Spectator's Journal/What Next for Guatemala?
Martinez, Mary Ball
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL WHAT NEXT FOR GUATEMALA? Guatemala City--This is aftermath time for Guatemala. For over a year now there has been peace in this, the best-off and most populous...
...Their children come home from school and ask, 'Dad, is it true you're one of the military dictators...
...But it was the beans 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 that hurt...
...OCT...
...Think back over the past couple of months...
...Krieger Publishing Company, Inc...
...When fellow officers pressured him to speed up his liberalization plans he acquiesced, but when they demanded he fire his two trusty secretaries, laymen of the Verbo Church, he said he would rather resign...
...Nobody remembers that now...
...If I'm not pleased after 3 or 4 issues, I'll let you know and you will cancel my Trial Subscription and promptly send back my entire $7.95, no questions asked...
...What had become obvious to me, in reviewing his seventeen mouths in offlee, was his c a p a c i t y to give Guatemala the one big thing it lacked and lacks today--cohesion...
...It means tourist hotels and restaurants are empty because Washington's Travel Advisers continue to warn Americans to stay CANCER & THE BIG LIEI Edith Effort, author of "The Apc• Cancer & The By Lie' Mary Ball Mart/nez reports frequently from Latin America for The American Spectator...
...None of us would dare to say anything...
...While the politicians I spoke to showed surprisingly little interest in the vast reconstruction and rehabilitation projects the army has undertaken, it is the army that insists the politicians go back to work...
...k- -k -kSOUTHERN POLITICS SINCE THE CIVIL WAR by Monroe Billington Orig...
...Whitbeck managed to secure food supplies, beans, and rice locally and corn from the FAO, then to handle deliveries to the war-torn regions where Indians who had fled the fighting in their villages had to be coaxed down from the mountains...
...Sorry...
...Sign me on for 20 issues (a $15 value...
...20003 - New Subscribers OnlyYES, I want to see what conservative leaders are doing and thinking, so here's my $7.95...
...Now it is more important than ever for you Yo get the full picture of what is going on...
...But I also remembered the words of former Peace Corps leader, Dennis Wheeler, in Antigua: " I n spite of his pentecostal vagaries, Rios Montt was deadly serious in power and he had a capacity for detail that was absolutely incredible...
...Much of what he projected continued after August of last year--the election schedule, the civilian autodefense system, the food-for-work reconstruction program...
...My friend, 1984 is going to be a tough year for conservatives...
...Here's what he says: "I have read Human Events fo~" over 25 years and find it the best weekly source 6f sane conservative Americanism in the country...
...1982 266 pp...
...You find people, especially country people, wanting to talk about it...
...Ticket Prlcesz unto At Oct...
...k- -k -k A DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SOCIAL CHANGE by Louis Filler Orig...
...They confront you with the news that the bad times, twenty years of guerrilla conflict, are over and good times have come...
...Did you see any of these stories featured in the major media - - stories about issues vital to our country's future...
...With their hidebound, Shavian, Sidney Webb mentality they work the machine that keeps things going no matter what military or political adventures take place outside their o f f i c e s . ' ' Hovering over the spread of computers in the ballroom of the El Dorado, the hopeful politicians waited for election returns...
...As could be expected, this sparked a worldwide leftist smear campaign directed ostensibly against the guns...
...I enjoy the same refund guarantee...
...Hurdan Events is reliable and very informational, in that it includes the news that is often omitted by our liberal secular humanist controlled press, magazines, television and wire services . . . . " @ We're so sure you'll agree that we are making you this special offer: 20 issues for $7.95 (a $15 value...
...By that time another Rios Montt original had concluded: the "Beans and Guns" blitzkrieg, his plan to win over the peasantry...
...This was the politicians' hour so away with the army, out of sight...
...I asked Professor Ayau why...
...But Rios Montt's election plans went ahead anyway," said the young chief of protocol, Byron Ar~valo, at the election observers' party...
...P.O...
...But other professional groups were enthusiastic, as were the Indians...
...O Door Two-days (student) $22.50 $25.00 One-day (student) $15.00 $18.00 Two-days (non-student) $45.00 $50.00 One-day (Iron-student) $27.50 $30.00 Friday Night Bamluet Requ~r Table $26.00 $32.00" Golden Table $45.00 $55.00" Saturday NIllht Film Festival $5.50 $6.50 _9 Subject to AvallablllW Future of Freedom Conf., Box 26044, Santa Ann CA 92799...
...Prof...
...At a hotel reception for foreign observers to the recent elections, I answered a question of foreign minister Fernando Andrade by saying I had just come from Huehuetenango...
...We'd be accused of interfering with their 'human rights.'" The reception for foreign observers took place on what happened to be Army Day...
...The fragmentation process could hardly allow two of the main forces in society to share the public's attention...
...1 9 , 2 0 & 21 California State Univ., Long Beach SAT: 9 : 3 0 am to 6 pro./SUN: 10 am to 6 pro...
...At the nearby Church of the Word, E1 Verbo in Spanish, where the expresident preaches and teaches, the American woman in charge turned me down: "No interviews...
...An Evangelical preacher was amazed to learn from me that 80 percent of Catholic priests in the country were foreigners, and a How nutritional are TV dinners...
...How many times have you heard Dan Rather or some other liberal smearing the President's record and wished you had the facts at your fingertips to prove him wrong...
...If ['m not pleased after 3 or 4 issues...
...President Rios's morality campaign was a source of quiet amusement among sophisticates, of annoyance to wheeler-dealers, of positive hope to the conscientious, and a rallying point for the poor...
...No parade, Sefiora...
...Have a question...
...President Rios had been highly appreciative of the economic theories of Manuel Ayau...
...Nor do noises abroad seriously threaten the peace...
...The liberals in Congress scent a chance to turn around the revolution President Reagan has begun...
...Speakers: Sandy Shaw (co-author with Durk Pearson, "Life Extension"), Thomas Hazlett, Prof...
...6.95 In the Anvil tradition, the author strips the Nazi story to its essentials and presents pertiqent documents and readings to supplement the narrative text...
...v" How the new Social Security taxes will wreak havoc on the elderly by taxing Social Security income and (tax free) municipal bond interest...
...Viva el ejercito...
...One American who agrees is noted author and lecturer Dr Tim LaHaye...
...And the liberal media are going to do everything they can to help t h e m . . . b y distorting conservative goals, by sneering at conservative accomplishments, and by simply ignoring important news that doesn't help promote their cause...
...Small bridges and country roads mined by the rebels are being repaired by the farmers themselves under the guidance of army engineers, and in the capital last July's elections to a constituent assembly and next July's vote for a president have given politicians the opportunity to flex long neglected vocal chords...
...Now golpes de estado may have been frequent in Guatemala, but they have also been notably polite~ Ousted presidents are quite welcome to remain in the country and to enjoy every freedom except interfering in national affairs...
...It means motorists along the Pan American Highway from Mexico to the capital must descend to the river six times because there is no money available to replace major bridges dynamited by the fleeing Communists...
...A dedicated convert to Fundamental Protestantism, he defied the country's centuryold anti-clerical laws by receiving the body of Cardinal Casariegos for public homage in the National Palace and decreeing three days of national mourning...
...v" An intelligent solution to forced busing, proposed by a high official in the Department of Education...
...Bernard Siegan, Jay Snelson, Robert LeFevre and workshops...
...v" How the National Organization for Women successfully prevented the school children of Texas from using a textbook which has been acclaimed by math teachers (many of them women) all over the country and which is getting stunning results:in Algebra...
...Name Address City State Zip Telephone Street Journal...
...The people who run this country are the bureaucrats...
...Instead of accepting the notion that the indigenous half of the population were potential rebels, he took them for potential patriots, fed them, and~armed them to defend themselves against guerrilla attacks...
...They were trained for certain work, and they feel beyond their depth when, say, economic questions come up...
...You won't have to grope for an answer the next time you hear a liberal say something outrageous...
...AS2 Name Address City/State/Zip Please Prml THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 47...
...That's why we're all here today...
...The soldiers are in barracks...
...He confided to friends that if his party had come to power five years ago it would have sponsored land "reform...
...m m Human Events THE NATIONAL CONSERVATIVE WEEKLY 422 First Street...
...714) 979-5737 (Athena) Checks payable to Future of Freedom Conf...
...Marco Cerezo, head of the triumphant left-of-center Christian Democrat party, may at least have learned somethir/g from the disastrous land grab of Christian Democrat Napoleon Duarte in neighboring El Salvador...
...For over a year now there has been peace in this, the best-off and most populous Central American nation...
...Call your library...
...What makes for vulnerability, as I see it, is fragmentation...
...Like Archbishop Rivera y Damas in El Salvador, Msgr...
...Before long, however, his natural exuberance and sense of humor took over...
...General Rios, the latest ex-president, abides by this rule--not that during his short time in power (March 1982-August 1983) he wasn't one of the most interfering ~statesmen in Central American l~istory...
...Where was the army and the parade, I asked the only youth in camouflage I could find, a guard outside the National Palace...
...What's more, except for army ofricers in their new role of farmers' helpers, one half of the population-the townsfolk who claim varying amounts of European ancestry and are called "Ladinos"--seem to leave the T i t l e s from KRIEGER...
...I prefer to save more, so here's $|9.75 for a full year of Human Events (52 issues--a $39 value at the singlecopy price...
...He adds: "And neither are the oligarchy--although they like to imagine they are...
...In Panajachel when I complained of being kept awake all night by barking dogs outside my motel cabin, the Ladina lady in charge sighed: "Every Indian family keeps five or six dogs, all of them half starving...
...Are They Out To Get The President...
...John Hospers, Prof...
...As he was working toward a new constitution and electoral process, Rios set up what he called a Council of State...
...other half, descendants of the ancient Mayas, entirely to their own devices...
...The wild green mountain region to the west and the lounge of the El Dorado Hotel are two separate Guatemalan worlds...
...However, to remind the general, pastor, and ex-president of that fact is to admonish him because, by all accounts, he gave up control too lightly...
...Ppb.$10.50 This collection of readings considers the roles that bosses, machines, and reformers have played in the shaping of urban America...
...It impressed President Reagan when the two met in Honduras at the end of 1982...
...Whitbeck, a Guatemalan whose father was American, continues to give his entire time to helping the country's rural poor...
...Village halls, churches, and medical posts destroyed in the last wave of terror are being rebuilt and little two-room schoolhouses finished at the rate of one a day...
...Seventeen months was a very short time...
...From his look of surprise I might as well have said "Zimbabwe...
...Predictably, he was of no help at election time...
...Not knowing quite what to make of me, he fenced a bit at first...
...Crazy...
...As millions trooped to the polls in what all foreign observers agreed were clean, free elections, His Excellency, who might have been expected to lead the rejoicing that atheistic Marxism had been defeated, declared publicly, as if from another planet: "Guatemala is living in a climate of uncertainty, fear, and anxiety...
...What does the ERA really say...
...To work toward a change in that situation he invited each of the 23 Indian "nations" to elect a representative to sit on the Council...
...I f You've Ever Thought t h e Major News Organizations Were Out to Get President Reagan...
...It is hardly likely to collapse for lack of those things now...
...Continued hostility on the part of the international media and the liberals in Washington who can't bear to see the Left trounced is certainly a nuisance...
...Including Banquet Honoring Novelist Ayn l~nd with Edith Efron, Barbara Branden, etc...
...795 This volume is a brief survey of the history of...
...away from Guatemala...
...There would be a grand, flagwaving parade up the Paseo de la Reforma and lots of moving rhetoric to the effect that thanks to our soldiers, boys like these who gave their lives for freedom, we can now enjoy elections...
...One quotable remark in p a r t i c u l a r set the tone of our conversation: "Do you know they call me a religious fanatic...
...Better yet: after you read 3 or 4 issues, if you're not pleased at discovering Human Events, just tell us...
...They made democracy possible...
...1984 212pp...
...He hesitated, then, s m i l i n g almost mischievously, "Quiz~s" . . . perhaps...
...It means long delays in getting supplies, food, seeds, and medicines to remote mountain _9 villages and bringing emergency cases to hospital since Congress still refuses to let Guatemala buy spare parts for its old American helicopters...
...THOMAS MORE INSTITUTE OF LIBERAL ARTS For Catalogue and Brochure Write To: Dr...
...Do eskimos really rub noses...
...The likelihood of a terrorist act in Guatemalan towns today is about the same as in Rome or Paris, and considerably less than in London...
...The military, in fact, seem hell-bent to get out of government...
...Party politics here being what they are--a supreme exercise in fragmentation--it is anybody's guess what these men will do with the power they get next July...
...The program was directed by Harris Whitbeck, Rios's right-hand man and personal adviser...
...Wherever I talked there was mention of Efrafn Rios Montt...
...Yet a second month-long stay in the country leaves me with the impression that Guatemala's altogether remarkable victory over Marxism is a fragile one...
...The officers are all family men...
...I'II advise you to cancel my Trial' Subscription, and you will promptly refund my entire $19.75...
...Penados del Barrio was well known to be the most leftleaning bishop in his country before the Vatican picked him out to head its main diocese...
...You Should be Reading Human Events...
...Nearly everywhere the milpa, the basic corn harvest, has come into cycle again...
...k- -k- -k" NATIONAL SOCIALIST GERMANY (An ANVIL Original) by Louis E. Snyder Orig...
...The country seems to be moving along in separate, sealed-off compartments, each section doing its own thing...
...When I showed the rector of a university in town a picture of the new model village at Acul in Quich$, he confessed he had no idea the army was undertaking projects of that sort...
...No questions asked...
...Before we parted I asked him if he thought he might some day return to political life and I got an answer I had not expected...
...10.50 Cloth $16.50 This is a Dictionary of the people, places, and events that have influenced American social reform...
...Isn't the army the real power in Guatemala...
...the politics of the American South from the Civil War to the present...
...He saw the boost freemarket principles could give to national recovery, but before he could implement them the bankers and industrialists stepped in to persuade him such changes would be "dangerous...
...Every week Human Events brings you lively, informative stories packed with the facts you need to be really informed...
...Fragmentation...
...But how long the second two will survive the results of the first is uncertain...
...Taking over the army's stalemated twenty-year war against terrorist subversion, Rios brought the war to an end in only six months...
...1984 178pp...
...v" How FBI "gudelines" make it impossible to prevent terrorist activities in the U.S...
...9 Washington, D.C...
...Peter V. Sampo Thomas More Institute of Liberal Arts One Manchester Street Merrimack, NH 03054 Please send me information about this program...
...Viva M~xico...
...Any professional politician faced with a hurdle of that size would have breezed over it...
...The officers don't like being responsible for problems that are not in their line...
...But what about the military...
...Our college program is based on the Humanities as discerned in the great books of Western civilization and as seen through the eyes of the Christian humanist...
...Strangely and perhaps dangerously, no group appears to be interested in or even conscious of what either potential adversaries or potential collaborators may be up to...
...The politicians, old school parliamentarians all, refused to take part, saying the idea smacked of Franco's Spain...
...I thought how much better nationalistic Mexico would have managed things if that country had been through what Guatemala has been through...
...Still less does there seem to be any real awareness among Guatemalans of what this unique clear-cut victory HOW TO REMAIN FREE & PREVENT WAR...
...Why don't you go and talk to him...
...That's what the kids say.' " Then there is the Church...
...Not according to Manuel Ayau, one of the top economists of Central America and a frequent contributor to the Wall THE GREAT UNIVERSITIES provided the ground for the important political leaders, philosophers, theologians, scientists, lawyers, poets, and religious of the past...
...Said Rios Montt: "Forty-five percent of our country's people neither produce, consume, nor participate in national life...
...Just mail the coupon with your check for $7.95 - - and see firsthand what the President is likely to be reading at Camp David this weekend...
...But I left a note and a copy of my April American Spectator article, and that evening she telephoned my hotel to give me an appointment...
...For one who tries to keep abreast of the protracted conflict between Latin America and Marxist subversion, who contemplates the appalling state of E1 Salvador and its no-win war, of Peru with its 18,000 terrorists (official count), of Colombia wracked by a drug-guerrilla mafia, of those twofaits accomplis--Cuba and Nicaragua--it is anything but reassuring to realize that Guatemala, less than two years after its neat, do-it-yourself victory, is about to face a future in which the army the peasants call their "protector" is heading for the barracks, politicians are setting off in a dozen different, mainly leftist directions, businessmen are clutching Swiss bankbooks, and progressive Church leaders are traveling under their own black cloud...
...Tibor Machan, Prof...
...1984 208pp...
...The army has won the unquestioned loyalty of the indigenous people and even of a good number of the ex-guerrillas and collaborators among them...
...Now that the revolutionary factor has been eliminated there is no apparent hostility, even between forces normally in opposition...
...American Library Association THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 45 Catholic bishop was just as surprised when I told him I had found seven Protestant meeting halls to one Catholic church in the village where he had his residence...
...198~ by Mary Ball Martfnez means or ought to mean to the everbludgeoned free world...
...He scolded bureaucrats for corruption, the rich for sending their money abroad, and men everywhere who, in true Latin tradition, were keeping mistresses...
...Tomorrow is Election Day...
...Box 9542 Melbourne, FL 32902-9542 (305) 724-9542 When ordering, please add $1 50 ~or the first book (75r each additional) to cover shipping...
...I knew...
...Because his born-again experience had taken place in California, I assumed Rios was fluent in English, but he insisted we carry on in Spanish...
...We'll cancel your Trial Subscription and send back your entire $7.95...
...Prominent lawyers, most of them, in conversation they were inclined to express what they called "centrist" views...
...How Reagan's tax policies actually increased tax receipts from the rich while at the same time lessening the burden of the poor...
...Leonard LlgglolGeorge Smith The 12ttt Future of Freedom Conf...
...k -k" -k" URBAN BOSSES, MACHINES AND PROGRESSIVE REFORMERS by Bruce M. Stave & Sondra A. Stave 2nd Ed...
...When he left office the Council was abolished...
...He's only three blocks away...
...The fact is, unlike tiny, heavily populated El Salvador, Guatemala has plenty of farm-worthy areas waiting to be developed...
...However, Guatemala won its war without one cent of American aid or one word of American advice...
...But not now...
...Not that there is any strength left in the rebel cause...
...But if talk became drawn out, leftist sympathies and even leftist backgrounds often emerged...
...And right on schedule...
...Monzion, minister of tourism, seemed to be unaware that people in Washington were still warning Americans not to go to Guatemala...
...info...
Vol. 17 • October 1984 • No. 10
