Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

The police investigation moved slowly and erratically, despite the immediate international outcry. On September 29, a well-regarded homicide investigator named José Mérida Escobar submitted his first report on the murder to the director of the police. The findings were unambiguous: Myrna Mack had been murdered for her work on the internally displaced population in the countryside; at least three perpetrators had attacked her outside the AVANCSO offices earlier that month. The lead suspect was Noel de Jesús Beteta Álvarez, an agent working for a highly placed military unit called the Archivo. He was in his midtwenties and slender, with an angular face, dark mustache, and arching eyebrows. One of Mérida Escobar’s government sources warned him not to proceed with the investigation because it would implicate the military high command. Sharing this view, the director of the police shelved the report. On November 4, 1990, a different version was entered into the court file, identifying the crime as a robbery with no known suspects.