An Unlikely Activist Achieves a Measure of Justice in Guatemala

Helen Mack Chang, one of Guatemala's most vocal advocates for justice, has the distinction of facing down the country's military and ultimately bringing a measure of justice and reconciliation to her family and the thousands of others who perished during country's 36-year civil war.

In 1990, a member of the Guatemalan military assassinated her sister, Myrna Mack. In her quest for justice, Helen Mack pushed the country's justice system to convict the soldier who perpetrated the crime, and ultimately, the military officers who ordered it.

"Helen has pursued her commitment to human rights with an impressive courage and determination," wrote the late Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, former Mexican senator and ambassador to the United Nations, who nominated Mack for the Prize. "She is one of the most respected Guatemalans of her time. Her integrity, modesty and good spirits have inspired many to follow her tracks. She is truly an example."

For her work, Mack will receive the Notre Dame Prize for Distinguished Public Service in Latin America from the University of Notre Dame's Kellogg Institute for International Studies. Mack will receive a $10,000 cash award, with a matching amount donated to the Myrna Mack Foundation.

‘Why Get Involved?'

Born in 1952, Mack was the product of a middle-class life of relative comfort. She was a business executive and devout Catholic who avoided politics. By contrast, her sister, Myrna, was a prominent activist and renowned anthropologist investigating the army's abuses of Mayan peasants during the civil war.

"I had no opinion of the government," said Mack in a 2002 profile in the New York Times. "My life was basically like any other middle-class person. As long as the violence did not touch you, why get involved? To get into politics was to be stigmatized."

On September 11, 1990, the police told her that Myrna had been in a traffic accident. When she went to the scene, however, the truth quickly emerged: Myrna had been stabbed 27 times.

Convinced that Myrna had been the victim of a political crime, Mack used a provision

of Guatemalan law that allows private citizens to take a prosecutorial role to seek justice for her family.

"Because of my political naïveté, I thought the system would respond," said Mack. "But it did not. That is when I recognized the terror that existed in Guatemala. As I learned of my sister's work, I learned the people of Guatemala were being subjected to repression and intimidation that made you a victim all over again."

‘An End to Impunity'

Although she had no legal background, Mack mobilized support from the Guatemalan and international community to take her family's case to court. Serious challenges hindered the investigation and prosecution, including the assassination of a key witness, destruction of evidence and threats to court officials, witnesses and their families.

Mack persevered and obtained an unprecedented conclusion to the case-army Sgt. Noel de Jesus Beteta was convicted for direct responsibility for the crime.

In October 2002, based on the testimony of Beteta, Col. Juan Valencia Osorio- security chief of the now-defunct Presidential Security Corps and one of the three officers accused of masterminding the crime-was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role, the maximum sentence allowed under Guatemalan law.

The other two defendants were acquitted because of a lack of evidence.

Valencia was the first high-ranking officer ever to be found guilty of a political crime.

However, to the outrage of Mack and human rights groups, an appeals court freed Valencia in May 2003.

"I proved that they were responsible for my sister's murder," Mack bitterly recalled in a November 2003 Newsweek article. "The message was that they are above the law."

In January 2004, The Supreme Court overturned that ruling and ordered Valencia returned to prison, but by then he had vanished.

The legal efforts in the case opened the path for other human rights cases in Guatemala, some resulting in convictions.

Perhaps the most significant victory from Mack's efforts came in April 2004. President Óscar Berger, accompanied by the heads of Congress and the Supreme Court, publicly acknowledged the Guatemalan government's responsibility for the 1990 killing of Myrna. Also that year, President Berger named Mack to the country's Advisory Council on Security.

Mack's work has garnered her numerous accolades, including the Swedish Parliament's Right Livelihood Award, known as an "alternative Nobel Prize."

With the proceeds from that award, Mack founded the Myrna Mack Foundation to provide training to those interested in ending impunity and defending human rights.

"We are putting on trial the policy of terror in Guatemala of the past 30 years. We are not looking for reprisals but for justice," Mack said. "What we want is justice as proof that governmental arbitrariness will not continue; justice as a condition for the development of democratic relations free of fear and coercion."