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As a 28-year-old from New Mexico, Sister Ortiz was teaching literacy to young children in Guatemala when she began to receive death threats. In 1989, she was abducted at gunpoint from a church retreat by two men and later, put in a police car. She was detained for 24 hours, burned more than 111 times with cigarettes and repeatedly raped. While in detention, she heard and witnessed the torture of other Guatemalans.
Sister Ortiz's torturers responded to orders from amen who spoke English with a perfect American accent, spoke heavily accented, broken Spanish, and refused to answer when Sister Ortiz asked him directly if he was an American. The torturers referred to him as "Alejandro." For more than six years, Sister Ortiz has sought to learn the truth about what happened to her and to learn the identity of Alejandro. Although Sister Ortiz traveled to Guatemala 4 times to press her case in the Guatemalan court system, sued former Guatemalan defense minister Hector Gramajo in a Massachusetts federal court with other Guatemalan survivors, winning a judgment of $5 million, and sued the Guatemalan government before the Organization of American can States, the U.S. government showed little interest in her case until last year. In 1995, President Clinton ordered a government-wide investigation of deaths, disappearances or assaults on U.S. citizens in Guatemala since 1984. The Intelligence Oversight Board is in charge of the investigation.
The Intelligence Oversight Board's report may not name names, may not be complete and
thorough, and may not be released to the public. The release of the full report, not just a summary, is especially important given recent revelations of U.S. complicity in human rights violations in Guatemala, notably in the cases of Efrain Bamaca Velasquez and Michael DeVine.
Sister Ortiz's case is part of a pattern. |