Israeli Connection - Not just Guns for Guatemala
Black, George
In June 1982, Israeli armored divisions invaded Lebanon. At once, the parallels resonated through Central American militaries. Defense Minister Garcia of El Salvador spoke wistfully of a...
...Kibbutzim in the Franja The majority of these exchange study programs have centered on the agrarian sector...
...Designed, staffed and funded by Israelis, its sophisticated systems are unprecedented 44 in Central America...
...see "Garrison Guatemala," *The author has visited Guatemala three NACLA Report on the Americas (Jan-Feb times in the last year This interview was 1983...
...Some elements of the Israeli kibbutz and the cash-crop moshav found their way into Lucas Garcia's abortive "Integral Plan of Rural Communities," a 1979 program for agricultural development in highland zones affected by the guerrilla insurgency...
...Bilateral tourism agreements were signed in March 1982, and the Guatemalan tourist board, INGUAT is reportedly targeting Jewish communities in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles for the promotion of tourism in Guatemala...
...Until the mid-1970s, Guatemala was supplied mainly by obsolete U.S...
...The Central American Right admired the Beirut summer on so many levels: Israel was a country which used decisive military force May/June 1983 to resolve its contradictions, did so in open defiance of world opinion and was able to bend Washington to its will...
...Galil assault rifles and stubby Uzi submachineguns are standard issue light arms...
...Colonization projects in the occupied territories were carried out under strict military supervision, expressly designed to colonize and redevelop infertile lands, often clashing with the wishes of a hostile local population...
...Defense Minister Garcia of El Salvador spoke wistfully of a preemptive strike at Managua, in the same way as Israel had hit Beirut, frustrated that his hands were tied by Washington...
...Star exhibit is the new Army Transmissions and Electronics School, opened in 1981 by President Lucas Garcia...
...As a token of Guatemala's gratitude for Israeli assistance, current Israeli Ambassador Elieser Armon is now the proud wearer of Guatemala's highest honor-the Order of the Quetzal (Grand Cross...
...Arms are the most visible evidence...
...The Lucas regime proved particularly interested in Israel's Rehovot land settlement center...
...In it, they see an in terlocking mosaic of assistance programs-weapons to help the Guatemalan Army crush opposiNACLA Reportupdate update update update tion and lay waste to the countryside, security and intelligence advice to control the local population and agrarian development models to construct on the ashes of the highlands...
...Nineteen seventy-eight saw the initiation of a two-year program of grants for Guatemalan officials to study cooperativization and rural development under the auspices of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's International Cooperation Division...
...By the end of Rios Montt's Plan Victoria 82 scorched earth campaign," with its accompanying talk of a new "integrated nationalism," the Indians-with up to 100,000 in Mexican refuge and *See "Guatemala--The War Is Not Over," NACLA Report on the Americas (Mar-Apr 1983...
...He confirmed that the U.S...
...With the advice has come the latest in electronic hardware...
...In 1975, it made its first delivery of Arava aircraft, and followed up with artillery and small arms...
...The ties date back to 1948, when Guatemala provided one of three United Nations commissioners overseeing the creation of the Jewish state...
...Agreements for large-scale police assistance, again replacing a defunct U.S...
...This independent foreign policy agenda is quite compatible with the regional role requested by Washington-that of loyal surrogate...
...Israeli penetration of Central America as a weapons supplier is now well-established...
...Here were workable models of rural development which avoided the need for agrarian reform...
...Tel Aviv newspapers reported that 300 Israeli advisers had helped in the execution of the coup, and Rios Montt himself paid homage to their role, acknowledging to an ABC reporter that the bloodless operation had gone off so smoothly "because many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis...
...At the school's opening ceremony, Israeli Ambassador Moshe Dayan (no relation to the late defense minister) hailed Guatemala as "one of our best friends," and promised that further technical and scientific assistance programs would follow...
...Kjell Laugerud Garcia (1974-1978) when the Guatemalan Army first showed interest in cooperatives as a limited means of defusing rural tensions...
...war materiel...
...Israeli-Trained Golpistas The praise was reciprocal...
...Yet for all the political affinities between the Lucas regime and Israel's Begin government, the Israeli role has become even more marked since the March 23, 1982, coup which brought Gen...
...Efrain Rios Montt to power...
...The Guardian went even further, asserting that interrogation and torture methods were jointly planned by advisers from Israel, Argentina and Chile...
...Massacres & Frozen Broccoli Under the Rios Montt regime's "Plan of Assistance to Conflict Areas" (PAAC), launched in August 1982, the Israeli model is more explicit...
...Representatives of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) interviewed in Mexico City believe that agriculture holds the key to Israel's current role...
...The Guatemalan military also acknowledges that the PAAC is based on cooperatives in Taiwan and the agricultural communes of South Korea, two other staunch U.S...
...Benedicto Lucas Garcia-the then president's brotherpraised Israel for the "gigantic job" it was doing on behalf of the Guatemalan armed forces...
...ambassador to deepen the connection...
...Top Washington Proxy Even so, Guatemalan-Israeli relations are a special case...
...Jorge Garcia Granados, later to be a close political associate of President Romeo Lucas Garcia, used his stint as Guatemala's U.N...
...But in a recent interview,* PAAC Director Col...
...decision to suspend arms sales in 1977, Israel became Guatemala's principal supplier...
...pp 11-15 conducted in March May/June 1983 territories...
...One Catholic priest interviewed in Guatemala in March believes that even the promotion of Catholic-evangelical factionalism in an effort to divide and conquer communities is the result of Israeli advice, based on the successful exploitation of rivalries between Christian, Moslem and Druze communities in Lebanon...
...We foresee huge plantations of fruit and vegetables, with storage and processing facilities and refrigeration plants...
...The radar system at Guatemala City's La Aurora international airport is run by Israeli technicians, while others instruct government bureaucrats in the use of computerized information and management systems...
...He was joined by Leonel Gir6n, in charge of colonization programs in the Franja Transversal del Norte, the vast northern area scheduled for infrastructural development and land settlement by the military regimes of the 1970s.* In return, Israeli advisers arrived in Guatemala to plan civic action programs in the conflictive Ixcsn area, heartland of support for the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and scene of constant military repression of local cooperative members...
...Like the Israelis, the Guatemalan Army has designated tame local mayors from indigenous communities...
...We aim to put in the entire infrastructure for exporting frozen broccoli, Chinese cabbage, watermelon...
...If an already skeptical Congress makes the link between Israeli guns, Indian massacres and frozen broccoli, then Reagan's attempt to throw a lifeline to the Rios Montt dictatorship looks set for further battles...
...The Israeli national airline, El Al, Guatemala's AVIATECA and Air Florida have discussed joint tourist promotion campaigns involving Guatemala City's Sheraton Hotel, locally owned by the Kong family, which has extensive links to the far-right Movement of National Liberation (MLN...
...And behind the militarist posture was a solid-looking parliamentary democracy, with an agrarian sector that seemed technologically efficient and socially visionary...
...Military aid, however, is merely the tip of the iceberg...
...a total of fifteen new export crops...
...As Guatemala's economic crisis has bitten deeper, Israel has helped the military regime to ride out the recession...
...Armed village committees in Israeli settlements prefigure Guatemala's ubiquitous Civil Defense Patrols...
...Soon after Rios Montt's seizure of power, new Minister of Economy Julio Matheu made a trip to Israel one of his first priorities, returning with a new, wide-ranging Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement...
...Today, Israel's role in Central America forms part of a concerted diplomatic offensive, which responds to Israel's need for foreign allies and the demands of an economy top-heavy with arms exports...
...Eduardo Wohlers admitted that Israel was the main source of inspiration: "Many of our technicians are Israeli trained...
...But the Colonel recognizes that only large infusions of foreign aid will fuel his dream of a little Israel in the altiplano...
...Today, Israeli advisers work closely with Guatemala's police intelligence (G-2), and both The Guardian of London and the Tel Aviv newspaper Haolam Hazeh reported in December 1981 that Israel and Argentina were collaborating on specialized electronic surveillance techniques...
...allies which have provided object lessons in efficient land use in heavily militarized societies...
...Fernando Castillo Ram[rez, director of the National Cooperative Institute-and at the same time an expert pilot of the Arava counterinsurgency plane-traveled to Israel in 1977 and flew back impressed with the kibbutz system...
...On the military front, Defense Minister Gen...
...The new Israeli technology, for example, has civilian as well as military applications...
...The model of the kibbutz and the moshav is planted firmly in their minds...
...Collaboration began under the regime of Gen...
...In 1980, the Army was fully re-equipped with Galil rifles at a cost of $6 million...
...In return, parallel cultural agreements have brought a regular flow of Israeli programs to Guatemalan radio...
...At the award ceremony, Armon was praised by his hosts for "boosting the program under which Guatemalan grant-holders have gone to study on a wide range of specialized training courses which Israeli instructors have given here in a broad variety of productive activities...
...Since Beirut, Sharon offers captured PLO weapons free to any Central American army willing to pay transportation costs...
...Guatemala will rely particularly heavily on Israel to revive its wilting tourist industry...
...Agency for International Development (AID) has given an informal green light to the export crop plan...
...Many observers point to deeper parallels between the actions of the Guatemalan Army in the Indian highlands and Israeli tactics in the West Bank and other occupied *On the Franja...
...A steady stream of planners, economists and credit managers flowed from the National Agricultural Development Bank, the General Directorate of Agrarian Services and the National Institute of Agrarian Transformation...
...The analogy between the Sandinistas and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was irresistible, especially since State Department rationales for the "external" roots of the Central American crisis had dwelt so heavily on the PLO presence in revolutionary Managua...
...Guatemala has taken a loyal pro-Israel stance ever since in international forums...
...And personally I think it would be fascinating to turn our highlands into that kind of system...
...Wohlers' words, they are seeking nothing less than "the definitive transformation of the face of the Indian highlands...
...After the devastating Plan Victoria 82 counterinsurgency campaign, Guatemala's military planners are shaping an ambitious long-term agrarian scheme for the highlands...
...Here, rightists spoke openly of the "Palestinianization" of the nation's rebellious Mayan Indians...
...a further million displaced inside Guatemala--began to look very much like a people stripped of a homeland...
...in the same year, Guatemala began to make inquiries about acquiring the advanced Kfir jet fighter-bomber...
...With the Aravas came technicians and advisers...
...But in 1975, when Great Britain pressured the Ford Administration to withhold shipments of offensive weapons to a country likely to use them for an invasion of Belize, Israel stepped smoothly into the gap...
...short take-off and landing Arava aircraft are the favorite choice of rural counterinsurgency planners...
...Col...
...After the U.S...
...Defense Minister Ariel Sharon pays a lightning visit to Honduras with his Air Force chief...
...AID officials in Guatemala City unofficially agree that a favorable decision on the aid is likely later this year...
...In Guatemala, the metaphor was stretched furthest...
...program, were sealed by the visit of Interior Minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz to Israel in March 1980...
...In Col...
...Army planners looked hard at Israeli agricultural settlements as a model for reworking the devastated rural economy...
...Israeli Economic Coordination Minister Ya'acov Meridor told a gathering of Israeli businessmen in 1981, "Israel coveted 43update update update update the job of top Washington proxy in Central America...
Vol. 17 • May 1983 • No. 3
