Questions regarding who were responsible for kidnapping and most likely executing Irma Flaquer, as well as murdering her son, Fernando Valle Flaquer, and actually committed the crimes gained the attention of the media. This development energized relatives and personalities on Guatemala ’s national scene.

On July 22, Fernando Valle Arizpe, Flaquer’s former husband, appeared before the National Congress to demand that the case be solved. He outlined three scenarios of possible blame that required investigation: One, the guerrilla movement, two, Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz, minister of interior during the presidency of Lucas Garcíía and three, the army.

Guerrilla Scenario Discarded

The scenarios presented by Valle Arizpe were taken from the IAPA’s investigation, the findings of which were announced at the Hemisphere Conference.

At that gathering, a commission made up of notable judges, Nobel laureates, civic leaders and human rights advocates conducted a symbolic trial in absentia of the murderers of journalists. The group drafted recommendations for government action to combat impunity and demanded legal reforms to prevent the crimes against journalists from being subject to a statute of limitations.

The IAPA investigation, conducted between 1995 and 1997, also included the case of Jorge Carpio Nicolle, a journalist and politician who was murdered in 1993. The study discarded the guerrilla and the interior minister scenarios as explanations for the Flaquer crime. Rather, it said, “the top presidential staff, perhaps joined by the chief of the National Police, Germán Chupina Barahona, decided to kidnap Flaquer.” The investigation, published in the book Unpunished Crimes Against Journalists (IAPA 1997), added that “Alvarez Ruiz may have known who the mastermind of the crime was, but he did not participate in its planning or execution.“

The IAPA study was later appraised by Guatemala’s CHC, which blamed the government for the disappearance of Flaquer. The CHC designated it as case study no.49 and concluded that in this crime

there was “the participation of government agents or subjects who had [government] acquiescence or tolerance and, in any event, later counted with its protection and cover-up.”

Valle Arizpe’s statements moved several people to indulge in mea culpas and some former guerrilla fighters to engage in a sort of informal self-criticism. All of this had no effect on any branch of the government nor on incumbent officials at the time.

“I have no proof,only elements which allow me to suppose that the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) and Pablo Monosanto are responsible for the kidnapping and subsequent execution of journalist Irma Flaquer,” former insurgent Danilo Rodríguez told a press conference. Rodríguez left the guerrilla movement in 1991.


Irma Flaquer Azurdia chats with a disabled child; she was heavily involved in social work in Guatemala.

Rodríguez disclosed that a few days before the kidnapping he made known to Flaquer, at the request of FAR’s executive national headquarters, the route she was to follow to leave the country. He also said that Flaquer may have been executed because it was discovered that she operated within the FAR as a “double agent ”or an “agent of the enemy.”

The CHC “rejected the suggestion that the journalist was a double agent,” based on subsequent interviews with several FAR members.

The response to Rodríguez was not long in coming. His accusations were rejected by Jorge Soto, alias Pablo Monosanto, a leader of the now disbanded FAR. “It is absolutely false that the FAR took part in, had knowledge of or ordered the disappearance and murder of the journalist and her son,” he stated. He stressed that “such charges serve only to conceal the true facts and misdirect the attention of Guatemalans in order to add to the campaign unleashed in recent weeks to discredit the URGN.”

He did acknowledge, however, that at the time of her death, Flaquer was working with the FAR in activities intended to lead to creation of a human rights commission for Guatemala.

The Insurgency’s Responsibility

Flaquer’s role as FAR associate at the same time she was a government official, a human rights activist and a journalist finds justification in the context outlined by the CHC. It concludes that “during the 1978-1982 period, broad sectors of the community engaged in growing social mobilization and political opposition to the established order, whose organized expressions, in some cases, had different types of contacts with the insurgents.”

In a letter he sent to the media (Prensa Libre 7/30/97), Valle Arizpe doubted the involvement of the FAR. He argued that it lacked the resources in Guatemala City to have valuable documents and the car in which his wife and son were traveling vanish 20 minutes af ter the crime. Added to this was the wounding of two eyewitnesses, one of whom was chased for several blocks and then killed while the other (Fernando Oliva) was delivered to a private hospital. Moreover, there were intimidating phone calls made for two years to another Flaquer son, Sergio, in Israel. He was told that his mother was alive but crazy and locked up in a clandestine jail. Death threats were made to Monsignor Casariegos, Guatemala’s archbishop, to discourage him from saying anything about the murder or offering a mass or any other religious service praying for the return of the journalist.

Valle Arizpe added another element of suspicion of the government. A month before,he said (Prensa Libre ,7/23/97) that Marta Altolaguirre, chairman of the President’s Commission for Human Rights, had offered him legal advice and even transportation to look for Alvarez Ruiz in the United States in order to solve the case. But when it became clear that the army was also suspect, the offer evaporated.

Regarding Alvarez Ruiz’ possible culpability, Valle Arizpe recalled their friendship from the days of elementary school and how he had hired Alvarez Ruiz to work in his company when he obtained his law degree. Valle Arizpe said he heard no more from his friend until he called on October 14, 1980, to say, “Tell Irma to leave the country immediately. I’m sending her a new passport, money and air tickets to Managua right now; I don’t want to hear any more excuses for delaying her trip. If she stays, there’s nothing more I can do for her, the group that decided to eliminate her is totally out of my control.”

Faced with that assertion, Valle Arizpe said that he asked if it was the military (Siglo Veintiuno ,7/23/97) “because I was talking to a friend, but Donaldo replied, ‘the decision comes from higher up than that.’”

The Presidential Staff Scenario

The third scenario, which implicates the presidential staff as culprits, possibly together with the National Police, finds support in the normal procedures in place at the time. The CHC found that the government was the primary source of violence directed at outsiders, the poor and, above all, the Mayan population. It also targeted those who fought for justice and greater social equality.

The commission added that the government was unable to respond to legitimate demands and social recovery during those years of armed confrontation. This failure led to the formation of an intricate web of parallel bodies of repression that replaced the legal role of the courts and usurped their functions and prerogatives.

“A de facto, illegal and underground punitive system was established, orchestrated and led by units of the military intelligence,” the report underscored. That system, the report said, “became the executive core of a government policy that took advantage of the climate of armed struggle to control the population, society, the state and the military itself.” The objective was “to guarantee secrecy for work whose physical or intellectual responsibility could not be traced, thus excusing from any blame the agents of the government and ensuring the futility of all judicial and police investigations.”

“The government also sought to stigmatize and blame the victims and social organizations in order to turn them into criminals in the eyes of the public and therefore ‘legitimate ’objects of repression...” the CHC report added.

New Details of the Attempt

The CHC’s probe added important details to the research done previously by the IAPA, particularly in describing the actual moment of the kidnapping.

The CHC was able to determine that on October 16, 1980, a pair of lovers sat at the curb outside Flaquer’s home. The couple had a large briefcase. Relatives and witnesses told the CHC that they saw armed members of the judicial police sitting in a jeep-type vehicle about a block from the house. They said that when Flaquer and her son emerged from the house at 6:30 p.m., the lovers signaled the occupants of the beige-colored jeep, which immediately took off after Flaquer.

The people in the jeep started firing as they chased the Flaquer vehicle. Fernando Valle, Flaquer’s son, turned to head south along Cementerio Avenue. Two blocks away, at 14th Street, the jeep passed and blocked the fleeing car. The assailants started firing again. At that moment, a minibus emerged from a nearby street -13 calle C; its occupants also opened fire. Valle was seriously injured by dum-dum bullet to the head; he lost control of the car and crashed into a house at the corner of Cementerio and 14th, in Zone 3. Flaquer, despite injuries that prevented her from escaping from the car, screamed for medical help for her son. Several of the attackers grabbed the journalist, covered her face with a cloth and fled.

Unclear in the report is what vehicle Flaquer’s abductors came from. A man who witnessed the action was chased for a couple of blocks and shot dead. The CHC is certain that another person who happened by at the time of the attack was wounded in the leg and taken to a local clinic.

Flaquer’s car, with license plates P-143196, was taken to the headquarters of the Mariscal Zavala military brigade less than half an hour af ter the incident. Inside were her handbag, a small tape recorder, recorded tapes and other work materials.

The CHC’s Mission

The goal of the Commission for Historic Clarification is not to judge history but to make sense of more than three decades of civil war. The body, created under terms of the Oslo Agreement of June 23, 1994, is charged with “clarifying with objectivity, fairness and imparciality the human rights violations and acts of violence that have brought suffering to the people of Guatemala.…”

The CHC officially logged 42,275 victims -men, women and children. Of this total, 23,671 were people arbitrarily executed and 6,159 victims of forced abduction. Of those victims fully identified, 83 percent were Mayan and 17 percent Ladinos (of mixed Mayan and white blood). However, it is estimated that overall the civil war left more than 200,000 victims.

The CHC determined that government forces and paramilitary groups accounted for 93 percent of the documented violations, including 92 percent of the arbitrary executions and 91 percent of the forced disappearances. The insurgent groups were responsible for 3 percent of the human rights violations -men, women and children -5 percent of the arbitrary executions and 2 percent of the forced disappearances. One of every four victims, on either side, was a woman.


Irma Flaquer Azurdia would frequently travel to the rural areas of Guatemala, gathering information for her column and in connection with her social welfare work.

During the most violent and bloody period of the armed conflict (1987-1985)- when the Flaquer abduction occurred -military operations focused on the provinces of Quiché, Huehuetenango, Chimaltenango, Alta and Baja Verapaz, the southern coast and the capital city. During the last period (1986-1996) -the time of the Carpio Nicolle case -repressive actions were of a more selective nature.

Presentation before the IACHR

Based on its investigations in Guatemala, the IAPA submitted to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights on March 11, 1997, the results of its probe into the Flaquer case, to which the IACHR assigned file number 11,766. As part of the CHC procedures conducted since then, the IAPA and the Guatemalan government have presented divergent arguments regarding the case.

The government differed with the IAPA inquiry, which faults the authorities for not conducting a serious investigation of the crime, arguing that because there never was a “formal complaint ” filed regarding Flaquer’s kidnapping or disappearance “it was not possible to find information about the investigation undertaken.” Moreover, it said that “relatives and interested parties failed to follow up on the inquiry begun into the death of Fernando Valle Flaquer by the First Circuit Criminal Court.”

The IAPA’s investigation is backed up by the CHC report: “While the government regretted the disappearance of the victim and the death of her son, there was not the slightest official effort to investigate what happened. The only step taken by the judicial process was to examine the body of Fernando, Irma’s son. There was no judicial examination of the vehicle, the relatives were not heard, nor was the wounded person deposed. The victim’s relatives were not able to recover the vehicle nor her other belongings.”

The CHC inquiry and conclusions demonstrate why so few complaints were filed that year.

“The country’s judicial system, through provoked or deliberate inefficiency, did not guarantee lawfulness; rather, it tolerated and even encouraged violence. By acts of commission or omission, the judiciary contributed to the worsening social conflicts at different times in Guatemala’s history. Impunity penetrated so deeply as to take over the government structure, and it became a means as much as an end. As a means, it concealed and protected the repressive actions of the government as well as those of private parties sympathetic to the government’s objectives. As an end, impunity was the result of methods applied to repress and eliminate political and social adversaries.”

The Responsibility of the Government

The IAPA always insisted on the responsibility borne by the government.

In response to the allegation that the absence of an investigation was justified because there was no formal complaint, the IAPA makes several points:

First, the Lucas García government recognized Irma Flaquer as a public figure and as a government employee. Presidential Spokesman Carlos Vielman called a press conference as soon as she disappeared to say that “this criminal action touches the government very closely.” Having acknowledged, in fact, that Flaquer was a public figure who had occupied three different government jobs, it behooved the authorities to file a formal complaint.

Second, the political climate that prevailed in 1980 made it virtually impossible for the family members to file a complaint. Flaquer’s daughter-in-law, Mayra Rosales, started receiving anonymous threats as soon as Flaquer’s relatives started looking for her body. Sergio, her only surviving son who was living in Israel, received telephone warnings not to return to Guatemala nor to investigate what had happened to his mother. When Flaquer’s ex-husband tried to get information from military sources about his wife’s whereabouts, he was warned by a soldier and former schoolmate to stop asking questions or everyone in the family would be killed. Monsignor Casariego sent Mayra Rosales a note a year af ter the disappearance apologizing for not having celebrated a mass in honor of Flaquer because he feared reprisals.

If the Roman Catholic cardinal succumbed to pressure, how can the current Guatemalan government expect that a formal complaint could have been filed?

The government cited press accounts in which Rodríguez, the former member of the FAR, alluded to possible guerrilla movement involvement. To this, the IAPA replied that “he himself admitted in press accounts and in an interview with an IAPA investigator that he had no firsthand knowledge of the guerrilla involvement; only that he had ‘strong suspicions,’ based on a request he received to provide Flaquer with a route to follow and that she was kidnapped on that route.

Evidence Against the Government

The IAPA alleges that there is evidence indicating the government at the time carried out the crime:

First, ecause of threats against the family, including some from identified military sources.

Second, because Interior Minister Donaldo Alvarez told Fernando Valle, Flaquer’s ex-husband, to pressure her into leaving the country because her life was in danger. Alvarez belonged to a five-man committee assigned to approve the death list at the time. It is assumed that orders came directly from President Lucas García. Alvarez previously had given Flaquer a check and a passport to leave the country.

Third, because the modus operandi of the kidnapping and the son’s murder matched that of the government in other crimes, including the murder of Manuel Colom Argueta. The use of two vehicles and action along a well-traveled road has been noted in several press accounts and human rights reports of the period as typical of operatives by the police, military or Presidential General Command.

Even if the guerrillas had been able at the time to copy such an operation with sophisticated urban commandos, it is absurd to believe they would have risked so many of their members in an area of heavy traffic and police presence. If the purpose was to implicate the government, this could have been done much easier by simply executing the journalist with a regulation weapon in a private place.

Rodríguez ’explanation of Flaquer following “a route”- the obvious way for her to go to her son’s house -only proves that the guerrillas’ involvement, if at all, was to lure the journalist out of her apartment. Many witnesses have declared that Flaquer’s residence was “under constant surveillance.” In fact, she delighted in remarking that the military were watching her. The government needed no additional information to learn of her destination once she lef t her home. Therefore, any allegation implicating the guerrillas in a move to lure the journalist out of her apartment in no way exonerates the government of its role.

Without Protection or Investigation

Given these precedents and the provisions of the American Convention on Human Rights, the IAPA charges that the government did not fulfill its duty to protect the wellbeing and life of Irma Flaquer and that it did not protect freedom of expression. Moreover, it failed to investigate because no authority of the Guatemalan government carried out a systematic investigation of the case at any time, nor has it attempted to find relevant witnesses, such as Alvarez Ruiz.

The IAPA cited as precedents two judgments handed down by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights during the first quarter of 1998 against the state of Guatemala.

The court issued one guilty verdict in the case of Nicholas Chapman Blake, an American journalist murdered on February 28, 1985, by members of a civilian patrol on a Guatemalan highland road.

This verdict is important because for the first time in Guatemala’s history the murder of a journalist was solved, the culprits identified and the government held directly responsible for policies that encouraged the killing of persons who, like Blake, did no more than practice rights recognized and guaranteed under international and domestic law.

In the other case, the court condemned Guatemala for the disappearance, torture and murder of 10 persons between November 1987 and February 1989, in a case known as Panel Blanca. The victims were identified as Ana Elizabeth Paniagua, Julián Salomón Gómez, William Otilio Gonz ález Rivera, Pablo Corado Barrientos, Manuel de Jesús González López, Augusto Angarita Ramírez, Doris Torres Gil, Marco Antonio Montes, Erick Chincilla and Oscar Vásquez.

The CHC complaint, filed on January 19, 1995, asked the Inter-American Court to condemn Guatemala for violations to the victims’ rights to life and physical integrity, and to legal guarantees.

It should be noted that in this case the Guatemalan government provided all the evidence possible without concealing anything, for the express purpose of allowing the Inter-American system for the protection of human rights to work without obstacles.

The Conclusions of the CHC

The CHC’s findings coincided with the IAPA investigation, whose findings the commission cited several times. The CHC held the government of Guatemala responsible for the kidnapping and disappearance of Irma Flaquer and the murder of her son. It noted that the government failed “seriously in its duty to investigate and order punishment for the events, thus violating the right to justice.”

Case Study 49 concluded by saying:

“The varied and coincidentally convincing elements gathered by the CHC permitted a sufficiently accurate reconstruction of the events that led to the disappearance of Irma Flaquer. Those events followed from a premeditated decision to eliminate the victim, an action that resulted in the arbitrary execution of her son, Fernando Valle Flaquer and of a passerby at the scene and the wounding of a third person.

The existence of a single testimony attaching responsibility for the events to the Rebel Armed Forces, along with other references to certain activities of the journalist, created a reasonable doubt in the commission about that aspect of the investigation.

Nevertheless, most of the evidence compiled from various sources and corroborated allowed the CHC to establish the simple presumption that there was participation of government agents or ot hers who enjoyed the government’s acquiescence or tolerance. Subsequently, they had the government’s protection and concealment, which together with the disappearance, the death of two persons and the wounding of a third constituted violations of the victims’ rights to life, liberty and their physical integrity.

Cited among the precedents were the quality of the victim, her public condemnation of violence unleashed by the authorities, human rights violations, and the serious, confirmed threats she received. Also mentioned were some of the characteristics of the assailants’ methods and the neglectful attitude of the authorities responsible for investigating the crime. All of this in a context which makes it absurd to believe such an event could happen without the forbearance of the government.

Having acknowledged that no serious investigation was undertaken, the CHC judged that responsible elements of the Guatemalan government had failed to investigate and punish the events and thus violated the right to justice.

In any event, the case clearly illustrates the level of intolerance created by the development of domestic armed conflict. These circumstances resulted in the loss for Guatemala of outstanding personalities, whose elimination represented a significant loss for the cultural estate of the country, the report concluded.

From Evidence to Hope

The presentation of so much evidence by the IAPA and the CHC gives rise to hope that there is a new political will on the part of the incumbent authorities to seek justice, not only in the Flaquer case, but also in those of Jorge Carpio Nicolle and so many other Guatemalan journalists who were slain for performing their professional duties.

During the opening ceremony of the Hemisphere Conference on Unpunished Crimes Against Journalists on August 31, 1997, the IAPA took to heart the words of Guatemala’s President, Alvaro Arzú, when he pledged to investigate the disappearance of Irma Flaquer and other crimes against Guatemalan journalists. “We will try to solve so many accusations that have been left up in the air,” he said.