Guatemala in the 1990s was a time and place of decreasing violence and increasing negotiation between the parties in the armed conflict—government and guerrillas. Negotiations culminated in a final peace agreement in late 1996. Still, the early 1990s were not free of state repression, though it tended to be employed with greater selectivity.
The killings of 1989 had devastated the organized student movement. In the early 1990s, the AEU limited itself to promoting cultural and sports activities as a way of regaining the confidence of the student body, a good part of which feared the consequences of associating with a movement that so clearly attracted the attention of the State's repressive forces (interviews).
But as in years past, Guatemalans could count on San Carlos students to mock and criticize the regime's policies in their traditional comic march, la Huelga de Dolores. On the eve of the 1992 Huelga, a tragedy occurred that exemplified the type of persecution that the student movement faced in the 1990s. Though the violence was not premeditated, it was the product of the years of conflict between students and the security forces.
On Thursday, April 10th, groups of students from the different schools and faculties stayed late into the night at the Paraninfo Universitario, the old Medical School, preparing floats for the next day's march. A few friends left to buy cigarettes, and on their way back a patrol from the government's Hunapú combined security force (made up of Nacional Police, Mobile Military Police and Treasury Police) passed close by. Apparently at least one of the students loudly insulted the patrol, who, in response, fired on the unarmed youths. Five students were injured, and another, Julio Cu Quim of Humanities, was killed.
By 1993 Guatemala's civilian government was in deep crisis. Back in 1990, dark horse candidate Jorge Serrano Elías won a surprising victory in presidential elections, but arrived in the national palace without an agenda. By May 1993, Serrano faced persistent protest against his economic policies, as well as accusations of corruption. Encouraged by members of the military, the President decided to abolish congress and the supreme court and suspend the Constitution.
This autogolpe (self-coup) followed the example of Peru's Alberto Fujimori. But in Guatemala it had less success. A wide opposition formed against Serrano and in favor of constitutional rule. During the state of emergency, the opposition once again took advantage of university autonomy and used the San Carlos as a meeting place. Within a week, public disapproval had managed to disgrace the government, the military withdrew its support, and Serrano and his closest collaborators fled to Panama.
After the coup, during the caretaker government of Ramiro de León Carpio (the country's former Human Rights Ombudsman), new generations of students continued to work closely with popular groups, including peasants displaced by the armed conflict who remained the focus of continued government hostility, and the urban poor adversely affected by the State's increasingly neo-liberal policies.
In November 1994, as in 1978 and 1985, a rise in the urban bus fare caused a series of confrontations between security forces and youthful protesters, including many from the University. The protests lasted a week, during which dozens of buses were set on fire throughout the city. As in protests past, participants achieved their immediate goal: the municipal government of Oscar Berger Perdomo revoked the fare increase. But security forces once again followed up the fare cancellation with a display of violence.
The night that the agreement was reached, November 11, students took to the streets, this time to condemn the previous night's violence, including gunfire from unknown sources that had injured various protesters. At 7 p.m., while the police massed nearby, students blocked the Avenida Petapa near the University. First a car passed through the intersection, its occupants firing at the students. Then uniformed police agents, including police from the anti-riot Immediate Reaction Force (FRI), moved into the area, forcing protesters back onto the San Carlos campus. Agents fired on retreating students, striking one of them, Law student and AEU activist Mario Alioto López Sánchez.
Alioto fell to the ground. When his comrades tried to pull him to safety, they were chased away by a police officers led by FRI commander Carlos Escobar Fernández. Escobar and his agents beat the bleeding student, and when medics arrived they refused to relinquish their prisoner. The next day Alioto died in the hospital. His death was caused not by his bullet wound but by the trauma produced by the beating (Prensa Libre: 13 November 1994).
Alioto quickly became a symbol and martyr for a new generation of "compromised" students. The effort to bring his case to justice involved the entire university, and the rector's office put together a group of lawyers to present the case in court. Other recent cases involving violence against university students had languished in the courts (including the 1987 and 1988 Panel Blanca killings and the deaths of three Quetzaltenango students in 1989). In 1996 Alioto's case made it to the argument phase. The accused included not just FRI chief Carlos Escobar, but also the police chief at the time, Salvador Figueroa, as well as the minister of the interior, Danilo Parrinello, and vice-minister Colonel Mario Mérida.
The trial lasted nearly two weeks and concluded with an historic decision. The court found all four guilty of homicide in the death of López Sánchez. The verdict provoked both expressions of support and protest. For the first time high officials of Guatemala's security forces, who since 1956 had directed the killings and disappearances of over 450 members of the university community and of over 150,000 Guatemalans, were tried and convicted for their direct or indirect participation in the state violence.
Students' joy over the decision was short-lived. After three months in prison, the accused, with the exception of Escobar, won on appeal and were set free. Justice had once again played a dirty trick on the University.
