Thorn in the flesh:

...I sat and chatted with the people waiting for the bus, mostly women with their children and bundles, and I observed the Mexicans and Guatemalans obviously getting along together...

...This young doctor was giving his services voluntarily...

...But the refugees -- the "thorn in the flesh" of the Guatemalan government -- keep flooding into Mexico with tales of horror almost beyond human imagination...

...She had been accused of taking foreign journalists to visit the refugee settlements...

...They come to us after the family has been fleeing and hiding out in the mountains of Guatemala for months, eating only roots, before they finally cross the border...

...One uncovered the baby on her back...

...By chance, a Mexican doctor and social worker (no foreigners are allowed to work with the refugees) from the Lake District area came into town that evening and offered to give me a ride to the settlement the next day...

...In Guatemala, I learned of the situation of the one million refugees inside the country...

...I was taken to visit the sewing class -- Mexican villages and Guatemalans learning how to use sewing machines to make clothing...

...However, parents finally agree when the child reaches second or third degree malnutrition and can only lie listlessly with little sign of life...

...With little formal education, one brother was teaching tailoring, the other was learning to be a health promoter...

...The children speak no Spanish and come from four different Indian groups speaking different languages...

...I have never seen children so terribly affected, with bloated stomachs, emaciated limbs, loss of hair and sometimes eyesight, others with swollen legs barely able to walk...

...Here they do not understand anything...

...An emaciated, wizened, old-man's face appeared, a child of one year weighing only a few pounds...

...I talked to Guatemalans both "inside" and "outside...

...the body lying there...

...One possible source of meager income could be from the sale of their weavings...

...The mother, with the dignity of her years, spoke of the flight...

...We walked up a steep hill to look at its white concrete markers...

...They had fled together from one of the most severely repressed areas of Huehuetenango...

...We in the U.S...

...Later the doctor took me on his rounds and to visit a special family...

...I could not hear anything, but their oversensitized ears had caught the low hum...

...The streets of Guatemala City and the larger towns are no longer the scene of brutal hit-and-run murders by men with . . . . . . I l l I _9 I ISABEL ROGERS is the pseudonym of a writer who must remain anonymous to protect her sources...

...Therefore, the country is again pronounced "safe" for tourists and the middle class...

...The government does not recognize the category of "refugees" within the country, and all displaced persons are looked upon as possibly associated with subversive groups...

...he acted in a good role for which he was now the fight age...

...the main one is hunger...

...they are afraid to apply for a new identity card, since the fact that they are from conflictive zones makes them suspect...

...Yet even this kind of massacre of the poor peasants in isolated communities has not proved sufficient for the government in stamping out "subversion...

...It was the biggest threat to the government in keeping everything "under the control" of the minority wealthy and military, as it had always been...

...This summer he celebrated his eightyeighth birthday in a nursing home he calls Gehenna in a state he refers to as Gawga...

...Rios Montt promised to "clean up" these brutal killings...

...I asked about permanent brain damage...

...Alvin White was responding to an inquiry from an aspiring Ph.D candidate who wanted to know what it had been like being a black reporter for the Associated Negro Press, the leading news agency of its day...

...According to the lack of news in the press, it would appear that "nothing newsworthy" is occurring, apart from the most recent coup last August which replaced the "born-again" military president, Rios Montt, with another general, Mejia Vietores...

...That same day, a young professor had been kidnapped by the security police...

...It was dark when we arrived and I awoke in the grey dawn to the beautiful sight of the lake and surrounding hills...

...The nuns told me: "The atmosphere of the city is destroying them...

...cannot offer the Guatemalan refugees the simple hospitality of the Mexican homes or share a plot of land, but we can offer our support by speaking out and insisting that Washington not renew military aid or support the government of Guatemala that is causing its people to flee their homeland in terror...

...They all spoke of hope and faith that one day they would return to rebuild a more just society in Guatemala...

...On the Mexican side the trees were thick, but on the Guatemalan side they had been chopped down to make it easier to spot the refugees as they made their last dash to safety...

...The families cannot visit them because they are not allowed out of the settlements...

...It is a drama filled with T HE FILM CRITIC, Stanley Kauffmann, in an acerbic review of the Oscar-winning On Golden Pond, comments on the acting of the aging Frederic March in The Iceman Cometh...

...I was told" "Follow their advice -- we do not know whether you will be allowed into the settlements...

...I was taken to see the home, which is run by the wife of one of the doctors and an exiled doctor from Uruguay, Doctora Mari...

...I N MEXICO, I traveled to the southern state of Chiapas and was able to visit a Guatemalan refugee settlement, a home for refugee children with severe malnutrition, and to talk with a number of church people working with the refugees...

...What tremendous qualities of courage, creativity, and leadership were apparent in this small representative group...

...Under the Lucas Garcia regime (ousted in March 1982) when repression was increasing, the government strategy was to kill off the leaders of mass organizations -- union leaders, peasants, students, intellectuals, and the priests and religious who supported them...

...T HE IM)CTOR and social worker picked me up at the prearranged spot on the highway and we drove another couple of hours in the evening light to a border village which has received 300 Guatemalan families...

...I walked over to the simple wooden house where the priest, doctor, and social worker lived, and they talked to me about the situation...

...They said, "We do not know yet...

...I concealed my camera but the border patrols waved the doctor's jeep through...

...Two Guatemalan mothers were working as cooks and to help with communication...

...It is not easy to visit the refugee areas...

...This is an extraordinary group of physicians" "Sickness has many causes...

...Foreign journalists' freedom to move about is severely restricted, and it is almost impossible to file a report through the government Telephone and Telegraph Company...

...They cannot find work, their children are undernourished and do not go to school...

...To his credit," and in Kauffmann's opinion unlike the performance of Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond, March "didn't trade on the fact of his age...

...His name is Alvin White...

...Traveling with them would reduce the chances of being turned back, since the guards knew them and their jeep...

...His tactic was not so much to concentrate on the leaders but on the "people" who were "supporting subversive action...

...Small or large amounts of these handcrafts can be sent to solidarity groups for fund-raising or information purposes...

...I was told: "Chiapas is like Central A m e r i c a . . . Here there is a majority Indian population, exploited for centuries by the big landowners...

...In San Cristobal I was warmly received by the courageous group of priests, nuns, and lay people who are working with the refugees, under the leadership of the bishop -- one of the few bishops of Mexico to have braved threats and harassment for taking a stand with the poor...

...We cannot just sit in the hospital and wait for the patients to come...

...They fled as whole families and villages, and have been allowed to stay together...

...We ran out and stood under the cover of a tree looking across the small hillock to the border 500 yards away...

...They showed me some children who had improved after several months' treatment and I was encouraged by their loving concern...

...The women set up their portable looms and continue to produce the beautiful, traditional weavings for which Guatemala is famous...

...For the better part of sixty years he has earned his living as a newspaper reporter I1 II I III 1 I I 1 Ill II I I LAWRENCE D. HOGAN iS associate professor history at Union College in Cranford, New Jersey, and the author of A Black National News Service: Claude Barnett and the Associated Negro Press 1919-1945 (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press...

...In the country they have skills and understand the land...

...The women kept the simple bamboo house I I I II I II I I II I I I swept and neat and offered us thick tortillas, pared by hand and baked on the low wood fire...

...How was this to be done...

...But the refugees continue to pour across the border with Mexico at the rate of several hundred families a month...

...Massacres of whole villages continued to occur with the accusation that the people were "supporting the guerrillas...

...All the children also have other serious conditions like pneumonia, anemia, diarrhea and tuberculosis...

...But the army continues in power, as it has for the last thirty years, since the U.S.supported coup that overthrew democratically elected President Arbenz...

...This is a population in dire physical and psychological conditions -- they move constantly out of fear of having their papers checked by the security forces...

...The Indians' sense of community was their biggest strength in organizing to confront their historical exploitation...

...10 February 1984:81...

...That was a day -the 1920s through the 1950s--that, according to Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish sociologist and student of American race relations, saw the black press as the "greatest single power in the Negro race...

...Guatemala itself, since the refugees' insistence that it is not safe for them to return does not support the government's claim that human rights abuses have decreased...

...As we talked, suddenly they were tense and listening: "the helicopter...

...I have a friend...

...The building is loaned by a religious order...

...II I I I I I I I II I I SHARING A WORLD THAT jIM CROW KEPT APART The gift o.f Alv i n White II IIII I II III I II II II [1 III II III LAWRENCE D. HOGAN I II and free-lance writer...

...The pediatrician started a home for severely malnourished Guatemalan children when the problem of so many children lying about waiting on the hospital floors became unbearable...

...However, many poor Mexican families living near the border have accepted the Guatemalan refugees into their houses, shared their land and helped them with their meager resources...

...The small lodge offered a bunk bed in a common dormitory and breakfast...

...Here in Mexico they are receiving basic foodstuffs, but for many of the children it is too late...

...and can treat up to 100 children...

...The village is on the edge of one of the scenic lakes of what used to be a wilderness tourist spot...

...A low mist hung over the higher hill which marked the boundary line and by now you could hear the muffled sound of the engine of the Guatemalan military plane as it flew along the dividing line, attempting to sow panic and terror among the refugees...

...They know that either they have tO go and massacre their neighbors or they too will be killed, The government is also giving the land of those who have fled to other Indians, knowing that is a sacred travesty of the Indians' link to their land...

...They have taken on the unexpected burden of the refugees flooding into their area and they go out in teams to the settlements...

...and thirdly, the United States, since the Reagan administration needs the image of a non-repressive government of Guatemala in order to resume military aid...

...After spending a couple of weeks in Guatemala last summer, I was able to visit the refugee settlements inside Mexico...

...The patrol is told: "A certain village is supporting the guerrillas -- we leave it up to you what to do...

...1 I I I I I I I I I II II THREE GOVERNMENTS WOULD LIKE THE REF JGEES GONE r Thorn in the flesh ISABEL ROGERS machine guns who drive by, shoot down their victim and leave T HREE GOVERNMENTS would like to see the Guatemalan refugee problem "disappear"" Mexico, because the more than one hundred thousand refugees who have crossed the border into Chiapas have caused a social and political headache for that country...

...His voice first came to me eight years ago from an upstairs apartment in his daughter and son-in-law's home in Worcester, Massachusetts...

...They are also learning about the Guatemalans' courage in organizing themselves to confront exploitation and about their deep, renewed faith which is leading them to say: "Enough...

...However, those who are continuing to be slaughtered are Indians living in isolated, mountainous communities, heavily patrolled by the army, with no word getting to the outside world...

...This was particularly evident in the structure of the rural church...

...AI White has been staging a play for me through eight years of a rich, rewarding correspondence...

...The border is only 500 yards away...

...March presumably knew it was his last performance...

...He told me: "Most of the 100,000 refugees in the area have had no contact with western medicine...

...But something even more diabolical is occurring...

...He had worked in Nicaragua with the Sandinistas during the 1979 final offensive, and later with the Salvadoran guerrillas, but felt he should return and give assistance to his own country in an area of desperate need...

...Because of the Indians' centuries-old tradition of community support and decision-making, when one of their leaders was killed, they simply named another...

...Th~ government has organized "civilian patrols" -- these are formed by "voluntary" groups of men from each village whosg;duty it is to patrol their area and to guard against the guer~ll~.: What is really happening is that the army is using these civil~n patrols to carry out massacres of neighboring villages...

...They resist vaccination and are suspicious of drugs and treatments...

...I was able to obtain letters of introduction through the Coordinating Committee for Guatemalan Refugees in Mexico City to the church people in San Cristobal de las Casas...

...therefore, people relied on their own resources, training catechists and "delegates of the Word" to carry on their religious life together...

...Often priests could only reach isolated communities once every few months...

...They feel the same identity as Indians and are learning of the horrors of the massacres inside Guatemala...

...The eager researcher on the road to his degree got more than he bargained for -- and he is still getting...

...The Mexican immigration officials and the security police turn back visitors saying that this is not a tourist area...

...The noise subsided and I walked back through the village to wait on the dusty roadside for the rare, ramshackle bus (it came two hours later) to take me back to Comit~in, followed by another two-hour ride to San Cristobal...

...They told their stories of fleeing the military after the San Francisco massacre near their village...

...He then took me to the house of one family -- two brothers, their wives and children, a sister and the sixty-seven-year-old mother...

...The latest and most diabolical plan therefore is to break the Indians' sense of community and to create di~'ision and enmity among them...

...Their culture and identity have been taken from them...

...What is happening in Guatemala...

...I talked at length with two gentle10 February 1984:79 looking Guatemalan nuns who were working at great risk with these refugees...

...Al has never been a man to hold in his opinions...

...The stories are almost beyond belief -- massacres of whole Indian communities, torture, and disappearances, causing people to flee for their lives...

...Killing leaders did not seem to work...

...For several months, the incidents involving Guatemalan soldiers actually entering refugee camps and capturing or killing people had been reduced, but people continue to live in fear...

...They have only half that number because it is difficult to get the parents to give permission for their children to be taken away for treatment...

...They have now received aid from UNICEF and other international groups (mostly from Europe, none from the U.S...

...We also go out to the villages and help the people with their agricultural projects...

...A long continuous swath had been cut out of Commonweal: 80 the forest to mark the boundary line between the two countries...

...The next morning, I took a two-hour bus ride through incredibly beautiful mountain scenery to the town of Comitlin, halfway to the settlement area, and contacted the team of doctors at the local hospital...