GUATEMALA Why They Like Rios Montt

...The mayor may think he is the authority...

...When the courts enforced the constitutional ban against his candidacy, some supporters threatened to take the battle into the streets...

...As Rfos fumed on the sidelines telling supporters to deface their ballots, they swung instead to a dark-horse candidate, born-again businessman Jorge Serrano Elias...

...While foreigners focus on how the general continued the previous regime's anti-guerrilla offensive, survivors are more interested in the differences-from the unpredictable, chaotic terror of a floundering dictatorship to Rios Montt's more predictable textbook campaign...

...Our problem is disorder...

...darity activists in the United States were appalled, and so were most of Guatemala's professional politicians...

...Serrano ran low in opinion polls until Rios was thrown off the ballot, then he surged ahead of several other candidates to close the gap with frontrunning newspaper publisher Jorge Carpio, whose most obvious qualification is that he spent a fortune advertising himself...

...Every Sunday over the airwaves, he railed against corruption in Guatemalan life...

...These were Catholic Ixil Indians...

...What was most interesting about the general's campaign was his attempt to translate the military values so abhorred by foreigners-obedience, discipline, devotion to authority-into a new culture of civic responsibility...

...When he closed Congress in 1982, ruling by decree through a Council of State, he earned the undying enmity of Guatemala's political establishment...

...From the start, the campaign was loaded with contradictions...

...But there has been no sign of such a move from the army's all-important base commanders...

...His closest advisors were elders from the congregation he had joined, the California-based Church of the Word...

...The hopes invested in the born-again general are older than the country's Protestant churches...

...Contrary to early assessments, Rios Montt's electoral support was not limited to evangelicals, the middle and upper classes, or to Guatemala City...

...These Ixils had found something to admire in Rios Montt which has so far eluded his critics...

...Flocking td his campaign were political novices and two small, discredited right-wing parties, but not the larger conservative parties or the country's influential business lobbies, who regard him as unpredictable and dangerous...

...He suspended kidnappings by security forces in the capital, and in the countryside he replaced a few abusive commanders...

...The campaign had a populist effervescence, organized around a charismatic figure with a simple message about law and authority: "Guatemala is not the police, the captain, the mayor, or the congressman," he told a crowd in Nebaj...

...Rios preached that Guatemalans can save themselves and their country through moral exertion...

...Here is un militar recto, they say-a just military man-even as they fear and despise the army for all the killing it has done...

...Five years ago, many evangelicals voted for the Christian Democrats...

...These inroads made Guatemala the most evangelical country in Latin America...

...And the all-powerful Praetorian army continues to define the permissible for the civilian government elected in 1985...

...The uniform in his campaign picture held out the hope, however illusory, that he could overpower the most flagrant abusers of authority...

...a frustrated development organizer explained...

...Nothing works the way it is supposed to...

...Lies, lies...

...But many of the voters who switched from the born-again general to the born-again businessman are Catholics themselves...

...Disenchanted Electorate Instead of following Rfos Montt's advice to deface ballots, many of his supporters shifted to another candidate preaching moral reform--a civilian with a'cleaner record...

...Their burdens have not been eased by the spectacle of the Christian Democrats...

...Solidarity activists and Guatemalan politicians are all breathing easier with the general out of the picture...

...De facto, the army is the country's most destructive institution, responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of citizens...

...We need law, order, and discipline...

...But Rios Montt took away all that...

...political strategy...

...Both candidates for the January runoff claim to represent the "stabilizing Center" or "modernizing Right" (although Carpio's running mate hails from the far-right National Liberation Movement...

...Carlos Arana Osorio in 1974...

...You know why I like him...

...Enter Jorge Serrano Elias, an evangelical businessman who placed a distant third in the 1985 elections and has since stayed in the public eye through his role in semi-official meetings with guerrilla leaders...

...Each received about 25% of the vote...

...4"A campesino seen was a campesino dead," Nebajefios say of the Lucas Garcia brothers-in contrast to Rios Montt, who they credit with saving their lives...

...Democracy isn't letting people do whatever they want...

...In an interview with the Village Voice, not all of which is this reassuring, he said: "I don't propose an economic program, but rather an ethical and moral one...

...Since then, the Catholic hierarchy-including the general's own brother, the bishop of Zacapa-has continued to decry evangelical growth as a U.S...

...And Serrano himself is a conciliatory personality, a contrast to Rfos Montt's aura of fanaticism...

...But authority is he who obeys the law...

...But as pietism conquers the population, Guatemala's public institutions continue to suffer a discrepancy between word and deed worthy of Stalinist Eastern Europe...

...Neither Serrano nor Carpio are likely to have much to offer most Guatemalans...

...Instead, they are widely seen as having enriched themselves at the public's expense, confirming traditional Guatemalan wisdom that politicians seek office only to steal, and make campaign pledges only to break them...

...If the retired general had not been knocked off the ballot by a constitutional ban against past coup participants, he probably would have been elected president...

...But in the countryside, stories still circulate about Rios Montt traveling around the country in disguise, meting out justice to corrupt officials, like a king in a medieval folk tale...

...In short, many thank the Christian Democrats for making Rios more popular than he was in 1982-1983...

...Both talk about restoring faith in government, and they each offer the free market as the solution to poverty...

...Some Catholics continue to fear that evangelicals will join the army in another wave of persecution against them, as A dual identity as sinner and saint VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 4 (DECEMBER/JANUARY 1990/1991) occurred in certain cases in the early 1980s...

...At headquarters in Nebaj-one of the areas hit hardest by Rios Montt's scorched earth tactics eight years ago-I was surprised to find that, despite the general's wellknown feelings about alcohol, his supporters showed up slightly inebriated...

...Neither has a solid social base, nor much of a mandate...

...He threatened to exterminate the town if it did not stop collaborating with the guerrillas, who at that point seemed on the verge of taking over the western highlands...

...Because of his fundamentalist rhetoric, Rios Montt ended up with a worse international reputation than Benedicto or the latter's brother, military president Romeo Lucas Garcia (1978-1982...

...Before, there were killers waiting on the corner...

...the two have become bitter rivals...

...SoliDavid Stoll is the author of Is Latin America Turning Protestant...

...Some of the people most uneasy about Rios Montt's presidential bid were evangelical leaders...

...Cerezo's hand-In a corrupt political system unable to articulate popular demands, many view Rios Montt as a charismatic reformer picked successor, Alfonso Cabrera, is rumored to have links to drug traffickers and won ony 17% of the vote...

...University of Californa Press, 1990...

...But that would have alienated many evangelicals and other lawabiding supporters, and it did not materialize during what proved to be an orderly election...

...A social scientist tells the story of a preacher who, in his testimony to juvenile offenders, describes the murders and rapes he committed before becoming a Christian-for which, no small surprise, he has never been brought to justice...

...And Rios Montt, a general responsible for carnage, paradoxically became a symbol of national redemption...

...Guatemala is you...

...The Second Coming Why the survivors of Rfos Montt's regime would want him back a second time is a mystery to North Americans schooled on human rights reports...

...nothing is what it seems...

...If it were, another retired general running for president-Benedicto Lucas Garcfa-would have attracted votes instead of ridicule...

...Apologists argue that Rios Montt's orders to respect lives were stymied by the same colonels who overthrew him after 16 months in office...

...For NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICASpeople disgusted with the day-to-day toll of chronic corruption, he was the moral crusader who promised to fire teachers who don't show up for school, prosecute civil servants who demand bribes, and stop tortured bodies from being dumped in the streets...

...Evangelical religion is providing a new language for talking about the problem of authority in Guatemala...

...The policeman may think he is the authority...

...But as he wagged his finger at adulterers and bribe-takers, he also denied the army massacres which continued under his administration, crimes eventually admitted to by his own evangelical advisors...

...This is not exactly the lure of the iron fist...

...Partly due to army repression, political parties in Guatemala tend to function only as patronage rackets, unable to articulate popular demands...

...That is why they see him as a wild card threatening to rupture the fragile agreements which returned the country to civilian rule...

...Because he used to get on television, point his finger at every Guatemalan, and say: 'The problem is you!' That's the only way this country is ever going to change...

...The Catholic Church and the Left denounced him as a fanatical tyrant who was plunging the country into a holy war...

...While remaining unrepentant about his own human rights record, he complained that the courts ruling against him were violating his human rights, and threatened to appeal to the World Court at the Hague...

...We had huge fights all summer," reports a visitor to Quetzaltenango-fights with Guatemalan friends who didn't want to hear of the human rights case against their candidate...

...The bloc of voters which turned from Rios to Serrano has revived perennial talk of religious strife...

...Outgoing President Vinicio Cerezo and his wing of the party leadership have not defended Guatemala's "democratic opening" from the assaults of the army and the extreme Right, nor have they protected the poor from the cost of economic stabilization policies...

...Seen as Outsider Many Guatemalans are less worried about the army than their dwindling ability to buy food and medicine, and a frightening rise in street violence...

...Internationally, he became known as the bornagain butcher...

...There was also fear of the same kind of military "reform coup" which put the general in office the first time...

...Everything about Rfos Montt's government dramatized the loss of Catholic authority...

...We have to put order into our lives...

...Despite some sympathy for Rfos, especially in the junior ranks, he has usually been at odds with the army's command structure since being sidelined by military president Gen...

...If it hadn't been for Rios Montt, we all would have disappeared...

...Not Fascism or Nazism, just order and discipline...

...abstention was the most popular option during the November voting...

...However, for victims of the stepped-up rural massacres that occurred early in his administration, Rios Montt's vows to transform Guatemala's moral landscape were a cruel propaganda hoax...

...Even if he has a pistol or a machine gun, this is not authority...

...In this double identity as sinner and saint, common in evangelical testimony, there is an echo of the double identity of the Guatemalan state...

...But for many Guatemalans, the bornagain general was an improvement...

...There are two ways of looking at Rios Montt, as reformer and as human rights violator, but separating the two is a mistake...

...What's important is that the people understand that we know what the law is and that we will apply it...

...Although Serrano served as president of Rios Montt's advisory council in 19821983, he is no surrogate for the general...

...His preemptory ways offended them in 1982-1983...

...Another Catholic campesino in Nebaj remembers Rios Montt for his "ley de amistad" ("law of friendship"), actually the "leyde amnistia," or the amnesty Rios Montt gave to refugees...

...Moreover, partially due to the repression against clergy and lay activists, Catholics increasingly began to describe Textbook counterinsurgency: In Nebaj, survivors of army massacres remember Rios for the amnesty he offered refugees VOLUME XXIV, NUMBER 4 (DECEMBER/JANUARY 1990/1991) themselves in pietistic terms borrowed from the Protestant movement...

...Restoring order is not a question of administrative measures...

...De jure, it maintains peace and stability...

...Neither is likely to challenge the army, although as conservatives they would probably face fewer coup attempts than the Christian Democrats...

...Rios cannot be credited with the evangelical boom, but his brief rule drew attention to evangelicals and defined them in new ways...

...a Nebaj teacher shouted when I insisted that his beloved general had covered up massacres...

...The captain may think he is the authority...

...Human rights activists find it hard to believe that the army uniform which Rios Montt wore in campaign pictures is, for many Guatemalans, an icon of credible authority...

...But for ordinary Guatemalans, Rios Montt's hostility to the parties makes him look like an outsider, an alternative to the politics of opportunism...

...The constitutional court upheld the ban a month before the voting, to the relief of the political establishment but to the disappointment of many Guatemalans...

...Bolstered by the general's downfall, Serrano ran a close second and stands a good chance of winning the January 6 runoff...

...The men recalled how, a few months before he took power in March 1982, another general-army chief-of-staff Benedicto Lucas Garcia-showed up in a helicopter...

...The most obvious reason Nebajefios like the former general is that he offered them the chance to surrender without being killed...

...The evangelist Luis Palau came to celebrate the Protestant centenary in Guatemala and, with Rios beside him, proclaimed that the country could become the first "reformed" nation in Latin America...

...Unknown to the coup plotters, Rios had become a born-again Christian, and in office he proved to be an outspoken one...

...As the November 11 vote drew near, it was clear that the dreaded ex-dictator had become the most popular candidate, as much as twelve points ahead of his nearest rival...

...the military chain of command he envisioned from God through himself to the nation did not sit well with the mutual deference which characterizes independent church leaders...

...In fact, the authoritarianism which foreigners hold against Rios Montt appeals to many Guatemalans who, shaking their heads at the latest outrage, are willing to say: "We need a strongman to control us...

...It was to protest another electoral fraud, at the height of the violence between the army and the guerrillas in 1982, that junior officers installed him in the national palace...

...Ironically, this law-and-order candidate had to violate the constitution in order to run...

...It's a matter of setting a moral example...

...Efrain Rios Montt, the evangelical general who seized power in 1982 and moralized over the airwaves while his army massacred peasants, was running for president...

...Democracy means fulfilling your duties...

...What had seemed an acquiescent mass of the poor and the middle class, apolitical and otherworldly, now appeared to have a hegemonic vision for Guatemala's future...

...you couldn't even go out, because they would kill you...

...Never mind that their candidate was a Protestant general who was accused of persecuting the Catholic Church, and whose army had destroyed every rural settlement in their part of El Quich6 department...

...the figure he cut was instantly recognizable as the old-fashioned caudillo, the man on horseback who saves the nation...

...Here the former head *of state has impeccable credentials...

...In 1974, he was generally thought to have won the presidential election as the reform candidate for the Christian Democrats, only to be defrauded by rivals in the army high command...