Under the Gun
Black, George
I: THE STRATEGY SERGEANT JULIO CORSANTES ONLY JOIN- ed the Guatemalan Army in 1981. For 22 years before that, he was a schoolteacher, and at first glance he still seems an improbable soldier. He...
...Hugo Alvarez G6mez, Centro de Estudios Militares, Guatemala City, October 18, 1985...
...From this experience, Army theorists like Col...
...The electoral fraud this time was too flagrant...
...A seventh was planned for the department of Solold...
...1 0 - 1 3 . 3. Estado Mayor General del Ej6rcito, Plan Nacional de Seguridad y Desarrollo, Anexo "H" (Ordenes permanentes para el desarrollo de operaciones contrasubversivas) al plan de campafia "Victoria 82," Guatemala City, July 16, 1982...
...Modern National Security embraces all activities connected to the nation, whether state or private...
...Further decrees in January and August 1983 stipulated full military control of food distribution in "conflict areas...
...Their eyes devoid of expression, the villagers sing the national anthem, the Army anthem and the song of the Civil Defense Patrol: I am a victorious soldier of the Civil Defense, Always side by side like a brother with the brave Army...
...Most officers now say the innovations were devised by the high command in the "new era" that followed the fall of Lucas Garcia in March 1982...
...other foreign supporters are more vital...
...that is why it was necessary to combat it using the same methods, and that is why we entered the era of ideological, military and developmental operations...
...4 6 "We left our aldea, and the Army came...
...Prensa Libre (Guatemala City), July 3, 1985...
...They will assemble work-details, plan visits by health promoters and teachers, decide on the location of latrines.20 There may be upward of 2,000 S-5 troops in Guatemala: the exact figure is classified...
...The model village strategy speaks of the need to acquire private land to spur the growth of more sophisticated agro-industrial enterprises, in line with the recommendations of "Operaci6n Ixil" back in 1981.30 Yet in practice, areas like Las Violetas remain in private hands unless the refugees themselves can purchase their plots...
...Fernando Mat6n P6rez of the Local Development Committee says the villagers and refugees are trying to raise the money, though many have no cash income...
...He wrote, "The EGP has been successful from the outset by offering the Guatemalan Indian a hope of dignity which had never before been offered in more than 400 years of humiliation and misery...
...More mime: "We beat them there with sticks...
...Neutrality, as many observers have pointed out, is a luxury the Army does not permit in the highlands...
...EARTS AND MINDS AND SIMPLE ECOnomics coincide neatly in the model village program...
...Today, the 28 colonels in charge of regional garrisons earn a handsome 18,000 quetzales a month-half of it paid in dollars.* W ITH THE CRACKS IN ITS OWN RANKS papered over, the Army drew up its next two annual plans-Reencuentro Institucional 84 and Estabilidad 85...
...an intensive, profound and carefully studied psychological campaign to rescue the Ixil mentality . . in the same way as the EGP has spoken to them about realities, for example "you are poor...
...military officer familiar with command structures commented in an interview that, "To make S-5 coequal at the staff level is an act of great sophistication...
...If the first part of the threat called for a new kind of counterinsurgency warfare, the second could only be neutralized internationally by means of "elections with a massive turnout, in order that . . no one may cast any doubts on the purity of the event...
...The country needs their enterprise and the jobs they provide...
...armed paramilitary squads of small farmers, often tied to the far-rightist National Liberation Movement (MLN), were crucial to the success of the Army's anti-guerrilla offensive in the late 1960s...
...Rodolfo Lobos Zamora to ministers and state functionaries, October 26, 1984, in Polos de Desarrollo y Servicios: Historiografia Institucional (Guatemala: Editorial del Ejdrcito, February 1985), pp.55-59...
...Juan Fernando Cifuentes presented to his colleagues a detailed set of proposals for "Operaci6n Ixil...
...He was lured back into politics after Gen...
...Lobos argued that there were two facets to the military threat which the Army had faced since 1980...
...Mat6n agrees: "The subversives put things into their heads that are not the truth...
...Cdsar Ciseres, Deputy Chief of General Staff, "Discurso en la ocasion del ascenso del General Rodolfo Lobos Zamora," Revista Militar (Guatemala: Centro de Estudios Militares), no.31 (January-April 1984), pp...
...Nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record...
...Today, the "Avenue of the Republic of China" in the model village of Acul bears witness to Taiwan's influence in the current phase...
...At the heart of the Army's strategy since 1982 is the certainty that new agreements must be worked out between the military, the oligarchy and the political parties: that is the only means of breathing new life into the old system...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22None of them, however, had enough space for maneuver to offer policies that would seriously threaten either the Army or the oligarchy...
...Revista Militar no.28 (January-April 1983), p. 1 3 8 . 30...
...Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo was one...
...Taken as a whole, the measures gave the military a virtually free hand to run the country...
...And last, does Cerezo, the likely next president, alarm the military any more than the other candidates...
...In 1984, Orwell described Winston Smith's job in the Ministry of Truth: This process of continuous alteration was applied...
...III: THE COUNTRYSIDE L OBOS ZAMORA WAS DESCRIBING A RADIcal break from traditional civic action, of the sort the Guatemalan Army and its U.S...
...Author's interview with Col...
...Marco Antonio Sanchez told the young officers: From the days when we used to go out on operations with our Schmeisser submachinegun and little else . . . the methods of combat have evolved...
...Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date...
...Overriding all other imperatives, then, is the Army's constant need to safeguard its own interests...
...Defending its record, the Army says resources are not available for longer term investment plans...
...Yet at the same time it is a world away, just as the brave talk of elected office is far removed from the realities of military power...
...by this point, the Army evidently felt it had put most of the *For many years the quetzal remained at par with the U.S...
...They knew there were guerrillas in that area, so they came into the mountains...
...it has fed them, clothed them and re-educated them...
...4 0 In addition to taking over the World Food Program, the CRN centralized all international relief aid to the "conflict areas" and decided on how it should be allocated...
...The Nebaj commander has between two and three hundred men out in the field on permanent patrol...
...Mejia Victores speech at inauguration of Chacaj development pole, November 30, 1984...
...reform of the tax base, one of the lowest in the world, was also not on the agenda...
...in the 1960s a rural guerrilla movement headed by dissident Army officers...
...Did they ask the Army to bring them down...
...However, every time the Army thinks about a coup, it will have to weigh what that would mean-aborting the democratic process, and going back to the way things were, only this time with a doubly frustrated popula- tion...
...In essence, the program is based on eroding ethnic identity among Guatemala's Mayan Indian majority, and on brainwashing...
...By rote, he gives the approved version of events...
...By August 1983, the high command decided it had come to the end of the road with Rios Montt...
...Only at the lowest levels of the pyramid-the Municipal Coordinator (CIM) or the village Local Development Committee (CDL)--do civilians have even nominal authority, in the shape of the major or auxiliary mayor...
...George Orwell, 1984 (New York: New American Library, 1983), p. 3 6 . 48...
...The ones from my village were old people...
...CRN, "Informe 1984...
...One group said, "We were frightened...
...The guerrillas made promises they could not keep: they said you would be driving Mercedes Benz's in six months...
...But the relationship escalated after a visit to Taiwan in early 1983 by Guatemalan Chief of Staff Gen...
...Author's interview with Sgt...
...7 Army decision-making passed to a collegiate structure of top officers, the 28-man Council of Commanders...
...Since the inhabitants of Saraxoch were "rescued" two and a half years ago, S-5 has brought in agronomists and ethnographers to study them...
...ine ic transfer of real be a handover of fo "ys of consolidating mn to tion...
...The system allowed a narrow range of civilian politicians to play the electoral game, but never to win...
...Ej6rcito coordina reconstrucci6n de cuarenta y cuatro poblaciones: Resurgen los poblados arrasados por la delincuencia subversiva," Revista Militar, no.31, p.87...
...At the end of 1984, Mejia Victores announced that the Army had distributed WFP food rations to 500,000 people in the Guatemalan highlands during the course of the year...
...SHADOW PLAY "How was that...
...Author's interview with Sgt...
...Author's interview with members of civil defense patrol, Acul, Quiche, October 13, 1985...
...Elections will give it an accurate barometer of the relative strength of the parties, in the secure knowledge that no single group will be strong enough to impose hostile views or unsettle the status quo...
...The Army understands that a coup could lead to all out war, which the Army could well lose...
...The directives of the 1982 counterinsurgency plan--"The Minds of the population are our principal target"--are never far from the soldiers' thoughts...
...So the realm of civilian government is for civilians...
...A coup could lead to the destruction of Guatemala...
...He gestures at the refugees...
...Hugo Alvarez...
...also, "Instituto Geogrifico Militar: nueva dependencia t6cnico-cientifica del Ministerio de la Defensa Nacional," Revista Militar, no.31 (January-April 1984), pp...
...We must know how to fight and defeat the enemy in the terrain of ideas...
...the remainder of the ballots were cast for a bewildering array of parties, scattered and fractured by Rios Montt's ban on party activities...
...Mejia Victores paid him a call in his Costa Rican exile...
...The guerrillas told us the Army would kill us if they found us, but we decided we were going to die anyway of starvation and disease...
...They have been at the mercy of the elements for as much as three years...
...The Army learned important psychological lessons from its study of EGP strategy...
...4 2 T HE ARMY HAS SATURATED THE GUATEmalan countryside with barracks and bases, regular troops and paramilitary patrols, resettlement camps and model villages...
...20, Santa Cruz del Quiche, October 14, 1985...
...The model villages brought the forced integration of different ethnic groups: Ixil and Quich6 together in Acul, for example...
...Author's interviews, Rio Azul and Santa Cruz del Quiche, October 13-14, 1985...
...Who were they...
...The CI system and the development poles were set up by the following series of decrees and government accords: Acuerdos Gubemativos nos...
...de Navio Juan Fernando Cifuentes, "Operaci6n Ixil," Revista Militar, no.27 (September-December 1982), pp.25-72...
...Author's interviews with Oscar Gallegos, CRN executive secretary, and Rub6n Bailey, head of model village design team, Guatemala City, October 16, 1985...
...The tone was self-confident...
...After 1978, it began using the Reconstruction Committees to coordinate the activities of state agencies in a wide range of rural programs: from health, education and housing to infrastructure, services and finance...
...The ruling military elite showed no ability to halt the slide of a once booming economy...
...Their greatest strength lay in the three towns of the so-called Ixil Triangle: Santa Maria Nebaj, San Juan Cotzal and San Gaspar Chajul, in the northern part of the Quich6...
...screens the group for new, loyal community leaders...
...3 ' As far back as 1981, "Operaci6n lxil" had foreseen that this would mean adopting...
...By counting orphans of the violence, it estimated that from 1981-1984 between 36,000 and 72,000 Guatemalans had died...
...Mario L6pez Fuentes and then head of civilian affairs Col...
...With the accompanying rhetoric of "bottom-up planning," and "maximizing local resources," the Army has created a deformed mirror-image of the guerrillas' own philosophy of mass involvement...
...43...
...also Junta Militar de Gobierno, Objetivos Nacionales Actuales, Guatemala City, March 23, 1982...
...So I would give them a plate of beans, a tortilla...
...With the political system so fragmented, this is no great problem for the Army...
...In this view, the carnage of 1982 was not an outright victory to end the war, but merely the latest success in an unending series of battles...
...No, here we plan to keep them involved...
...Cerezo has modified his way of thinking...
...Kekchi and Pocomchi in Saraxoch...
...For officers like Captain Joaquin Sosa Batres, once a senior aide to President Efrain Rios Montt, and now head of S-5 in the Quich6 town of Uspantin, Security and Development is a simple matter...
...No," he says, "They were living in caves...
...Who better than the Army to be the main bulwark for integrating our national identity...
...International donors have taken care of that...
...The process of consolidation was only interrupted by a change at the top...
...Hugo Alvarez...
...By the end of 1983, one priest claimed, fifteen or sixteen thousand people had died, most of them Indian villagers...
...The moment the Army leaves, the sickness will strike them down again...
...L AS VIOLETAS LIES IN A HOLLOW, A TENminute walk down a twisting, muddy path from the outskirts of Nebaj...
...In other words, once security is achieved, the Army penetrates the population to encourage development...
...The "Food for Work" program spares the economically strapped government the headache of providing wages, and has kept the development poles within budget...
...In the aftermath, the Army decided that its strongest card with the civilian population was the charge that the guerrillas had broken their promises to bring about rapid change in the nation's power structure, and to orotect non-combatants against Army reprisals...
...G6mez turns defensive at this...
...oitsneg, to its ideg minine what I REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 24For them it's the other way round...
...In a novel liaison program, the Taiwanese mission trains Guatemalan soldiers in advanced agrarian techniques...
...murdered children remain uncounted...
...I know the experience of Mendez Montenegro, and I know that he failed because he accepted the Army's conditions...
...5 4 - 5 8 . 7. Ley Constitutiva del Ejercito, December 8, 1983...
...It could pave the way for power to be irretrievably centered in the military, not the civilian government...
...In its boldest stratagem, S-5 has tried to turn Indian allegiances around on the most basic and traumatic truth of all: that it was the Army who massacred their families and destroyed their villages in the first place...
...When the subversives began to lose support in 1982, they turned on the civilian population, kidnapped thousands and forced them into the mountains...
...The Food for Work programs, the forced labor, the daily assemblies, have all inculcated the values of mass involvement in Security and Development...
...A: The point is that if I win the elections, this will be useful to the Army, because it will help Guatemala to break out of its international isolation...
...S-5 troops may operate either in uniform or in civilian clothes...
...The idea came from Guatemala's brilliant foreign minister, Fernando Andrade Diaz-Durin, an adviser to the Army for 20 years...
...Diario de Centroamgrica, March 5, 1985...
...A: Alfonsin-style trials would be very difficult here, because the Guatemalan Army is not an Army in defeat like in Argentina...
...Cifuentes proposed that a sweeping list of activities should be taken under military command, with the Army's civilian affairs division in charge...
...we lack a national identity...
...2. Col...
...intelligence operations expanded...
...At that time, L6pez had recounted the story of what happened when the Army found them...
...Three years after the worst of the fighting, these military operations continue...
...Author's interview with Lt...
...It speaks incessantly of its "granitelike unity...
...The situation was so acute that the military opted for a coup and a period of direct military rule...
...That's the way you get things done...
...In response, the military drew up a Plan of Action of Maximum Priority requiring "all public sector institutions to take part in the execution of the plan at the summons of the Chief of Staff of National Defense...
...They still come down in scattered handfuls, smaller groups than before, but more frequent: one day 25, then 60, the next week maybe 40...
...Like this...
...The new dimension was making the system nationwide, harnessing it to the counterinsurgency war and creating a new Army section to run the public sector...
...Jose Lisandro Garcia Arandi, Nebaj, Quich6, October 13, 1985...
...The first was "the new modality of subversive aggression" in the villages of the highlands...
...now, however, they have enough guns for most of their duty roster, thanks in large part to a shipment of 12,000 second-hand Remington rifles from Israel...
...Ibid...
...Two, slap them down...
...Though their strategies have grown more sophisticated in response to changing realities, *Lobos Zamora is the key figure in the Guatemalan Army today...
...Worst of all, a guerrilla war threatened to engulf the old ruling order once and for all...
...With the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, Guatemala was an international outcast...
...That's the philosophy of the World Food Program...
...In an effort to stem conflict within the Army, Mejia Victores swiftly restored its traditional vertical hierarchy...
...All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.47 Each dawn in Saraxoch, the flag is raised...
...At the outset they were pitifully armed...
...2. Rescue where possible individual members of the [guerrillas'] Irregular Local Forces (FIL), neutralizing or eliminating any who do not wish to be integrated into normal life...
...The first part of the strategy was the military campaign plan Victoria 82, whose central thrust emerged clearly from its appendix of standing orders to field commands: 3 1. Deny the subversives access to the population who constitute their political and social base of support...
...They serve the Army as a human trip-wire in every highland community, a permanent "cop on the beat" to monitor the movement of people from one aldea to the next, or act as knowledgeable trackers for Army patrols in search of villagers still wandering in the mountains...
...They thought we might be subversives, because we had run away from the Army...
...Agrarian reform, the root of Guatemala's problems, was off limits...
...The question is too much for him...
...Operaci6n Ixil: plan de Asuntos Civiles...
...Sgnchez went on to explain that the basis of ideological warfare was the projection of "authentic Guatemalan nationalism...
...They are verbal agreements among gentlemen...
...Between 1976 and 1980, the Army, working through the CRN, took control of the distribution of bank credits to many impoverished rural areas-areas that subsequently became the main theater of the counterinsurgency war...
...And that was only the adults...
...Cifuentes, "Apreciaci6n de Asuntos Civiles," pp.44-45...
...On June 22, 1984, in his closing speech to the first graduating class of the Army's new School of Ideological Warfare, Col...
...The National Reconstruction Committee...
...We have been in a permanent state of war ever since international communism began to attack us...
...It isn't the same to work under a civilian as under a military man, someone who has access to materials and communications and who can coordinate work in the conflict zones...
...T HE IDEA OF COORDINATION AMONG VARious institutions was not without precedent in Guatemala...
...L T. COL...
...Enemy action can only be neutralized, and the support of the Ixil population won by Army civilian affairs units, by offering them realities and producing immediate results...
...One of the few advantages with the Army is that their reasons for defending the institution are not neces- sarily ideological...
...E NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 23SHADOW PLAYVs A SHADOW PLAY EL SENOR PRESIDENTE...
...That's why the Army brings them here, so nobody will kill them...
...How...
...Since 1981, the Army has believed that its primary means of dismantling the guerrillas' political influence is to secure permanent access to the population, and then to insist on obligatory mass involvement in rural security and development initiatives...
...In that sense, they will try to use me, or any other elected civilian president, because breaking the country's isolation means opening the doors for new military aid to the Army...
...Military action had been carried out "satisfactorily" from 1977-1981, said Cifuentes, but, "As is natural in this kind of action, the resentment of the civilian population has spread alarmingly without any apparent peaceful solution...
...They were burned, but it was all the guerrillas' fault...
...and "Una soluci6n a la Operaci6n Ixil," reference JE/CEM, Gua-040940JUN/1981...
...EWM/MAB, December 1982...
...many recent recruits are women...
...We want you to graduate convinced of the need to be ideologically strong, in these times when the outlandish violence of foreign doctrines, alien to our Guatemalan idiosyncracies and customs, is trying to destroy our Army...
...A: Maybe they will, but I won't do it...
...Chacaj, in northwest Huehuetenango, was built principally to entice refugees back from Mexico...
...Garcia Arindi of Nebaj...
...The Civil Defense Patrols' main task is intelligence rather than combat...
...they've just come out of the hospital...
...Estabilidad 85 called for presidential elections late in the year, as well as a continuing diplomatic effort to usher Guatemala back into the community of civilized nations...
...eader Vinicio Cere...
...CRN/ara...
...The institution, its structures, rules and hierarchy, are considered sacrosanct...
...I think they have realized that for years they have accumulated great power, but also a very bad reputation...
...Troop strength grew to 40,000...
...their worldview has remained remarkably constant over the last thirty years...
...5 - 1 0 . 12...
...One, help them...
...HE THIRD FEATURE OF THE ARMY IS ITS intense chauvinism...
...If I did that, I'd be committing suicide...
...Mejia Victores was only being frank when he gaid, "We will never organize a fraud...
...The subversives are just waiting for us to leave...
...Although the figure is classified, Army officers interviewed agreed that 2,000 was a reasonable minimum estimate, based on one company of S-5 troops in each of 22 departments, with more in major conflict areas...
...The land at Las Violetas is owned by an absentee landlord, Don Guillermo Samayoa Brol, whose asking price is 25,000 quetzales-$6,580...
...He rounded out the list of Army responsibilities with "fine arts and religious affairs," adding laconically that "the profession of the faith will be guaranteed as long as it is not contrary to the interests of the State...
...7 The idea worked to the satisfaction of the High Command, and as conflict spread through the highlands, the Army set up similar units in the departments of Alta Verapaz and Huehuetenango...
...The new Section of Civilian Affairs and Community Development, S-5, had sweeping powers...
...In December he decreed a new Army law, which reaffirmed that military "organization is hierarchical, and based on the principles of discipline and obedience...
...9. Gen...
...Sinchez continued: The existence of 23 ethnic groups, with their different languages and dialects, demonstrates that in practice we are not integrated...
...In Saraxoch, part of the Chisec pole, Sgt...
...First Rios Montt, then Mejia Victores, had found that to push through modest increases in indirect taxation was beyond even the Army's considerable powers...
...We have to make them tell us the truth, tell us where their things were...
...T HE SAME YEAR BROUGHT IMPORTANT changes to the military itself, as well as new legislation which expanded its powers...
...Polos de Desarrollo, pp.32-48...
...his Army camouflage uniform is an uncomfortably tight fit, and the Uzi submachinegun looks a little out of place slung over the shoulder of a heavy-set man in his mid-forties...
...FBIS-LAM, June 22, 1984...
...Because there are others who will kill them...
...He was educated at Fort Benning, Ga., Colombia's Infantry School and the Inter-American Defense College...
...Cifuentes, "Apreciaci6n de Asuntos Civiles," pp.38-39, 44-48...
...The CRN also supervised the creation of fledgling Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees in a dozen of Guatemala's 22 departments...
...Civilians only ever do things for their own narrow political interests...
...It's a matter of survival, and that means strategic questions can be discussed...
...The budget allowed just Q. 14 million...
...There will be no explanation of the fate of the thousands of desaparecidos...
...They can't live in the aldeas any more, so they come here...
...And were people killed...
...Subsequent events reinforced the vision...
...That's a worse crime than breaking the constitution...
...As such it is we who have to respond to the country's needs...
...and Col...
...Both groups disparage the counterinsurgency of the Lucas period for dealing with guerrillas by purely military means...
...The civilian candidates, especially Cerezo, are well aware that this situation has a precedent in Guatemalan history...
...Even so, there are limits to the Army's tolerance...
...It turned them into a caste...
...Author's interview, Tzalcol camp, Cobin, Alta Verapaz, November 29, 1983...
...Historia del Comit6 de Reconstrucci6n Nacional...
...In December 1982 it brought the National Geographical Institute under the Defense Ministry, the latest addition to a list that already included the state telecommunications facility (GUATEL), the electricity board (INDE) and the disaster relief organization (CONE...
...Q: At the same time, the Army has utter contempt for civilian leadership in the countryside...
...Well, we had to torture them...
...Some were killed...
...6. Decreto-Ley 90-84, September 10, 1984...
...Comit6 de Reconstrucci6n Nacional (CRN), "Informe 1984," Diario de Centroamrica, December 24, 1984...
...more likely an ex-soldier or the head of the Civil Defense Patrol...
...Corruption was out of control...
...This Week in Central America and Panama (Guatemala City), August 5, 1985...
...liux 15SHADOW PLAY trolled administrative decentralization," the poles provided equally controlled resettlement for the internal refugees from the 440 villages which the Army now acknowledges were destroyed in counterinsurgency operations in 1982-1983...
...How could this same Army have killed your families...
...advisers had employed in an earlier counterinsurgency war in the mid1960s...
...Decreto-Ley no.65-84, in Polos de Desarrollo, pp.5-7...
...Since the collapse of the old electoral system in March 1982, the Army has redefined the spectrum of politicians who are allowed to take part...
...The second, however, came from outside Guatemala...
...aid will have its price...
...Federico Fuentes Corado was plotting a reformist coup, he was replaced by a tough Air Force officer from military intelligence, Col...
...By December 22, Acul was complete...
...Subversion had put in twelve years of good political work in the region...
...With the Army's creation of S-5, and the revamping 20REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 20of the Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees in October 1983, the CRN's role expanded...
...Q: Do you think the United States will back you...
...They were living in her aldea (hamlet), but the people from the civil defense patrol arrived to take them out of that place and brought them down here...
...2 The coup brought to power General Efrain Rios Montt, who put entire stretches of his country to the sword...
...In a modern, coercive variant on that system, the entire infrastructure of the model villages has been built by community work gangs...
...Isafas Contreras...
...Julio Corsantes...
...He immediately reinstated the notorious gastos confidenciales-discretionary expenses-that Rios Montt had halved, and raised the pay of field commanders...
...6 - 1 3 . 38...
...The EGP called the village "La Montafiita"-the little mountain...
...The 1983 plan, ushered in by the Mejia Victores regime and called Firmeza 83, aimed to consolidate the "pacification" of the previous year...
...He is exSergeant Rosalfo G6mez, a fifteen-year veteran who quit the Army in December 1984, but still accompanies troops on patrols into the mountain aldeas...
...Was she living in her house in Tucalami...
...After 1975 Lobos held a series of crucial field commands, culminating in Guatemala City's Mariscal Zavala Brigade--the country's most important...
...25...
...only to be replaced by a pervasive para-militarization of the communities, under the control of the Army's S-5...
...Yet progress has been so rudimentary as to suggest a lack of serious intent...
...The Army introduced "castellanizacidn" programs into schools to wean children away from indigenous languages...
...28 U.S.i Guatemalan relations are, however, far from fully rehabilitated...
...they need to be taken care of...
...In Guatemala, peasant labor has traditionally been paid partly in cash and partly in kind...
...They are liabilities in the international arena, and economic adversaries of an Army grown too greedy...
...One, help them...
...Acuerdo Gubernativo 801-84 of September 12, 1984...
...We are going to listen to the Army's opinions and integrate them, but civilians are going to take the decisions...
...Garcia Arindi recommends a visit to the transit camp of Las Violetas...
...At intervals, military helicopters clatter overhead, drowning out conversation...
...objectives must be set in accordance with the real possibilities of the country and the character of the locality...
...Herman Grotewold...
...Within days of the coup, the rural death toll was in four figures...
...Q: Do you ever feel that the Army is using you...
...It concluded that prom18REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 18ises counted...
...Because the subversives were bothering us...
...I don't like to say the word...
...Yet it has also realized that no amount of committees, bulldozers or guns will work if the hearts and minds of the population remain beyond the Army's grasp...
...My position is that the only thing a Guatema- lan politician cannot accept is to lose the confidence of the people...
...Author's interview with Col...
...store civitian power...
...From the creation of a string of model villages and "development poles," to the establishment of new agencies and bureaucratic structures in the countryside, to arrive at its eventual goal of a two-round presidential election in November and December 1985...
...I only believe in a real democratic process, not a masquerade...
...Three times a day, at dawn, noon and dusk, the villagers assemble in military formation to salute the blue-andwhite flag of Guatemala...
...As the counterinsurgency manual used in CEM classes emphasizes, "Countersubversive war is total, permanent and universal...
...But during 1984-1985 the quetzal collapsed, and at press time was changing hands at 3.80 to the dollar...
...When the tide of the war turned, the villagers went through a year-long ordeal of Army killings, flight into the mountains, near starvation and surrender...
...This is to rectify the weaknesses of our society...
...They are not run-of-the-mill conscripts, but specialists...
...Decreto-Ley 65-84 of June 27, 1984...
...assigns a model village for the refugees' eventual relocation...
...An Ixil-speaking widow and her three small children have just arrived from the hamlet of Tucalama...
...They wanted to run the government...
...Julio Corsantes, Saraxoch, Alta Verapaz, October 11, 1985...
...Some officers suggest they will be off limits...
...The Army retains veto power...
...Today, L6pez tells a different story...
...By 1983, a military munitions plant in Alta Verapaz was in full production to offset the reliance on foreign suppliers...
...The speech was an unusually frank public statement of the Army's national security priorities...
...Douglas Wuj, Cobin, Alta Verapaz, October 11, 1985...
...The CRN was set up by the military government a month after the devastating earthquake of February 1976...
...In a speech to cabinet ministers and other top government officials in October 1984, Chief of Staff Lobos Zamora described the accomplishments of the preceding three years...
...Julio Corsantes speaks for his colleagues in S-5: "No, we can't leave these people, because these are conflict areas...
...9 S-5 would also run the model village program, the development poles and the one million strong Civil Defense Patrols...
...3 In 1981 and 1982, the Army debated several options for dealing with the ethnic problem...
...Colonel Hugo Alvarez, a senior instructor at Guatemala's Center for Military Studies (CEM), and a key figure in developing the Army's theory of national security, believes that "We are at war in Guatemala...
...3 These "immediate results" have been brought to the highland conflict areas by means of forced labor...
...The most widely publicized facet of Victoria 82 was Rios Montt's program of Fusiles y Frijoles--Guns and Beans-which aimed to feed the survivors of the 1982 terror...
...It resettled those displaced by the conflict, built a new infrastructure and spoke of moving ahead from "pre-development" to development...
...An Army officer formerly involved in S-5 responded: "Fixing the wage at 3.20 was a big political error by Lucas Garcia under pressure from the terrorists, who had a strategy to destroy the economy...
...also "Decilogo PAAC," undated internal memorandum...
...It has physically uprooted entire communities, disrupted age-old patterns of settlement and decided that tens of thousands of people shall move to new homes...
...and that the guerrillas' weak point was to have over-extended themselves...
...Under the Gun 1. Author's interview with Capt...
...Cifuentes, "Apreciaci6n de Asuntos Civiles," p.49...
...The presumed guerrilla sympathizers were to be Meiia Victores: A four-vear master Dlan NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 I1Re SHADOWt e AmYras SHADOW PLAY "rescued," and given emergency shelter...
...Fernando Mat6n P6rez, president of the Local Development Committee, comes along...
...In November, the Army granted itself precedence over civilian legal authorities in the countryside...
...He makes a twisting motion as if breaking the neck of a chicken...
...Since 1983, the visible presence of regular Army troops in the smaller, less strategically important villages has diminished...
...From an original target strength of 40,000 in 1982, the patrols grew to 300,000 in 1983, and then to their present size of one million: in other words, every Indian adult male in Guatemala...
...CRN Executive Secretary Oscar Gallegos laughs at the idea: "Look, this one, of all the institutions, is the one that most needs to be kept under military control...
...Firmeza 83 took the logic of guns and beans one step further...
...We are not going to kick the Army out altogether, because that was another mistake that was made in the past...
...Well, it wasn't the guerrillas who did it...
...In the end, the High Command decided that this crude approach would be counter-productive, driving the Indians further into the arms of the guerrillas...
...Q: Does that mean that you reject an Alfonshn-type approach of military trials or sacking senior officers...
...Domestically, I can also use the Army...
...The second special characteristic of the Guatemalan military is its all-embracing conception of national security...
...Other diehard loyalists say Rios Montt himself was the guiding spirit...
...Coming in the middle of an economic recession, the effect of this had been to interfere with the military and financial aid "which might help Guatemala to defeat subversion...
...On each occasion, the Army has beaten back the subversive menace, and eliminated those contaminated by its influence...
...Amidst stacks of gray concrete prefabricated latrines for the model villages, and warehouses full of WFP food sacks, the CRN occupies a rabbit-warren of offices and warehouses in an outlying industrial zone of Guatemala City...
...On October 12, 1983, the Army began work on Acul, its showcase model village...
...The law creating the new body stipulated that its director must be a military officer on active duty...
...In July 1983, shortly after the villagers surrendered after 13 months in the mountains, they were interned in a camp next to the Cobdn Army base...
...Author's interviews with Sub-Lt...
...One senior officer explained that, "The difference is that the United States has never had to fight a war in its own territory...
...the Army can now even claim that the spectrum has a genuine left pole...
...Two, slap them down" For my country Guatemala, my blue and white flag, For my homeland, my ideals, I shall fight like a wild beast...
...This month's voting was planned from the outset to be the culmination of a transitional period whose starting point was the massacres of 1982-1983...
...When there are military operations in the mountains, these civilians take the opportunity to come down to the town with the patrols...
...In 1966, the Army allowed a civilian, Julio C6sar M6ndez Montenegro, to take office, but only after he had signed a 16-point written agreement giving the Army carte blanche over national security affairs...
...1 3 9 - 1 4 2 . 44...
...Plan Nacional de Seguridad y Desarrollo, Anexo "H" al plan de campafia "Victoria 82...
...it has listened to daily talks on civics, democracy and nationalism and watched lectures on Guatemala's patriotic symbols ("Poor Guatemala," the old joke goes, "even our national flower, the monja blanca, is a parasite...
...Alvarez goes on to explain that each new metamorphosis of the war demands fresh responses, and since the nature of subversion is to insinuate itself into every level of society, the doctrine of national security must be equally far-reaching: "National Security is a social condition . . . the synonym of integral peace...
...Gustavo Rosales, deputy commander Zona Militar no...
...A: Totally...
...First, the officer corps sees Guatemala as a frontline garrison of immense strategic value, defying an international communist conspiracy of monstrous proportions and infinite cunning and subtlety...
...They had places where they stored arms, they even had tunnels and everything...
...government will pitch in as well...
...The Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) controlled much of this territory back in 1982...
...4 ' After suspicions that CRN director Gen...
...The Army also shored up its already impressive control of state agencies, and broadened its definition of those agencies it considered crucial to national security...
...Luis Francisco Rios Mejia...
...T HE LAST KEY AGENCY IN THIS MOSAIC of military power is the National Reconstruction Committee (CRN...
...And if they lose prestige, they are condemned to be an Army of occupa- tion...
...Las Violetas was designed as a point of attraction...
...Sgt...
...The other is to turn the formal trappings of political office back to an elected civilian president...
...in September 1984 the high command acknowledged that a second factory was operating in Santa Ana Berlin, producing armored cars called "armadillos...
...He estimates that there are still more than 6,000 civilian refugees up in the mountains of the northern Quichd...
...we choose model places where all the conditions for development coincide...
...We realize this will be a serious problem...
...What was G6mez doing on patrol in the first place...
...The political realm, and security matters-those we can discuss with the Army...
...Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-LAM), September 7, 1982...
...The goal was still, in Mejia Victores' memorable phrase, to "do away with the words 'Indian' and 'indigenous.' "45 IN FRONT OF THE VILLAGE FLAGPOLE, AT the foot of the monumental concrete staircase, the Avenue of Development and the Avenue of Security open out into the central square of Saraxoch...
...Whenever they found people they would start firing...
...These days he's more tolerant...
...So this is the crux of the debate, and we will put it on the negotiating table from day one of the new government...
...Rios Montt briefly put a stop to this behavior, but Mejfa Victores restored business as usual...
...But in Las Violetas we couldn't raise the money.'2 In 1984, the Army calculated that the development poles would cost Q.358 million...
...26 The priority plan covered four development poles, embracing the most critical areas of counterinsurgency...
...see also Guatemala: Revista Cultural del Ejircito, Vol.2 no.3 (January-February 1985...
...but both formed part of a single coherent conception...
...It is a temporary holding camp for newly "rescued" Indians, a straggle of makeshift huts hemmed in by steep slopes and a rushing stream...
...Those who win wars don't worry about how or why they won: all that matters is that they won...
...By 1981-1982, it was operating in the inaccessible mountains of the northwest, this time through a new kind of guerrilla organization that aimed to win over the Mayan Indian population...
...Each dusk, it is ceremonially lowered...
...to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance...
...The Army will be part of local planning, but it won't be in charge...
...When they get to the coast, they find that no farmers are paying the daily minimum wage of Q.3.20 decreed NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 19ReoDr o he Amrca SHADOW PLAY "No work projects, no food" in 1980, when the currency was worth almost four times its current value...
...While these still called for extensive counterinsurgency operations, the "rescue" of remaining internal refugees and ongoing work on the model villages, the plans' main goals were in the larger political arena of elections and image-building...
...He looks away, suddenly reticent, and gestures toward his groin...
...On October 18, the Army unveiled a new structure of "Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees" under military leadership, which brought the entire rural civilian bureaucracy into line behind national security goals...
...Lobos Zamora speech, in Polos de Desarrollo...
...author's interviews with S-5 officers, Cobin, Alta Verapaz and Uspantin, Quicbe...
...The Guatemalan Army feels that it is victorious, and it's right-no matter what the cost...
...Hugo Alvarez...
...For a time the Army toyed with the idea of bringing about stability through an officially endorsed 20-year government, in which leaders of four center to right parties would alternate five-year terms in office by common accord...
...Wearing military uniforms--' 'to discredit the Army"-the subversives burned the refugees' crops and houses, and massacred all those who refused to cooperate...
...In fact, the Army has not even had to pay for the food...
...14 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON THE AMERICAS pieces of the puzzle together...
...Even if Cerezo still sticks in the throats of some military officers, most have reasoned that he offers them their best meal ticket...
...The Army estimated that the EGP had 1,200 armed combatants in the Ixil Triangle...
...The worst thing for democratization in Guatemala would be to make a deal and have the Army go on ruling...
...In the mountains, we only ate wild plants and grasses, a little corn if we could...
...If the Army's survival can be guaranteed within a democratic system, they will accept it...
...no Alfonsin-style trials of military officers...
...So they had nowhere to live...
...Under Rios Montt's successor, General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, who took power in a coup and declared himself "Head of State" on August 8, 1983, the plan has progressed apace...
...Because these people don't know how to think...
...The most radical was laid out as part of the "Operaci6n Ixil," whose author suggested the Army might consider . . devoting the entire effort of the civilian affairs unit to accomplish the mission assigned to it by intensifying the ladinizaci6n of the Ixiles, so that they disappear as a cultural subgroup alien to the national way of being...
...The Army recruits many of them for their experience in intelliIxil Triangle: A permanent state of war REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16gence work, their aptitude for psychological operations or their qualities of leadership in the indigenous communities...
...The model villages...
...But the system became an integral part of its control of the countryside, and it continued...
...How then are civilians chosen for the committees at the municipal and local level...
...Neutral in the sense that they are backing the democratization, but no direct support for me...
...One, which inREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 10volves a network of agencies headed by S-5, is to address the political side of counterinsurgency warfare, to win Indian loyalties...
...Speech by Gen...
...I think we'll suc- ceed if we manage to use the forces within the Army who are in favor of the democratic opening...
...They can help me push through the economic and social changes that are needed...
...The fourth component in the Army's vision of its NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 I 13ReSHADOW, e AYrcs SHADOW PLAY role is a contempt for civilians...
...For me, the fear of a coup is not out of the question...
...At the highest level, the National Coordinator (CIN) is presided over by Chief of Staff Lobos Zamora...
...5. El Grdfico (Guatemala City), September 7, 1984...
...and begins the long, tenacious job of re-education...
...Oscar Humberto Mejia Vfctores, "Mensaje de aiio nuevo," El Imparcial (Guatemala City), January 11, 1985...
...Joaquin Sosa Batres, head of S-5, Uspantin, El Quiche, October 12, 1985...
...In his 1985 New Year's message, General Mejia Victores reported that S-5 had been created "as part of the General Staff of each regional military command, with the principal mission of acting as coordinator of the Public Sector, and of being secretary ex-officio of the Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees at the departmental level...
...They were just little houses of sticks and branches...
...A substantial number are bilingual...
...Historia del Comit6 de Reconstrucci6n Nacional," internal CRN memorandum ref...
...It is the cutting edge of a new philosophy, which the Guatemalan Army calls "Security and Development...
...If I become president, I have good friends among the liberals in Congress, and they can lend me a hand...
...Marco Antonio Sfnchez Samayoa, Discurso pronunciado en ocasi6n de clausurarse el primer curso de Guerra Ideol6gica, Centro de Estudios Militares, June 22, 1984, in Revista Militar, no.34 (January-April 1985), pp...
...To re-establish the constitutional order of the country as a matter of urgency...
...All civilian politicians are corrupt," says Colonel Alvarez in a matterof-fact way...
...It has moved from wholesale massacres-what Rios Montt called his "policy of scorched communists' '--to the massive relocation of internal refugees...
...They were tricked...
...Though the Army says that refugees stay only a week at Las Violetas, there are families who have been there for six months or more...
...Well, because they couldn't run fast, so the bullets hit them here, in the back, and they fell...
...In May and June 1981, Navy Capt...
...Playa Grande, on the northern boundaries of Quich6 and Alta Verapaz, was designed to resettle both groups...
...Hugo Alvarez concluded that the essence of national security planning must be realism, "in order to avoid provoking frustrations...
...Yes, in her house...
...By March 1982, however, this system had unravelled in chaos...
...The new CRN chief became planning director of the Coordinating Committee system at the departmental and lower levels...
...One young officer in Cobin expressed the contempt that many military men feel for their civilian counterparts: "In small towns, the auxiliary mayor can barely read and write...
...In May, the Army created a chain of new zonal commands--one in each of 22 departments, parallel to Guatemala's civilian administrative structure...
...Why did she come to Nebaj...
...The Army tried a primitive early version of the system during the 1960s, after it had wiped out a guerrilla threat in the departments of Izabal and Zacapa...
...In a sense, the Army's entire strategy hinges on its ability to deny or reverse that truth...
...but the Army was generous, was it not...
...That figure sounded a macabre exaggeration, until a Guatemalan government census published its findings in late 1984...
...But they have to be firmly convinced of this...
...The Army has also realized, however, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 21 that the biggest obstacle to its ideological work, and so to the counterinsurgency program as a whole, is the fact that Guatemala is not a single nation...
...How do you know the guerrillas burned them...
...2 A basic goal of the model village program is to diversify economic activity...
...On these, the officer corps appears unanimous and unbending.s 0 The Civil Defense Patrols...
...there are scattered fishponds and pig-breeding projects, often of Taiwanese origin...
...At best, it could mean infecting the civilian authorities with the military's get-it-done mentality...
...Capt...
...Cifuentes was one of several officers who realized that the latest breed of guerrillas presented the Army with a new kind of political challenge...
...That means you earn 45 or 60 quetzales a month...
...The two largest, the Ixil Triangle and Chisec, in the northern part of Alta Verapaz, aimed to resettle internal refugees starved down from the mountains...
...A great way of doing things," commented Sgt...
...For much of the period since the CIA coup of 1954, the Army rotated the presidential office among its generals at four-year intervals, in a system of limited democracy...
...his secretary is S-5 director Col...
...3 5 "" J 1 N TWENTY-FOUR HOURS," WROTE THE army journal Revista Militar, "it is possible to assemble 3,000 or more voluntary workers to undertake the construction of a road, a school, irrigation projects, a whole city, any project no matter how large.''36 The subject of the article was not the Food for Work program, but the ubiquitous Civil Defense Patrols (PAC), which the Army regards as its first line of rural defense, as well as its most useful tool for mobilization and population control...
...They had caves, so they buried themselves away there...
...How come...
...RDDM, Departamento de Capacitaci6n, Divisi6n de Extensi6n, 1985...
...Under the regimes of three successive military presidents from 1970 to 1982-Generals Carlos Arana Osorio, Kjell Laugerud Garcia and Romeo Lucas Garcia-the Army caste grew rich, skimming off millions of dollars from public works projects and arms deals, and taking over scores of state agencies that provided scope for graft on a grand scale...
...periodic sweeps can involve as many as 2,000 soldiers...
...Julio Corsantes in Saraxoch...
...Less aid, more autonomy...
...We pluck out the outstanding people in the community," says Col...
...Today, the Army has reverted to the original name of Saraxoch, and has erected a sign at the entrance which proclaims it "an ideologically new anti-subversive community...
...In an earlier stage of the Guatemalan war, Israel, and to a lesser extent Chile and Argentina, stepped in with arms, intelligence and advisers...
...The same month, the Army assumed control over FYDEP, the development agency for the vast lowland department of the Pet6n, an area larger than El Salvador and the scene of frequent guerrilla attacks by the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR).' Finally, in early 1985, the Army took over the international airport...
...The chief of staff ended his speech by paying tribute to the Army's new combination of military and psychological operations, and quoted approvingly from the standing orders issued to troops: You will conduct operations of security, development, countersubversion and ideological warfare...
...Guatemala turned even its pariah status to its advantage, and built a selfimage of defiant pride in going it alone...
...But development is a civilian matter...
...To have the S-5 section in the wrong hands could be a disaster...
...The backbone of military strategy for these last four years has been the National Plan of Security and Development, a classified document approved by Rios Montt on April 1, 1982...
...Now Taiwan blends advice on agriculture with help on psychological warfare...
...In an aggressive speech in August 1985, Col...
...Along comes an Army officer, with technical skills and an education...
...Because we are all brothers...
...Gallegos laughs again: "There is always likely to be conflict...
...Gabriel Angel Castafieda, "La Guatemalidad y la autodefensa civil," Revista Militar, no.27 (September-December 1982), pp...
...Although the United States had trained and equipped the modern Guatemalan Army during the 1950s and 1960s, the country's abysmal human rights record forced it to fight the dirty war of 1982-1983 without U.S...
...But I hope the U.S...
...We have no need to.,48 The last four years have seen a serious realignment of Guatemala's political parties...
...But at the same time it's a very professional Army...
...it would leave the Army in a disastrous state...
...In the 1950s it infiltrated Guatemala through Arbenz's agrarian reform...
...Why did the Army burn their houses...
...Why can't they live there...
...The Army just sends patrols up, and the patrols know they're there, and they just find them and bring them down...
...No...
...What did you do...
...Ibid., pp.65-70...
...Q: When Julio Cesar M6ndez Montenegro became president in 1966, he had to sign a written agreement with the Army...
...Then the people would feel defrauded by civilian rule...
...if thepe;ifthe people lose their faith in democracy, that is worse than any military coup...
...3. Eliminate the enemy's Permanent Military Units (UMP...
...He has something of a weight problem...
...JOSE LISANDRO GARCIA ARANDI, commander of the garrison town of Nebaj, has a full company of S-5 troops to run civilian affairs in the Ixil Triangle, first and largest of the development poles...
...The friendship is of long standing: the Taiwanese and Guatemalan military establishments forged close ties through the activities of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), and Taiwan has had an agricultural mission in Guatemala since 1973...
...Since 1982, Alvarez says, "There can be no military power without national development, and vice-versa...
...The Civil Defense Patrols have made the villagers the military's accomplices in arms...
...Gustavo Rosales...
...2 4 To see the next phase, Lt...
...Yet for all the talk of the Army as a "moral force," most observers would agree that corruption, as much as ideology, is what makes the Guatemalan Army tick, and why it is so obsessed with preserving its institutional integrity...
...Newer parties of the center-whether real, or merely self-defined-have moved into the vacuum...
...While the Army provided the guns, the CRN provided the beans, through its Plan of Assistance to Conflict Areas (PAAC)--the most important non-military component of the Army's National Plan of Security and Development...
...After four years of service, however, Julio Corsantes is commander of the military detachment in a model village in the highlands of Alta Verapaz...
...No work projects, no food...
...We may provoke a coup, but that's the risk we have to take...
...In fact the "new" approach, with its emphasis on civilian affairs, began in 1981, well before Lucas was ousted...
...What happened to their houses...
...We have built some very impressive laboratories with the Indians...
...Author's interviews, October 7-20, 1985...
...The Army is the only moral force in Guatemala...
...In any event, "someone who understands that the population has to be given some bread as well as the whip...
...Virtually nothing was exempt: civil government, legal affairs, public security, public health, social welfare, public finance, education, labor, commercial and industrial activity, agriculture, price controls and rationing, property registers, supplies, public works, communications, transport, information and broadcasting (in conjunction with Army psychological operations, or "Psyops"), and displaced persons...
...Civilian leadership in the Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees ? - "Maybe," another colonel shrugs...
...The game has been staged in such a way that the Army can coexist with any of the likely winners...
...S-5 is new, it is powerful and, in the Indian highlands, it is ubiquitous...
...It has created a complex fabric of new agencies, programs and bureaucratic structures, and begun to address new ways of organizing the rural economy...
...The people here are like patients who are convalescing...
...5 - 9 . 32...
...Scorched earth to clean elections may seem a long way...
...And what happened when you captured them...
...That goes nowhere...
...During the 1970s the conspiracy wore the mask of the Catholic Church and worked through the "urban fronts" of labor unions, academics and social democratic parties...
...8. Author's interview with Lt...
...Of course, I know that U.S...
...Military security is still the most visible element of the development poles...
...Working hand-in-hand with S-5, architects and technicians from the CRN designed the model villages, laying them out on neat grid plans that combined the rationalization of services with the need for security and surveillance...
...While S-5 was the dynamo in the field, the Reconstruction Committee offered technical back-up and controlled funds, resources and a large central bureaucracy...
...they are deceitful...
...At the head of the group stands Alejandro L6pez, the Pocomchi Indian designated by the Army to be president of the Local Development Committee...
...Hugo Alvarez, "Seguridad nacional y la politica de desarrollo nacional," Revista Militar, no.33 (September-December 1984) pp...
...It is given for a month, or a maximum of two months...
...Like a chameleon, the subversive conspiracy can take the most varied forms...
...So if we want to bring about peace in Guatemala, we can't have an amnesty for the guerrillas and then put the Army of- ficers on trial...
...And if the conflict stops in the future...
...The Ixiles understand that clearly, because they are poor...
...Afterwards it made me sad to see them like that, with no clothes on and their hands tied...
...2 7 Smaller poles took shape in Yanahi in the Pet6n, and in Senahdi/Yalijux in Alta Verapaz...
...The Army refuses to consider the option of expropriation...
...HE ARMY, WHICH HAS DOMINATED Guatemalan politics for more than three decades, has now made two strategic decisions...
...We have two ways of dealing with the civilian population," Sosa says with a broad grin...
...We will not abandon these areas of the country...
...I know the Guatemalan Army, and I know that they are very hardline about this...
...During the elections for the Constituent Assembly," explained one senior officer, "all the politicians were opposed to the PAC...
...Edgar HernAndez, regional commander of Alta Verapaz, warned that, The new civilian government will have to respect the Army's hierarchical order and constitutional law...
...Finally, the highly prized unity of the Army itself, the most powerful institution in Guatemala, was in danger...
...In the development poles, coordination may involve twenty or more state agencies under Army directionfrom the agricultural services agency (DIGESA) and the national housing bank (BANVI) to the technical training institute (INTECAP) and the reforestation program (INAFOR...
...The local Coordinating Committees will be run by elected officers, or by representatives of the civilian government...
...If there is a coup, it will be because the democratic sys- tem failed, and it would be a good thing for its failure to be made visible...
...The PAAC's first priority was to work in support of counterinsurgency operations in "areas of concentration of displaced persons under the protection of the Army...
...W ITHIN THOSE GROUNDRULES, THE Army has pre-emptively cordoned off those areas that it considers non-negotiable...
...Yes...
...But even worse, out of a total of 50,000 Ixil Indians, "As much as 50% of the population may collaborate with the enemy in espionage activities, principally by informing them of our movements...
...23 When the refugees reach Nebaj, or another military base, S-5 constructs a demographic profile by language group and village of origin, and gives the new arrivals food and medicine...
...That conviction has underpinned every key Army statement and document of the last four years, and it has given birth to a sustained program of ideological warfare and psychological operations...
...The re-education of the conflict areas begins by implanting doubts...
...After military sweeps through the region, the civilian affairs units (by now part of the new, expanded S-5) provided the basic machinery for running the next phase of operations...
...What else...
...By that point, the guerrilla movement had sown the threatening seeds of a new political loyalty in wide stretches of the higlands...
...Through their daily written reports-the patrol commander must be literatethey are uniquely placed to report to the Army on any unusual activities: strangers in the vicinity, mysterious behavior by a neighbor...
...WFP) 34 The United Nations, which runs the WFP, might disagree, but it has surrendered jurisdiction over food distribution to the Army...
...4 W E WANTED TO MAKE A VERY SPEV cial agricultural project out of Las Violetas," said Lt...
...Looking for the subversives...
...The Guatemalan Ministry of Health used to be in charge of channelling the WFP, but in 1982 the Army-run National Reconstruction Committee took over the program...
...The more aid they give, the greater the conditions...
...IV: THE ELECTION F ROM SARAXOCH TO GUATEMALA CITY IS only a four-hour drive...
...It offered food and shelter...
...Lobos continued: In this stage of the rural guerrilla war, there is also the action of large international groups, which from Washington, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Geneva and other cities, have unleashed a broad international campaign in support of subversion and against the Government and Army of Guatemala...
...Eduardo Wohlers, "Politica de los Frijoles," internal CRN memorandum ref...
...IN THE FOUR YEARS SINCE THE RIOS MONTT coup, the Guatemalan Army has completed several phases of a grand design...
...It was US...
...It has realized that povNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 25 For them tsl the debate i from day 0n fights are iii erty and misery are military matters of the highest priority, and that bothers them...
...II: THE INSTITUTION T HE ARMY'S FOUR-YEAR MASTER PLAN IS the brainchild of a group of strategists, ideologues and field commanders who form the top echelons of a unique institution...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12What happened to their houses...
...S-5 troops themselves take care of tasks as diverse as census-taking, relocation of the population and "psychological consolidation...
...They have been paid with food rations in the name of "making the peasants the subjects of their own future...
...A change would not be convenient...
...Despite its rhetoric of independence, the Army has counted heavily on foreign assistance to the model villages...
...But they were absolutely ignorant of the security problem...
...The Army General Staff recommended the creation of a pilot civilian affairs unit for the area, code-named PUMA in Army operations...
...The Coordinating Committees were revived for planning post-earthquake operations in 1976, but quickly fell into disuse again...
...They can't come alone because they will get killed on the road...
...In the "conflict areas" where the patrols' duties are most demanding, and may involve as much as one 24hour stint every week, peasants have traditionally supplemented their income by migrating to the southern coastal plantations in search of seasonal harvest work...
...On this point we are intransigent...
...Q.3.20 isn't a feasible wage, so there's no reason why it should be a legal norm...
...Above them, ultimate authority was vested in Mejia Victores and his new hardline appointee as chief of staff, General Rodolfo Lobos Zamora.* In 1983, the Army also upgraded its old division of military/civilian affairs...
...4. Ibid...
...771 and 772-83, of October 18, 1983...
...Because human rights are violated in the name of national security...
...In a speech in October 1984, Army Chief of Staff Lobos Zamora declared that, We Guatemalans can feel satisfied at being the first country in the world that has managed to inflict a substantial defeat on subversion by means of our own eminently nationalistic strategy and tactics, without outside assistance...
...1. lxil Triangle 2. Playa Grande 3. Chacaj 4. Chisec 5. Yanahi 6. SenahO 7. (proposed) Solola EN PAZ \. y,- y .s Guatemala a City mated that the EGP alone had gained "some 260,000 ideological sympathizers...
...We told them that the people wanted the patrols and the politicians couldn't touch them...
...It all depends on what kinds of individuals are running the Army...
...If he still has any radical tendencies, they will be held in check by the deals he will need to make with more conservative minority parties in order to take power...
...At first, the Army justified the Food for Work program as an emergency measure to replace crops burned or left unplanted during 1982...
...See map...
...If the new government tries to dissolve the PAC, the people will come down on their heads, with the Army right behind them...
...We have...
...Even Acul, the first and most physically developed of the villages, is producing neither new crops nor a cash surplus two years after its inauguration...
...This time, deals have been struck, but in a less crude fashion...
...Under Reencuentro Institucional 84, National Constituent Assembly elections were staged on July 1, 1984...
...It became an equal partner with the existing sections of Personnel/Administration (S-1), Intelligence (S-2), Operations (S-3) and Logistics (S-4)-a break with the traditional structure inherited from the U.S...
...The Army also hopes that the civilian government will respect the military's plans against subversion.49 And the institutional structures created by the Army since 1982...
...The study is divided into three parts: "Apreciaci6n de Asuntos Civiles (G-5) para el Area Ixil," Army reference U. de AACC, CEM/JFCH-armv, 250800MAY81...
...He is a member of its recently created Section of Civilian Affairs and Community Development, otherwise known simply as S-5...
...Don't you think the Army will ask the same of you...
...Julio Corsantes says that "Everything here came from AID: the new housing, the tin roofs, the cement, absolutely everything-todito--down to the last nail...
...The Army, in the words of one colonel, felt compelled "to assure the very survival of the state itself, since Guatemala was in serious danger of being erased from the list of countries capable of self-determination...
...The Army may be going back to the barracks, but in its definition the barracks cover most of Guatemala...
...Saraxoch has an experimental market garden where agronomists are testing new strains of citrus fruits and vegetables...
...Saraxoch has seen film shows on the horrors of life in the Soviet Union...
...Will you replace the military, for example, at the head of the Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees...
...NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 17SHADOW PLAY "Here...
...Lobos Zamora esti14In the most conflictive areas of the northwest, the Guatemalan Army has constructed a string of model villages in so-called Development Poles...
...A U.S...
...36...
...They pay two quetzales, or even 1.50," complained a group of civil patrollers at the model village of Rio Azul in the QuichM...
...This may be the schoolteacher or the trader...
...Author's interview with Lt...
...A second interpreter disagrees, however...
...they are part of the system...
...which subversion has exploited with great efficiency...
...It made me sad to see, when I was up there on patrol...
...This was the system of Inter-Institutional Coordinating Committees (set up in October 1983 and given nationwide reach in December 1984) and the network of "development poles" established by decree in June 1984.18 While the Coordinating Committees offered "conNOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1985 I I...
...Even there, power is more apparent than real...
...Because like it's written in the Bible, he who doesn't work doesn't eat...
...Is it not more logical that the subversives were to blame all along...
...This is going to be a democracy where nobody is excluded, and where everyone has a respon- sibility...
...no freedom in the choice of the next Defense Minister (Lobos Zamora is widely tipped for the job...
...They said their supporters would be killed if the Army found them...
...The end point of the security plan was also explicit: "To restructure the electoral system...
...We don't blame the oligarchy for this problem," explains one senior officer who prefers to remain anonymous...
...Rios Montt's most serious offense was his reliance on an unorthodox advisory council of young officers, ranging from a 23year-old lieutenant to a colonel...
...and Decreto-Ley 111-84 of December 1, 1984...
...Like other aspects of today's counterinsurgency program, the patrols are not an entirely new concept...
...Sergeant Corsantes represents the new public face of the Guatemalan military...
...Hugo Alvarez, "Seguridad Nacional," Revista Militar, no.31, pp...
...From November 1983 until December 1984, the CRN conducted several intensive training cycles for members of the Coordinating Committees, and trained four groups of military officers and 12 new companies of S-5 troops in "social and community promotion...
...ratemala's next pre ns just two weeks a 5ked Cerezo how h fom the Army...
...The ferocity of Army counterinsurgency operations in 1982-above all the decision to attack the guerrillas' civilian support base rather than their combat forces--proved the point...
...We are going to civilianize public adminis- tration...
...It debriefs and interrogates...
...All the contestants are well aware that the price of playing the game is to accept the Army's rules...
...Balance de dos afios de lucha contrainsurgente," Informe del Coronel Mario Enrique Paiz Bolafios, director de Asuntos Civiles del Estado Mayor de la Defensa Nacional, Diario de Centroamdrica, June 29, 1984...
...the promise was kept...
...Who better than we men in uniform to project ourselves to every last corner of the Fatherland, bearing the message of nationalism...
...when you've paid for food and drink you come home with maybe 20 quetzales...
...dollar and was considered one of the world's most stable currencies...
...But in the Ixil Triangle especially, where land is scarce and of poor quality, the model villages are barely self-sufficient in corn and beans...
...Though widely respected as an aggressive and disciplined combat commander, Rios Montt had ruled in a state of semi-permanent conflict with the private sector, the Catholic Church hierarchy, and-worst of all-many of his fellow officers...
...If you remove them from gov- ernment altogether, that makes them see themselves as the country's saviors from the errors of democracy...
...Guatemala: Elecciones de 1985 (Guatemala City: Inforpress Centroamericana, October 1985), p.45...
...In the 22 departmental committees (CID), the military commander presides, with his chief of S-5-a captain, major or lieutenant-colonel-as secretary...
...Because the Army has learned a couple of important lessons as a result of its contact with people in the countryside...
...3 7 In their present form, the patrols started in 1981 in San Juan Cotzal in the Ixil Triangle...
...This meant allowing in from the cold a few of those who were once called communists, those who slept in different places each night for fear of Army-controlled death squads...
...Null and void votes ran first...
...The old parties of the far Right have lost ground...
...That vision first took hold in 1954, when the United States attached global significance to the overthrow of the reformist Arbenz government...
...His 17 months in power saw at least ten attempted coups...
...It collapsed, but no matter...
...Written permission for migration now has to be obtained from the local military commander...
...It would mean losing all we have built, all these years of work and effort...
...Garcia Arindi outlines the first steps of the resettlement program: "The development poles are constructed on the basis of displaced persons seeking refuge from subversion...
...We won't stand for it...
...So my request for aid is going to be a modest one...
...Gustavo Rosales, deputy military commander of the Quich6 department...
...Instead, it opted for a more subtle war of attrition against Indian culture...
...But after all, if there's a military officer sitting next to him with a gun, the civilian is hardly going to disagree, even if the soldier isn't actually the president of the committee...
...Once basic certainties are clouded, and memory cut adrift, a new version of the truth can be implanted, and hammered home by constant repetition...
...armed forces, which only uses its S-5 capability when operating abroad...
...A: They're neutral, period...
...Sure...
...Mario Sol6rzano, leader of one wing of the old Social Democratic Party, was another...
...Mat6n replies, half translator, half commentator...
...Not any more," says Lt...
...We are happy here, by our Army's side...
...On August 2, 1982, four months into the Rios Montt regime, the National Reconstruction Committee went into overdrive...
Vol. 19 • November 1985 • No. 6
