Guatemalan judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez, who more than a year ago escaped from Guatemala to save his life, when death threats against him intensified, asked Guatemalan migrants in the United States to unite to demand that the authorities of their country origin, better conditions in the homeland they left behind.
“The migrant has a very strong weapon in remittances. Guatemala lives off remittances, it is the main source of income. With that strength they can afford to sit down with the authorities and impose some issues,” Judge Gálvez said in an interview with The opinion from the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (Cal State LA).
“If migrants can unite, they will have a voice, and they can decide a president for Guatemala.”
He stated that education and health are in very poor conditions, not to mention the roads, and security.
“They have no idea of the conditions in which indigenous communities live. “That is why there is so much indigenous Guatemalan population in the United States.”
During the Guatemalan Civil War, between 1960 and 1996, government forces killed thousands of civilians, especially indigenous Mayans living in rural areas. A phenomenon known as genocide.
Judge Gálvez brought charges against dictators, presidents, death squad operators, oligarchs and drug traffickers.
He gained fame beyond Guatemalan borders when he brought to trial the de facto president Efraín Ríos Montt, who was convicted of genocide; At the same time he ordered the arrest of former President Otto Pérez Molin on corruption charges related to customs fraud.
The departure from Guatemala
It was on November 4, 2022 when Judge Gálvez fled Guatemala for Costa Rica, leaving his wife and son.
“They had already recommended that I leave Guatemala. I didn’t want to. “I had some processes that I hoped to finish.”
But when a woman told him in front of his son that “his heart was going to hurt a lot if they killed him,” he decided to take action because he took the comment as a veiled threat.
For 22 years he had already lived in custody, and suffered several attacks.
“In 2000, I was assigned security. In 2015 they gave me armored vehicles. He was carrying a car behind and another in front of the one I was going. “This was my life in the judicial body.”
In the first stage, Judge Gálvez escaped to Costa Rica, but even in that country he says that they continued to threaten him with death by telephone.
“I thought that if I left, everything was going to be over, but they kept arriving at my mother’s house, cars without license plates.”
So from Costa Rica he left for Europe, where he lived in several countries such as Germany and Belgium.
He currently lives between the United States and Costa Rica, but even though he has a scholarship from George Mason University that ends in July, he says that life in exile has not been easy, far from his family, his homeland and without a salary. .
“How a person can feel after spending 25 years in the judiciary. My life developed with sensitive processes in Guatemala.”
The first threats
“The Peace Signing was in ’96, in ’99 I arrived in Quiché where some transitional justice processes began, which are processes against the military; and then I start to have threats.”
Judge Gálvez recalls that the threats continued in the city of Chiquimula due to drug trafficking, but later when he moved to the capital of Guatemala, the case that raised his profile was that of Ríos Montt, which gave rise to the Foundation against Terrorism , a military association.
“On the issue of drug traffickers, we are talking about officials involved in drug trafficking. That’s the most dangerous thing. The purely drug trafficker remains isolated from that issue.”
And he comments that of course there was no shortage of offers of money.
“One day, a Supreme Court justice invited me to breakfast. At breakfast, I felt him quite uneasy. He did not dare to tell me, but on a napkin he asked me to put the amount I wanted so as not to touch people.
Judge Gálvez assures that in Guatemala, the military is involved in drug trafficking and everything bad.
“Illegal bodies, clandestine security apparatuses continue to exist. Much of the economic power was enriched by the armed conflict, they killed the peasants to take their lands.”
For this reason, he explained that the international community created courts of expanded jurisdiction to protect judges.
“That’s how I started working with them, with the coverage of the international community, especially the United States.”
It was worth it
Has it been worth working on these cases to bring to trial and punish those who participated in the genocide?
“That is the question I have asked myself in this year that has taken me away from Guatemala. Exile and ostracism is very hard, it is very strong. It has been a difficult year in all aspects due to the monitoring they give me in Costa Rica, and without economic possibilities.”
He says that his wife, who is a judge, sometimes supports him, but she cannot demand it.
“My 18-year-old son has stopped studying. Everything became complicated with my exile; and my retirement process stopped.”
That’s how he said that when he left Guatemala to save his life, at the same time he was closed.
“It is not easy to get a job in other countries. In Costa Rica, if I bring in paperwork to teach classes, they give priority to Costa Ricans; and they are, of course, right.”
Hopes
He says that the only good thing that has happened in the last year has been the victory of Bernardo Arévalo for the presidency of Guatemala, since with this, the threats against him have stopped.
But he recognizes that the situation remains complicated in Guatemala.
“I see the future uncertain. The issue is not simple and the power groups are still there. “The military still has power.”
But still, he is hopeful.
“The fact that Bernardo became president broke the scheme. These power groups had financed the eight political parties, and the ninth was Bernardo’s. And the surprise is that he stayed.”
It also gives him hope for change in Guatemala because something historic is happening that has drawn national and international attention. “The 48 cantons, the indigenous movement began to articulate itself. That is the most important thing because the same population is generating that incidence.”
I would do it again
When recounting his years in the judiciary, he says that of course, he was afraid that they were going to kill him.
“I remember when I was going to start the intermediate phase of the Genocide process, and they threatened me, I suspended the hearing. But he made me aware of my conscience, and the first thing I did was call the secretary and ask her to suspend the first hearings and hold the genocide hearing.
“I stayed in a hotel for a month, I didn’t use the telephone, I kept the office closed, I didn’t let anyone in. He didn’t come to my house. You can already imagine. “I made the judiciary an apostolate.”
For this reason, he says that he would do all his actions as a judge again. “I acted based on the study and analysis of the processes.”
The judge says that he is not contemplating returning to Guatemala for now, but he hopes that very soon his wife and son will be able to join him, so that together they can start a new life in another country.