LEFTIST PRISONERS SLAIN BY GUATEMALAN POLICE
‘According to a special dispatch in the July 18 New York Times, two former Guatemalan police agents supplied the University Students Association in Guatemala City with shocking details July 16 about the Enrique Peralta Azurdia government murdering 28 students and leftists after arresting them last February and March.
Among the victims were former Communist party leader, Victor Manuel Gutierrez; the former:farm labor leader, Leonardo. Castillo Flores; and Fernando Arce Behrens,’ ‘a:-law student on vacation from the University of Mexico.
They were tortured in the police headquarters in the capital. Later they were ‘taken to a military base near the Pacific coast and shot. Their bodies'were sewn into burlap sacks and dropped into the ocean from an army transport plane.
The victims included Kris Yon , Cerna, the niece of the guer— rilla leader, Marco Antonio Yon Sosa; and Eunice Campiran de Aguilar Mora, wife of a Mexican’ student, David Aguilar Mora.. She disappeared after she came to Guatemala in search of her husband, David Aguilar Mora, who vanished after being arrested last December. David Aguilar considered himself a Trotskyist and belonged to the’ Posadas group, which was formerly on friendly terms with Yon Sosa.
“According to the two former police agénts, both young women were beaten to death with clubs and buried in shallow graves near the Zacapa military base.
The University Students Association, which has been conducting . an investigation since last March on the many missing victims in Guatemala; ‘was told that most of the police killings had been ordered by’ AYbert Barrios, chief of the judicial police under. Peralta. Many more have been murdered beside the 28.
The Suerrilla movement in Guatemala has suffered lately from various divisions among its ranks. One tendency, influenced by the Communist party, even made "Trotskyism" a splitting issue. Castro himself. gave weight to this tendency. The Guatemalan police, however, made no distinction along these lines. They butchered all they caught, whatever their differences.