How things are getting better in Guatemala
Bowen, Gordon L.
ASSASSINATIONS & ABDUCTIONS ON CAMPUS How things are getting better in Guatemala GORDON L. BO WEN IN THE FIRST week of September 1985, police stormed a university campus. In the clouds of tear...
...Three university rectors (i.e., presidents) have fallen to assassins in recent years...
...television, Guatemala's crisis this year has plunged the nation into a psychological state unknown Gordon I. bowkn teaches political science at Mary Baldwin College in Ststinton, Virginia...
...This is not South Africa, but Central America...
...Guatemalan Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio later accused "those persons who oppose the economic and social betterment of the indigenous peoples" (or Indians) of committing these kidnappings...
...U.S.C...
...it is Guatemala's University of San Carlos (U.S.C...
...U.S.C...
...Commonweal: 558...
...On May 30, 1985, three extension workers for the (Catholic) Rafael Landivar University were abducted in the capital...
...Hector Estuardo Marroquin Quifionez, died the next day...
...campus long has been a lightning rod for violence...
...de Icon's dean and colleague...
...Congress and signed by President Reagan in July 1985, bars United States assistance to any nation where a pattern of gross violation of internationally recognized human rights exists...
...A social welfare teacher (and law student) and his wife were machinegunned to death on the last day of the month...
...G.A.M...
...Three days later, the corpse of an abducted U.S.C...
...Half of the workforce is idle...
...family members, including small children, were also murdered in these incidents...
...1984...
...the final draft released later, however, granted U.S.C...
...Prof...
...Another student...
...student Gloria Elvira Barrientos was abducted while conducting social services studies in Zunil, Quetzaltenango...
...Virtually none of this was considered newsworthy in North America, Events also not deemed newsworthy here during this last year (from September 1984-September 1985) conclusively demonstrate the continuity of government repression against U.S.C...
...Prof...
...student protests in 1944 that shook the very foundations of the long-running military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico, moves which dissident officers followed...
...Yet it remains simple...
...Rector Eduardo Meyer Maldonado again decried "thirty years of continued violence, during which time the university intellectual has been subjected to economic strangulation, repression, and indiscriminant aggression...
...Relatives provided authorities with the abductors' license-plate numbers, but no arrests followed...
...The U.S...
...A year later, on September 1, 1985, Rector Meyer set the number of university students and faculty killed or "disappeared" during the two years of the current Mejfa government at over six hundred...
...since the panic surrounding the 1954 C.I.A.-backed coup which toppled the elected reformist President Jacobo Arbenz...
...students and one U.S.C...
...On November 28, 1984, for the third time in a month, security forces opened fire on the U.S.C...
...Vitalino Girdn Corado, was shot dead at a gas station while on his way to de Leon's funeral...
...in Commonweal, Feb...
...In so doing they have followed a brave and precedent-rich avenue in Guatemalan history...
...Foreign Assistance Act, reauthorized by both houses of the U.S...
...Carlos Cabrera Garcia, formerly candidate for Engineering Dean at U.S.C., was shot to death...
...students and 18 October 1985: 555 several more teachers were killed or violently became "disappeared" later in 1984...
...It was the struggle for fair, not rigged, elections by genuine student leaders like Oliverio Castaneda (murdered) and Antonio Ciani ("disappeared") that in 1978 led those Guatemalans opposed to an open society to begin gunning down teachers, students, deans, priests, and trade unionists...
...In the July 1985 negotiations over a foreign aid bill in a congressional conference committee, and by subsequent action by both full houses of Congress, the U.S...
...students also were targeted that month: Two were killed and four were violently "disappeared" at the hands of Commonweal: 556 heavily armed gunmen...
...lawmakers specifically spurned administration efforts to grant even a nickel to the Guatemalan police...
...Otto Ivan Caceros Morales, was shot inside the Veterinary Medicine building twelve days later • On September 27, 1984...
...In the clouds of tear gas, in the students' hail of rocks and bottles, ill winds of rage are blowing...
...Murders and kidnappings have been endured too long on campus...
...Law student Maria del Carmen Sanchez Tarrayo forcibly became "disappeared" in the capital the same day...
...Just since January 1985, the local currency (the quetzal) has lost over 60 percent of its buying power as measured in U.S...
...As the New Year of 1985 broke, the well-informed British monthly Latin American Regional Reports: Mexico/ Central America stated: "Hardly a day passes without a newspaper report of the assassination of a student, university lecturer, or union leader...
...The voices of the martyrs from San Carlos University never were heard here in life...
...security assistance...
...State Department, things have been improving ever since forty-five persons were violently abducted (thirty-seven of whom vanished forever) in the year immediately preceding the 1983 military coup which brought to power the country's current dictator...
...On June 4, 1985, Prof...
...in order to try to secure his release...
...On July 2, 1985, U.S.C...
...Formerly he had served on U.S.C...
...Leiva had been nominated to become University Rector in 1986 and was shot near the spot where, in 1982, Rector Mario Dary Riveria fell to an assassin...
...IT MUST BE STRESSED that this grim chronicle is not comprehensive, in that repression against only one social sector, the university, has been enumerated...
...Prof...
...students' festival turned into a large street demonstration against the government's persistent violation of human rights...
...student Hector Arturo Vasquez, who was shot on that day...
...The absence of prosecutions in over thirty-five thousand unresolved "disappearances" since 1966 tends to underline the continuing relevance of Amnesty International's 1981 charge that, in Guatemala, there existed a "government program of political murder...
...This rash of violence caused other student leaders and their families to seek asylum in the Venezuelan embassy...
...Edgar Enrique Leiva Santos, a member of U.S.C.'s Supreme Council, was shot dead by security forces on campus...
...On May 3, 1985, veterinary student Jorge Mario Alberto Sandoval was seized by armed men in the capital...
...Total nation-wide casuallies in all social sectors caused by guerrilla and counterinsurgent warfare, rightist terrorism, and security forces' violence certainly number several thousand in each year and at least fifty thousand dead over-all since 1978...
...Thereby, G.A.M...
...Guatemalan student protests, then, are no flighty rite of spring (or fall) but, rather, form key chapters in the slim volume of Guatemalan democratic politics...
...in the western highlands...
...Indeed, the perception of an improving human rights situation, of fewer campus kidnappings for example, has been a central image in administration pleas to Congress for military ancl police aid...
...Six days later, U.S.C...
...This mad "lobotomization" of society's "brain power" followed cycles of ever increasing ferocity between 1978 and 1983 (see "Guatemala: A New Form of Totalitarianism...
...leaders were murdered in separate assassinations...
...In late February 1985, large numbers of plainclothes security forces entered U.S.C, and agriculture student Luis Factor Ozaeta Chavez was wounded by gunfire on February 20...
...students have taken their protests to the streets several times in 1985, to publicize both narrow university issues and to articulate the broader economic grievances of most Guatemalans...
...campus on November 29, along with that of an agriculture student (Carlos Alfredo Molina de Leon...
...Though unreported on U.S...
...On August 13, 1985...
...community in the first ten months of 1984, including U.S.C...
...On December 4, 1984, U.S.C...
...A Nicaraguan who had lived in Guatemala for many years, Quezada was connected with the U.S.C...
...law student, was violently "disappeared-" On April 23, 1985, a nineteen-year-old woman (Violeta Ileana Perez Sierra) was kidnapped as she left an evening school class...
...publication Chronicle of Higher Education on this same day claimed only three U.S.C...
...medical student Hdgar Edmundo Minja Ardon was kidnapped by government security forces...
...campus was occupied for three days by riot police and army troops...
...1984, Prof...
...Another student at U.S.C.'s Quetzaltenango campus, Edgar Florencio Cajas Martinez, was found tortured, shot, and dead several days after his mid-July abduction...
...On March 27, 1985, Prof...
...Before the end of July, three G.A.M...
...Simply throwing money at Central America to "stop terrorism" has, in fact, become a more tempting option in Washington, especially since Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte's daughter was abducted in September...
...Can aid to these police occupiers really help stop terrorism, as the Reagan administration contends...
...But the Reagan administration has formally proposed not to condemn these police, but to lift an eleven-year ban on all U.S...
...Any fair reading of the facts reported in this article must concede that these patterns in the Guatemalan system of human rights violations appear to endure...
...lecturer Rudy Gustavo Figueroa Munoz's tortured corpse was discovered in the capital...
...Eleven days later, an agronomy student was kidnapped (Julio Cesar Flores Polanco...
...Miguel Angel Salazar, his wife and three young children were abducted while traveling near the tourist center of Panajachel...
...Center for Regional Urban Studies, where formerly he had served as director...
...It strains credulity to claim blandly that an electoral campaign can be fairly conducted unperturbed by this cloud of intimidation...
...His tortured cadaver then turned up near the U.S.C...
...Medical School Dean Mario Rene Moreno Cambara denounced an incendiary bombing of his school which, apparently, had been done to show displeasure over a third-year-medical-students' strike (over unpaid back wages) that had begun the preceding day...
...On January 4, 1985, U.S.C...
...On April 11, 1985, Mariano Aparicio Esquetuazy, anotherU.S.C...
...On October 27, 1984...
...Six U.SC...
...in particular, and the festering Guatemalan human rights problem of which university travails form but one sad, small part...
...dollar, a quetzal now is worth twenty-five cents (down from sixty-six cents on last January 1,1985...
...Earlier, in September 1983, Prof...
...Dozens of U.S.C...
...On March 15, 1985, ruling Gen...
...On January 8, 1985, government security forces occupied the U.S.C...
...1984, two U.S.C...
...students led mass urban demonstrations against increases in food and bus prices The USC...
...A long-brewing crisis in political and economic life spawned both earlier Guatemalan student activism and the September 1985 "street politics" which led to the occupation of the university...
...University officials have charged that $1.5 million in damages to facilities resulted...
...law student was found floating in a reservoir...
...Economic collapse has been so rapid that the central bank recently had to sell gold reserves to pay for oil deliveries...
...professor had been kidnapped since May 1. The story noted no killings of university persons...
...law student (who was a legal aid volunteer), was abducted, the eighth such abduction in June 198S alone...
...and its guidelines ("you must raise taxes"), private lenders and the Guatemalan elite have taken to keeping their money outside the country...
...students...
...On February 19, 1985, three thousand U.S.C...
...One student...
...On July 12, economist Juan Rene Conde Velarde, a professor at Rafael Landivar University, was killed...
...Student protests were only ostensibly over increases in bus fares and food prices...
...he was released alive on May 27...
...Rolando's parents had joined other parents of "disappeared" persons to form a "Mutual Support C.-oup" (GAM...
...But violence didn't abate: Ambrosio Perez Guzman, an employee of the U.S.C...
...The U.S...
...was promised...
...medical student Augustin Pos Ibay was abducted also...
...and campus human rights advocates were accused of being a "pressure group managed and directed by the subversion...
...Inexplicably, however, the Reagan administration would have us avoid any delay and set aside that needed, close examination...
...Less than six weeks after accepting congressional parameters on Guatemalan aid in July (i.e.: civilian government, military under control, an end to "disappearances"), why has the administration now proposed to rush $5 million to the Guatemalan police this fall...
...dollars, a drop more precipitous than that of the South African rand during the same period...
...On August 15, 1984, U.S.C...
...But it is the ship of American values that will be beached if Congress accedes and takes Guatemala off the list of proscribed nations ineligible to receive U.S...
...Services Division offices burning files and threatening workers...
...Demonstrations ended when 5 percent of the national budget for U.S.C...
...Especially in view of the American press's erratic coverage of Guatemala, the truth of the matter may have become more obscure...
...aid to them...
...On January 27, 1985, U.S.C...
...Both had attended the February demonstrations in the capital...
...student Eunice Pulaez Almengor also was abducted that day...
...that his government held no "disappeared" persons...
...s Supreme Council...
...The campus under occupation is not in Capetown...
...students began to demonstrate for constitutional protections for the university at the National Constituent Assembly, the body elected during 1984's violence to write a new constitution to take effect in 1986...
...In non-compliance with the I.M.F...
...Mejia was assuring a delegation from G. A.M...
...On April 5, 1985, a U.S.C...
...After fifteen years of direct military rule, Guatemalans in 1985 have witnessed the disintegration of Central America's once most promising economy, a disintegration with wrenching impact on'an already polarized society...
...Consider: • ()n September 12...
...Eventually, students and junior officers mounted a coup that ushered in the only decade of open electoral competition in the nation's history, from 1944 to 1954...
...It was U.S.C...
...Guatemalan newspapers, in relating Meyer's charge, reported seventy violent deaths or abductions in the U.S.C...
...On October 13, 1984, communications student Edgar Rolando Ramazzini was abducted 15 miles from the capital...
...In the cities they have murdered those even suspected of dissent...
...Hduardo Rodriguez and Estcla Jeancth Martinez, were wounded by gunfire on campus...
...The Guatemala City U.S.C...
...Meza had been abducted and released...
...In the first week of September 1985, twelve were injured and five hundred arrested after U.S.C...
...Indeed...
...On October 29, 1984, Rector Meyer declared that death threats had been received by several members of the Supreme University Council...
...However, according to the U.S...
...campus, injuring several persons...
...On June 21, 1985, the secretary of U.S.C.'s Economics Students' Association, Vladimir Armando Hernandez, was 18 October 1985: 557 abducted by security forces even as Gen...
...On March 24, 1985, architect Fabio Jose Quezada Zaldaha was machine-gunned to death...
...engineering school, also was killed (June 26), again by men arriving on campus in three official vehicles...
...For decency's sake, can they finally be heard in their deaths...
...Long pegged at one quetzal to one U.S...
...Mejia stated that "to take steps toward the reappearance alive of the 'disappeared' is a subversive act and measures will be adopted to deal with it...
...On October 26...
...The 1984 Kissinger Report found such a pattern in Guatemala, stating on page 100: "An even more serious obstacle in terms of the ultimate containment of armed revolt in Guatemala is (he brutal behavior of the security forces...
...On March 2, 1985, two university students (Joaquin Rodas and Rafael Galindo) were abducted in the city of Quetzaltenango...
...founded in 1676 and located in the center of Central America's largest metropolis...
...In rural areas a wave of abductions also has been reported...
...Within days, a U.S.C...
...What conceivably can have changed...
...psychology professor Mayra Janeth Meza Soberanis was found dead with her throat slit...
...Oscar Humbcrto Mejia Victorcs...
...Carlos Eugcnio de Leon Gudiel was shot dead as he returned home from the campus...
...U.S.C...
...only 1 percent of the budget...
Vol. 112 • October 1985 • No. 18
