Otto looked utterly exhausted as he left the court today, his voice strained. He claims he could easily have escaped into exile, but has chosen to face the music.
It's hard not to feel sorry for him — and his abandoned dog —in spite of everything. The spectacle of the mighty fallen is always somewhat disturbing.
I don't think I could ever muster the same kind of compassion for that gangster and clown Manuel Baldizón.
I think Otto more or less believes the self-image he has consistently projected - as a man of honour. He must have thrown all the bad stuff into a little box at the back of his psyche.
Whatever happens now he's royally screwed. Even if he can convince a judge that the conspiracy was going on all around him and he really had no active part in it, they will get him for 1982 now. He'll be the surrogate Rios Montt in no time at all.
And then there's Gerardi, and any other skeletons they find in his cupboard now that he has been deprived of immunity.
He's fully stretched out on the public altar of sacrifice and it really doesn't matter what he did or didn't do, because he has become a living symbol of the past 60 years that has to be ritually purified from the body politic.
The media have started to address him as 'General' once again...
1 comment:
Whatever happens now he's royally screwed
And well be it. He was a ringleader in wholesale murder in the highlands. Is what it is. You know how the roads are in the highlands, you can see a military convoy coming two hours before it enters town. They brought track hoes with them to dispose of the dead. The old people were the only ones who stayed behind and those who could not believe their own army was there to kill them. Into the fresh dug hole those people went who did not run for the hills . I've spent a good bit of time in Guatemala's back country-those people are still pissed. The good general should be screwed, be a symbol if you will; I've got no problem with whatever your courts decide to do with his carcass.
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