IMPASSIONED CHARGES OPEN
(The article below, by Le Monde correspondent Irénée Guimaraes, appeared on the front page of the French daily September 28. Guimaraes was covering the trial of the imprisoned French journalist Régis Debray in Camiri, Bolivia.
(The day following Le Monde's publication of the article, Guimaraes was expelled from Camiri by military prosecutor Colonel Remberto Iriarte.
{In addition to expelling Guimaraes, according to a Reuters dispatch from Camiri printed in the October 2 New York Post, the Bolivian military authorities threatened the remaining correspondents with the same fate if they continued to write “inaccurate and malicious reports."
"If you agree with Guimaraes," Iriarte told the international reporters, "you too are a Communist and will have to leave Camiri."]
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Camiri, September 27
On Wednesday September 26 in the little town of Camiri in the heart of the southeast section of Bolivia, the long wait, around a modest one-story pink building bearing the name Casino Militar [Officers' Club], came to an end. There journalists, trade unionists, student and antiwar leaders, a poet and a book publisher.
Additional signatures are being sought by the petition's sponsor, Robert McCarthy, Massey College, 4 Devonshire Place, Toronto, Canada.
DEBRAY TRIAL IN CAMIRI
former Ecole Normale student Régis Debray has been awaiting trial for three months. The waiting came to an end as army detachments in green uniforms with white helmets and red scarves suddenly converged, bayonets fixed, around the blue cement library which has been converted into a courtroon.
The "high society" of Camiri, as they call it here -- a motley agglomeration of pretty wives of officers stationed here, petroleum engineers, and town notables -flocked to the spectacle of the day: what the military tribunal's presiding judge, Colonel Guachalla, smugly called "the stern majesty of Bolivian military justice.
The entire length of the street leading to the improvised court is blocked off by barbed wire. At the court itself no safeguards are omitted. Passes are checked five times. Everyone, without exception, is frisked, even women, who are given special attention by a nurse in country dress. "Los zapatos también" "shoes too," whispers Comandante Etcheverria, the chief of secret police in Camiri.
On the wall at the back of the hall is a sign in pink letters against a green background, testifying to Bolivia's great patriotic longing: "El mar nos pertenece por derecho; recupararlo es un deber" -- "The sea is ours by right; it is our duty
to regain it."
A mere glance is enough to reassure anyone that the accused are being carefully guarded. Sixteen armed men are spaced out through the hall. Two of them are carrying heavy machine guns. let me add, lest I forget, the officers in the audience with full cartridge belts over their bellies and colt revolvers at their hips; they are shortly going to give almost forty seconds applause to the prosecutor'’s impassioned charges, without the presiding judge's making the least attempt to call them to order.
But it is time to begin. Tightly buttoned in their handsome blue-grey uniforme ~- Uniform No. 4, their most modest dress uniform -- the military judges and the prosecutor pose for history amid the buzzing of movie cameras, flashbulbs and tape recorders of the small international army of journalists. This background noise will continue throughout the session, despite occasional protests.
Now, here come those for whom this affair is something altogether different from a "show." The three Bolivian guerrilla deserters -- Choque, Rocabado and Barrera -- are of but slight interest to the crowd. The fourth Bolivian, Ciro Algaranaz, a stolid, respectable farmer is no star either. But it is a different matter for the Argentine cartoonist Bustos and above all for Régis Debray. The former Ecole Normale student is extremely pale. The thick walrus mustache falling down over his mouth has not made him look any older. He is taciturn and rather unconcerned as he is subjected to the caneras and the popping of flashbulbs.
A "Cruel and Cynical Bandolero"
Are we going to see what lies behind this really rather mediocre stage setting? The beginning of the trial is dumbfounding. Amid the tension of the initial formalities, the outbreak of the first incident comes as almost a relief. The lawyer appointed to defend Régis Debray, Sefior Novillo Villaroel, firmly interjects a procedural point. The presiding judge, Colonel Guachalla, obviously taken by surprise, mumbles haltingly. Novillo insists. "Calla te" -- "shut up," Guachalla screams, losing his selfcontrol. Novillo wanted to plant his first banderillos [light lance driven into the bull at the beginning of a bullfight to infuriate and weaken the animal]. He has succeeded.
He is an unusual person this lawyer, this placid provincial who specialized for twenty years in defending military men without resources. He succeeded at last in gaining a kind of nobility by his quiet stubbornness. He has taken this case to heart. He has succeeded in establishing good relations with Régis Debray but he is still only a court-appointed lawyer. Lacking the wide perspective that this affair demands, he will nonetheless doubtless give the judge-colonels some trouble.
But here comes the first theatrical stroke of the day. Abruptly after the court clerk's reading of two depositions, Choque's and Régis Debray's (36 pages), the reading of the trial brief is interrupted to give the floor to Colonel Iriarte. Amid general consternation, scarcely two hours after the trial has begun, the prosecutor delivers what can only be called the prosecution's conclusion, a violent diatribe against "Castro-Communisn," attempting to destroy Debray's status as an intellectual, philosopher and writer. He makes the accusation outright that Debray organized and led the bloody ambushes of Nancahuazi and Iripiti last March 23 and April 10.
"This young Franco-Cuban talent is not even a guerrilla; he is nothing but a bandolero, a highwayman, cynical and cruel, who despite his gifts does not want to see that Latin America's great social revolution can be made by means of ideas and constructive acts." At last, with a grand theatrical gesture, Colonel Iriarte takes out a yellow envelope of "conclusive pictures" which are purported to show Régis Debray armed with a machine gun and with a cartridge pouch tucked in his belt. After having proclaimed his solemn "J'Accuse" [I Accuse], he demanded, to thunderous applause, the maximum penalty of thirty years in prison.
The Mystery
of the "C
onclusive" Pictures
The defense, noting the extent of these procedural errors, concentrates its fire. It has not been shown these pictures. The reading of the depositions has not been completed. There has been no examination of the accused. Witnesses have not been heard. And already the prosecution presumes to come to conclusions.
Mendizabal, the lawyer for the Argentinian Bustos, then denounces "these transports of military passion which are injecting disorder and chaos into this trial." He adds: "To maintain the impartiality and serene majesty of the law, you must imagine yourselves stripped of your uniforms and attired in the robes of magistrates."
A violent gavel blow echoes in the hall: "I will not allow the honor of this nation's military justice to be challenged," cries Colonel Guachalla; however, he accepts Mendizabal's procedural protest before adjourning the session.
A second theatrical stroke came
with the distribution to the press of the "conclusive" pictures. Certainly, they show Régis Debray in the company of guerrillas but they by no means show him armed nor do they show anything to support this accusation.
The opening session probably showed one thing definitively: the military court convened at Camiri is manifestly unprepared for a trial of this magnitude. Let us hope that in the days
PRD