About the GHRC-USA
The Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA is a non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization created for the purpose of informing the public about human rights issues in Guatemala and advocating the end of repression and persecution of the Guatemala people.

The GHRC-USA was founded in 1982 by Sister Alice Zachmann, SSND, after visiting the country in 1975. Concerned about the plight of the people and their persecution by the Guatemalan military, Sister Alice received the support of her order and opened the first office of the Commission at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

With a number of volunteers from throughout the United States, Sister Alice and her small paid staff publish bi-monthly Updates on the human rights situation in Guatemala and coordinate urgent actions in emergencies on behalf of human rights leaders and others suffering harrasment and intimidation.

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Jennifer Harbury
A Harvard Law School graduate and attorney for the Texas Rural Legal Aid project in Texas, Jennifer Harbury is the widow of Guatemalan insurgent, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez. Following her husband's disappearance in 1992 after a battle with the Guatemalan military, Harbury assumed that he had died. Several months later, however, two corroborating witnesses testified that Bamaca had, in fact, been captured by the military, and that both had seen him under various stages of torture in the weeks and months that followed.

Harbury began a full press in the courts and international media to have him freed. She even conducted hunger strikes on two occasions before the Guatemalan Military Polytechnic (Military Academy) in Guatemala City to protest Bamaca's illegal incarceration and abuse. When she learned through Congressman Robert Torricelli that the State Department had information that Bamaca was dead, Harbury began petitioning the United States government and President Clinton to release all classified information pertaining to her husband and the deaths of all others in Guatemala since the CIA overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz and his government in 1954. She returned twice to Guatemala in support of a court order to have his body exhumed, once in Retalhuleu and a second time in San Marcos, but to no avail.

As a result of a third hunger strike, this time before the White House itself, Harbury learned that Guatemalan Col. Julio Alpirez, a paid CIA "asset," had ordered Bamaca's torture and execution, Harbury filed suit with the OAS and lodged formal protests with the United Nations High Commission on Human Rights. Her petitions and suits against both United States and Guatemalan governments are still pending.

Jennifer Harbury is the author of two books addressing
the Guatemala civil war. Her first, Bridge of Courage (Common Courage Press, 1990), includes a series of interviews with selected combatants of the URNG (Guatemala National Revolutionary Unity). Searching for Everardo (Warner Books, 1997) narrates Harbury's moving quest to free Sub-comandante "Everardo," her guerrilla husband, Efrain Bambaca Velasquez.

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Dianna Ortiz
One of the most moving stories involving a United States citizen in Guatemala, the investigation into the 1989 attack on Sister Dianna Ortiz, OSU, threatens to expose the web of notorious links between the CIA, the Guatemalan G-2 (Guatemala Military Intelligence), the United States DEA, a veritable tapestry of corruption, clandestine payoffs, tortures and murders, all conducted for decades under the watchful eye of the United States Embassy personnel in Guatemala.

On November 2, 1989, Sister Dianna was abducted from a garden in Antigua after receiving several earlier death threats. She was taken to a clandestine torture chamber, possibly in Mixco, a suburb of Guatemala City, where she was brutally raped and burned 111 times with lighted cigarettes. At one point she was lowered into a pit in the middle of the chamber containing the butchered remains of dead victims of torture and swarming with rats. At another point, she was forced to hold the handle as one of her attackers stabbed another woman with a large knife.

Dianna's ordeal was interrupted by the exclamation--in American English!--of a man who apparently was one of the leaders. He noted that she was a North American and that the story of her abduction was already in the international press. He helped her dress and placed her in a vehicle, telling her that he was going to take her to the United States Embassy. Fearing, however, that he was planning to kill her, she jumped out at an intersection in Guatemala City and fled to the Belgian Embassy.

At first, United States authorities cast doubt on her story, claiming at one point that her injuries probably were sustained in a tryst with a lesbian lover. Following a demonstration outside the White House, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, received Dianna and offered her the full cooperation of the White House in searching for her abductors. Dianna has maintained her story all the while, and the OAS has accepted her case for review. Continuing to receive therapy as a survivor of torture, Dianna lives in Washington, D.C. and works longside Sister Alice in the GHRC-USA.

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Coalition Missing
Chaired by Jennifer Harbury and supported through the GHRC-USA, Coalition Missing supports its members, including the families of slain United States citizens and other Americans who have survived attacks in Guatemala allegedly perpetrated against them by the Guatemalan army and its clandestine apparatus.

Coalition Missing members print periodic reports on Guatemala human rights conditions and updates on the cases of its members. In 1995, members reported their attacks before the United States House of Representatives.

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Other Activities of the GHRC-USA
In addition to publishing its bi-monthly Update, the Commission also publishes a number of other reports including Urgent Actions in times of crisis in Guatemala ,a quarterly Bulletin, and its Annual Report. In 1986, the Commission completed a video entitled The Dark Light of Dawn. In 1992, the Commission organized an international Conference on Torture, held at Catholic University and attended by more than 250 people. The Commission also conducts research in support of Guatemala political asylum applicants in the United States and co-sponsors various programs and projects of other Guatemala solidarity groups throughout the United States.

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The GHRC-USA can be contacted by writing:

or telephone: (202) 529-6599.

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