GUATEMALA Keeping the Lid On
Jonas, Susanne
On Tuesday, August 9, the Guatemalan army's top officials met to decide the fate of the civilian government of Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo. The president and his cabinet were also...
...A bomb was planted in the theater where students had organized a Latin American songfest...
...Although it was not strong enough to paralyze the economy, the strike's turnout was greater than anyone expected, a surprising show of force from this as yet untested movement...
...A Coup in Stages The constant bullying of the government by the extreme Right, in uniform and out, came to a head last May 11 when two rebellious army garrisons marched on the capital...
...We can't think only in terms of a coup...
...Kidnappings, disappearances and murders of labor and student leaders are all on the rise...
...Washington may publicly support Cerezo, but in its search for regional allies against Nicaragua, it has strengthened the small sector of Guatemalan society that supports the contras-the extreme Right-further undermining Cerezo's authority...
...For others on the Right, however, it is the core of the Cerezo problem...
...The government's response has been to propose establishing patrols in the cities as well, under a new army-controlled "security system...
...This became visible, for example, in the furious faces and raised fists of the grandmothers in the town of Amatitlfn, as police were stoned while arresting young protestors...
...The buildup during August was dramatic, as the strike movement extended its work stoppages by one hour each day and threatened to affect essential public services...
...As of October, UASP was again staging demonstrations-this time including the Committee of Campesino Unity (CUC), branded "subversive" by the government-and resisting pressures to be drawn into government-manipulated agreements...
...Others place their hopes in the "national dialogue" engendered by the Central American peace plan...
...Far from being a pacified and stable "model democracy," as Washington officials proclaim, Guatemala is a bubbling cauldron...
...In the MLN view this is just one more indicator that Cerezo is "paving the way for socialism," as Frei did for Allende in Chile in the 1970s...
...From the other side, leading Christian Democrats viewed Shultz's trip as a "detonator," giving the Right a new excuse for overthrowing the government...
...The popular movement has been brutally smashed and its leadership physically eliminated several times over in recent decades...
...But anything can happen in this fastchanging country...
...Outside the capital, similar mobilizations were mounted in the towns, while peasants in several provinces organized to denounce abuses by the government's "civil defense patrols," as well as compulsory service in the supposedly voluntary patrols...
...Those who seek to maintain the Cerezo government, like Gramajo, argue that a coup would return Guatemala to the long diplomatic isolation which ended when Cerezo took office, jeopardizing essential financial and political support from abroad...
...Although they failed to overthrow the government, it now seems clear that Cerezo ceded whatever authority he once held, in order to remain in office...
...Lately, death threats have been made against top Church officials who favor timid land reform proposals, the deputy foreign minister for his affiliation with a group promoting dialogue with the guerrillas, progressive journalists-the list goes on...
...The Unity of Labor and Popular Action (UASP), a coalition of labor and popular organizations, staged a series of demonstrations and strikes that grew larger weekly, surviving both intimidation and general expectations of failure...
...While they lash out at specific targets, entire constituencies get the message...
...The Cerezo government did not prosecute human rights criminals of past military regimes...
...Pro- and anti-coup factions seem to have reached an uneasy compromise: destabilize the Cerezo government just short of overthrowing it...
...and it is here that U.S...
...Government measures lifting price controls on food, bus transportation and other necessities placed them beyond reach...
...But up to what point will popular protest be tolerated by the army...
...None of our problems have been resolved," answered one labor leader...
...it is impotent to stop their activity in the present, or even to keep them out of government posts...
...Virtually all political parties support such talks, but the army remains intransigent...
...People in Washington-in fact, people high up in the White House-have told me off the record that they regard Cerezo's position as hypocritical...
...It is testing the limits of Guatemalan "democracy" and challenging right-wing pressures to "close the spaces" opened by the experiment with civilian government...
...The government has no real answers for the deepening economic crisis...
...How is it possible, I asked one participant after another, that it is now experiencing a resurgence unmatched since the late 1970s...
...countries, and no attempt to limit the activities of right-wing terrorists in or out of the security forces...
...Keeping the Space Open All summer long, even at a time of increasing right-wing political violence, a crescendo of protest rose from the streets of the popular barrios...
...On the negotiating table this time was Cerezo's policy towards Nicaragua, the last progressive card in his deck...
...Even after two major army offensives in the last year, insurgent operations have increased in several parts of the country...
...The Shultz visit also stirred up a longstanding, very live debate within the Guatemalan army between the proponents of "active neutrality" and those who see it as inconsistent with anti-subversive policies at home...
...Of course," he concluded, "we have to think about an election in 1990...
...The hopes awakened by the return of civilian government have been dashed, as recent months have seen a precipitous rise in right-wing violence...
...The fact that there was no protest during those ten years doesn't mean that people went along with the conditions imposed on them...
...They've only gotten worse in the last ten years...
...The revolutionary Left has enjoyed a new presence in Guatemalan political life since the Central American peace process raised the issue of government negotiations with the URNG...
...Most of the Right's agenda has been met-no talk of land reform, no new taxes, no dialogue with the guerrillas, no new relations with socialist Susanne Jonas, who co-edited NACLA's 1974 book Guatemala, teaches Latin American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is on the staff of Global Options in San Francisco...
...Though he failed to get Guatemala to sign a strong condemnation of Nicaragua, Shultz did successfully undermine "active neurtrality" by the very fact that Cerezo agreed to a meeting in Guatemala that excluded Nicaragua...
...The United States is playing a double game in Guatemala...
...A medical clinic run by Father Andr6s Gir6n's peasant movement was firebombed and Gir6n himself was nearly assassinated...
...The president and his cabinet were also meeting in an emergency all-day session, as helicopters hovered above the National Palace and coup rumors spread...
...This sinister "message system" permits the ultra-Right to keep alive the specter of the open brutality and massacres of the early 1980s that cost 100,000 lives (mostly Indians) and destroyed 440 villages...
...The progressive weekly newspaper La Epoca, one of the only experiments in independent journalism in 35 years, was firebombed in June to underscore the limits of press freedom...
...To ease tensions, politicians are hoping to begin the 1990 presidential election season as early as this year...
...Neutralizing "Active Neutrality" Cerezo has tried to maintain some initiative for his stance of "active neutrality" in the conflict between the United States and Nicaragua...
...The Left At the same time, the guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), although by no means as strong as in the early 1980s, have shown a surprising capacity to act...
...High school students protesting the unsafe conditions of their school buildings clashed with police...
...H6ctor Gramajo-is tenuous and vacillating...
...In fact, its efforts in August to "alleviate" the galloping rise in the cost of living were so lame that they only fueled the fires of protest (hence, of course, the Right's coup threats to "restore order...
...The lesson for Latin America is clear: In a country where 80% of the population lives below the poverty line, social revolutionwhatever forms it may take-will remain on the agenda...
...In late August, a general strike call was adhered to by 50% of government employees, including the crucial electrical workers, who are well-organized in every province of the country...
...of State George Shultz's diplomatic blitz last August...
...In July, a criminal court judge presiding over the trial of top officials of the feared Treasury Police was kidnapped and held for several days...
...they had to be silent because of the repression...
...The Right thus ensures that all policies will be tailored to suit its interests-a "coup in stages," as one observer put it...
...The Right has taken to "sending messages" with greater fury...
...Particularly within the army, support for Cerezo-and thus for his defense minister, Gen...
...Many people became so angry that they began to lose their fear...
...Many call the Christian Democrats "watermelons": green on the outside, red on the inside...
...pressures have become crucial...
...In fact, the Reagan team has had close ties with these groups since 1980, when they were running Guatemala's infamous death squads...
...But as soon as there is any opening, you'll always see this kind of explosion...
...She is currently at work on a new book about Guatemala...
...In the wake of Shultz's visit, Guatemala shook with suspicious military maneuvers characteristic of a coup-the army's method of wresting concessions from Cerezo...
...In fact, since the day the peace accords were signed in August, 1987, the army has insisted that they "don't apply" to Guatemala, and Cerezo has followed suit...
...Even after 30 years of counterinsurgency and 200,000 civilian casualties, Washington's long-cherished goal of "stability" is receding farther into the distance...
...This policy was actually initiated by the military governments of the early 1980s, and is considered by many to be a "policy of state" rising above partisan politics...
...SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 Cerezo also faces opposition from less extreme sectors of the Right, who argue that the army handed power to the civilian government in 1986 only to see it frittered away by indecision, ineptitude and corruption...
...Two days after his release, he freed all the defendants...
...Beyond economic issues, labor's struggle has broader significance for Guatemala's political future, as several astute union leaders acknowledge...
...One official commented cynically on television that in Guatemala, being kidnapped is "part of the job description...
...The week ended with a tense 15-hour standoff between riot police and electrical workers furious at the state-owned company for withholding their paychecks in retaliation for a work stoppage...
...As of November, the lid appeared to be back on, but new eruptions are almost certain...
...Two days later, 40,000 workers marched in the pouring rain to kick off a series of work stoppages and strikes...
...Guatemalan neutrality just plays into the hands of the Nicaraguans," a leader of the ultra-Right Movimiento de Liberaci6n Nacional (MLN) told 7me the day after Sec...
...Certainly the army's boast of having reduced the guerrillas to a mere "annoyance," and Cerezo's announcement to the press that there are only 700 of them left, ring hollow...
Vol. 22 • August 1988 • No. 5
