Guatemala's Conversion
S., J.
The coup that brought General Rios Montt to power on March 23, 1982, came in response to fraudu- lent elections earlier that month, in which the government of General Lucas Garcia tried to prolong...
...But the massacres continue-3,000 to 8,000 dead in the highlands since the March coup...
...Both are part of a single unity presided over by God...
...guerrillas still controlled the next hamlet, four kilometers away across the cornfields...
...Once favorable to the coup, Cerezo now says that any hopes of democratization are absurd as long as Rios Montt stays in power...
...Only the Army remains impressed with the new head of state...
...instead of the elections they expected within 60 days of the coup, Rios Montt has banned all political party activity until 1985...
...The first, Salquil Grande, had just been bombed flat by the Army and was crawling with troops busy "relocating" the population...
...Our interview with the leader of Guatemala's Christian Democratic Party, Vinicio Cerezo, took place with Cerezo surrounded by three heavily armed bodyguards...
...The coup was backed by most of the Army and by centrist and farright parties who saw it paving the way for clean elections...
...We found little evidence that he has managed to achieve any of these goals...
...Congressional oposition thus far has blocked any direct military transfers to Guatemala, but the State Department is now pushing several ostensibly humanitarian grants through multilateral lending institutions...
...The Reagan Administration has not failed for lack of trying...
...Only one priest remains in the whole department, placed there recently by the conservative cardinal of Guatemala City...
...Chontala was the scene of an Army massacre last December...
...The civic action strategy here centers on redistributing the corn and beans that villagers had contributed to guerrilla food caches in the area, and creating Civil Defense Patrols-under military supervision-to "protect" the hamlet...
...All criticism is ascribed to a sophisticated "international communist conspiracy,"-with Amnesty International high on Rios Montt's list of communist stooges...
...The military commander of El Quiche told us that the Army's counterinsurgency operations make "no distinction between the communist subversives and the Catholic Church...
...They are one and the same thing...
...It was eerily desolate...
...The coup that brought General Rios Montt to power on March 23, 1982, came in response to fraudu- lent elections earlier that month, in which the government of General Lucas Garcia tried to prolong its rule...
...But the political parties that originally backed the coup are profoundly disillusioned...
...When questioned about any contradiction between his religious convictions and his command of an army notorious for its human rights abuses, Rios Montt replied: "There is no contradiction...
...In rural areas, the Army's new tactics have put the revolutionary movement on the defensive since the coup...
...The regime's attitude toward international opinion is deeply ambiguous...
...But the rest of the military is more realistic, and they are bitterly resentful of the Reagan Administration's failure to live up to its campaign promises...
...NACLA Report x aU 0 42update update update update May, after repeated threats from paramilitary bands...
...Areas which the Army previously avoided are now the object of surgically executed counterattacks, followed by the classic trappings of civic action-army bulldozers cutting new roads, construction teams building markets and health centers...
...The evidence of that is one of the most enduring images of El Quiche: dozens of boarded-up churches...
...The second, San Sebastian Lemoa, had been abandoned by its 900 inhabitants in Guatemalan counterinsurgency troops on patrol in Quiche province...
...The urban middle class desperately wants to believe that Rios Montt can perform miracles, and many have turned to his brand of evangelism...
...One such grant is an $18 million IDB loan for a rural telephone systemaid which will directly support the Army's intelligence operations in the northwestern highlands...
...now it's a hearts-and-minds showcase which the Army is keen to display to foreign visitors...
...Certainly, Guatemala City is now quiet and Lucas Garcia's paramilitary thugs are no longer visible on the streets...
...We visited three villages in El Quiche, each of which illustrates a different facet of the war...
...Rios Montt, flying in the face of all the facts of economic collapse, insists that they can manage without aid: "Everyone can eat beans and maize...
...Rios Montt was the Army's chosen figure for three basic purposes: to regain international prestige, to broaden the social base of the regime and erode support for the guerrillas, and to unite a badly divided Army and improve its combat morale...
...Perhaps the Reagan people will take our needs seriously," said the Quiche commander, "when 80 million Mexicans have died under the boot of Soviet terror...
...And the third, Chontala, had been retaken from guerrilla forces only three weeks earlier...
...If they don't like it, they can leave the country...
...The problem for the regime comes in reconciling this cavalier attitude toward world opinion with its pressing need for foreign aid...
...Rios Montt's concept of counterinsurgency-combined with a moralizing program of civic action-is more sophisticated than his predecessor's and more popular with field commanders...
...Just as we arrived, eight members of the far-right MLN party were arrested for plotting a coup against the government, and MLN vice presidential candidate Leonel Sisniega -a key figure in organizing the March 23rd coup-was in hiding...
...All the early rhetoric about changing the Army's corrupt and violent practices has been abandoned, and no officers from the previous regime have been purged...
...Since everything in Chontala was expertly stage-managed for our benefit, one can only question the "voluntary" character of these patrols...
Vol. 16 • September 1982 • No. 5
