Louisa Reynolds /

Pz

P

78

In an overly dramatic speech in which he gestured, shouted 

and sweated profusely, briefly pausing now and then to wipe 

his brow, César Calderón, Ríos Montt’s defense lawyer, tried 

to argue that the Dos Erres massacre was committed by a 

group of rogue soldiers whose actions had got out of hand 

and that even if Ríos Montt was the supreme commander of 

the armed forces, he could not be held accountable for each 

of his soldiers’ actions.

“This man is a sacrificial lamb. He never gave direct orders. 

How could he have stopped the massacre? Soldiers were 

hardly going to send him a report saying “we raped so many 

women in Dos Erres,” were they?” said Calderón indignantly.

The prosecution refuted this argument by showing a clip 

from an interview that Ríos Montt had given US film maker 

Pamela Yates in June 1982, which is included in her most 

recent documentary Granito. How to Nail a Dictator. “Our 

strength is our capacity to make command decisions. That’s 

the most important thing. The army is ready and able to act 

because if I can’t control the army then what am I doing 

here?” he said without suspecting that three decades later 

those words would return to haunt him.

Judge Flores ruled that there was enough evidence to hold the 

Ríos Montt accountable for the Dos Erres massacre but that 

he should be tried for genocide, not murder, which means 

that the ageing former dictator will continue to be held un-

der house arrest. However, he was ordered to pay another 

US$64,000 bail sum, which visibly irritated him.

FAMDEGUA’s lawyer, Edgar Pérez Archila, was far from 

satisfied with the ruling. After the hearing, he said that trying 

Ríos Montt for genocide was a deliberate strategy to keep 

him under house arrest rather than being held in prison dur-

ing the trial. He added that the Dos Erres massacre cannot 

be considered an act of genocide, as the inhabitants of the 

village were non-indigenous peasants who had migrated