THE WIDER WAR: Guatemala
NACLA Report has been hampered in its objective by limited economic resources as well as cultural animosities that date back to the colonial period. (The Coast was colonized by England...
...VII, no...
...The military and landed oligarchy have perpetuated their privileges only by maintaining absolute political control-at best through electoral fraud, at worst violently...
...7. Isabel Letelier and Michael Moffitt, Human Rights, Economic Aid and Private Banks: The Case of Chile (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1978...
...Ibid...
...ALAI...
...Inforpress Centroamericana, May 21, 1981...
...In These Times, April 15-21, 1981...
...firms and affiliates in Guatemala...
...No one can any longer contend that there was anything internal about the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador and no Guatemalan can say that there is discontent within Guatemala...
...Even though agro-export is still the basis of the economy, manufacturing by 1977 accounted for a third of total foreign investment...
...Francisco Villagran Kramer, the rightwinger who resigned his vicepresidential position in disgust last year after first fleeing to the United States...
...5. Statement byJohn A. Bushnell, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Central American Review (United States Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs), March 5, 1981...
...It can submit a reprogramming of fiscal 1981 expenditures to the foreign operations subcommittees of the House and Senate which, based on past practice, may well approve the request for the "non-lethal" spare parts...
...Over the years there has emerged a small clique of high-level officers who not only defend, but embody those privileges...
...Interview with representative of FP-31 in Agence Latino-Americaine D'Information (ALAI), Vol...
...and the White Paper on El Salvador," The Nation, April 11, 1981...
...Diario Las Americas, June 6, 1981...
...3. Washington Post, April 22, 1981...
...cit., p. 20...
...4. See "Text of State Department Report on Communist Support of Salvadorean Rebels," New York Times, February 24, 1981...
...This position finds a small echo within the Guatemalan ruling class, but even such "reasonable" elements would be loathe to concede any but the most miniscule reforms...
...The PDC was the only non-rightest party to participate in the April 1980 municipal elections, scoring relatively well on the ballots...
...press treatment of the "captured documents," see Jonathan Maslow and Ana Arana, "Operation El Salvador," Columbia Journalism Review (New York), May-June, 1981...
...At the leadership level, assassinations of wellknown political figures like Alberto Fuentes Mohr of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and Manuel Colom Argueta of the moderate left United Revolutionary Front (FUR) were only a beginning...
...Endemic violence," proclaimed Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs John Bushnell, speaking of Guatemala, "is on the upswing, spawned in considerable measure by communist exploitation of traditional social and political inequities.'" Who is the enemy in this conspiratorial formulation...
...references ENTERING THE QUAGMIRE 1. Editorial, "Salvaging El Salvador," The New Republic, March 21, 1981, p. 5. 2. For an excellent analysis of these lessons unlearned, see Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (Boston: South End Press), 1979...
...By thus resuming the "dialogue," Washington might eventually succeed in persuading the Guatemalan ruling class to at least accept some social reforms...
...According to reliable reports, over 1,000 Guatemalan troops intervened on the Salvadorean side of their common border during the January offensive, with the tacit approval, if not active support, of the Carter Administration...
...There is also an unconfirmed report that the Administration is sounding out the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where it has majority support, about a possible Guatemalan purchase of 150 commercial trucks...
...towering white cathedrals, tributes in Every day more of the ladino and indigenous population Baroque stucco to this imperious seat of Central registers its discontent with arms...
...Previously, they were represented either by the organization of large capitalist growers (which joined the Council of State walkout in November) or by the Association of Rural Workers (ATC), neither of which addressed their real needs...
...And of course, the Guatemalans can paint the trucks olive green themselves...
...Ibid...
...Representing all union confederations except CUS and CTN, the creation of this Coordinating Committee culminated unity discussions begun last April...
...Communists," of course...
...5, No...
...As an added bonus, it could serve to expose more militant elements...
...the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP...
...Between June 1978 and February 1981, according to a new Amnesty International report, nearly 5,000 more people were "seized without warrant and killed," with another 615 missing.15 The report shows unequivocally that this wholesale slaughter operates "under the direct supervision of President Lucas Garcia [the General who succeeded Laugerud...
...3. Washington Post, February 20, 1981...
...He has shown himself determined to stop the revolutionary volcanos exploding one after another the length of Central America...
...1 3 This scenario was misguided in the extreme...
...actions...
...The liberal argument-which prevailed, at least publicly, to the end- was that a "democratization" scheme was fundamental...
...30MaylJune 1981 Today, grisly images intrude: a 55-year-old village woman, tortured and shot for denying knowledge of her son's whereabouts...
...a conservative priest shot in the head and dumped down a ravine for trying to reopen a diocese in violenceravaged Quiche...
...ALAI...
...The Reagan Administration has just sent down retired general and former CIA deputy director Vernon A. Walters to work out a way to circumvent the rider...
...Today there are 193 U.S...
...Acknowledging that 1982 will be a pivotal year for the popular and revolutionary groups, an FDCR representative said, "We are clear that peaceful options are closed.'" 18 Guatemala's revolutionary Left, too, has been accumulating forces with amazing rapidity since 1974, when increased repression against the peasantry in areas such as Quiche revitalized the decimated clandestine organizations...
...The Center Shall Not Hold In 1980 alone, the deaths included 110 trade union leaders, 311 farmworker leaders, 225 primary school teachers, 86 university professors, 389 university and secondary school students, 18 journalists, 4 priests and 37 political party leaders...
...The international religious community has made too strong a stand on El Salvador to be taken in by such maneuvers, particularly since many priests and lay workers have been victims of the regime's violence...
...5. Ralph McGehee, "The C.I.A...
...As one of the organizations put it, "The coming together of the armed struggle with other forms of mass struggle, implies that more and more the struggles of the popular organizations assume paramilitary forms and underground methods, while the armed struggle assumes a more massive character...
...Economic Commission for Latin America, Nicaragua: Economic Repercussions of Recent Political Events (New York: United Nations, September 1979), p. 43...
...John Dinges, "Documents Tell a Different Tale," In These Times (Chicago), April 1-7, 1981...
...4. London Times, February 22, 1981...
...In short, Washington will find itself standing alone in support of another old order that well may crumble in the next few years...
...Four pro-Sandinista parties, which last summer formed the Patriotic Revolutionary Front, played a major role in preparing the agenda for these meetings, and suggesting active forms of solidarity against aggression...
...The FP-31 sees itself as a serious attempt to deal with the formidable question of how to incorporate masses of people into the process of what is being called Revolutionary Popular War and prepare them for an insurrection under conditions of brutal government terrorism...
...Recent events, however, have shown the Reagan team, while still giving occasional lip service to improvements in the Guatemalan system, to be more indined to strengthen the hand of those within Guatemala who argue that the "Communist threat" must be met with old, trusted methods...
...XIV, No...
...Guerrilla groups active in the 1 9 6 0s had been totally defeated by this time and Guatemala was, except in a few rural areas, relatively free of grassroots activity...
...7. Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1981...
...Lars Schoultz, "Guatemala," a paper prepared for the State Department, December 1980...
...pf the labor force-30% are unemployed...
...2. Figures taken from a paid advertisement by Concerned Americans, Washington Post, February 8, 1981...
...Another proSandinista group participating in the meetings is the new Nicaraguan Trade Union Coordination Committee (CSN) established last November...
...Remaining neatly unaccused is the ruling class which has made violence "endemic" for the last 27 years and has turned social and political inequities into a grim "tradition...
...Costeilos still refer to people on the Pacific side as "the Spanish...
...34MaylJune 1981 ladino and indigenous sugar workers on the southern coast in February 1980...
...The letter will be sent to governments all over the world, most pointedly to the United States...
...Yet, since then, over 70 PDC officials and mayors have been murdered, while increasing repression is decimating the party's rank and file...
...In other words, in addition to the expected victims, referred to as "the torturable classes," a new category of people has been targeted-the middle-class base of a potential political center...
...James Petras, "White Paper on the White Paper," The Nation, March 28, 1981...
...4. Inforpress Centroamericana, November 27, 1980...
...and to Reggie Norton of the Washington Office on Latin America, who shared his knowledge of Guatemala's history and people...
...Thus, even before the Sandinistas' daring occupation of Nicaragua's National Palace in August 1978 shook the region's dictators, outgoing President Laugerud loosed a fierce wave of repression which has swelled to historically unprecedented levels in the last three years...
...New York Times, May 3, 1981...
...Diario Las Americas, June 10, 1981...
...cultural Workers Unity (CUC) formed in 1978 and joined the CNUS...
...2. EPICA Task Force, Nicaragua: A People's Revolution, Washington, D.C.: EPICA, 1980...
...New York Times, May 8, 1981...
...33 (June-July 1978), p. 508, and Monteforte Toledo, "Guatemala," p. 641...
...What exactly failed differs according to the different conceptions of what could be accomplished...
...5, No...
...Opening the Foodgates The Laugerud government had come to power in 1974 in a fraudulent election against a Christian Democrat-led coalition...
...Companero (Magazine of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor), no date, p. 1. 20...
...They have initiated a "unitary process [which] has resulted in the execution of coordinated plans...
...Francisco Villagran Kramer at a symposium on Central America sponsored by the Library of Congress, 1981...
...the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR...
...First, it is the northernmost buffer between revolutionary chaos and Mexico, a reality that unnerves Pentagon strategists far more than it seems to the current Mexican government...
...New York Times, April 21, 1981...
...From the Guatemalan side, this is nothing new...
...35 37 2. Testimony by Franklin Kramer, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, House Appropriations Subcommittee of Foreign Operations, March 25, 1980...
...Parade Magazine, March 15, 1981...
...8. "Socialist International Nicaragua Solidarity Committee Meets," Socialist International Press Release, 21/80, December 6, 1980...
...The Administration has dubbed this tactic "quiet diplomacy...
...Another level is written into the daily lives of children-80% suffer from malnutrition...
...For challenging (pardon, "exploiting") the status quo...
...American colonial rule...
...1 (January-February 1980), p. 29...
...6. Ibid...
...By any yardstick the question of reform or repression had already been resolved in Guatemala by 1978...
...as he explains, one cannot resist "aggression" and implement reforms at the same time...
...9 And now there is an even more powerful interest for the United States: oil wells loom tall on the strategic horizon...
...5, No...
...As an FP-31 representative and member of the CUC said, "In practice we find that the two issues, ethnicity and exploitation-that is, class struggle-are parallel...
...The Sandinistas have apparently redoubled their efforts to work with the new provisional leadership of Misurasata to reduce the tensions...
...Two oil fields in the jungles of Peten province are already pumping 6,000 barrels a day...
...and the Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms (ORPA...
...Each strong in different regions, their actions "now cover more than half of the country, including the most densely populated zones and those of greatest economic importance...
...Ibid...
...And finally, an estimated one million Nicaraguans-nearly half the population-have been marching with their neighborhood defense committees to polling sites to sign a Letter of Dignity which expresses their unity in the face of aggression...
...Within the logic of the Guatemalan system, this is a quite rational policy, since it eliminates the growth of the only political alternative the United States might tolerate...
...New York Times, February 13, 1981...
...Latin America Weekly Report (London), March 20, 1981...
...Since 58% of the registered electorate was too alienated to even vote, Laugerud's "modernizers" hypothesized that a limited amount of circumscribed reforms, accompanied by a decrease in generalized repression, might coopt strategic sectors of the labor force...
...This is the most effective object lesson for those centrist elements who hold to the delusion of a peaceful coexistence with Guatemala's ruling class...
...This seemingly benign order would break the ice for future spare parts requests...
...Latin America Weekly Report, May 15, 1981...
...In their initial conference, some 200 delegates to the CSN heatedly discussed the difficult issues facing workers in the coming period...
...NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...Amnesty International, Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder (New York: Amnesty International), 1981...
...XII, No...
...6 (November-December 1978), p. 9. 18...
...And the bottom 10% of the population eke out a livelihood from 0.5 % of the land while the top 10% control 81.4% .4 In the early 1950s, a president namedJacobo Arbenz tried to redress some of these injustices...
...20 They have learned from the mistakes of their past as well as from the experiences of neighboring revolutions, abandoning the purely foco strategy...
...The largest and most economically developed, Guatemala already represented as of a decade ago over 81% of all U.S...
...of the rural populace-90% can't read a word...
...Diario Las Americas, June 11, 1981...
...In this regard, the fate of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), the tamest of the country's centrist parties, is worthy of note...
...in recent months the number has climbed to 35 or 40 a day...
...In the last four years, said Villagran, Guatemala has purchased $270 million worth from more willing suppliers.12 These include Israel, Argentina, Spain and others...
...ated...
...As a result of efforts by the Confederation of Trade Union Unity and a progressive religious grouping called the Committee of Justice and Peace, a mass organization was formed whose primary function has been to publicly denounce the government's repressive tactics and farcical elections.' 7 Called the Democratic Front Against Repression (FDCR), it affiliates over 150 organizations, including the two small social democratic parties (PSD and FUR), church groups, trade unions, peasant organizations, the university, students and others...
...A Guatemalan Industrialist, Guatemala-the name used to evoke kaleidoscopic travel poster images: Mayan temple ruins straining through jungle overgrowth to touch the sun...
...Miami Herald, February 4, 1981...
...6. Editorial, Globe and Mail (Toronto), March 3, 1981...
...The FDCR in particular has a great deal of support from the Socialist International and individual governments in Europe, Canada and Mexico...
...In coordination with the four vanguard organizations, members of the FP-31 say they are undertaking more combative forms of struggle than can be carried out by the broader CNUS and FDCR, including sabotage and armed propaganda...
...Proclamacion del Frente Popular 31 de enero," ALAI, Vol...
...Moderate" conservatives in Washington argue that the crisis requires more than a military solution...
...3 5 The consolidation of UNAG is an important advance in providing the campesino base of the revolution with its own voice and enabling the government to help them increase much-needed food production...
...This newest of the Sandinista mass organizations represents the interests of more than 100,000 small and medium landowners, mostly producing basic foodstuffs for the domestic market...
...But Reagan faces real domestic and international problems by throwing his lot with Lucas...
...Ultimately it might even force the Right out of office, which State Department analysts brilliantly estimated was the prerequisite to any meaningful structural change...
...Central America Report, May 23, 1981...
...Aggression Accelerates Unity U.S...
...Washington Post, May 19, 1981...
...aggression, however, has had the countervailing effect of pulling some sectors closer together...
...There was no basis to believe that a ruling class which had violently maintained the status quo for decades would share, much less relinquish, any real power...
...The massacre of 114 Kekchi Indians demonstrating in a town called Panzos for the return of their lands in 1978 made world headlines, as did the infamous incident at the Spanish Embassy...
...12 (March 27, 1981), p. 135...
...Strategies for Central America," NACLA Report, Vol...
...As one journalist put it, "A list of the country's most powerful politicians and generals would duplicate a 'Who's Who' of the Guatemalan landowning class...
...8 (February 27, 1981), p. 88...
...Dissent Paper on El Salvador and Central America," DOS 11/6/80 (DM-ESCA #80-3), November 1980, p. 11...
...Its secretary general, Vinicio Cerezo, lives in semi-clandestinity surrounded by party militants who act as his armed guards...
...Interview with representative of the Democratic Front Against Repression, ALAI, Vol...
...After the wheat cutoff, the FSLN launched a worldwide protest campaign called Bread for Nicaragua, which has highlighted the violation of basic human rights inherent in the act of using food as a political weapon...
...8. Ibid...
...Ibid...
...Coercion had only resulted in a breakdown of communications between the two governments...
...nor about the armed takeovers of towns and farms by Indians who then communicate the ideas of their revolution to their brothers and sisters in their own languages (of which there are 22).23 Thus, for the first time in the history of Guatemala, the caste division between Indian and ladino* is being overcome...
...In either option, however, the human rights rider could be used to force a congressional examination of Guatemala's practice...
...3 4 Another new organization, the National Union of Farmers and Ranchers (UNAG) has just taken its two seats on the Council of State...
...The PDC is cowed, in complete disarray...
...Negotiations between the government and the officially unrecognized CNUS ultimately forced agroexporters to concede to a minimum wage increase from $1.20 per day for sugar workers to $3.20 for all agricultural workers...
...2 The Washington Post calls Guatemala, "a small, blood-stained country run by a rightwing military dictatorship regarded now as the most repressive in Latin America.' 3 What's more, torture and death are only the most visible signs of repression...
...Avances de la Revolucion Popular Sandinista (Managua: International Relations Department of the FSLN, January 1981), p. 13...
...It thus lent some credibility abroad to a meaningless exercise in which, typically, only 12.5% of an electorate of two million bothered to vote...
...Today that "specter" has been raised again...
...Companero...
...1 0 Exit Human Rights: Enter Red Threat In the grasp of Reagan's propagandists, the definitions that link U.S...
...Announcing the visit by Walters, the State Department trotted out its new rationale: given that there are now 2,000 "Cuban-supported Marxist guerrillas" operating in Guatemala, the Carter Administration's policy has "clearly failed...
...5. Washington Post, January 7, 1981...
...Latin America Regional Report, March 20, 1981...
...to Professor Piero Gleijeses, whose work provided the conceptual basisfor our analysis of Guatemala...
...Diario Las Americas, June 7, 1981...
...New York Times, May 7. 1981...
...Washington Post, May 9, 1981...
...Or it can invoke its power to arrange a government-to-government sale up to a maximum of $21 million...
...6 For the Reaganites, Guatemala is a crucial "domino" in their regional strategy of domination...
...In These Times, April 15-21, 1981...
...Many thanks to Peter Shiras, a free-lance writer who helped prepare the articles on Honduras and Nicaragua...
...The Administration has two ways to cooperate...
...8. NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol...
...New York Times, March 17, 1981...
...9. Latin America Weekly Report, May 8, 1981...
...In the midst of the Cold War hysteria he was branded a communist and overthrown in a coup engineered by the CIA...
...And why...
...needs...
...8. New York Times, April 30, 1981...
...Press release, Democratic Front Against Repression, February 17, 1981...
...Also, Hodding Carter III's critical commentary on press coverage, "The El Salvador Crusade," Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1981...
...GUATEMALA 1. New York Times, May 10, 1981...
...9. New York Times, June 3, 1981...
...4. Jeremiah O'Sullivan-Ryan, "El rol de la informacion en la vida del agricultor de subsistencia: Un estudio en el altiplano de Guatemala," Estudios Centroamericanos, No...
...Interview with representatives of FP-31, ALAI...
...What the Guatemalan military is hurting for is spare parts for their fleet of Huey helicopters and C-47 transport planes, and in general they would prefer U.S...
...investment in Central America...
...Soon after its inception, the CNUS began work stoppages all over the country, particularly in protest against the mounting attacks on Coca Cola workers...
...Second, it would be useful not to have all of Guatemala's well-equipped and trained 18,000-man Army tied up with internal preoccupations...
...The Guatemalan government is too clearly implicated in the violence to be treated as anything but a pariah in international circles...
...involvement in El Salvador will surely include Guatemala as soon as Reagan makes his first overt move...
...First, a study by the Nutritional Institute for Central America and Panama showed that meeting only the very basic needs of rural workers requires a minimum of $8.60 per day, and second, the government is turning a blind eye to the fact that many bosses have refused to pay the increase...
...and] led to a consensus on important strategic and tactical points and joint initiatives...
...As recently as February, he survived an assault on the party headquarters 33NACLA Report led by the military's notorious Sixth Batallion...
...From a talk by Dr...
...The Challenge from Below The pervasive violence of the last three years has mobilized the population at large, moving many to more radical positions...
...The comment of a Guatemalan rightwinger-"We have terrorized those Christian Democrat leaders that aren't dead''--is a fitting description of the country's political life...
...5. New York Times, April 2, 1981...
...3. For more information on the origins and role of CONDECA, see, "U.S...
...6. Clifford Krauss, "Guatemala's Indian Wars," The Nation, March 14, 1981...
...According to one report, "Military strategists around President Lucas Garcia have estimated that 50,000 'subversives' will have to be elimin*While this was an astounding victory in Guatemalan terms, there are qualifiers...
...In the countryside, the Committee of Agri32MaylJune 1981 Back view of off-limits Presidential Palace Annex-a documented torture center...
...NICARAGUA 1. New York Times, May 8, 1981...
...6. Latin America Weekly Report (London), April 3, 1981...
...5, No...
...7. Piero Gleijeses, "Perspectives of a Regime's Transformation in Guatemala," paper prepared for the Second Expert Discusson on "Central America: Perspectives After the Sandinist Revolution in Nicaragua," sponsored by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bonn, West Germany, March 9-11, 1981...
...Said Walters: the Army high command would have to assure that political assassinations would be "controlled...
...Both want an end to domestic turmoil, seemingly at any cost...
...The private sector, divided on the question of aid cutoffs, is participating albeit warily, and slowly, in preparations for a forum to explore ways to further national unity in the face of U.S...
...Intercontinental Press, December 1, 1980...
...Even Carter was not so blinded by human rights concerns that he failed to see a regional military role for Guatemala...
...The four main groups are the Guatemalan Workers Party (PGT), a split from the traditional Communist party...
...How will he confront yet another people for whom death, be it by hunger or violence, is nothing new...
...9. Reggie Norton, unpublished manuscript, 1981...
...But little is known of the work stoppages and strikes carried out by the sugar cane cutters, the coffee and cotton pickers--Indians, for the most part...
...Intercontinental Press, December 1, 15, 1980...
...Greater participation for parliamentary opposition parties would theoretically draw the apathetic "silent majority" back into the electoral arena and undercut the growing radicalization of moderate political forces...
...3 (1980), p. 32...
...n But Guatemala is not hurting for military equipment, according to Dr...
...For an excellent analysis of U.S...
...Indigenous Incorporation Perhaps the most crucial development of the recent period is that in ever larger numbers the indigenous peoples, four million out of a total population of seven million, are integrating into the political-military organizations, particularly the EGP and the FAR, or into militant mass organizations such as the CUC...
...While at that rate a week's output barely supplies Guatemala with a day's worth of oil for its own use, new explorations being conducted by Texaco and Amoco promise to supply 10% of U.S...
...In 1977, Congress attached a rider to the military aid bill, prohibiting assistance to countries engaged in "gross and consistent" violations of human rights...
...Washington Post, June 9, 1981...
...GUATEMALA We are in the middle of a professional war between the United States and Russia...
...Programa Economico de Austeridad y Eficiencia '81 (Managua), 1981...
...Even if the Christian Democratic Party, or a sector of it, joined the 1982 elections, chances are the charade would not wash internationally...
...13 (April 3, 1981), p. 150...
...Within two years a number of workers' organizations formed the independent National Committee of Trade Union Unity (CNUS...
...placid Indian women weaving cloth patches of brightly ordered color and intricate symbols...
...25 Options for the Reaganauts This, then is the reality Reagan confronts in Guatemala...
...military aid to the end of human rights "abuses" in Guatemala will be stretched to the breaking point...
...And finally, the mushrooming domestic opposition to U.S...
...Therefore, argues theAdministration, echoing Carter hardliners like Viron Vaky, then Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, renew military assistance...
...Latin America Weekly Report, May 15, 1981...
...7 Guatemala is the only one of the strife-torn Central American countries that has any economic importance to the United States in its own right...
...The Coast was colonized by England which helped its inhabitants successfully fight Spanish incursions for almost 400 years...
...Toward this end, the major parties usually offer military officers as their presidential candidates...
...trade terms to those offered by Israel...
...3. Intercontinental Press, April 13, 1981, p. 352...
...9. Sources for this example, and many others, include: Wall Street Journal, June 8, 1981...
...Twenty-five thousand people have been similarly assassinated in the last 15 years...
...Interview with CNUS member in "Guatemala: La lucha de los trabajadores por un gobierno revolucionario," Cuadernos de CIDAMO (Mexico), No...
...In fact, the slackening of repression revealed the seething radicalization of large sectors of the population...
...Intercontinental Press, April 20, 1981...
...Inforpress Centroamericana, April 9, 23, 30, 1981...
...Agence Latino-Americaine D'Information (ALAI), Vol...
...1 4 But given conditions in Guatemala today, quiet diplomacy is nothing but a duplicitous euphemism for silent approval...
...19 The groups are moving to overcome past divisions...
...The Reagan Administration offers a more modest proposal...
...It will assure that isolation if it wades even deeper into the Big Muddy-intervening militarily to avoid accepting the victory of the revolutionary forces in Guatemala...
...2 4 The most significant concrete example of this was a paralyzing strike by 75,000 * Ladino refers to the population that is not indigenous or has abandoned its Indian cultural heritage...
...Ibid...
...General Kjell Laugerud-whose regime was one of the more "moderately" repressive in Guatemala's history -jumped before he was hit, pridefully declining to 31NACLA Report request any further aid...
...2 ' A New Instance of Struggle The meeting point of these two aspects of struggle is embodied in the creation of the January 31 Popular Front (FP-31), announced publicly in January 1981.22 Named for the date of the slaughter of 27 protestors, the majority Indian, in the Spanish Embassy in 1980, it groups six revolutionary grassroots organizations, including the massive Committee of Agricultural Workers (CUC...
...A Lethal Alliance A shameless alliance is becoming manifest between the Guatemalan Right and the Reagan Administration...
...8 (February 27, 1981), p. 90...
...New York Times, June 8, 1981...
...5 (May-June, 1973...
...7. Wheaton, op...
...These days, in fact, the most talkedabout candidate for the hitherto touted 1982 presidential election is Mario Sandoval Alarcon, founder of Guatemala's notorious death squad, Mano Blanco...
...26 For Reagan it's a matter of taking a little bad with the good...
Vol. 15 • May 1981 • No. 3
