GUATEMALA'S GIRON Good Shepherd or Pied Piper?
Dewart, Tracey & Eckersly, Michel
"As a member of this government, I come to try to convince you to desist from continuing this march. By saying this to you and your closest collaborators, I have accomplished what the...
...His aunt was recently murdered in Guatemala City, another attempt to punish and intimidate him, he says...
...Gir6n faces a 6-year prison sentence, but UNAGRO has yet to produce sufficient evidence...
...Led by Father Andres Gir6n, 16,000 campesinos had marched from Nueva Concepci6n in the coastal department of Escuintla to the presidential palace...
...He has expressed his appreciation of the organization's orderly conduct during demonstrations, and on one occasion referred to the priest's leadership as "the most exemplary conduct seen in this country...
...In response to the increasing volatility of the land tenure crisis and an overall drop in the country's standard of living by 20% since 1980, the government has begun to talk about fresh initiatives...
...Amid flurries of publicity, an occasional farm is handed out, hardly approaching even lip service to the country's urgent need for structural solutions...
...Exhibiting a healthy distrust for politics and trust in non-violence, he has proved an effective spokesman...
...A seminary Gir6n started was torched last July and the press has reported numerous abductions and assassinations of campesinos involved in ProLand efforts...
...The ANC seeks to purchase land on concessionary terms and secure credit to work those lands collectively...
...As one critic put it: "Rather than obtaining land for the campesinos to cultivate, Father Gir6n may only be securing land for their graves...
...Gir6n argues that INTA lures such groups under its wing in order to divide the movement...
...The landless population totals nearly 500,000 and 3.5 million campesinos need more land to reach even subsistence levels, about 500 times as many people as the plan is slated to reach...
...The government, the priest declared, had made no attempt to meet its self-appointed deadlines and promises...
...Many observers doubt his sincerity...
...By saying this to you and your closest collaborators, I have accomplished what the president asked me to do...
...In March 1987, after nearly two hundred visits to the capital, Gir6n and some 5,000 campesinos staged a three-day hunger strike in front of the presidential palace...
...neither Father Gir6n nor his popular marches were unknown on the national scene...
...Recently letters threatened to kill him as well as the 150 children attending the parish school...
...It is, however, difficult to imagine how anyone might organize campesinos in Guatemala without being political...
...But the envoy had another agenda: "Now, as a Guatemalan, I have the highest admiration for you and your movement, and if you ask me what you should do, my answer is: Definitely, padre, continue...
...A number of small campesino groups in Retalhuleu and Esquintla have accused the government of giving Gir6n preferential treatment...
...The hospital set up alongside his Church at Nueva Concepci6n is inscribed with the lurid words, puta comunista (communist whore...
...Some observers, including the secretary general of the Confederation of Guatemalan Labor Unions (CUSG), consider the farm sale project a bail-out for their former owners...
...In March 1987, an agroexport organization called UNAGRO-which had once threatened a slander suit-began criminal proceedings against Gir6n...
...In response, the government has dispatched the police...
...He's tied up with the Army and the very rich...
...In the words of one campesino: "It is difficult...
...Avoiding total alienation, Cerezo occasionally compliments the movement...
...Cerezo replies by accusing the priest of demagoguery...
...AID denies they were ever approached, but says cooperative farms "do not conform to AID norms" REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 6(which emphasize private property...
...In 1978 he organized a 7-kilometer "procession" for peace from Huehuetenango to Chiantla, protesting the genocidal policies of the Lucas Garcia government...
...It remains unclear, however, what the ANC can achieve...
...Maybe in five years from now if they let us alone...
...Any form of organizing among peasants is portrayed as a prelude to calls for expropriations and "invasions" of land...
...Within two months they set off on the five-day, 147-kilometer "March for Land," now a landmark in Guatemala's history...
...It is a very timid little program that Vinicio has produced just to say to the people, You know we are doing something for you," Andr6s Gir6n told us in an interview...
...Divide and Conquer Several attempts have been made to discredit the Pro-Land Movement...
...Guatemala's minister of agriculture, Rodolfo Hurtarte Estrada, had been sent to forestall the "March for Land...
...You have to ensure this movement lives because it is the best thing that Guatemala has today...
...There is no space in Guatemala for agrarian reform just now: it's too risky...
...A fairly common criticism is that Gir6n is philosophically confused and inconsistent, claiming on one hand to be apolitical, and on the other that man is a political being incapable of acting without political implications...
...Following a two-year exile in Texas, he led another peace march of some 12,000 people in 1984, "to measure the pulse of the people, of its level of consciousness...
...Gir6n considers comprehensive land reform to be the only means of resolving the land distribution crisis, and boldly asserts that "we won't stop asking for land until we are masters of the entire south coast...
...UNAGRO's secretary general, Edgar A. Pinetta, recently announced to the press, " . . . the Catholic Church, with its so-called Liberation Theology . . . is so anxious to win over souls that it can't wait for eternity and instead is trying to do it in this life, exchanging the Word of Life for the rifle, as in the case of Father Gir6n...
...But this time-with a civilian Christian Democratic government in place-Gir6n had every reason to hope his demands would be met...
...Invasions have occurred in Retalhuleu, Palin (Escuintla), Alta Verapaz, the Pet6n and Izabal...
...Nowhere in Latin America is the land as unevenly distributed as it is in Guatemala, where, according to AID figures, 2.1% of the population owns 80% of the land, and 88% of the country's farms are too small to provide for the needs of a family...
...Meanwhile, the powerful agrarian private sector is growing steadily more impatient with the government's "vagueness," detecting tacit leftist sympathies...
...Only a month after the February 1986 inauguration of Guatemala's civilian government, Father Gir6n and several thousand of his landless parishioners formed the National Association of Peasants for Land (ANC...
...It was the first real test of the government's commitment to make land available for purchase...
...a third, 18-day march that same year from Tiquisate to Esquipulas mobilized 1,500 people in support of peace...
...Attempting to prove his independence, Giron tells the press that Cerezo is a mere puppet of the Army, the democratic face of a military show, who has deserted the rural population...
...Nevertheless, he counsels patience: "I think Cerezo sees that agrarian reform is the answer, but he is not the man to bring it about at this moment...
...It accused him of "violating the laws of the land by inciting thousands of campesinos from the south coast to commit the crime of usurpation [of lands...
...Cerezo, conscious of the limitations of his office, told reporters in 1985 that the best he could hope for during his term would be to consolidate political MARCH/APRIL 1988 7 MARCMAPRIL 1988 7democracy, without attacking Guatemala's underlying problems...
...We have to make it stronger...
...Others note that the fincas selected for sale are casualties of Guatemala's cotton exports crash and are sold at inflated prices...
...March onward...
...But this menacing atmosphere has gone beyond words...
...The reform-minded Ar6valo-Arbenz Administrations launched a program in the 1950s which provoked their CIAbacked ouster...
...The unconfirmed report made front-page headlines...
...President Cerezo has proven adept at preaching patience to his electors, but as living conditions deteriorate, their willingness to wait is rapidly waning...
...One caller told him he would "watch [the children] die, one after another...
...For Gir6n, intimidation is not new...
...Informers, or orejas, mingle with worshipers at Sunday mass...
...The jubilation and hope that accompanied the inauguration of the democratic government are, over two years later, converting to disappointment and cynicism...
...There are people who control the president, who won't permit peaceful change...
...Guerrilla of Jesus" Perhaps predictably, Padre Gir6n is controversial on several fronts...
...Arbenz' Decree 900 handed out more land in its six-month life than the amount redistributed in the 30-year period from 1954 to 1984...
...The Pro-Land Movement has received farms, while other groups have lobbied unsuccessfully for years...
...Ever since the May 1986 march on the capital, he has received regular death threats in the form of anonymous letters and telephone calls...
...Some campesinos, not all under the auspices of Gir6n's Pro-Land Movement, have grown tired of waiting for the president to deliver and have indeed resorted to "invading" lands...
...Yet to avoid alienating property owners, Cerezo's Administration has stressed that "private property will be fully respected," and that "the purchase and sale of land will be wholly voluntary...
...In reply to his critics, President Cerezo affirms, "I am not God, who can perform miracles overnight...
...Thanks in part to an $8.4 million donation from the European Economic Community, 7,700 additional hectares were purchased for distribution...
...Land reform has, of course, a contentious history in Guatemala...
...AID says that 3.5 hectares of prime quality land or 7 hectares of poor quality land are needed for a family to subsist, so the project should allow some 1,100 to 2,200 families simply to eat, although the government claims it will benefit 3,000 families...
...It soon became apparent, however, that President Vinicio Cerezo's promised land would fail to materialize...
...In March 1987 a telephone caller posing as Father Gir6n informed the Guatemala City daily, Prensa Libre, that he had just invaded the Calcutta farm in Suchitep6quez and intended to proceed immediately to invade another...
...While some consider Padre Gir6n a good shepherd leading his flock to green pastures, others assert he unnecessarily promotes class struggle, increasing the likelihood of another wave of repression...
...Rigoberta Menchti, international continued on page 11 continued from page 8 representative of the Committee of Peasant Unity (CUC), said in October 1987 that "the movement has never been as well organized as it is today," yet expressed the fear that the radicalization of the Pro-Land Movement at this time may trigger another cycle of violence, similar to that which succeeded in the early 1980s in breaking the political structure the CUC had built, making it impossible to continue their previous activities...
...Recalling Guatemala's nottoo-distant past, some fear that the hopes of an organized peasantry will once again be shattered and washed away in a sea of blood...
...That's why we have to make the movement stronger...
...The action was dissolved after three days when the strikers agreed to lower their demands...
...Largely inspired by Father Gir6n, twelve Pro-Land groups took shape in the last six months of 1986, although many operate within the auspices of the governmental National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA...
...Charges that Dub6n is corrupt have kept his group, the country's second largest, embroiled in controversy...
...But Tracey Dewart and Michel Eckersley are New York-based writers who recently spent a year in Guatemala...
...Agency for International Development (AID...
...Having secured one finca for a cooperative agribusiness enterprise from the government, Dub6n is now requesting another...
...Dismissing INTA "as an evil organization created for the very purpose of making all land reform projects a failure," Father Gir6n confronts the divisiveness headon, openly inviting smaller groups to unite with him in their common cause...
...In its first two years, the Pro-Land Movement attracted 130,000 members...
...His father and four relatives were assassinated in the late 1970s and he spent over two years in forced exile...
...Respect for Private Property With the return to civilian rule, agrarian reform is once again on the national agenda...
...But given estimated population growth rates, the reform will not keep abreast of the need...
...Yet it seems unlikely the government will offer an alternative...
...AID Refuses to Help Despite the confrontation, Gir6n's movement remains within the confines of government policy...
...Father Gir6n's self-depiction as a "guerrilla of Jesus" ready to "die for [his] followers" angers religious conservatives intolerant of Liberation Theology...
...Ironically, Father Gir6n says that when he tried to obtain financial assistance from AID, he was told that his movement is "too political...
...One group, headed by Carlos Dub6n Garcia, claims 30,000 members...
...The movement is our last hope...
...Gir6n does enjoy some support from powerful political circles, who perhaps consider him a more attractive alternative to a popular uprising triggered by the country's inequitable economic structure...
...The current plan clearly reflects the government's desire not to rock the boat...
...The dramatic march catapulted the down-to-earth Gir6n into the forefront of Guatemala's agrarian movement...
...To date five farms have been distributed to organized peasant movements, three of which went to the ANC...
...In fact, Gir6n's movement is said to have encouraged the development of a private land market, which is promoted by the U.S...
...The substance of his Pro-Land Movement-to defend and exercise the right of peasants to buy land-falls far short of his calls for far-reaching, nationwide land reform and threats of massive invasions...
...There is a gulf between rhetoric and accomplishments, which to some extent obscures the nature of his demands and ideology...
...The purpose of the spring action was to express support for the democratic process while attempting to hold the Christian Democrats accountable to their election promises...
Vol. 22 • March 1988 • No. 2
