was being restricted.

Today's demonstration was supposed to have been happening as I was writing
this, and I'm home and without direct access to video feeds and so on. 

But I saw Univision's video of yesterday's demo, reported as being several
hundred, and I was flabbergasted, for I have been in Guatemala and Guatemala
City a couple of times, albeit years ago, and I didn't realize there were
that many white people in the entire country. 

Judging by the video, the demo was OVERWHELMINGLY people of European
descent, and my impression was that of a very well-groomed, well-dressed,
fashionable crowd. At best, out of dozens of faces one could pick out and
hazard a characterization from the video, I spotted one or two that MIGHT
have been mestizos. 

My recollection of a typical Guatemala City street is that the ratio is
precisely the *opposite* -- you might see one or two faces that do not
clearly betray indigenous forebears. And even then, as we say in Cuba when
people put on airs  --or, rather, USED to say, a half century ago--, "ÿ tu
abuela, ¿donde está?" meaning, "and your grandmother, where is she?" 

Hinting that your blood line of descent might not be as direct and
exclusively from the crowned heads of Europe as you seem to be implying.

And today I had a chance to talk to a fellow hack who has been sent into
Guatemala, and this person told me the ethnic/class polarization is
transparent and palpable. He FELT it the moment he got off the airplane. You
couldn't avoid it.

That is ALSO my strongest recollection/impression of my visits to that
country, but then the dividing line was between mestizos and "westernized"
people even if of "pure" indigenous  stock, and those who instead came from
or were inserted in the 20-odd indigenous pueblos of Guatemala. 

My friend, who had also been to Guatemala before, said the dividing line now
seemed a little different. The mestizos he had met seemed to be neutral
towards or even siding with Colom under these confusing circumstances. And
the entire country is caught up in discussing/analyzing/speculating about
this bizarro case.

I also heard something else that was interesting. Univision and CNN Spanish
and Telemundo and a couple of the Mexican networks and I suspect wire
services and others all have local stringers in Guatemala. These are
typically from the more prominent --and usually whiter-- layers of respected
professional journalists in these sorts of countries (for example,
Salvadoran president-elect Mauricio Funes was the CNN en Español stringer
pretty much until the day he announced his candidacy for the FMLN). 

But there were no reports from the international news organization Guatemala
stringers on TV, radio or the wires that I have seen. And what I heard is
that they demurred, finally admitting that they were afraid. The feeling in
Latin American journalistic circles outside Guatemala is that they're not
just scared, but have been directly threatened -- and while no one in these
U.S.-dominated media managements completely and totally excludes the
theoretical possibility that the threats might have come from the Colom
administration, the working assumption is that almost certainly the threats
came instead from "la mano blanca" --the white hand-- as reactionary
Guatemalan death squad operations are still referred to among the more
veteran journalists, although the CIA --oops, I mean "whoever it is that
might have been responsible"-- retired that name, but JUST the name, a
couple of decades ago. 

Part of the reason for this is that the Rosenberg video is, well, PECULIAR.
At first anonymous, later on Monday a lawyer/radio talk show host admitted
to --or perhaps I should say claimed, for he offered no real proof-- having
recorded it just hours before the assassination on Sunday. The background is
a blue sheet or blanket, as if we were dealing with a hostage video from the
middle east. WHY would Rosenberg, assuming the video to be exactly what it
PRETENDS to be, want to anonimize the time, place and circumstances under
which it was recorded? That makes absolutely no sense.

On the contrary, one would have assumed he wanted to be completely and even
demonstratively out front about when, where, how and so on, to undercut any
doubt about his video's authenticity, or about whether he was perhaps forced
to record it against his will.

And for my money, Rosenberg is either reading a prompter, cue cards  or
reciting a very carefully rehearsed script. And my money is pretty good:
producing TV shows with people reading prompters, cue cards and reciting
carefully rehearsed narratives is what I do for a living. Every day.

Of course, most of the stories on my programs aren't nearly as good. I keep
thinking Rod Serling must have been reincarnated as a Guatemalan.

The claim by the videotaper is that Rosenberg came to him with a paper
statement containing the same sorts of allegations, telling this person he
wanted his statement notarized and his charges broadcast in case he was
assassinated. 

This was recently, if not Sunday, then the impression one is left with is at
most a day or two before. They eventually agree that Rosenberg will come on
this person's radio show Monday morning where Rosenberg will reveal the
alleged proof of the government's corruption and its having had a couple of
people Rosenberg represented assassinated. But the lawyer/radio host says he
tells Rosenberg that really, a paper statement isn't very convincing. And
that much better would be an AUDIO statement for radio broadcast. And THEN
they proceed to record the video.

The lawyer/radio host urges Rosenberg NOT to handle it this way, by coming
on his program on Monday, but instead to leave the country and present the
issue to the OAS human rights commission, which is sort of like a
continental cloaca collecting any and every allegation --no matter how
absurd-- against any government that might be suspected of having the
slightest contamination from the Latin American "pink tide." 

And Rosenberg and the other guy have a very serious discussion and finally
they agree that Rosenberg will go public the next day --Monday the 11th-- on
this guy's radio show. But just in case they have the video recorded on
Sunday. In case the government kills Rosenberg before the next sunrise.

All that said and done, and the video recorded, THEN Rosenberg supposedly
goes out bike riding by himself on the streets of Guatemala City, where he
gets promptly assassinated, just as his video claims would happen. 

Oh happy coincidence.

I do not know what witnesses there were --if any-- to the actual
assassination. But there are aftermath videos showing the bicycle, police
cars and so on from daylight hours on Sunday, in the afternoon I assume.

IF the video accusing the president had been taped months earlier, it might
make sense to suppose that by May 10 Rosenberg had let his guard down. But
it was supposedly taped that very same day. He became so worried the
previous few days that he drafted his written statement accusing the
president and then acceded to making the video tape. Even though he knew he
would be on the radio Monday morning, he considered it NECESSARY to make a
video tape 24 hours or less before. In case he was assassinated before the
radio show the next morning.

And then he went out bicycle riding? 

By himself? 

My only question is, was it a simple bulls-eye he was wearing, or did he
also have a sign saying "shoot me"? 

If I, as a television fiction writer, had produced such a preposterous
account, I would have been fired -- immediately,

The story is completely incoherent. It makes no sense. None whatsoever.

IF he was of sound mind in making the video, then the claim of his
loony-careless bike ride is preposterous. And if the story of the bike ride
is true, then EITHER he did not really believe what he claimed was going on
as he presents it in that video, or he was simply not of sound mind, in
which case the claims on the video tape are also deprecated.

And if the government was willing to terminate this Rosenberg fellow, how
come the lawyer/radio host that vouches for the video, its authenticity, the
time when it was made and the circumstances surrounding it, and thereby
imparts it with much of its credibility, is still around to talk to CNN's
Patricia Janiot, as he did last night right before President Colom's
interview? 

Why isn't THIS radio/lawyer guy sleeping with the fishes, or at least in
some volcanic crater, or perhaps the victim of, oh dear, an extremely tragic
traffic accident?

*  *  *

There is a famous saying (among journalists or a certain age and
inclination) from the OJ Simpson case. 

It is when the defense forensic expert, Dr. Henry Liu, who is like the
Albert Einstein of his field and everyone admits it, describes that the
blood on OJ's socks was on BOTH side of the sock, as if the blood had been
dripped onto the sock when it was lying flat on a surface without anything
inside the sock, like a leg or a foot. And how, surprisingly, there was not
the pattern of splatter droplets one would expect but only on ONE SIDE of
the sock if the blood had gotten on the sock while being worn.

OJ's lawyers tried mightily to get their guy, Dr. Liu, to say this showed
the blood was planted, but all Dr. Liu would say, with a memorable Chinese
accent, was "something wrong here." 

And that's what I would say about the story of the lawyer who claims the
president was out to kill him -- and then puts himself in a position to be
assassinated. 

Something is wrong here.

Stay tuned folks. In Latin America, no novel --not even from a Garcia
Marquez-- can hope to compete with reality.

Joaquin


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