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Protecting abuse files a full-time job

Millions of documents that could shed light on alleged government efforts to eliminate leftists and guerrilla sympathizers during Guatemala's 36-year civil war have survived for decades inside a dusty, humid warehouse.

They may not last much longer.

Protecting the information from roof leaks, vermin and potential sabotage has become a full-time job for civilian activists and personnel from Guatemala's human rights defender's office.

Human-rights officials believe the files, compiled by the infamous, now-disbanded National Police, could shed light on the role police and shadowy security groups played in the killings and disappearances of thousands of government opponents.

"There could be evidence of human-rights violations, but we might never find out if the files decay or are destroyed," said Carla Villagran, director of analysis for Guatemala's national human rights ombudsman, whose office stumbled upon the towering stacks of mildewing documents last summer while investigating a report of explosives hidden in the area.

Containing at least 48 million pages, the files are currently stacked haphazardly from floor to ceiling across five spacious rooms inside the decrepit, two-story remains of an unfinished hospital-turned-warehouse. The building is surrounded by a semi-abandoned police complex filled with junked cars in a crowded northern Guatemala City neighborhood.

Cracks in the roof and walls provide little protection from heavy spring and summer rains, which flood the building and drench paperwork already coated in mold. Decades of dust and dirt also make it tough to decipher information, as do the rats, bats, cockroaches and other critters that live among the piles of pages.

"When the rains start, we have to put buckets everywhere and move the files all over the place, to parts of the building where there are fewer leaks," said Ana Corado, one of a team of police clerks who have been in charge of sorting the files since long before human-rights officials knew they existed.

Authorities also worry that current or former police officers -- or anybody, really -- could steal or destroy bundles of documents to keep investigators from uncovering evidence that may incriminate them.

The warehouse is so exposed that several years ago during Christmas street celebrations, a firecracker flew in through a broken window and charred some files, Corado said.

The building has no security cameras, and authorities only on Monday finished construction of a 2.7m fence topped with razor wire that extends along most of the length of the warehouse. Before that, hundreds of residents used the area as a shortcut, traipsing past the warehouse on their way home.

The police complex does house kennels for drug-sniffing dogs and sleeping quarters for some officers, meaning there are always law enforcement personnel around. The human rights ombudsman has hired six security guards, who work 24-hour shifts in teams of three to provide extra protection.

"Everything has been calm. We haven't seen any threats or indications there will be an attack on the files," said security guard Pedro Garcia. "But with the fence, they will be safer."

Guatemala's civil war was Latin America's bloodiest, pitting guerrilla groups against a string of US-backed military and civilian governments. About 200,000 people, most of them civilians, died or vanished before UN-brokered peace accords ended the fighting in December 1996.

Human rights groups hope to save the files because they may provide evidence that the National Police -- disbanded in 1997 because of its notorious reputation -- and other shadowy government security forces wrongfully imprisoned, tortured and killed suspected insurgents.

"They are concrete proof from an official source and they all are intact," said Iduvina Hernandez, director of the Institute for Democratic Security, a non-governmental group helping to analyze and protect the Guatemalan files. "They detail everything, not like US declassified documents that come with the names of those responsible for many atrocities blacked out."

Heavily redacted US government files about the Guatemalan war have been made public in Washington thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests by the non-profit National Security Archive, which has published them online. In contrast, the Guatemalan effort is shockingly low-tech: Simply cleaning off and sorting through the sheer magnitude of documents, some of which date back to 1900, may take decades.

Complicating matters is the fact that potentially useful information, such as pictures depicting torture and lists of people classified as "disappeared," "assassinated" or "political detainee," are mixed with such mundane paperwork as applications for new driver's licenses, or reports detailing what songs a police band played during an independence day celebration.
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