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Guatemala Deja Vu?

Guatemala Deja Vu? image Guatemala Deja Vu? image
Parent Issue
Month
September
Year
1990
Copyright
Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held By
Agenda Publications
OCR Text

In a surprising turn in the Guatemalan presidential elections scheduled for this November, Efrian Rios Montt, the born-again former president who presided over the genocide of the early 1980s, has emerged as a serious contender. Recent polls show Rios Montt to be narrowly trailing the heavily favored Jorge Carpio Nicolle, a conservative businessman endorsed by U.S. Embassy officials who desire to maintain a facade of democracy in Guatemala.

Inexplicable as it may seem to those who have followed the sad recent history of Guatemala, Rios Montt has a substantial following. The third major candidate in the race, Alfonso Cabrera, is running far behind both Rios Montt and Carpio, mainly because of his affiliation with the rampant corruption of the Christian Democratic party of current president Vinicio Cerezo.

With allegations of official drug trafficking and visibly spiraling street crime emerging as the final hallmarks of the pathetic Cerezo years, many Guatemala City residents look back on the rule of Rios Montt as a period of relative order within the city limits.Although military and paramilitary forces massacred roughly 30,000 of Guatemala's rural poor in the 16-month presidency of Rios Montt from March 1982 to August 1983, the more well-to-do sectors of Guatemala City felt little of the damage.

More importantly, Rios Montt has the support of a significant corps of young officers whom he helped train at the military academy. Many of these officers rose to power during the reign of terror in the early '80s in which hundreds of villages in the country-side were razed as part of a scorched earth campaign against guerrilla insurgents.

A bizarre dimension of the Rios Montt campaign is the constitutional restriction which enjoins past presidents or leaders of a coup d'état from again assuming presidential power. Rios Montt took power in a coup after claiming the 1982 elections were a fraud, and thus, cannot legally take office. He obviously feels, however, that he can either set aside the constitution or can gain sufficient momentum for another coup if he receives enough support at the polls. He also has the advantage of having one of his chief adversaries, Hector Alejandro Gramajos, suddenly out of the country, since the former defense minister is grooming himself at the Kennedy School of Government al Harvard University for his own later run at the presidency. Under current election rules, a candidate must win more than 50% of the popular vote to assume office. With several candidates running, this is unlikely, so the top two vote-getters will probably face off in a run-off election on January 6, 1991.

With the notable exception of the 1986 vote which carried Cerezo into the nation's highest office, Guatemalan presidential elections have consistently been marked by fraud. (Ironically, Rios Montt had the 1974 elections snatched out from under him when then president Osario Arana unilaterally declared his hand-picked successor, Kjell Laugarud, the winner.) Thus, there may be ample opportunity for Rios Montt, with the support of powerful allies in the military, to be able to ascend to the presidency outside of the electoral process.

Guatemalan elections are hardly open and free. Even with a majority of the nation's population being Indians, there has never been an Indian candidate leading a major party. Additionally, since politica! dissidents, labor leaders, and intellectuals are routinely executed in Guatemala, there has been little fundamental political debate about the struggling economy, access to land, labor rights, and forced conscription into military-led civil patrols.

The true political opposition in Guatemala, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG), concluded long ago that they could only survive as an armed opposition, and have effectively repelled repeated military campaigns against them . The goal of the URNG is to build a real democracy in Guatemala in which all political forces can participate, and toward that goal they have been unwilling to lay down their arms until serious negotiations and reconciliation have been completed with the government and the army. Remarkably, they have been able to begin the negotiating process over the past year, with a dialogue between the URNG and the government in Oslo, Norway, in March. Another set of meetings were recently completed outside of Madrid, Spain. Although little progress has been made, the fact the negotiations are occurring is an optimistic sign.

On the other hand, the primary goal of the United States is to downplay the negotiations between the URNG and the government, and to attempt to legitimize the November elections which offer little political choice. A victory by Cabrera or Rios Montt would be dissasterous, since the former is so obviously corrupt, and the latter because of the potential blood bath which could ensue.

To help discredit Cabrera, the State Department came up with an unusually harsh report on the human rights situation in this year's annual report on Guatemala, stating: "There continued to be credible reports of security forces personnel and political extremists engaging in extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and other serious abuses."

We need not be fooled into thinking that this critique is because the U.S. wishes to support human rights and self-determination for Guatemala. The U.S. continues to support the Guatemalan military, with the Bush administration requesting another $2.88 million in military assistance and $50 million in security assistance.

Behind the scenes, the CIA, with the help of U.S. service personnel, has recently stepped up its support of the infamous Guatemalan secret police, the G-2. Using the war on drugs as the perfect cover to allow additional funds and logistical support to aid in operations against insurgent forces, U.S pilots have been helping to fly reconnaissance missions over the tropical forest areas which are the strongholds of the guerrillas. On the other hand, the admission by the State Department that security forces are responsible for human rights abuses is a far cry from Ronald Reagan's statement that Guatemala was "getting a bad rap" on human rights.

In the U.S. Congress there is a shred of good news. On July 27, Representative Peter Kostmayer (D-PA) introduced a non-binding resolution, House Congressional Resolution 355, to cut off all military aid and commercial arms sales to Guatemala. Unlike other kinds of legislation on Guatemala, where only a few committee members have any input, any member of the House can sign on to this resolution. It should come to the House floor after the August recess, and it is an excellent opportunity for individuals to hold their representatives accountable for U.S. assistance to Guatemala.

In early August Michigan 2nd Congressional District Representative Carl Pursell was urged by this reporter to add his name to HCR 355. His response was the following: "Please be assured that I will keep your thoughts in mind should HCR 355 come before the full House of Representatives for consideration." This kind of noncommitment in the face of several years of Congressional support to the very security forces that inflict abuse on the Guatemalan population is unconscionable. The cutoff of military aid by the U.S. in the late 1970s certainly contributed to the international isolation of earlier Guatemalan military regimes, and forced a return to civilian government. Granted, the civilian regime of Cerezo has not been able to wrestle real power from the military, but continuing financial and technical support to the military does nothing to loosen its cruel grip on the Guatemalan people. The increase in human rights abuses in Guatemala in 1990 is acknowledged by everyone from Americas Watch to the State Department. Congressman Pursell has never been known to take a stand supporting human rights in Central America. This is an opportunity that he shouldn't miss.

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