New York Times
February 1, 1980
A fire killed at least 36 people today in the
Spanish Embassy, where Indian peasants had been holding the Ambassador and
several others hostage, according to the Red Cross.
The only survivors of the fire, which
authorities speculated was started by a gasoline bomb accidentally dropped by
one of the Embassy occupiers, were Ambassador Maximo Cajal y Lopez and an
unidentified man. Both were reportedly
injured.
Among the people initially reported as dead
were the former Guatemalan Vice President, Eduardo Caceras Lehnhoff, and a
former Guatemalan Foreign Minister, Adolfo Molina Orantes, as well as Mr.
Cajal’s secretary, Jaime Ruiz del Arbol.
“The bodies were burned so badly we can’t
tell the peasants from the embassy people,” said one Red Cross official as he
poked through the rubble of the mission’s second floor, where most of the
victims were found.
A United States Embassy spokesman, Jack
Gallagher, said, “The second-story windows had bars, which resulted in a
tragedy.” He said there were
unconfirmed reports that at least five of the Indians were “armed terrorists.”
The Red Cross said it had found 36
bodies. At least four appeared to be
embassy employees and one was identified as one of the peasants who had taken
over the embassy and captured the hostages at about noon.
The peasants, Indians from the Quiche region
186 miles west of Guatemala City, had been demanding a meeting with Government
officials to air their complaints of army repression against Quiche Indians.
Witnesses, contradicting earlier Red Cross
reports that the fire started shortly after policemen stormed the building,
said the blaze was well under way by the time police rushed inside in an
apparent attempt to help the victims.
Some 2,000 people, many of them poor Indians,
have been killed in political violence in Guatemala since May 1978, according
to a report releases last September by Amnesty International, the London-based
human rights organization.