The Pope and 'Holy War':

...Report from Guatemala THE POPE & HOLY WAR' CONFRONTATION WITH RIOS MONTT IN GUATEMALA, the pope had to confront a government accused of grave human rights violations but one which rules in what it describes as God's name (and a Protestant God at that...

...a sign of support for the pope, however religious in nature, became an indirect criticism of the government, or at least open to interpretation as such...

...In a highly unusual step for a body whose entire membership was handpicked by Rios Montt himself, the Council demanded a special meeting with Rios to publicly express, for the first time, dissatisfaction over its limited role...

...Directly linked to the government's treatment of the pope (Council members were irked when key presidential advisers "did not comply with the wishes expressed by the Council to afford the pope a warm welcome, and instead, adopted a cold, indifferent and rather disrespectful attitude"), the Council's public demand for a more meaningful political role is an example of how the pope's visit has given impetus to forces pushing for a more genuine democratization of Guatemalan politics...

...As overwhelming popular support for the pope became evident-and tensions erupted within the higher reaches of the government itself-Rios's posture of intransigence, even pugnacity, toward the Vatican abruptly changed to one of self-reproach, leaving the impression of a government floundering to compensate for what was a serious political error...

...If Rios originally intended to use the executions to demonstrate to hardliners in the military and private sector that he would not cave in to outside pressures, the final effect was the reverse...

...The unwarranted dismissal of the diplomat to the Vatican seemed to indicate that the Guatemalan government felt the political need to shift the responsibility for its behavior, that it was no longer feasible, either at home or abroad, to fully defend the decision as a necessity in the fight against subversion...

...While not totally undermining his support among Catholics, Rios Montt's confrontation with papal authority at least had the effect of highlighting these paradoxes, neutralizing some of the political advantages Rios had managed to reap from his image as a devout Christian...

...Probably not...

...Moreover, Council members told the press they felt they were being used in a "spectacle for public opinion consumption''-a statement that will make it far more difficult for defenders of the regime to point to the Council's existence as evidence of progress toward democratization as they have in the past...

...Yet this attempt"to manipulate public opinion failed, and the executions became the subject of heated debate among ordinary people, in sharp contrast to three similar executions in September which hardly roused a word...

...In such a climate, the Catholic pontiff's advocacy of dialogue and reconciliation as the solution to the nation's twenty-year-old guerrilla insurgency was bound to be considered subversive...

...Rios has continued to rely on his reputation for religiosity to lend credibility to his claim to be a reformer, while he has done little more than talk of reform...

...in this sense it should not be regarded as an isolated incident, but as an additional point of contention within a government already divided between Catholics and Protestants, reformists and hardliners, economic nationalists and laissez-faire capitalists...

...on the eve of the pontiff's arrival Guatemala's Minister of Defense Oscar Mejias Victores was audaciously admonishing the pope to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's...

...Rios's blatant defiance of the pope's wishes had the paradoxical effect of turning what otherwise would have been a purely religious celebration of the Eucharist into a political protest...

...At a time when a sweeping state-of-siege law expressly banned all political demonstrations, the government had no choice but to tolerate the more ambiguous demonstration of one million Guatemalans cheering a papal message that urged the peaceful reconciliation of contending forces even though it had assumed anti-government connotations...

...Perhaps the most important effect of the pope's visit was also one of the least tangible, and that is the dissipation of the halo of religiosity that had given a certain legitimacy to Rios Montt's dictatorial regime...

...He has not only failed to renounce either the death penalty or the secret, extra-legal trials, he has actually ordered the execution of five additional men convicted of similar crimes by similar tribunals...

...The government's handling of the papal visit emboldened discontented sectors of the Rios government to voice broader complaints both publicly and privately, and Rios Montt was faced with a revolt in the ranks of his ordinarily docile State Council, an unelected body scorned by Guatemala's four leading political parties as lending a democratic facade to the Rios dictatorship...

...With Valladares, who at the time of his firing was dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps, suing the government for defamation of character, the credibility of the government charges against him are on the line...

...The controversy over the pope's condemnation of the executions exacerbated already-existing strains within the Rios Montt government...

...Moreover, in preachy Sunday television broadcasts designed to evoke sermons, Rios has repeatedly invoked God's name to justify the harsh counterinsurgency campaign that is at the heart of human rights violations in Guatemala...

...The government maintained that Valladares's notification of the papal request didn't reach Guatemala until a day after the executions...

...LINDA DRUCKER...

...Would it be fair to say that the pope's visit caused an upheaval within the Rios Montt government...

...While the decision to proceed with the execution was clearly a deliberate and calculated act, at the time explicitly defended by Rios Montt and his advisers, the government was attempting to minimize opposition by shifting its explanation to one of technical failure...

...Valladares claims it had arrived two days earlier...

...In spite of Rios's admission on the Sunday following the pope's departure that "We, the government, know and understand that we have sinned, that we have abused power and we want to reconcile ourselves with the people," there is little sign that Rios has the political will to bring about concrete socio-economic or political reforms, even those he has already promised...

...The Christian Democratic Party, for example, had endorsed Rios Montt as their presidential candidate in 1974, only to admit nine years later that they had made a terrible mistake...

...It is a country where influential sectors of society suspect the Catholic church of abetting radical movements, and whose fanatical Protestant president has allowed his army to bar the doors of Catholic churches and occupy convents, while he encourages a Chatauqua-like Protestant revival...

...Yet despite this inauspicious beginning, the pope's visit to Guatemala ultimately proved to be one of the most effective visits of his nine-day, eight-country Central American tour, thanks to Rios Montt...

...The papal nuncio in Guatemala told the New York Times that he had personally communicated the request to Rios Montt himself early in the week-the executions took place at sunrise Thursday...

...By firing Guatemala's Ambassador to the Vatican Luis Valladares y Aycinena for allegedly being late in relaying the pope's request for pardons to his government, Rios Montt was attempting to give the impression that he simply had not received the papal plea in time...

...This "holy war against subversion"-in which religious-sounding reasons were invoked to justify a military strategy that included the suppression of Catholicism, which was thought to be linked to radical movements-was inherently paradoxical...

...For Rios'-s decision to go ahead with the executions-which some believe was a last-ditch effort to force the pope to cancel his visit-completely backfired...

...Only seventy-two hours before the pope was to land in Guatemala City, Rios Montt-ignoring John Paul's special handwritten plea for clemency-had proceeded with the executions of six men convicted of political crimes by secret tribunals...

...Yet regardless of the date this particular letter arrived in Guatemala, there appears to have been ample time to postpone the killings...

...Resistance to reform is still high...

...As revealing as the firing itself was a line in the dismissal letter which said Valladares's action had "caused deep disgust and countless problems" within the Guatemalan government-an admission of the existence of severe internal recriminations after the fact...

...It is a country where there is strong support for a no-holds barred campaign to annihilate leftist guerrillas and their civilian sup- porters, where "peace" is a highly controversial word...

...Instead of lifting the state-of-siege on March 23 as he had pledged, Rios substituted a virtually indistinguishable state of emergency...

...A SIGN THAT the Guatemalan government was worried about the political consequences of the executions was the selection of a face-saving scapegoat soon after the pope's departure...

...A dispute that occurred the week before the pope's arrival had the makings of a showdown between the moral authority of the Catholic church and the government of Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup, declaring he was "God's messenger...

...In the eyes of Guatemala's Catholics, who suffer from the anti-Catholic bias of Rios's policies, the holy war against subversion has perhaps become a touch less holy...

...But by exacerbating already existing tensions within the Rios Montt government and by lending a certain moral authority to its critics, the pope has strengthened the hand of those vying for a political liberalization in Guatemala...

...Even before he seized power in a March 1982 coup, the general's strong religious convictions and penchant for biblical quotation led many Guatemalans to mistakenly conclude that he was significantly different from other military men...

...The pope's harsh condemnation of the executions, and, by implication, the logic of state violence and extra-legal action, provoked the Guatemalan government to denounce the Vatican for meddling in its political affairs...

...Realizing the potentially damaging impact of papal criticism in what, despite recent Protestant inroads, is still an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the government had advised newspapers against printing any Vatican condemnation of the executions and instead circulated a communique from a high official of the Protestant Church of the Word (Rios Montt's sect) praising Rios Montt for steadfastly complying with the law...

...But although the pope's pleas failed to save the lives of these eleven men, they have succeeded in stimulating a debate within the higher reaches of the Rios Montt government, even within the military itself, over the appropriateness of the methods that otherwise would have been taken for granted...