Rob Mercatante's Guatemala Journal: Guatemala News: Romeo Lucas Garcia dies

May 28, 2006

Guatemala News: Romeo Lucas Garcia dies

Guatemala now remembers Lucas Garcia as one of the most bloodthirsty presidents in all of its history. During his administration, a great number of massacres of entire segments of society took place as military troops slew hundred of intellectuals, student leaders, unionists and peasant leaders.
(Marco Julio Ochoa, UPI)

Romeo Lucas Garcia.jpg It is difficult to lament the passing of a man responsible the suffering and deaths of so many innocent people. Romeo Lucas Garcia is a name that will be forever uttered with scorn, contempt, and loathing in Guatemala.

I believe that Eduardo de Leon, director of the Rigoberta Menchu Foundation, is correct when he laments the fact that "death came and saved him from facing judgment".

Although his genocidal deeds went unpunished on earth, one can still hope that there is a special place in hell’s table reserved just for Romeo Lucas Garcia. (I would imagine that it is right next to the empty chair marked “Efraín Ríos Montt”.)

Ex-Guatemala President Lucas Garcia Dies
By Juan Carlos Llorca
The Associated Press
Washington Post
Sunday, May 28, 2006; 8:47 PM

Guatemala City -- Former Guatemalan President Romeo Lucas Garcia, whose rule was marked by a bloody police raid on the Spanish Embassy, has died at a hospital in Venezuela. He was 81.

Lucas Garcia, who reportedly suffered from Alzheimer's disease and had been incapacitated, died of respiratory failure Saturday in Puerto la Cruz, about 150 miles east of the Venezuelan capital Caracas, said family friend Eduardo Vallejas.

Lucas Garcia lived in Venezuela since the 1980s, his former sister-in-law Maria Nana Winter told a Guatemalan radio station.

An army general, Lucas Garcia served as president of Guatemala from July 1978 to March 1982 when he was overthrown by another general, Efrain Rios Montt. While Lucas Garcia's administration was accused of rights abuses, Rios Montt ushered in one of the bloodiest chapters in the country's 36-year civil war.

In the major crisis of Lucas Garcia's tenure, peasant, labor and student activists took over the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City in January 1980 to protest his rule. Police raided the building in an attack that left 37 dead, including Vicente Menchu, father of Rigoberta Menchu, the Indian rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992.

Lucas Garcia was briefly placed under house arrest at his home in Venezuela in 2005 after a Spanish judge issued a warrant for his arrest for rights abuses committed during his administration.

Spain wanted to try him for his role in the police raid. But in June 2005, Venezuela's Supreme Court ruled that Spain did not provide enough evidence for his extradition and lifted the house arrest.

Eduardo de Leon, director of the Rigoberta Menchu Foundation - which sought to make Lucas Garcia stand trial for the deaths - said he regretted that the former leader had died before facing justice.

"Death came and saved him from facing judgment," de Leon said. "Still, we hope that the trial could go forward and that he could be judged, even posthumously."