Culture of Impunity.(military crimes)

For a few months at least, it seemed that Helen Mack's long quest for justice might finally succeed. In 1990, a Guatemalan Army sergeant brutally stabbed her sister Myrna to death in front of her Guatemala City apartment. In October 2002, a panel of judges finally convicted a retired Guatemalan military officer of ordering the slaying. It was a hard-won victory for Mack, who had spent more than a decade pursuing her sister's killers. Mack's sister had been murdered for attempting to expose the extent of government involvement in atrocities committed during the country's 36-year civil war, which officially ended in 1996. Many believed the conviction of Col. Juan Valencia Osorio--the first high-ranking officer ever to be found guilty of a political crime-- might herald a new era in Guatemala's efforts to come to grips with its brutal past. Such hopes died last May when an appeals court overturned the decision, making Osorio, once again, a free man. "I proved that they were responsible for my sister's murder," Mack bitterly recalled recently. "The message was that they are above the law."

So it goes in Guatemala, which seems unable to confront its repressive past and join its neighbors in embracing democracy and economic reform. El Salvador started down a path of national reconciliation and reform a decade ago. Nicaragua launched a major battle against corruption last year. Yet Guatemala, Central America's largest nation, remains mired in poverty and tormented by lawlessness and a culture of impunity. Sadly, few expect things to change after Guatemala's presidential elections, which began with a first round of voting last Sunday.

Pro-business candidate Oscar Berger and leftist Alvaro Colom were widely expected to finish in the top two slots. Berger is a former Guatemala City mayor with close ties to the media. Colom, an ordained Mayan minister who ran a distant third in the 1999 presidential elections, has the support of much of the human-rights community. But it is candidate Efrain Rios Montt, the former military dictator, who epitomizes the country's woes. Human-rights groups have accused the notorious general of genocide because thousands of peasants were slaughtered after a 1982 coup d'etat brought him to power. Rios Montt wasn't even eligible for the presidency until the Supreme Court effectively gutted a law last summer banning the candidacy of anyone involved in a former coup.

Just days after that decision, in what has become known as "Black Thursday," some 5,000 surly supporters of Rios Montt and the Guatemalan Republican Front ruling party rioted in the capital, attacking ...