In Guatemala, peace amid cautious
hope
By PAUL JEFFREY
Special to the National Catholic Reporter Guatemala
City
Guatemalans took a significant step toward peace on Dec. 29 when
government officials and guerrilla commanders signed an agreement ending
Central America's longest running armed conflict.
The document, formally titled the Accord for a Firm and Lasting
Peace, was signed in the National Palace before 1,200 invited guests, including
representatives from more than 40 countries and the United Nations. Several
thousand Guatemalans watched the ceremony on giant television screens outside
the building while others participated in local ceremonies throughout the
country.
Although most greeted the peace agreement as a positive
development, analysts and observers expressed doubts that it will resolve the
country's pressing problems. A poll published the day of the signing by Prensa
Libre, a popular Guatemalan daily, showed that while 78 percent of those polled
approve of the accords, only 38 percent believe they "will be respected."
At best, cautious optimism prevailed. "It's a necessary agreement,
a legal document that provides the first step toward constructing real peace,"
said Miguel Palacios, an Episcopal priest and human rights activist. "Nothing
has changed for the popular sectors, for the people who are beaten and
marginalized. Yet if this agreement will help us start down the road toward the
formal structural changes this country needs, then some day we may have a true
and lasting peace."
The war has left its mark on every aspect of life here. "I am 32
years old," said Ronalth Ochaeta, director of the Human Rights Office of the
Guatemala City Archdiocese. "I am part of the generation born during the
conflict. I've grown up in a culture of polarization where reaching consensus
is difficult and where distrust dominates human relationships."
War's toll
More than 100,000 people died, an estimated 40,000 disappeared and
upwards of one million were displaced from their homes during the almost 40
years of bloodshed. Counterinsurgency campaigns waged by the Guatemalan army
and its paramilitary counterparts -- both of which were trained, advised and
equipped by the United States -- brought the complete destruction of hundreds
of indigenous villages in the highlands.
In 1990 the National Guatemalan Revolutionary Union guerrillas --
the URNG -- and government officials agreed to begin peace negotiations, which
were mediated first by officials from the Catholic church and later by United
Nations representatives. These talks had stalled in recent years, but the
right-of-center President Alvaro Arzu revived them after he took office last
January, using a pragmatic, hands-on approach that produced a rapid succession
of thematic agreements and set the stage for the final act.
The ceremonial signing of the accords, however, will prove the
easy part for Arzu; implementing the agreements is a formidable challenge.
"Now the really hard part starts," said Carlos Aldana, the
information director for the Guatemala City Archdiocese, the day after the
signing.
The Dec. 29 document mandates the implementation of the earlier
thematic agreements, which include provisions on indigenous rights,
socioeconomic changes and the role of the military in a postwar society. Those
agreements contain ambitious programs -- everything from the resettling of
thousands of families displaced by the repression and fighting to a litany of
improvements in education, health, and other public services. They bear a
four-year price tag of an estimated $2.5 billion. Government officials said
they hope the international community will come up with two-thirds of that
amount, but analysts say those contributions will probably be slow in
coming.
The Clinton administration has pledged $40 million for peace and
reconstruction, less than half of the $90 million earmarked for similar
purposes in 1991.
To raise its own funds, the Guatemalan government must increase
tax revenues from the current 7.9 percent of GDP -- the second-lowest rate in
the hemisphere -- to at least 12 percent. To achieve that, the World Bank is
recommending an increase in the regressive value-added tax, a form of sales
tax, from 10 percent to 14 percent. Many financial analysts fear Arzu will have
to eventually increase direct taxes on wealth and income, a move that might
bring resistance from the politically powerful oligarchy.
Implementation of all the accords also means confronting
corruption, a pervasive legacy of more than three decades of military rule.
While Arzu has shown a willingness to take on corrupt bureaucrats, he is
expected to have more difficulty overhauling the system as a whole. For
example, farmers involved in growing export crops are likely to oppose attempts
to set up a new registry of land titles, a provision mandated by the peace
agreement. Export farmers have for decades expanded their properties by moving
their boundary markers onto land belonging to indigenous communities.
Unchallenged corruption
Such corruption, unchallenged by a frightened and often corrupt
judiciary, helped produce the most skewed pattern of income distribution in
Latin America: The wealthiest fifth of the Guatemalan population has an income
30 times greater than the poorest fifth. Land tenure reflects the same reality
-- 70 percent of arable lands are owned by less than 3 percent of the
population.
An overview of Guatemala's economy and political system reveals
that the country's indigenous majority always gets the short end of the stick.
The Dec. 29 peace accords were no different. With a few exceptions like Nobel
laureate Rigoberta Menchu, indigenous people were conspicuously absent from the
crowd that gathered for the signing inside the presidential palace. None of the
signers from either the government negotiators or guerrilla forces were
indigenous, and, of the eight representatives signing, only one was a woman --
Raquel Zelaya, an assistant negotiator for the government.
"We continue being excluded," commented Antonio Otzoy, a
Presbyterian leader and indigenous writer. "The scene in the palace only
confirms that neither the war nor the peace agreement is something that we
want. Indigenous people continue searching for some way to participate in
national life."
Such distrust poses a formidable obstacle to URNG rebel leaders.
Although a jubilant crowd greeted the comandantes at the airport when they flew
home from exile on Dec. 28, such euphoria will be difficult to sustain.
Many left-wing movements and political leaders have criticized the
URNG for backing down on several points in the negotiations. Moreover, the
intention of the former guerrillas to form a united left-wing party could turn
into a turf battle with the New Guatemala Democratic Front, a mostly indigenous
coalition that won 8 percent of the national vote in 1995 elections.
And the August kidnapping of 86-year-old Olga de Novella, a friend
of the president, by a faction of the URNG has left its most marketable
prospective political candidate, Rodrigo Asturias, an unpopular man.
Though details of the peace accord are pending, approximately
2,000 URNG combatants will demobilize in coming weeks. To provide the legal
framework for their reassimilation into Guatemalan society, negotiators
produced a "reconciliation law" that was approved by the Guatemalan Congress on
Dec. 18.
The measure provoked strong criticism from those who said it would
let military officials responsible for torture and massacres off the hook. "All
of us who had nothing to do with this armed conflict but have loved ones who
fell victim to it are totally opposed to such an extremely broad amnesty," said
Karen Fischer, a Guatemalan lawyer who heads the Alliance Against Impunity, a
coalition of human rights, religious and indigenous groups. "Rather than
bringing reconciliation it will only create more polarization."
Legislators from Arzu's ruling party denied the law would absolve
officials guilty of forced disappearance, torture, and other acts prohibited by
international treaties. Opponents pledged to challenge the law's
constitutionality.
Guatemala's Catholic bishops strongly criticized the measure. "The
only kind of amnesty that's acceptable is one where the criminals ask publicly
for forgiveness for what they've done, in order to open the possibility that
the victims will offer them pardon," said San Marcos Bishop Alvaro Ramazzini.
Arzu responded to these criticisms by claiming Catholic leaders had been
"encouraging strife in the country for a long time."
The Clinton administration also criticized the potential amnesty,
and Arzu angrily retorted that the United States and the former Soviet Union
"shouldn't throw stones at this agreement, because they fought the Cold War in
our back yard."
Guatemala's violent strife did indeed have its roots in the Cold
War. The Central Intelligence Agency overthrew the democratically elected
government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 because Arbenz planned to confiscate fallow
land from the United Fruit Company. The CIA replaced Arbenz with a military
government that has ruled Guatemala since with a brutality unrivaled in the
hemisphere.
Guerrilla beginnings
Young military officers, upset over corruption and Guatemala's
involvement in the CIA's operations in Cuba, launched a revolt against their
superiors in 1960. The failed coup produced a budding guerrilla movement that
slowly grew over the years.
In 1981 four separate guerrilla armies merged into the URNG and
mounted a significant challenge to the government. The government responded
with a "scorched earth" counterinsurgency campaign that wiped out much of the
guerrilla movement and tens of thousands of innocent civilians, most of them
indigenous Maya. From then on, the rebels were never more than an insignificant
military force, but the Guatemalan army used their existence to justify
continued repression of civilian activists. Successive U.S. administrations
also used it to justify military aid and intelligence assistance to the
Guatemalan regimes.
Few believe the signing of the accords will curtail military
repression entirely, and analysts say the real test of the agreement will lie
in Arzu's ability to moderate sectors of the military leadership and rein in
violence. The death squad-style killings in December of both a journalist and a
prominent human rights activist lend credence to these concerns.
National Catholic Reporter, January 10,
1997
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