Guatemala asks U.S. help in nun's death

Christian Century, May 23, 2001 by Paul Jeffrey

Guatemalan authorities have asked the U.S. government to send investigators to help end the mystery over the death of an American nun early this month. Sister Barbara Ann Ford, a member of the New York-based Sisters of Charity order was shot dead on May 5 after two well-dressed men hijacked her pickup truck in a busy section of Guatemala City.

Sister Barbara's killers later abandoned the truck a few blocks away and stole another vehicle, which they then discarded a short distance away.

Police called to investigate quickly described the crime as an act of delinquency that had gone wrong. But human rights activists claimed the sequence of events fitted a pattern consistent with politically motivated killings in recent years.

The Mutual Support Group, Guatemala's biggest rights organization, declared May 7 that Sister Barbara's killing was "an extrajudicial execution ... of a political nature." A 62-year-old nurse, she had helped prepare the church's landmark 1998 report--Guatemala: Nunca Mas ("Guatemala: Never Again")--that blamed the nation's military for most of the deaths in the 36-year civil war that ended in 1996. More than 200,000 people, mostly indigenous Mayans, were killed or "disappeared" --abducted--during the conflict.

In a statement on May 11 the Guatemalan Catholic Bishops' Conference said the nun's death was symptomatic of an "anticulture of death that undermines fundamental human dignity." The killing also demonstrated "the incapacity of the authorities in charge of security and the application of justice."

Responding to criticism, Interior Minister Byron Barrientos announced he was requesting assistance from the U.S. embassy. A source in the Interior Ministry said agents from the FBI would soon arrive in Guatemala. Barrientos indicated that he took the unusual measure reluctantly, stating confidently that the foreign investigators would "demonstrate that it was a lamentable and shameful act of common delinquency."

As a close aide to the Catholic bishop of El Quiche, Sister Barbara ran the diocese's mental health program, helping indigenous peasants recover from the trauma of war and repression. Guillermo Monroy, social ministries director for the archdiocese of Guatemala, said: "Sister Barbara was one of ten people in the world who knew the most about this field." The Mutual Support Group claimed that Sister Barbara's work of "encouraging reconciliation" among Guatemalans was "surely not appreciated by those responsible for the pain and grieving" of the war years.--Paul Jeffrey, ENI