Guatemala on the World Stage
"They just don't understand our needs," complained a Guatemalan field commander last August, referring to Washington. "Perhaps they will wake up to our reality when 80 million Mexicans have been...
...troop commitment in an emergency...
...Scaling down the General's hyperbole only somewhat, evangelical leaders themselves reckon that their "Lovelift International" could channel $10 million into Army redevelopment plans for the Indian highlands...
...8. See, "Cuban Support for Terrorism and Insurgency in the Western Hemisphere;' statement by Thomas O. Enders to the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism, March 12, 1982...
...It took one year to get Representatives Michael D. Barnes (D-MD) and Stephen J. Solarz (D-NY) to withdraw proposed legislation which would formalize the ban on arms transfers in exchange for a "gentlemen's agreement" with Assistant Secretary Enders that Congress would be consulted for its approval in advance...
...And that requires turning the clock back on economic sanctions as well as military ones...
...Guatemala's Christian Democrats are still firmly distanced from the revolutionary movement...
...Even at the immediate regional level, U.S...
...interests...
...it was never designed to be...
...Documents captured by ORPA from a helicopter downed in Sololi indicated that spares for the Guatemalan Air Force were being shipped out from the U.S...
...Lucas' arrogance was as effective as a black- mailer's note: play your foolish game, but you have no real alternatives...
...Like Carter before him, Reagan had failed to discern the nature of the beast...
...When Chairman Jerry Patterson (D-CA) of this oversight subcommittee protested that such a loan did not serve the basic human needs of the Indian highlands, the Administration backed down...
...By June 1982, three months after the coup, Administration officials presented the loan request once again...
...The ideological grip is firm enough to make the whole appear greater than the sum of the arguments...
...But the Democratic Community quickly became a two-edged contradiction in terms when the Administration urged the inclusion of Guatemala...
...Though nominally a civilian craft, 4,000 of the Jetrangers have been sold worldwide by Bell to military customers, and only 2,300 for civilian purposes...
...The region is living through its hour of change," said Mexico's Castafieda more than two years later, "and our nation must come to terms with that fact...
...cold shoulder...
...Enders briefed the State Department on the beatified contradiction...
...As Congress lagged on allocating funds for upgraded airstrips in these countries, a new idea was born: that of the Central American Democratic Community...
...By the end of 1982, the fleet included* 4 Bell UH-1H "Hueys'," updated version of the UH-1D...
...Stay there and fight...
...Washington Post, April 25, 1978...
...four are known to be out of service...
...2 0 The Argentine connection was nothing new...
...The World Bank would weigh in with $100 million more" 2 The decision not only opened the door for multilateral finance, but for the extension of aid through the Agency for International Development (AID), previously subject to the same criteria...
...instead, the Guatemalan military imposed its own candidate by fraud in the 1978 elections...
...Daniel O. Graham went down to give positive signals to Lucas...
...A $71 million slice of IDB funds would cover the rural telephones, small industrial development and specialized rural education...
...The implication is that the other four have been illegally refitted in the last two years...
...To lend weight, they disclose that Guatemala is the contingency site for a regional U.S...
...Ambassador William P Middendorf and Interior Secretary James Watt, have held enthusiastic meetings with top Rfos Montt aides...
...In the polarization of Guatemala's political crisis, moderate democratic allies have few straws to grasp...
...National ActionlResearch on the MilitaryIndustrial Complex (NARMIC), The Central American War: A Guide to the U.S...
...With the Malvinas-Falklands war, U.S...
...Guatemala, identifying with its own long-simmering claims to Belize, ardently took the Argentine side, placing 350 paratroopers and marines on standby to be flown to Port Stanley if needed...
...In two years, the Guatemalan chopper fleet has swelled from 9 to 27 machines, all manufactured in the United States by the Bell Company...
...Add Panama's canal, Mexico's oil and the vision of Soviet boots poised on the banks of the Rio Grande, and Guatemala becomes a Pentagon nightmare of strategic import...
...4 The Beirut summer was admired by all Central American rightists, but in Guatemala they spoke openly of the "Palestinianization" of the nation's rebellious Indians...
...the U.S...
...Asked last June about the differences between his country's part in the French-Mexican declaration on El Salvador in 1981 and its caution regarding Guatemala, then Foreign Minister Jorge Castaileda of Mexico noted that, "In the case of Guatemala, the right moment has not occurred in the international arena to allow us to take a similar step...
...In the summer of 1981, sophisticated Argentine computer analysis methods (using Israeli hardware) had been crucial in detecting 27 guerrilla safe houses in Guatemala City...
...Washington Post, April 18, 1982...
...Selling the Big Lie The Embassy in Guatemala City had been kept abreast of coup plans from the beginning...
...Not only was Guatemala strategically important, but the selling of Rios Montt would make the impossible seem possible...
...The diversion of moneys to the strategic hamlets will be in direct relation to the success of funds now being poured into the counterinsurgency war...
...Guatemalan businessmen reportedly pumped large illegal contributions into the Reagan campaign coffers...
...2 9 The evangelical movement has used its media access and its mass base to help neutralize the impact on Congress of progressive U.S...
...New right and neo-conservative delegations swarmed over Guatemala City...
...In desperation, State Dept...
...Though Congress stood firm against a resumption of military aid, even denying a 1980 Pentagon request for $250,000 in military training funds, and Carter blocked a Guatemalan request for six F-5 jet fighters, the U.S...
...Unomdsuno, June 23, 1982...
...Can the Grip Be Loosened...
...aid, the Guatemalan Army will be hard pressed to hold its own...
...The Guatemalan regime had labeled aJuly 1982 Amnesty International report "a horror story conceived by an insane writer...
...Until now, the Administration has not become as deeply involved in Guatemala as it is in El Salvador...
...Israeli civilian and military technology is everywhere in Guatemala, but nowhere more than in Rfos Montt's plans for the strategic hamlets of the Indian highlands, which take as their models the agrarian colonies of Israeli occupied territory.* Western democracies, even Communist nations, tend to swallow political qualms if export earnings or trading needs are at stake...
...In the opposite direction came delegates from Amigos del Pais and the Guatemalan Freedom Foundation, recruiting professional lobbyists and public relations firms like McKenzie-McCheyne, which had performed the same tasks for the Somoza regime in Nicaragua...
...Israeli ambassador to Guatemala Moshe Dayan, 1981...
...Equipment has been removed from the unservBell civilian model helicopter flies military missions...
...tional Financial Institutions Act included Guatemala on a list of gross human rights violators...
...But, generally speaking, one can expect changes in the international balance of forces as the "right moment" approaches...
...Military Buildup, Philadelphia, 1982...
...Arnson and Montealegre, IPS Update, June 1982...
...In November 1981, though abstaining from the vote, the Reagan Administration had privately lobbied in favor of a $75 million IDB loan for hydroelectric energy...
...Perhaps they will wake up to our reality when 80 million Mexicans have been enslaved under the Soviet boot...
...The military assistance group at the U.S...
...The building of international alliances is at least as important for the Guatemalan Left as for the military regime, and is a crucial element in their conception of popular revolu32 o J 5 r r m I;Mar/Apr1983 "Improvement of communications in zones where the government is committing atrocities is a form of indirect military aid...
...Yet within a month the goal was clear: under the proposed fiscal 1984 foreign military assistance program, Guatemala was slated for $50 million' The two-year running battle with Congress has not been easy, and it is not over yet...
...ence eroded and their leaders assassinated...
...Relationships with the Southern Cone dictatorships had long been a part of Guatemala's attempt to break out of international isolation by joining forces with other pariah nations...
...Gen...
...As a result, by the start of Carter's term, Guatemala was already buying Galil assault rifles and Arava counterinsurgency planes from its new supplier, Israel...
...Deputy Assistant Secretary of State John Bushnell...
...It was true...
...Sources: Washington Post, January 23, 1981: The Guardian (London), January 3, 1983: Fort Worth Star Telegram, December 15, 1982: international Institute for Strategic Studies (London), The Military Balance 1982-1983...
...to OPIC guarantees for oil exploration and for Export-Import Bank credits...
...The Dallas-based Southwest Vert-AII Inc...
...Nor did the Sandinistas escape: they were supposedly channeling 50 mm mortars, submachine guns, rocket launchers and other weapons across Honduras into the Guatemalan countryside...
...Italy alone will pump $500 million worth *A more thorough examination of the Israel-Guatemala connection will appear in a future Update article...
...decline in Central America offers space for new actors like Mexico, Venezuela and the European social democracies who have no real stake in the current regime...
...arms sales on a scale inconceivable without the tacit approval of the Reagan Administration...
...Jesse Garcia z C One end of the tarmac at Guatemala City's La Aurora airport is crammed with helicopters...
...New York Times, January 8 and February 5, 1983...
...It is all part of the harsh world of geopolitics...
...More importantly, prominent born-again members of the Reagan team, including White House adviser Ed Meese, Deputy U.N...
...6. Allan Nairn, "Controversial Reagan Campaign Links with Guatemalan Government and Private Sector Leaders," COHA Research Memorandum, October 30, 1980...
...Joint hearings on July 30, 1981 of the House Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs and that of Human Rights and International Institutions confirmed that the situation was as wretched as ever...
...C 0 0m 0 26Mar/Apr 1983 place as such an alternative...
...Latin America Regional Report, January 19, 1983...
...Can an effective international counter-weight emerge to neutralize the conservative forces lined up behind the regime...
...Such a show of real potential is also likely to galvanize many inside the country who currently fear the repercussions of premature exposure...
...S 25NACLA Report argues Guatemala's strategic value-petroleum and nickel reserves, albeit modest, and access to the Pacific and Caribbean coasts...
...S8 Bell 206-B's, known as the "Jetranger...
...News of his election was greeted with firecrackers...
...Latin America Political Report, November 6, 1981...
...In announcing the $6.3 million package, Administration officials stressed that they were setting no precedents, merely clearing up some untidy business inherited from Jimmy Carter...
...iceable Hueys and refitted to the 412's...
...The Administration would continue to push for legitimacy, but meanwhile, subversion was the order of the moment...
...It is not the big corporate lobbyists who crowd Washington corridors on Guatemala's behalf, though five of the Fortune top ten companies (Exxon, Texaco, IBM, ITT and Gulf Oil) have interests in the country...
...forces in Panama...
...Not surprisingly, all the leading lights of conservative evangelism and the "electronic church" have rallied round his cause...
...What Friends for the Left...
...The businessmen who stridently remind Washington of its reponsibilities are an expatriate bunch, many of them participants in the 1954 CIA operation who settled in afterwards to enjoy the fruits of their labor...
...All share a fear of northward creeping communism as if it were a disease with no known antidote...
...Furthermore, the FDCR was not in Raw Indian recruits drill in Chichicastenango...
...Three months later, the Administration formally erased Guatemala from the list of human rights transgressors...
...Wallace Nutting, commander of U.S...
...Since the fall of Somoza in 1979, Washington has sponsored successive attempts to build a new regional counterinsurgency bloc...
...This time the argument was nothing less than that Guatemala was no longer a gross human rights violator...
...7. Ibid...
...9. "Cuba's Renewed Support for Violence in Latin America;' State Department, Special Report, No...
...Policy advisers Roger Fontaine, Gen...
...The Socialist International has denounced the military's policy of systematic extermination of the Indians, but has refrained as yet from any more active political initiative...
...For the U.S...
...Arnson and Montealegre, IPS Update, June 1982...
...Guatemala was a Soviet target "because of its size, population and raw materials, oil included...
...Beating Congress into Submission The symbolic centerpiece of theJanuary 1983 military aid package is $2.35 million for spare parts and repairs to Guatemala's small fleet of "Huey" helicopters, vital to the aerial war against the guerrillas and their peasant supporters...
...The cost of a new machine exceeds $25 million...
...It is here that the Administration's bipolar world-view reaches back in time to clasp hands with Guatemala's Cold War legacy...
...See box...
...See Gregorio Selser, "Presencia de la Internacional Socialista en America Latina y el Caribe," in CECADE-CIDE, Centroamirica: Cn'sis y Politica Internacional (Mexico, 1982), pp...
...He would resume arms deliveries, restart Pentagon training for the police and security forces, stay silent on the death squads (i.e., "quiet diplomacy") and hold open the possibility of direct U.S...
...Inforpress, July 1, 1982...
...Boats from California and the Gulf Coast ports have already begun shipments of building and roofing materials for the new rural settlements, and the Christian Broadcasting Network has dispatched teams of agricultural and medical technicians to help design the "model villages...
...3 4 As in the 1960s and 70s, U.S...
...Further AID initiatives include a $20.1 million investment guarantee for low-cost housing as well as government-sponsored colonization and resettlement programs in the northern lowlands...
...surrogate...
...3. Clarin (Buenos Aires), March 6, 1982...
...Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Enders elaborated...
...In late 1982, 23 contracts on items approved before 1977 remained exempt and open...
...Yugoslavia supplies weapons,'Switzerland fighter aircraft...
...The London Guardian had reported the presence of Argentine and Chilean torture specialists in Guatemala under Lucas...
...As allies in the fight, the Administration enlisted the support of a variety of conservative lobbyists-not only New Rightists within the coalition, but corporate groupings with economic interests in the region...
...The Israeli connection has become even more marked undef Rfos Montt...
...2. Antonio Cavalla Rojas, "Guatemala en la estrategia militar de los Estados Unidos," in Cuadernos de Marcha (November-December 1980...
...Without massive U.S...
...27NACLA Report By August 1981, a leading Guatemalan newspaper headlined an editorial, "General Haig, Ally of Dr...
...As the Somoza regime began to crumble in early 1979, Mexico carefully engaged its diplomacy to ease out a military dictatorship while pushing for the moderation of the inevitable revolutionary transition that would follow...
...the other, Air Force Lt...
...it faltered at that time for the dearth of any democratic credentials...
...7 In the case of Bell helicopters, chinks in the law became gaping holes...
...Ibid...
...Unlike the days of the Carter-Lucas standoff, all these voices find absolute resonance in a Reagan-sanitized State Department...
...Canada and the European Economic Community have refused to resume economic assistance or swallow U.S...
...conventional notions of a political center were eliminated long before they were in El Salvador...
...In the meantime, the Administration had resorted to indirect, semi-legal and downright illegal devices to help the Guatemalan military weather the cutoff...
...3 5 Above all, Mexico-prime mover of initiatives regarding Nicaragua and El Salvador-has held its fire...
...Center for International Policy, Aid Memo, October 1982...
...The largest was a $20 million order for two Lockheed L-100-20 transport planes, updated versions of the Hercules paratroop-carrier...
...of credits into hydroelectricity, railroad modernization and port facilities...
...Kicking off the Rfos Montt round of its propaganda onslaught, the Administration found itself countered by a stream of hostile reports to Congress from international human rights groups...
...Tel-Aviv newspapers reported that 300 Israeli military advisers had helped in the execution of the coup itself...
...But their selling line depends on their milieu, economic, military or political...
...Washington Post, January 23, 1982...
...from Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell to Bill Bright's Campus Crusade for Christ and the Christian Broadcasting Network...
...But it is moving in that direction, and this is likely to spawn the same non-interventionist responses that it has in its time in both Nicaragua and El Salvador...
...Changing "Crime Control and Detection" equipment to "Regional Stability Controls" allowed $3.2 million worth of Army trucks and jeeps to slip through the net...
...Castro...
...Congress does not realize the historic importance of the competition in Central America...
...Though there is no indication of direct U.S...
...Green Beret Capt...
...Before this can happen, the Guatemalan Left will have to clearly pose itself as a force to be reckoned with...
...Excilsior, October 23, 1982...
...By 1980, Lucas was publicly denouncing Jimmy Carter as a communist...
...It marked the end of a five-year hiatus in military aid and the culmination of a two-year propaganda offensive against Congress...
...It was impossible for the Administration to defend Lucas in public...
...I'll help you as soon as I get in...
...Alternatively, those few who saw Rios Montt as refreshingly honest doubted his longevity on the Guatemalan scene...
...In These Times, November 23-27, 1982...
...Carter's tactics were doomed to fail...
...But the pinnacle of that effort may already have been reached...
...If only instinctively, the officer was fighting on a decisive front of the war...
...GUATEMALA ON THE WORLD STAGE 1. NACLA interview with local commander, El Quich6, August 25, 1982...
...Jesse Garcfa, teaches a range of skills including counterinsurgency tactics at the military Polytechnic School, camouflaged as an English language teacher...
...IPS Resource Update, June 1982...
...3 7 Reagan's response has been to put his back against the minute hand...
...In expanding their fleet, the Guatemalan armed forces have broken the five-year embargo on U.S...
...6 Yet Congressional resistance held...
...Attacking groups like Americas Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), it reserved its greatest wrath for Amnesty, which received a five-page letter from 30Mar/Apr 1983 Enders accusing it of lacking professionalism and relying on biased sources...
...South Africa has offered to send counterinsurgency troops, while the Chairman of the Taiwanese Joint Chiefs of Staff assured Guatemala that the U.S...
...He thought his "The implications of a Marxist takeover in Guatemala are a lot more serious than in El Salvador...
...There is no Washington-controlled super-plot...
...New York Times, January 8 and February 5, 1983...
...for the last year they have been arriving at La Aurora at the rate of more than one a month...
...Administration now took up the charge with a vengeance...
...Jerry Patterson, chairman of the House Banking Subcommittee tionary war...
...Though there are lingering problems on the ground, the main difficulty has been that of building a coherent diplomatic voice that can represent the struggle abroad...
...Ultimately it will turn, too, on who can best capture the hearts, minds-and purse strings-of the international powers that be...
...Embassy continues to give routine advice to their Guatemalan counterparts, and two active service officers are on duty...
...Document received by congressional offices, Fall 1982, cited in Jonas, "Counterinsurgency State," p. 50...
...New York Times, May 20, 1982...
...policy appears to hold the upper hand...
...Iron Triangle of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala...
...Arnson and Montealegre, IPS Update, June 1982...
...See Gregorio Selser, "Presencia de la Internacional Socialista en America Latina y el Caribe," in CECADE-CIDE, Centroamirica: Cn'sis y Politica Internacional (Mexico, 1982), pp...
...The Guatemalan Right has both ardent sympathizers and nail-hard, pragmatic supporters, who understand its needs only too well...
...4. New York Times, June 1, 1980...
...Paris AFP in Spanish, 1630 GMT, June 3, 1982, in FBIS, June 4, 1982...
...Until the end of 1982, when Congress began finally to relent, Guatemala policy was a textbook case of circumventing restraints...
...During the last half of Carter's term, more than $34 million worth of U.S...
...IPS Update, June 1982...
...Miami Herald, April 17, 1982...
...Bell employees and Guatemalan pilots confirm that these machines have been fitted out with machine guns for counterinsurgency use...
...Statement of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Stephen W. Bosworth before the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations and the Subcommittee on Inter-American Affairs of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, July 30, 1981...
...Selling Guatemala as a democracy is as Herculean a task as portraying Nicaragua as a totalitarian superpower, given the Sandinistas' repeated diplomatic effors for regional peace and their determination to maintain the greatest rather than least pluralism that security will permit...
...tina and another 175 in Chile...
...Having boldly stepped into the vacuum at the center of Guatemalan politics, Carter had nowhere to go...
...His human rights policy had been designed to press for normalized electoral democracy...
...This model, known as the "Longranger," has twice the capacity of the 206-B...
...This raises the question of the U.S...
...From January 11 to March 31, 1982, more than 20 Guatemalan Air Force pilots were trained at Bell Company facilities in Forth Worth, Texas...
...5 Even Friends Couldn't Do More With Reagan in the White House, the Guatemalans assumed that everything would change...
...Grouped together in the American Chamber of Commerce (AMCHAM), they share the fierce bunker vision of their Guatemalan counterparts...
...The regime's battle for survival depends on alliances far beyond the Reagan Administration's reach...
...arms transfers from a decade before were still moving through the pipeline...
...One aspect of this will be to push to higher levels of military struggle and prove the strength of their bargaining power...
...Through a complex variety of channels, assistance has flowed to help Rios Montt's military drive and to keep afloat his sinking economy...
...90, December 14, 1981...
...Document received by congressional offices, Fall 1982, cited in Jonas, "Counterinsurgency State," p. 50...
...CBS, "Guatemala," Special Report, September 1, 1982...
...though some countries act as surrogate forces, indirectly serving U.S...
...Bullets may help win the war, but only hard cash will do for the next stage-the salvation of Guatemala's tottering economy...
...But, stung by accusations from the ascendant Right that he had "lost" Nicaragua, Carter could not...
...6 Bell 206-L's...
...Together with this, the revolutionary forces must convince skeptical foreign powers of their commitment to a revolution which is "democratic, pluralist and non-aligned...
...Walters, Haig's special envoy...
...Benjamin Castro, instructs Guatemalan pilots.' 8 Allies and Pariahs Back in 1981, Lucas' presidential candidate, Defense Minister Guevara, was asked by a reporter how Guatemala had fared as a result of the U.S...
...Latin America Weekly Report, August 27, 1982...
...Excilsior July 19, 1981...
...These links may take military forms-Austria and Belgium have given Guatemala advice on munitions manufacture, in line with the Army's desire for its own arms factory...
...Ronald Reagan, to Amigos del Pais envoy Eduardo Carrete, 1980...
...269-312...
...By now, Honduras and El Salvador had gone through the "laundering" process of elections, and the new grouping gathered to isolate revolutionary Nicaragua...
...only economic criteria would now apply...
...In 1977, the Carter Administration's Interna31NACLA Report The Civil Defense Patrols are obligatory for all males 18-50...
...Carter's envoy, William Bowdler, could not even get a hearing from the Lucas government or official right-wing parties...
...New York Times, December 19, 1982...
...5. IPS Resource Update, June 1982...
...representatives from supporting multilateral loans to Guatemala through the World Bank or Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) unless they demonstrably financed "basic human needs...
...2 2 Other sympathetic members of the "Pariah International" too have rallied to the Guatemalan cause...
...The reports hammered home not only the Guatemalan armed forces' responsibility for recent massacres but the fact that Rfos Montt was promoting the antithesis of a "democratic opening...
...This time around, however, the money will begin to realize the highlands plan which has been around for at least two decades...
...options are not absolute...
...Upon receiving the State Department's damning human rights report in March 1977, the Guatemalan regime retorted that it would reject in advance any military aid from a government which dared to impose conditions on matters it considered an internal affair...
...Roman Catholic opinion and the socially oriented programs of the protestant National Council of Churches...
...2 Four months later, a State Dept...
...The Act prevented U.S...
...CBS, "Guatemala," Special Report, September 1, 1982...
...evangelical connection...
...The recent agreement among Guatemala's revolutionary forces, he charged, "exemplifies Cuba's systematic efforts to unify, assist and advise Marxist-Leninist guerrillas...
...Interview with UPI, November 24, 1981...
...It also permitted the last-minute assignation of $11 million to Guatemala in the Caribbean Basin Initiative, Reagan's highly selective "economic" project...
...all agree that Guatemala is of strategic significance, and must be defended...
...Its existence permitted Lucas to firm up relations with new allies and its loopholes permitted him to still receive U.S...
...Its goal is the war zone, paying for small new agricultural production units and access roads in the Indian highlands...
...9 But the smear failed to stick...
...The Reagan Administration has worked overtime to paint the Central American revolutionary movements, and the Nicaraguan government, as led by godless Marxists...
...Then there is the Pentagon crowd, which "It is very difficult for any small country to withstand an assault supplied by training and materiel from one of the superpowers and its assistants without help from the other...
...3 Bell 212's and 6 Bell 412's-sales approved by the Department of Commerce in 1980-81...
...How far will the international community stick its neck out for Guatemala's revolution...
...troops would come and go freely...
...Throughout Reagan's election campaign, the two-way lobbying had been intense, reflecting the rise of the New Right within the Reagan coalition...
...U.S...
...envoys had come to a four-point "understanding" with the Lucas regime...
...Guevara confided that Guatemala was receiving military supplies from "countries who still believe in us," citing trading partners as diverse as Argentina, Israel and Belgium...
...Excluding a queasy Congress, the commander was wrong about Washington...
...Guatemala's impor- tance to the United States will prove decisive...
...12...
...Guardian (London), December 29, 19%1: Testimony by former Interior Ministry Press Secretary Elias Barahona, in Guatemala News and Information Bureau (Berkeley, California), November 1982...
...official conceded to the New York Times: "We have no options in Guatemala...
...arms ban would not affect existing military assistance or officer training programs.2 The tightest role is played by Israel, and is the one in which an independent foreign policy agenda is most compatible with that of loyal U.S...
...In Guatemala," he intoned, "a coup has installed a new leader who has improved the human rights situation and has opened the way for a more effective counterinsurgency effort...
...Within three weeks of the coup, he announced with satisfaction, if not much substantiation, that "the government has come out of the darkness into the light.''14 The Big Lie was launched...
...equipment...
...Their role was both to apply direct pressure on Congress and to counteract mounting public disquiet at closer links with Guatemala's military rulers...
...Next came the "Strategic Triangle," in which more palatable countries-Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Colombia-were to be enlisted as pincer states, where U.S...
...Don't give up...
...7 Lucas understood that part too, but not as a trade-off for even cosmetic human rights improvement...
...New York Times, May 20, 1982...
...The tone was set in May 1981, when the Administration sidestepped Congress by reclassifying military items and approving their sale through the Department of Commerce...
...The discrediting of the State Dept...
...269-312...
...Embassy in Guatemala, these are vital services in combating what it believes is a "Communist-backed disinformation plan.') Washington Dollars Soon after the coup, Rios Montt told bewildered reporters that he expected a billion dollars from the U.S...
...But if it continues to move inexorably forward, he is likely to find himself on the other side of a time warp from those who see their interests in coming to terms with change...
...supplied sophisticated radio transmission gear for all models...
...Masters of the Loophole In January 1983, the State Department pushed a request for $6.3 million worth of military hardware for Guatemala through the House Foreign Affairs Committee...
...Nairn, "Controversial Campaign Links...
...military equipment wormed its way to Guatemala, mostly under contracts licensed by the Commerce Department...
...Flight training was also given by Bell's Fort Worth neighbor, Flight Safety International Inc...
...The Administration shifted focus to Guatemala's insurgent "enemy" and its supposed CubanSoviet sponsorship...
...Haolam Hazeh (Tel Aviv, Israel), April 12, 1982...
...Congressional opposition, alarmed public opinion, even the law itself, were all systematically flouted...
...Support for the Left alternative in Guatemala has not come to fruition...
...As much as they are frustrated at having part of their chopper fleet grounded, they most intensely feel the issue as reflective of Congressional stupidity...
...New York Times, December 16, 1981...
...assertions that SovietCuban conspiracies are to blame for Guatemala's ills...
...It incorporates both a concerted diplomatic offensive in Central America and markets for Israel's top-heavy arms export trade...
...Welcoming the coup, U.S...
...Interview with UPI, November 24, 1981...
...airbase in Homestead, Florida...
...Walters had previously been employed as adviser to the Luxembourgbased Basic Resources Inc., which, with extensive drilling rights in northern Guatemala, had its own reasons for exaggerating the figures...
...Seeking to reinforce centrist forces, Carter saw their influ"Hang in 'til we get there...
...Center for International Policy, Aid Memo, October 1982...
...2 6 Even Spain offered $61 million for tourism, industry and transport-all to a country with which it had broken diplomatic relations two years earlier after the Spanish Embassy massacre...
...All of this implies that the Guatemalan revolutionaries achieve a more consolidated and operative level of unity than they yet have...
...One, Special Forces Capt...
...ends, others may operate counter to U.S...
...Rep...
...liberals and human rights activists exhorted him to broaden the search for acceptable alternatives, even to the new, broadly based Democratic Front Against Repression (FDCR...
...It will take hundreds, not tens, of millions...
...Inforpress, July 1, 1982...
...flow never entirely dried up...
...We'll get in and then we'll give you help...
...Unomdsuno, June 23, 1982...
...Ambassador Chapin promised that his government would provide up to $50 million in economic aid...
...at the moment, U.S...
...Washington Post, January 23, 1982...
...The policy change affected six World Bank and IDB loans...
...3 6 What steps any specific country might or could take requires a complex analysis of its own internal political balances, its international alliances, the role of its foreign policy in general, and with relation to the United States and Central America in particular...
...Ibid...
...Or the links may be purely commercial-West Germany's largest regional investments are in Guatemala, and the People's Republic of China buys more than 50% of Guatemala's cotton crop...
...aid strategies will center on supporting Guatemala's export elite...
...One of the main problems in gaining recognition for these alliances has been the difficulty of incorporating Guatemala...
...White Paper on El Salvador had provoked general skepticism at a repeat performance, and many in Congress noted that the roots of the Guatemalan revolution predated Fidel Castro by several years...
...New York Times, December 19, 1982...
...hopes for rehabilitating Guatemala took a real nose dive...
...Under Lucas, Guatemala listed its inventory as eight UH-1Ds...
...regional economic plans, investments and counterinsurgency techniques...
...For five years now, Guatemalan commanders have been galled by the cutoff...
...La Nacidn (Guatemala City), August 21, 1981...
...So perverse was Guatemala's animosity that it sent a team to the 1980 Moscow Olympics just to defy Carter's Afghanistan-prompted call for a boycott...
...No matter how limited Rfos Montt's margin for political and economic maneuver, nor how coherent or popular the opposition inside the country, the war will not be determined on the ground alone...
...A month later, it tried to steamroll through the House Banking Subcommittee an $18 million IDB loan for a rural telephone network...
...In one bizarre flight of fancy, the State Department asserted that the Guatemalan Left's success in recruiting Indian peasants was due to the establishment in Cuba of secret language schools to teach Guatemalan communists their country's 22 indigenous languages...
...Secretary of State Haig tried another approach...
...For it was draped in 1954's myth of "salvation from communism" that Guatemala became the repository for U.S...
...o But that argument wore thin as it emerged that the State Department had relied on inflated figures about Guatemala's proven reserves supplied by Gen...
...The first attempt, in August 1979, was the so-called 28Mar/Apr 1983 Hell's Bells "With a chopper, you just fly in, drop some bombs and fly out again...
...2 Most of them would as happily do business in pro-socialist Mozambique as in anti-communist Guatemala...
...its social democrats, the PDS and FUR, weak inside the country, are not yet at a stage in the unity process where they can play a major international role...
...military base.' For the still unconvinced, the argument moves regional...
...Carter was stuck-with Lucas and with an arms policy that was doubly ineffectual...
...involvement, Ambassador Frederic Chapin leapt to embrace Rios Montt with almost indecent haste and exuberance...
...role itself...
...4 Military aid had actually begun to decline in 1975, when Great Britain pressured President Ford to send Guatemala a warning to drop invasion plans against neighboring Belize, busy negotiating its independence from Britain...
...5 The trouble was that neither press nor Congress was ready to buy the lie...
...others alleged that Guatemalan soldiers and police were taking courses, including interrogation techniques, from Southern Cone mentors-200 in Argen29NACLA Report "Guatemala is one of our best friends...
...Vernon Walters and retired Gen...
...Panama, Costa Rica and others too played their role...
Vol. 17 • March 1983 • No. 2
