Guatamela
Early this spring, almost 1,000 representatives of popular organizations gathered in Guatemala City to found the Democratic Front Against Repression (FDCR) whose single objective is to build...
...The concerted action of workers, students and shanty-town 38 dwellers bore unmistakable testimony to the intense polarization of classes that has taken place in Guatemala over the last three years...
...The problem of "self-defense for organizations, groups or individuals threatened by repression" is recognized by the FDCR as a vital aspect of its struggle...
...in the capital city, few people venture out after dark and visitors report almost nightly gunfire...
...The advance of the popular movement is associated with the creation of the National Committee for Trade Union Unity (CNUS), formed in the wake of the 1976 Coca Cola workers' strike...
...REVOLUTIONARY SUPPORT The formation of the FDCR has received expressions of support from both the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) and the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP...
...the former Secretary General, Israel Marquez, fled the country after several attempts on his life...
...There is also evidence of complicity on the part of both government and business in the assassination of Manuel Colom Argueta, the mayor of Guatemala City from 1970-1974, the leader of the moderate United Front of the Revolution (FUR) and a likely 1982 presidential candidate...
...The leadership of this union, perhaps the strongest union in Guatemala and a principal force in the CNUS, has been a prime target of the hit squads...
...Traditionally, the petty-bourgeoisie-shopkeepers, civil servants and intellectualsformed the ranks of the democratic, nationalist parties, Colom NACLA Reportupdate * update * update * update Argueta's FUR and Fuentes Mohr's Democratic Socialist Party (PSD), and, hence, were engaged in the very electoral politics so deeply suspected by the CNUS and other popular organizations...
...While government spokespersons place blame for these murders on the "fight between extreme right and extreme left," the materials and methods employed by the squads, as well as the impunity with which they act, point unequivocally to collusion between police and army intelligence units and the terrorists...
...Their participation in the FDCR expresses their recognition that only a structure completely independent of traditional political institutions can insure their survival...
...Following the 12-hour meeting, the newly painted walls of businesses and municipal buildings proclaimed: "Let no one give information or any kind of help to the repressive forces...
...Fifteen people have been murdered each day since the beginning of the year...
...In response to the "threat" posed by the popular movement, terrorist "hit squads"-the Secret Anti-Communist Army (ESAO) and the Armed Action Force (FADA)-have circulated death lists and undertaken the assassination of unionists, student leaders and university officials...
...THE DEMOCRATIC FRONT AGAINST REPRESSION The essential task of the FDCR, formed on the initiative of the CNUS, is "to defend our organizations to enable them to continue pushing forward the struggle for popular and democratic rights...
...Its most successful mass meeting was held in Nebaj where 4,000 Indian peasants and workers met for a full day with armed peasant guerrilla units of the EGP...
...Early this spring, almost 1,000 representatives of popular organizations gathered in Guatemala City to found the Democratic Front Against Repression (FDCR) whose single objective is to build a unified resistance against the campaign of terror raging in Guatemala...
...However, with the murders of Colom Argueta and Fuentes Mohr and the spread of repression to its own ranks, much of the pettybourgeoisie has begun to despair of electoral politics and to look instead to the popular movement or revolutionary organizations...
...Moreover, the EGP has conducted a series of armed propaganda actions throughout the country in an effort to build a united struggle against the enemy offensive...
...The latter was apparently organizing opposition to the government's economic development plans for Guatemala's "Northern Transversal Strip...
...Everyone organize to combat repression together...
...But the principal significance of the FDCR consists in the unity it has forged between formerly opposing forces...
...Our objective is the Revolution, the Popular War is the only road...
...THE COMPLICITY OF PRIVATE CAPITAL On April 5, Manuel Lopez Balam, the new Secretary General of the Coca Cola workers' union, was knifed to death while on his delivery route...
...While such violence and terror have been chronic in Guatemala since the CIA-backed establishment of a military dictatorship in 1954, the present campaign has a particular significance: it is aimed at crushing, not only peasant and guerrilla insurgency as in the past, but a rapidly growing mass movement, organized, shaped and inspired by working-class leadership...
...GUATEMALA THE POPULAR RESPONSE Charging company complicity in the assassination of their leadership, workers at Coca Cola pointed out that only Coke officials had access to the addresses and delivery routes of the slain unionists...
...Under the leadership of the CNUS, which has sought to build ties between the labor, peasant and student movements, the working class has conducted a series of militant actions, culminating last October in a four-day general strike aimed at blocking an attempted hike in busfares (See Update, Nov-Dec 1978 Report...
...Lopez Balam was the second union leader at Coca Cola killed in the space of a few months...
...His brother Gustavo has charged that at a meeting with private business leaders in March, senior army officers decided to assassinate Colom Argueta...
...Accordingly, security measures for meetings, demonstrations or threatened individuals are gradually being developed...
Vol. 13 • May 1979 • No. 3
