World Fact Research

The TC and CEH reports by themselves were an accomplishment. However, it was the
subsequent reaction of the country to the reports that was pivotal. The government’s and the
military’s reactions to the TC and the CEH would signal to the general population their genuine
intention to change the ways of old or maintain sinister “business as usual.” Subsequent
responses from the population or community organizations would reflect how and if the report
had reached the public, whether victims were encouraged by the report’s acknowledgment of
the truth, and the public’s overall confidence in the possibility for reconciliation.
76The immediate reactions of different sectors of society to a truth commission report foretells
what short-term potential there may be to reconcile different versions of the past within one
nation. Closure of the pain of the past, which virtually all people want, depends on whether or
not agreement on the past can be reached.

The recommendations made at the end of the TC and CEH reports were of major importance.
They outlined the impartial truth commissions’ respective visions for healing, prevention of
conflict recurrence, and national reconciliation for El Salvador and Guatemala. El Salvador’s
case was the first negotiated truth commission in which the Parties were bound to the
implementation of the recommendations. A provision of the Mexico Agreements explained that
the two parties, the FMLN and the Government, must cooperate with the TC and carry out its
recommendations.’ 77 This binding nature of the recommendations was critical for
72communicating to the entire country an initial willingness to work for change in the future with
former enemies. If the recommendations were then carried out or pursued in good faith, such a
progression would exemplify and reinforce the ideal of reconciliation throughout society. In
contrast, a failure to uphold and prioritize the TC recommendations after pledging to do so,
would greatly undermine confidence in the potential for reconciliation. It would slow motivation
to work for the ideal and reverse society’s optimism. This would be a betrayal of the Parties’
own words and stated policy, further eroding the trust the people looked to restore in the
government and relevant parties.
If opposing parties recognize a real potential for reconciliation and have concrete measures
through which to make progress together, yet let the moment pass them by and allow the
momentum to whither, they send the message that reconciliation and society healing is not
important. The danger is that society may never face another opportunity so timely, direct, and
promising to demonstrate reconciliation and, thus, build momentum for reconciliation among
society.
In a direct effort to promote national reconciliation, the TC dedicated a certain section of its
proposed recommendations to initiatives addressing victims’ need for dignity, acknowledgement,
and justice. To provide material compensation, a fund was to be created for the victims and
families of victims of the violence. 178 It specifically required that at least 1% of all international
aid sent to the country of El Salvador be earmarked for the fund.
179
For moral compensation, the
commission recommended three important gestures: (1) “The construction of a national
monument bearing the names of all the victims of the conflict;” (2) official and public
recognition of the victims and crimes committed against them; and (3) “the institution of a
national holiday in memory of the victims of the conflict and to serve as a symbol of national
73reconciliation.” 180 Finally, a special “Forum for Truth and Reconciliation,” which would
monitor compliance with the recommendations, was recommended to be created by the newly,
peace accord-created National Commission for the Consolidation of Peace (COPAZ).
181
It is
interesting to note that this last recommendation was situated in the “Steps Toward National
Reconciliation” section of the recommendations document. Such a placement implies the
recognition that reconciliation would be contingent upon the implementation of the
recommended reforms and initiatives in all of the areas included: military reform and
demilitarization, creation of a civilian police, dismissal of violators, judicial reform, respect of
human rights, and steps toward national reconciliation. The TC sought to address the problem of
impunity with the dismissal of all of the officers named in the Ad Hoc commission’s report and
in the TC’s report. Likewise, all civilian government officials implicated in the unjust violence or
cover-up were to be dismissed. Anyone who was implicated in such violence was disallowed to
hold public office for ten years and prohibited from defense or security positions for life.
Additionally, in order to ensure that no corrupt legacies of the past perpetuated impunity in the
courts, it called for the removal of all of the Supreme Court justices who had failed to investigate
abuses. The report also emphasized the ratification of any international human rights treaties
that it had yet to enforce. 182 Interestingly, the report did not recommend prosecution of the
perpetrators that it named in the report because it recognized that the justice system would not be
able to provide a fair trial. The judiciary was corrupt, ill-equipped, and vulnerable to political
pressure and threats. Most of the content of the TC recommendations cited the already
comprehensive reforms of the peace accords and reiterated the importance of their
implementation. The TC had few ways it could think of improving those reforms already signed,
except for the key recommendations that spoke specifically to the issue of reconciliation. Thus,
74although El Salvador’s TC recommendations were binding, they did not seem as extensive or
ground-breaking as the eighty-four recommendation included in the CEH report.
The Historical Clarification Commission concluded their report, Memoria del Silencio
(Memory of Silence) with a comprehensive, impressive list of eighty-four recommendations to
the Parties. They were organized by theme: preservation of the memory of the victims;
reparatory measures (including the exhumations of clandestine graves); fostering a culture of
mutual respect and observance of human rights; strengthening the democratic process (legislative
measures, military reform, civilian police and security forces); measures to promote peace and
national harmony (especially the recognition of indigenous rights); and creation of a body to
promote and monitor the implementation of the recommendations. 183 The CEH directed the
President to express, in the name of the State of Guatemala, public apologies to the nation for the
violence wrought on the people and to assume responsibility for such acts.
184
As the Salvadoran
TC had done, the CEH called for purging the armed forces of its human rights violators. The
CEH additionally called for the dissolution of the Estado Mayor Presidential y Vicepresidential,
Guatemala’s secret services, implicated in many of the most egregious and massive-scale
atrocities. Of high importance, the CEH called for the criminals of human rights abuses to be
brought to justice through the courts.
The third section of the chapter of recommendations on “Reparatory measures” began, “The
CEH considers that truth, justice, reparation and forgiveness are the bases of the process of
consolidation of peace and national reconciliation.” 185 It was critical that the CEH recognize that
these recommendations were specifically intended to “dignify the victims.” In this way, it did
not leave room for any interested parties, like the government, to deny that the central focus of
reconciliation should be on the victims, rather than on former combatants or actors of the
75conflict. In the introduction to this section, the CEH charged the Guatemalan State with
“design[ing] and promot[ing] a policy of reparation for the victims and their relatives. There
could be no mistake that the government must engage in real reconciliation — direct contact with
or actions implemented specifically for the victims. Purporting a policy of reconciliation through
amnesties given to perpetrators and speeches about forgiveness and “moving on” would not help
society heal and reconcile. The CEH clearly acknowledged this in its report and
recommendations. Unlike the recommendations in the Salvadoran TC report, these were not
binding. However, the final recommendation of the CEH for the establishment of a State and
civil society-combined body to hold both groups mutually responsible for the implementation of
the recommendations would hopefully help monitor this progress. The “Foundation for Peace
and Harmony,” (FundaciOn de la Paz y el Acuerdo) as it would be called, was to be created no
more than sixty days following the publication of the CEH report through a legislative measure
brought to Congress by the Commission on Human Rights.

In the words of Christian Tomuschat, “The handing over of the report was a glorious moment
in the life of the Guatemalan nation.” 168 The CEH report, Memoria del Silencio (Memory of
Silence), is a profound, unequivocal clarification of Guatemala’s history. It explained the
historical progression of violence, provided statistics on the patterns, locations, and extent of
violence, and gave a few victims the chance to have their story finally recognized and included
in Guatemala’s national history. The CEH’s declaration of the commission of genocide meant
that it was”breakthrough human rights documentation.” The CEH may, however, be most
remarkable for its daring analysis of the structural and systemic causes of the war. This was
69daring because no official body had ever spoken publicly and openly condemning the “official
policy of racism and social exclusion.” 169
The report’s tremendous strength comes from its simple unity of premise: that
the origin of the conflict and the overwhelming majority of violent acts were the
responsibility of the Guatemalan state. 17°
The CEH report asserts startling, undeniable qualitative and quantitative statistical
conclusions of responsibility.
During the armed confrontation, the State’s idea of the “internal enemy,”
intrinsic to the National Security Doctrine, became increasingly inclusive. At
the same time, this doctrine became the raison d’être of Army and State policies
for several decades. Through its investigation, the CEH discovered one of the
most devastating effects of this policy: state forces and related paramilitary
groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the CEH,
including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced disappearances.
Victims included men, women, and children of all social strata: workers,
professionals, church members, politicians, peasants, students, and academics;
in ethnic terms, the vast majority were Mayans….
Among the cases registered by the CEH, insurgent actions produced 3% of
the human rights violations and acts of violence perpetuated against men,
women, and children, including 5% of the arbitrary executions and 2% of forced
disappearances. 171
The three-volume, 3000-page report contains four thematic parts. The first seventy-one
pages of the report cover the administration, legal mandate, and technical functioning. 172 The
historical context of the conflict is explained over the next one-hundred-fifty pages of volume
one.
173
Volume two covers the perpetrator analysis for the first half and analysis of specific
violations for the last half. Volume three continues on in its entirety to analyze specific
violations. 174 Eighty of the total 8,000 testimonies of violations heard by the CEH were included
in the report as illustrative cases.
The mandate explained that the CEH would investigate the years of the conflict from the
beginning of the armed conflict in the early 1960s. Since the government was one of the
negotiators of the terms of the CEH’s mandate, it is not surprising that the timing of the period of
inquiry was limited in order that it would do the government and military the least harm. By
70choosing the early 1960s as the beginning of the investigation period, the conservative
government and military intended to frame the guerilla insurgents as the instigators of the
conflict 175 — an ideological war between threatening leftist/communist guerillas and the
government authority. If the mandate had instead set the beginning of the period of inquiry at
the landmark military coup of 1954, the coup would have appropriately been seen as a cause of
the conflict. Including the 1950s would have portrayed the insurgent’s campaign as a legitimate
response to the military’s violent coup and the repossession of peasant land after implementation
of Arbenz’s critical land distribution reform. Beginning the investigation period in the 1970s or
later would have highlighted Mayan victimization and would have characterized it as a conflict
about poverty, marginalization, and racism. This would have incriminated the military and
weakened the military’s case of the conflict as a Cold War conflict. The military then justified
the launching of their counterinsurgency on the basis that they were protecting the population
from a threatening communist menace.
Despite this subtle and sly attempt by the government (backed by the military) to curb the
full truth arrived at by the CEH and tailor it to their interests, the Commission bravely declared
the military’s simplistic ideological explanation for the conflict was untrue and deceiving.
It is not possible to present simple explanations that situate the armed conflict as
a manifestation of the Cold War confrontation between the East and the
West….If the most visible actors of the conflict were the military and the
insurgency, the historical investigation realized by the CEH provides evidence
of the responsibility and participation, in different forms, of segments of the
economic elite, political parties, and diverse sectors of civil society…. In this
sense, any reduction to the logic of two actors is not only insufficient, but
misleading.’
76
The sources of the conflict lay much deeper: economic exploitation, racism, and political
marginalization. The reasoning for the military’s vicious counterinsurgency did not lie as
shallow as simply protecting the country from a communist, outside threat. The CEH exposed
the truth of agency: it was the military and the government protecting the Guatemalan economic
71elite who were culpable. The military was on a deadly campaign to defend the pillars of the
existing system — exploitation and discrimination — to guarantee that the elite could continue
benefiting from this way of life. The military went on a mission to eradicate those elements of
society that it presumed were “restless” from their position of disadvantage and would pose a
threat to the elite’s comfort. Identifying such internal causes and agents of the war was not only
stated specifically in the commission’s mandate as one of its purposes; revealing the
overwhelming responsibility and the cold logic of the military and government in attacking its
own civilians make lies, cover-ups, and denials no longer feasible or beneficial for an
individual’s or institution’s prestige. The hope is that the old lies would be de-legitimized, this
more truthful, complete perspective of responsibility would be accepted throughout as “the
truth,” and that this truth-uncovering process would be humiliating enough to give incentive to
the guilty parties to apologize. The CEH sought repudiation of the military and corrupt
governmental institutions.

One of the unique strengths of the Salvadoran TC report was that it dared to name
perpetrators. It is one of only two truth commissions 153 that can be admired for such firmness and
courage. “Approximately eighty individuals were named for either planning, committing, or
covering up human rights violations. Those who were named included roughly a dozen
members of the FMLN as well as several civilians, but the vast majority were members of the
armed forces or security forces.” 154 Surprisingly, the military had originally asked the TC to
identify the problematic, corrupt, individuals inside the institution. It believed that the Truth
Commission had been created weak enough that it would be able to ascertain only minimal
incriminating evidence to identify a few token, low-ranked individuals. The military’s principle
motive was to preserve its prestigious, honorable image. Therefore, it strategically decided that it
would blame military brutality on a handful of culpable members, while maintaining the
institution as guiltless. The TC final report conclusions were, however, damning for the military
as an entire institution. Over forty of those named were senior members of the military,
judiciary, and armed opposition, 155 which demonstrated the need to go beyond purging a few
“bad apple” individuals to reform the military institution.
Even where guilty parties were not directly penalized with dismissal, the blow to
personal reputation and to institutional prestige was appreciable… The
unprecedented act of identifying those who had only been rumored to be
involved with the Salvadoran death squads, like the trial of soldiers implicated
in the November 1989 murder of six Jesuits, their housekeeper, and her
daughter, has opened another breach in the wall of impunity… The truth
commission took “[a] step towards justice — the truth, but not punishment.” 56
65Naming names was an important punitive, although not legal, measure. Due to the fact that it
had no judicial powers to legally convict and punish perpetrators, naming their names in the
report in an undeniable, factual declaration of responsibility was the most it could do to
contribute to stopping impunity. Publicly naming names would amount to a punishment of
moral castigation. In addition to establishing the truth of the violence, the mandate stated that
the TC would “clarify and put an end to any indication of impunity on the part of officers of the
armed forces, particularly in cases where respect for human rights is jeopardized.” 157 The TC
saw impunity as an obstruction of justice that would prevent healing of the victims and
jeopardize reconciliation, one of the explicitly stated purposes of the Commission in its mandate.
In this way, the TC courageously sought to address the problem of impunity in a way that was
never done before and to help pave the way to reconciliation.
The commissioners never once questioned naming those perpetrators for whom they had
built up overwhelming or substantial evidence from a variety of sources. The truth commission
report, Madness to Hope, justified its reasoning: “Not to name names would be to reinforce the
very impunity to which the Parties instructed the Commission to put an end.” 158 They assumed it
was a part of their fundamental duty to establish the factual truth surrounding the crimes
committed and the nature of the violence of the country’s bloody 12-year civil conflict. A truth
commissioner, Thomas Beurgenthal, explained, “In our view, national reconciliation would be
harmed rather than helped by a Commission report that told only part of the truth.”
The naming of names of perpetrators was extremely controversial. The Salvadoran Truth
Commission was aware of opposing opinions held by prominent figures such as Jose Zalaquett, a
commissioner on Chile’s National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. Chile’s
Commission had chosen not to name names of perpetrators they had identified. Zalaquett
66explained in the Chilean Truth and Reconciliation Commission report that, “To name culprits
who had not defended themselves and were not obliged to do so would have been the moral
equivalent to convicting someone without due process.’
,159
In response to such arguments that
would disapprove of a so-called over-stepping of truth commissions’ juridical bounds, it should
be emphasized that “…the publication of names represents a de facto rather than a de jure
pronouncement of guilt.” 16° In defense of the decision to name names, the TC was never
presumptuous in this role. The commission knew many thousands of names, but reduced it to a
small pool of the most sin-drenched high command officials of the government and military. In
order to evaluate the extent of their evidence, the TC set up three categories of proof:
overwhelming evidence, substantial evidence, and sufficient evidence.
161
Any person named in
the report had to belong to either the overwhelming or substantial evidence groups.
162
The
Commission’s policy was to give any individual to be named an opportunity to rebut the charges
and let their story be heard by the commission prior to the publication of the name in the
report. 163 When the TC summoned individuals it suspected were guilty of or involved in
particular human rights violations for which they already had much evidence, the commissioner
or staff member to interview them would inform them of why they had been asked to come
before the commission, and give them the opportunity to ask questions or respond with any
statements they wished. 164 They were never given the names of their accusers or any
information that could reveal the identity of these witnesses4 . 165
Both Beurgenthal of the Salvadoran Commission and Zalaquett from the Chilean
Commission had strong, yet opposing, points of view regarding naming perpetrators in the
report. A truth commission’s decision must, therefore, be based on which option will best
4 This was done in order to ensure the safety of the accusers and witnesses. The TC’s mandate explicitly stated that
all procedures were to be conducted confidentially. The country was unfortunately not yet rid of violence and the
commission took care to protect the identities of their informants.
67support and stimulate reconciliation. The context of the truth commission in Chile was different
from that of the Salvadoran Commission, and, subsequently, the nature of each of their
reconciliation processes has differed as well. Thus, the contrasting methods of either inclusion
or omission of perpetrator names seemed the more or less appropriate given the distinct contexts
in Chile and El Salvador. The intention in both cases was the same: to trigger a reconciliation
process. Salvadoran Commissioner Beurgenthal explains:
…We believed that our mandate required us to name names and…in our
judgment this action would promote rather then impede national reconciliation
in El Salvador…How that story is told is less important than that it be told
truthfully. Hence, whether the names of the perpetrators are revealed, whether
trials are held, sanctions imposed, compensation awarded, or amnesties granted,
these are all considerations that may well depend upon the nature of the conflict,
the national character of the country, the political realities, and compromises
that produced the end of the conflict. But if the basic truth about the east is
suppressed, it will prove very difficult to achieve national reconciliation. 16
Naming names is a very context-specific decision. Whether reconciliation is best served by
revealing individual or institutional responsibility depends on the political realities and
social/cultural context and causes of the conflict.
Guatemala’s CEH was not granted the option of “individualizing” responsibility — in other
words, naming names of perpetrators. The inability to name names seems at first glance like a
disadvantage, especially considering the TC’s persuasive reasoning for including the names of
perpetrators. However, perhaps this is not the case considering that the strategy of the TC and
CEH reports towards healing and reconciliation differed. The TC report was very legalistic in
style, reflecting the belief that justice, including punitive versions, is necessary for reconciliation.
Morally denouncing human rights violations will finally empower the victims and raise their
dignity above that of the perpetrators. By examining a few individual cases in depth and
revealing names of key perpetrators, the report sought to condemn the acts committed. By
focusing on the acts, more latitude was given to society to reject such behavior and learn to
68reconcile with the people. In contrast, it was critical for the Guatemalan Commission to
establish the macro-truth: to make clear the guilt of the institutions that were infiltrated with
racist and supremacist attitudes and perpetuating the violence and injustice that caused such
suffering in Guatemala. Achieving a substantial level of national reconciliation would never
have promise in Guatemala unless the system and governmental institutions were made culpable
and underwent major overhaul reform.
The macro-level truth of the CEH looks at the root causes, the suffering of the indigenous
people under racist war policy, the brutality and culpability of the government and military
forces, and the guerrillas’ failure to protect the civilian population. This macro-truth is also
demonstrated in both the TC and the CEH with statistics and a comparative approach. 167 Such
macro-truth is most attuned to furthering national-level reconciliation, rather than micro-level,
individual reconciliation between particular victims and perpetrators or former enemies, for
which it has only limitedly potential.

On March 15, 1993 and on February 25, 1999, the Salvadoran and Guatemalan truth
commissions, respectively, presented their final reports to their countries and to the entire world.
After months of grueling professional work and deep emotional challenges, the TC and the CEH
had opportunities to tell the truth of what they had found about the recent conflicts of their
respective countries. Despite external pressures and intrinsic weaknesses of their mandates, these
truth commissions were able to produce poignant, impartial, extensive accounts of what really
had happened in these warfare-torn countries and how. The CEH went even further to debunk
why the conflict had surged.
63The Salvadoran Truth Commission Report, From Madness to Hope, came out with
astonishing conclusions. During its six months of investigations, it had collected 22,000
denunciations of severe human rights violations, mostly of extra-judicial executions, forced
disappearances, and torture. 148 An overwhelming proportion of the crimes were committed by
the armed and security forces, state-sponsored paramilitary groups, or death squads. Only 5% of
the violations were perpetrated by the FMLN.
Over 60 percent of all complaints concerned extrajudicial executions, over
25 percent concerned enforced disappearances, and over 20 percent included
complaints of torture. Those giving testimony attributed almost 85 percent of
cases to agents of the State, paramilitary groups allied to them, and the death
squads.
Armed forces personnel were accused in almost 60 percent of complaints,
members of the security forces in approximately 25 percent, members of
military escorts and civil defense units in approximately 20 percent, and
members of the death squads in more than 10 percent of cases. The complaints
registered accused FMLN in approximately 5 percent of cases. I49
One element of the Salvadoran TC success is the broad variety of severe human right
violations it was able to document. The report delves into the factual details and the human story
of specific cases, leaving the reader or listener shivering. Though the report only cites 33
principle cases, the cases were agreed to be widely representative of the systematic, violent
tactics used during the conflict to insinuate power through fear. “The Salvadoran Truth
Commission’s mandate was broadly worded, allowing it to investigate what it deemed were
`serious acts of violence. -150 During the negotiations each side to the conflict wrote out a list of
specific atrocities it wanted the TC to investigate. 151 However, the parties could not agree on
how to merge their lists into a final version for the mandate. Thus, they left it considerably open
to interpretation. In this way, the TC enjoyed a small degree of flexibility and ability to insert its
own judgment as to the priorities of the historical investigation. They avoided being rigidly
controlled by the parties to the mandate as was the experience in Guatemala. The commissioners
64later agreed that investigating extra-judicial executions, forced disappearances, and torture 152
constituted a priority.

With time, the two commissions gained trust from the public and began to receive
overflowing numbers of victims and witnesses to human rights crimes who wanted to tell their
stories. But the process was inevitably missing the essential other side of the conflict’s story: the
perspective of the perpetrators and commanders of these atrocities. Obviously, perpetrators do
not have the same inclination to speak out as do the victims (as long as their personal safety is
not threatened).
140
Moreover, perpetrators in El Salvador and Guatemala had no incentive of
amnesty to bring them to talk, as in the South African commission. As a consequence, the
numbers of perpetrators who gave testimony was extremely low compared to the numbers of
victims who came forward. Of those who did come forward to the CEH, many did not even feel
deep remorse for their acts. 141 Some felt like they had been unjustly dealt with by their superiors
in the security forces. They complained of not having received certain promised rewards. To
them, going forward to the CEH was a way of putting pressure on those individuals. 142
Unfortunately, the military would use this imbalance in testifiers to claim bias in the entire
report.
Similarly, the fact that the CEH did not have a comparable amount of evidence and
information from the earlier pre-1977 period as it had for the later period143 made this a
`discrepancy’ and ‘problematic inconsistency’ that the military later targeted as evidence of bias
in the CEH report. Few people came forward to speak about that earlier period because the
repression had been so successful in defeating organized political and opposition groups that the
few who survived had dispersed and ceased to be politically active.
144
Since the CEH often
gained access to victims through organized political and community groups, little information
came from those who were not involved. Even more important was the fact that during the
62earlier period very few human rights groups existed to document the atrocities. 145 It was the
significantly more developed civil society of the 1980s that was indispensable in monitoring and
documenting valuable information that the commission used to understand the extent of the
crimes and patterns of atrocities conducted throughout the later period.
146
Thus, the CEH had to
compensate for its lack of statistics on the pre-1977 period when it estimated the total death toll
from the conflict. The lack of data from before 1977 explains why the report’s analysis of the
conflict is weighted more towards the latter years. This emphasis is one feature that has allowed
the military to claim that the report was biased and under represented their perspective — the
ideological clash interpretation of the war. However, this imbalance of data sources did not
change the essential story told by the CEH147 — that of economic injustice and racist policy that is
essential to tell in order to address these ills. This is the story that is necessary in order to help
heal the pain perpetuated from the past through the present and, eventually, feel the resolution,
peace, and, eventually, reconciliation with society and the government.

The CEH had another source of external advantage that was fundamental not only to the
success it had in producing the truth, but to the Commission’s existence: international funding.
Without funding, a truth commission cannot do any of its work toward truth and reconciliation.
International sources were responsible for financing the vast majority of the CEH’s work
because the Guatemalan government had decided it was not its national or political priority to
fund its country’s own truth commission. The facts that the government did not consider it their
responsibility to fund the CEH and the mandate did not specify a way in which to acquire
funding could have been detrimental. MINUGUA (the UN Verification Mission in Guatemala)
was generous to donate enough to provide for an Executive Secretary, a typist, a driver with a
car, and three little office rooms to start off its mission. 135 However, the Guatemalan CEH was
not a UN endeavor.
The CEH launched a private campaign to raise enough money to sustain a commission of
sufficient staff, resources, supplies, and transportation that would penetrate deeply into the
country. The Commission needed the necessary financial support to conduct a concentrated
investigation into 36 years of civil conflict within a mandated one-year period. Its appeal was
swiftly answered by the governments of the Scandinavian countries, the United States, and
Canada. 136 A few other nations signed on to help to a lesser degree after this initial wave of
principal commitment, though no Latin American countries (besides Guatemala itself) were to be
counted among this final list of contributors. 137 It took months to persuade the Guatemalan
60government that it was essential to the country’s own interests, to contribute financially to their
own truth commission. 138 In the end, the commissioners were able to raise $9.5 million dollars
to fund the complex, multifaceted project. Compared to the funds available to commissions in
the past, this was an extensive amount. However, considering the sheer length of the conflict
period, the immense death toll and scope of suffering throughout the country, and the convoluted
conflict dynamics that the commission had to investigate, the $9.5 million was by no means an
ample amount of funds. In the end it provided for the necessities, but during the process the
level and sources of funds fluctuated, at times threatening financial collapse. 139
El Salvador, on the other hand, received what appears to be significantly less money for its
truth commission: $2 million. Compared to other truth commissions, this was still an
advantageous amount of funds. El Salvador was a smaller country than Guatemala, in every
sense. But the main advantage was the added element of security to their funding: the
Salvadoran Commission on the Truth was a UN initiative with a reliable UN pledge of financial
backing. Energy and time was not wasted fundraising or worrying about how to keep the
organization running, as in the CEH experience. United Nations sponsorship of the TC benefited
the consistency and degree to which the Salvadoran commission was able to investigate grave
human rights violations committed during la Guerra sucia. Still, one wonders if the donors were
selling the TC short by funding only a minimalist, six-month investigation of 12 years of civil
conflict. On balance, financially involving the international community in the Salvadoran and
Guatemalan post-conflict truth and reconciliation efforts was crucial to their investigation
success and proved to be instrumental later in receiving international and national-level
recognition, legitimacy, praise, and leverage for national reforms

TC staff and commissioners interviewed employees of NGOs, church leaders, media
representatives, and community leaders. 126 The TC collected 2,000 testimonies relating to 7,000
victims in its own truth-finding work, while secondary sources provided information on 20,000
more victims from the conflict years. Despite having courageously assisted the population
during the years of the conflict, the level of involvement of local Salvadoran human rights
organizations in the post-conflict period and the quality of their help to supplement the work of
the TC was disappointing.
127
As truth commissioner Beurgenthal explained,
The gradual perversion of governmental authority by the military, with the
willing or unwitting collaboration of civilian authorities, and the military’s total
immunity for its acts, however criminal, was the cancer that invaded the fabric
57of Salvadoran civil society and eroded its ability to protect itself against this evil
disease. 128
International NGOs that had monitored and prepared human rights reports on general patterns or
specific cases did provide helpful information to orient, at least, the outsider commission to the
real situation inside the country (even though they could not be included in the report).
In contrast to Salvadoran civil society’s very limited level of cooperation and participation in
the UN truth commission’s work, Guatemalan civil society was constantly involved.
Guatemalan NGOs and community organizations maintained active communication with the
CEH, giving the commission feedback, connecting the CEH to communities with whom they
already had long-term relationships, helping with technical and logistical assistance, and
supplementing the CEH work with their own records and case investigations. Much of the
CEH’s success is owed to the contacts and dedicated work of civil society, emerging in the
1980s and taking on an active role in Guatemalan public life through the 1990s and today.
The CEH was fortunate to have outside assistance and support from three particularly notable
civil society sources. They provided the CEH with invaluable information that jump-started their
own process and which the CEH could include in its report. Teams of forensic anthropologists
in Guatemala, including the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team (now Foundation:
E/FAFG) which had been working since 1991, provided methodical, scientific evidence
regarding the nature of deaths and massacres that they had collected from exhumations of mass
graves that disproved military denials of responsibility. 129 They have continued their work and
as of March 2004, have exhumed 335 clandestine graves with a total of 1,600 individual cases. 13°
They have continued to exhume despite death threats over the years because they believe in their
responsibility to help uncover the truth of violence, case by case, and preserve and record
58evidence for future justice in the courts. The resolution that the exhumations bring to the
families as they recover their loved ones is a sense of restorative justice.
A second source of information came from a coalition of human rights groups who worked
with the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) — the group that trained
the EAFG — to construct a database of violations that held record of some 37,000 killings by the
time the CEH began work. 131 The AAAS provided the CEH with technical assistance and help
in the post-publication dissemination of its report as well. It maintains the principal website for
the CEH report, offering online access to versions of the report in English and Spanish.
Additionally, they sell a complete volume set in Spanish on CD-ROM at a modest price.
The Archdiocese of Guatemala provided a third outside source of rich information for the
CEH. 132 At the time of the 1994 peace agreement to create the CEH, the Archdiocese of
Guatemala concerned about various limiting aspects of the CEH’s mandate, began the Recovery
of Historical Memory Project (RecuperaciOn de la Memoria Hist&lea, REMHI). 133 It was
essentially an unofficial truth commission. In this way, REMHI was not restricted to an
unrealistically short investigation period, was not prohibited from naming names of perpetrators
in its final report, and could afford to take the time to reach more extensively and deeply into
certain rural villages of Guatemala, with whom the CEH never had contact. Pooling all of these
databases plus the information that CEH was able to collect over its year-long investigation
period was what made it possible for the CEH to make a scientific estimation of the number of
people killed in Guatemalan conflict: 200,000. 134 The REMHI project and report was directly
responsible for helping ensure that the CEH’s explanation and characterization of the truth of
Guatemala’s civil conflict was comprehensive and powerful. Implicit is its responsibility to
59achieve eventually some level of reconciliation as a long-term consequence of both truth
commission reports

El Salvador and Guatemala were split along very similar political and social lines regarding
willingness to cooperate with, and provide support to, their respective truth commissions. The
civilian governments of both countries, led by presidents Cristiani and Aral who claimed to
support efforts toward reconciliation, avoided handing over any information that the TC and
CEH requested that could be used to demonstrate government implication in or complacency
towards atrocities. During the first month of the CEH’s investigative work, September 1997, the
Commission tested out the government’s readiness to cooperate with a trial run. The Agreement
on the Commission’s establishment had specified that the Parties would undertake their
responsibility to “collaborate with the Commission in all matters” for the fulfillment of its
mandate 113 This trial run also checked the government’s compliance with the accord. This
government cooperation test requested from the President detailed information of four different
disappearance cases spanning the entire investigative period. When the commission had
received no response, Guatemala President Arai explained that he had passed the request along
53to the Minister of Defense where it had ‘gotten lost.’ 114 The Minister of Defense later “found” it
and passed it to the Minister for Internal Affairs and the Head of Police, none of whom could
find any evidence of substance.)
t5
The only documentation that the CEH received back as
nominal “effort” of a search for evidence was a few pages from the police files — a letter sent to
the victims employers asking if their employees had, in fact, disappeared. There was no
behavior that showed desire to understand the true story of their disappearances.)
t6
What it did
demonstrate was how well the military still controlled the President. It showed that the executive,
the armed forces, and the civilian police institutions were undeniably still linked together in a
(coercive) network of hidden secrets and covering for each other. All requests for information
were required to filter through a central path at the Ministry of Defense. Commissioner
Beurgenthal reflects on the Commission’s same challenge to break through the impenetrable wall
of denial and impunity that the Salvadoran military had built around its institution.
All of them, moreover, seemed to have great faith in the ability of the system to
cover up, protect them, and to punish those who talked. As one officer put it,
“most officers knew who had done what, but we also knew that none of us
would tell on them, and that if we did, we would be dead.” 17
In Guatemala, direct dealings with the military did not have this delay and hesitation in response,
as in the above situation with El Salvador. The military’s response was straight-faced denial that
any operational records from the decades being investigated existed in the military archives. Of
course, the CEH knew that in reality the military had kept meticulous account of this information
ever since the institution was established. TC requests for service records or personnel files of
military officers were declined with the explanatory excuse that such files “had been destroyed,
could not be found, or were incomplete.” 118 Access to the Guatemalan secret services files and to
the Salvadoran security services records was impossible.
54While investigating the specific cases that the Salvadoran TC planned to use as illustrative in
its report, it requested personal interviews with alleged perpetrators and others who might have
held key information. Interviews were the only source of primary data, as public hearings broke
the mandate requirement that the TC and CEH proceedings be carried out confidentially. 119
Thomas Beurgenthal describes below the results of those efforts:
Most civilians, former FMLN combatants, and military personnel presented
themselves at the Commission after being summoned by it… Of course, it is one
thing for individuals to appear for questioning; it is quite another for them to tell
the truth or, for that matter, to provide information…Initially it appeared that
none of the military officers we interviewed, whether or not they were
implicated in any of the cases under investigation, would provide any useful
information. For the most part, they lied, when responding to our questions.
Many of them made it quite clear, either by the manner in which they spoke or
by their body language, that their careers or their lives were at risk if they told
the truth….It was obvious to us that the military had built a defensive wall to
protect itself. 12°
The military provided the commission with false cooperation, agreeing to meet with the
commission but answering with shameless, transparent lies. The officers believed that, as
members of the military institution, they were above the truth. This behavior significantly
curtailed the TC’s access to rich, valuable information that would have amplified the truth
established and avoided inconvenient, time-consuming waiting periods and the investigation of
secondary routes to the same sought information. For the sake of the commission’s objectives, it
was at least positive that the FMLN and other civilians were tolerant of the TC’s request for
informational interviews.
The guerrilla groups of both El Salvador and Guatemala were more responsive than the
militaries, though the FMLN’s reaction was comparatively more guarded than that of the URNG.
Although the FMLN showed up for their interviews as well, they were not terribly open and
obliging in turning over requested information that contained names and deployment
assignments of various field commanders. 121 They were specifically reticent about turning over
55certain facts that would help the commission determine identities of those responsible for
ordering or permitting certain violations of human rights.
122
In Guatemala, the CEH found the
URNG and other former combatant guerillas more cooperative. In contrast to the formalities and
unresponsiveness of the military officers in meetings at the Salvadoran Ministry of Defense, the
meetings with the guerillas were more dynamic, mutually organized, and numerous.
123
Some
questions put forth were never clearly answered. 124 However, whereas no one from the military
once recognized the wrong of what they had perpetrated, the URNG openly acknowledged its
fault. 125 The URNG also more readily complied with the terms of the accords in cooperating
with CEH requests of information.
This disparity between the government and military’s willingness to cooperate and that of the
URNG reflects the fact that the military knew it was at a disadvantage and attempted to obstruct
this truth. The effect was to begin to polarize opinion of the CEH along political party and
ideological lines: the military and the conservatives were against, while the leftists were
supportive. As will be discussed further on in this paper, the military later claimed that the
report was biased, infiltrated with “leftist” agenda. Reconciliation with truth commissions,
acknowledgement of the victims, and pursuit of justice became “leftist.” On the other hand, the
political right purported a “reconciliation” of pardoning perpetrators, forgetting the pain of the
past, and “moving on” in order to maintain the systemic injustice that affords them power.
The reality in Guatemala and El Salvador during the work of the TC and CEH, and when the
countries were supposedly under democratic governance, was that the Parties to the peace
accords did not comply with their own pledged cooperation with the Truth Commissions.
Furthermore, the CEH’s failure to gain access to governmental archives, which should belong to
the public domain, illustrates the tight, manipulative, forcible grip held by the Minister of
56Defense and the Secret Services (Estado Mayor Presidencial) on the civilian leaders. With no
legal repercussions possible, the Truth Commissions were effectively bare in the face of the
military’s power to answer the TC or CEH’s calls or questions with unabashed lies. Given this
reality, it is indisputable that the TC and CEH should have had stronger investigative powers that
would have been threatening to the military institutions, and which could have frightened or
compelled the military to hand over sources vital to disclosing the truth of the past. The weak
mandates regarding investigative powers granted to the TC and CEH let the military keep the
vast majority of their lies secret and receive no penalty for doing so. The Truth Commissions’
lack of compulsory powers thus perpetuated the legacy of impunity for the military in El
Salvador and Guatemala. There can be no doubt that in both countries the military’s grip was
upon the government when it spoke for “its” interests in negotiating for weak investigative
powers in the Salvadoran and Guatemalan Truth Commission mandates.

Both the TC and CEH were established to be definitively independent of the juridical realm.
The Salvadoran commission mandate in the April 1991 Mexico Agreements set these
boundaries, asserting that the TC was not to “prevent the normal investigation of any situation or
case … nor the application of the relevant legal provisions to any act that is contrary to law.” I I°
The CEH mandate explicitly states that its “work, recommendations and report…shall [not] have
any judicial aim or effect.” 111 Although some wished that the truth commissions had been
allowed more direct effect on impunity in the two countries, the logistical separation of the TC
and CEH from any judicial processes made them more acceptable to the conservative
government, economic elite, and military powers — and therefore possible. The Salvadoran and
Guatemalan society had to take what it could get. Unfortunately, what they got were bodies with
very little investigative clout.
52Both the TC and the CEH were created with the handicap of no legal powers of subpoena,
search, or seizure. Without the power to lawfully require the appearance of certain individuals
before the commission, the means to compel the surrender of evidence, or the right to search any
premises where relevant archives could be stored or hidden, 112 the amount of incriminating
information to which they could gain access on their own was considerably reduced. They had to
rely on voluntary information of truth-testimonies and on the responsiveness of the government,
ministry of defense, FMLN or URNG, media sources, and civil society to specific requests. The
investigation process became a test of others’ cooperation.