This summer, two NACLA staf- fers made separate trips to Central America, under circumstances that provided rare access to those who rule the bloodiest regimes in the region: Guatemala and El Salvador. George Black traveled to Guate- mala as a consultant to the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Reli- gious Affairs Unit, preparing a doc- umentary on General Rios Montt’s attempt to use evangelical Christi- anity as a vehicle for stabilizing mili- tary rule. NACLA previously had collaborated with the BBC on a documentary studying the impact of the film “Missing” on U.S.public opinion. In the course of his ten-day trip, George interviewed North Ameri- can pastors of the Christian Church of the Word, an evangelical mission Septl0ct 198 of Gospel Outreach, based in Eureka, California, that boasts President Rios Montt as its best- known convert. He met with Army officers in charge of planning the government’s “guns and beans” counterinsurgency and civic action program, and spent two days film- ing with the Army on maneuvers in the northwestern department of El Quiche, a guerrilla stronghold. He also conducted an extensive inter- view with Rios Montt, and met with the leader of Guatemala’s Christian Democratic Party, Vinicio Cerezo. Janet Shenk spent two weeks this summer in El Salvador and Honduras, as a member of a citi- zens’ delegation examining the pol- itical and human rights situation in those two countries. The delega- tion was headed by former Iowa Senator Dick Clark, and was organ- ized by the Washington D.C.-based Commission on U.S.-Central Amer- ican Relations. The delegation’s visit to El Salvador was timed to coincide with the State Department’s per- functory deliberations on whether to “certify” that El Salvador has im- proved its human rights record and made progress on reforms. While part of the delegation went on to Honduras, to visit the camps housing thousands of Salvadorean refugees, the rest of the group came back to Washington to testify at hearings on certification, held by the House Subcommittee on Inter- American Affairs. Not surprisingly, the delegation’s findings contrasted sharply with the Administration’s claims of improved conditions in El Salvador. What follows are some impres- sions from these two trips, based on extensive interviews with gov- ernment, military and Church offi- cials, and, to a lesser extent, given the dangers, with opposition sour- ces in Guatemala and El Salvador.
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