The coup that brought General Rios Montt to power on March 23, 1982, came in response to fraudu- lent elections earlier that month, in
which the government of General
Lucas Garcia tried to prolong its
rule. The coup was backed by most
of the Army and by centrist and far-
right parties who saw it paving the
way for clean elections.
Rios Montt was the Army’s cho-
sen figure for three basic purposes:
to regain international prestige, to
broaden the social base of the
regime and erode support for the
guerrillas, and to unite a badly
divided Army and improve its com-
bat morale. We found little evi-
dence that he has managed to
achieve any of these goals.
Certainly, Guatemala City is now
quiet and Lucas Garcia’s paramili-
tary thugs are no longer visible on
the streets. The urban middle class
desperately wants to believe that
Rios Montt can perform miracles,
and many have turned to his brand
of evangelism. But the political par-
ties that originally backed the coup
are profoundly disillusioned; in-
stead of the elections they ex-
pected within 60 days of the coup,
Rios Montt has banned all political
party activity until 1985.
Just as we arrived, eight mem-
bers of the far-right MLN party were
arrested for plotting a coup against
the government, and MLN vice pres-
idential candidate Leonel Sisniega
-a key figure in organizing the
March 23rd coup-was in hiding.
Our interview with the leader of
Guatemala’s Christian Democratic
Party, Vinicio Cerezo, took place
with Cerezo surrounded by three
heavily armed bodyguards. Once
favorable to the coup, Cerezo now
says that any hopes of democrati-
zation are absurd as long as Rios
Montt stays in power.
Only the Army remains im-
pressed with the new head of state.
Rios Montt’s concept of counter-
insurgency-combined with a mor-
alizing program of civic action-is
more sophisticated than his prede-
cessor’s and more popular with
field commanders. (When ques-
tioned about any contradiction be-
tween his religious convictions and
his command of an army notorious
for its human rights abuses, Rios
Montt replied: “There is no contra-
diction. Both are part of a single uni-
ty presided over by God.”)
In rural areas, the Army’s new
tactics have put the revolutionary
movement on the defensive since
the coup. Areas which the Army
previously avoided are now the ob-
ject of surgically executed counter-
attacks, followed by the classic
trappings of civic action-army
bulldozers cutting new roads, con-
struction teams building markets
and health centers. But the massa-
cres continue-3,000 to 8,000
dead in the highlands since the
March coup.
We visited three villages in El
Quiche, each of which illustrates a
different facet of the war. The first,
Salquil Grande, had just been
bombed flat by the Army and was
crawling with troops busy “relocat-
ing” the population. The second,
San Sebastian Lemoa, had been
abandoned by its 900 inhabitants in
Guatemalan counterinsurgency troops on patrol in Quiche province.
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May, after repeated threats from
paramilitary bands. It was eerily
desolate. And the third, Chontala,
had been retaken from guerrilla
forces only three weeks earlier;
guerrillas still controlled the next
hamlet, four kilometers away
across the cornfields.
Chontala was the scene of an Ar-
my massacre last December; now
it’s a hearts-and-minds showcase
which the Army is keen to display
to foreign visitors. The civic action
strategy here centers on redistribut-
ing the corn and beans that villag-
ers had contributed to guerrilla food
caches in the area, and creating
Civil Defense Patrols-under mili-
tary supervision-to “protect” the
hamlet. Since everything in Chon-
tala was expertly stage-managed
for our benefit, one can only ques-
tion the “voluntary” character of
these patrols.
The regime’s attitude toward in-
ternational opinion is deeply am-
biguous. All the early rhetoric about
changing the Army’s corrupt and
violent practices has been aban-
doned, and no officers from the
previous regime have been purged.
All criticism is ascribed to a sophis-
ticated “international communist
conspiracy,”-with Amnesty Inter-
national high on Rios Montt’s list of
communist stooges. The military
commander of El Quiche told us
that the Army’s counterinsurgency
operations make “no distinction be-
tween the communist subversives
and the Catholic Church. They are
one and the same thing.”
The evidence of that is one of the
most enduring images of El Quiche:
dozens of boarded-up churches.
Only one priest remains in the
whole department, placed there
recently by the conservative car-
dinal of Guatemala City.
The problem for the regime
comes in reconciling this cavalier
attitude toward world opinion with
its pressing need for foreign aid.
Rios Montt, flying in the face of all
the facts of economic collapse, in-
sists that they can manage without
aid: “Everyone can eat beans and
maize. If they don’t like it, they can
leave the country.”
But the rest of the military is more
realistic, and they are bitterly
resentful of the Reagan Administra-
tion’s failure to live up to its cam-
paign promises. “Perhaps the
Reagan people will take our needs
seriously,” said the Quiche com-
mander, “when 80 million Mexi-
cans have died under the boot of
Soviet terror.”
The Reagan Administration has
not failed for lack of trying. Con-
gressional oposition thus far has
blocked any direct military transfers
to Guatemala, but the State Depart-
ment is now pushing several osten-
sibly humanitarian grants through
multilateral lending institutions. One
such grant is an $18 million IDB
loan for a rural telephone system-
aid which will directly support the
Army’s intelligence operations in
the northwestern highlands.
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