FIELD NOTE AN EFFECTIVE AND KNOWLEDGEABLE COMMANDER CONSTITUTIONAL COURT OF GUATEMALA V. MONTT Basics FILMING Tribunal: Constitutional Court of Guatemala What Crimes: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity including murder, torture, sexual violence and forced displacement Who: Jose Efrain Ríos Montt, President of Guatemala, 1982-1983 How: Command Responsibility (and Ordering) Backstory In 1982, a young filmmaker named Pamela Yates went to Guatemala to make a movie about the ongoing genocide of Guatemala’s indigenous people. While there, she was given the rare opportunity to sit down and interview then President Ríos Montt. Part of his interview appeared in her award-winning film titled When the Mountains Tremble.2 Twenty-five years later, one of the attorneys investigating President Montt learned about the interview and asked Yates if she still had the full, uncut interview. Yates went to her storage unit in New Jersey where she embarked on what she described as an archeological dig through 25-year-old outtakes of 16mm film and ¼-inch audiotape. Proving Command Responsibility In order for prosecutors to secure a guilty conviction, they needed to prove that President Montt had: • Effective command and control over the forces that implemented what is now referred to as Guatemala’s “scorched-earth” military policy; • Knowledge about the activities of his forces; and • Failed to stop his forces from committing crimes. Keeping this in mind, read the transcript below from a one-minute clip of the film, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator.3 This film is Yates’ follow up project about the unexpected role that her footage from 1982 played in the genocide case against President Efrain Ríos Montt. SHOWN IN THIS VIDEO Watch this oneminute clip from Granito: How to Nail a Dictator at vimeo.com/35763021. If you don’t have time or access to watch the clip, it shows filmmaker Pamela Yates standing with one of the prosecuting attorneys, watching and discussing the rediscovered footage of Yates’s interview with President Ríos Montt on June 2, 1982. 122 VIDEO AS EVIDENCE: PROVING RESPONSIBILITY V 1.0