While the world is focused on the U.S. aggression against Iraq, an invisible political conflict worsens in Guatemala. There, pro-democracy actors, including human rights groups, are under attack, as the country prepares for the forthcoming November 2 general elections. The project and ideology of the current president of the Congress, former military dictator and founder of the ruling right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), General Efraín Ríos Montt, threatens to be consolidated unless a broad pro-democracy alliance recognizes that the key strategic objective is to vote out those in government.
In the last three years, under current President Alfonso Portillo, the overall situation has grown worse, and the FRG continues to strengthen its hold on power. In fact, Ríos Montt might be elected president in the coming elections despite a constitutional ban.
Increasing violence and violations of human rights are creating a climate of terror. And the stagnation of the process to implement the 1996 Peace Accords has frustrated the expectations of the vast majority of Guatemalans, particularly the indigenous populations and the social movement. At the end of a March visit to Guatemala, by an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights delegation, spokesperson José Zalaquette said, “The Commission has found alarming signs that efforts to protect human rights have suffered a setback.” He pointed to death threats against judges and police corruption as important factors, but stressed that the proliferation of armed clandestine groups linked to drug-trafficking, kidnapping for ransom and smuggling, combined with a lack of compliance with the provisions of the Peace Accords to demilitarize Guatemala, plays a significant role.
On April 7, armed men broke into the home of Mario Polanco, leader of the Group of Mutual Support (GAM), and Nineth Montenegro, founder of GAM and current member of Congress. The men asked about Mr. Polanco’s whereabouts and took away files and computers. Only four days before, another GAM member, Diego Xon Salazar, was abducted and assassinated in his village in Chichicastenango. As a reaction to this, human rights defenders insisted on the need to dismantle all clandestine groups, and urged the government to accelerate the process to establish the Commission to Investigate Illegal Armed Clandestine Security Groups (CICIACS) that they had been proposing since last October. On March 13, Sergio Morales, Guatemala’s ombudsman, and President Portillo’s representative signed an agreement creating CICIACS. In this agreement, the President committed himself to requesting the Organization of American States and the U.N. to appoint representatives to that commission, but work will only begin in September.
The need to investigate and dismantle resurgent death squads arose from the constant wave of harassment, death threats, attacks and assassinations that human rights defenders and those involved with truth and justice cases have been enduring for the last three years. During February and March there was a sharp increase in cases of politically motivated violence, as reported by the Washington D.C.-based Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA.
Violence is not only directed at human rights groups; campesino activists and leaders are also targets. Campesino activists María Antonia Asencio and Romero López received death threats following the February 2 murder of fellow activist Pedro Méndez. Twenty policemen intimidated and harassed campesino leader Juan Tiney by surrounding his home in Guatemala City on March 8. On April 4, the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC) condemned the assassination of Jorge Gómez, in Izabal.
Land continues to be at the heart of Guatemalan conflicts, and therefore violent action and judicial cases against campesinos by landowners and the state have intensified. Their families are also at risk: On March 19, an attempted attack on Marcelino Choc, from the Verapaz Union of Campesino Organizations (UVOC), left his 7-year-old daughter wounded by several bullets; and Daniel Chanchavac, 16-year-old son of the leader of the National Coordination of Campesino Organizations (CNOC), was abducted on April 4 and remains missing.
Political leaders and journalists are also under attack. Congressional representative Anabella de León reported that she was the victim of an armed attack in Guatemala City. The mayor of Colotenango, Arturo Méndez, a member of the Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity (URNG) escaped unharmed after an attempt on his life; and a leader of another opposition party, New Nation Alliance (ANA), Arnulfo Gutiérrez, was shot to death in Chiquimula. During the last week of February, Isabel Enríquez, Maricely Enríquez and Carmen Judith Morán were accosted and threatened at the premises of CERIGUA, a news agency where they work. Several intruders broke into the house of Marielos Monzón, columnist for the daily Prensa Libre. After Monzón wrote about the disappearance of Antonio Pop Caal last December, she was told by phone that unless she stopped writing about the case, she would meet the same fate. Pop Caal’s decapitated body was found on December 17, 2002.
Even before these events, the findings of both Amnesty International and the U.N. Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) clearly indicated that secret armed groups were amassing power and increasingly exercising it. In its February 2002 report, Amnesty International stated: “Having committed mass murder with impunity during the conflict years, those responsible. . . have also engaged in a whole new range of economically motivated crimes, abetted and covered up by state agencies, in what has been referred to as Guatemala’s ‘Corporate Mafia State.’” In its latest human rights report, in August 2002, MINUGUA wrote: “Clandestine structures and illegal groups used in the counterinsurgency effort during the conflict have. . . undergone a transformation. Judicial processes have not affected these structures or their members. . . Shielded by impunity, these structures have regrouped and are pursuing illegal business interests and political influence.”
All of this is happening without any governmental action to curtail criminal activities. A recent State Department report on Guatemala states: “The obstruction of justice, threats, and intimidation also were traced to ‘parallel forces’ or ‘clandestine groups’ related to the Government.”
Besides what many see as government inaction regarding human rights violations and violence, the Portillo government also faces widespread corruption allegations. This government has shown the highest level of flagrant corruption since the establishment of civilian government in 1986: The president, vice-president and his son, are being investigated for allegedly transferring tens of millions of dollars to personal accounts in Panamanian banks.
Portillo was elected in 1999 mainly because the population was outraged at then-President Alvaro Arzú and his National Advancement Party (PAN) for the implementation of neoliberal policies that people blame for increased poverty and deepening income disparity. The further dissolution of the middle class and the acute economic problems created by the coffee crisis have prompted Portillo to concentrate his electoral efforts on the very poor.
His disdain for the recent teachers’ strike that interrupted the school year for almost two months reflects his “populist” strategy. While 62,000 teachers were demanding an increase in salary and better conditions for education, Portillo elaborated a plan for defeating the movement and replacing the current school system with one run by parents. Only the strong support of other sectors of civil society forced the government and Congress to finally meet some of the teachers’ economic demands, ending the strike on March 13. Unfortunately, the teachers’ movement had to pay for its gains with blood. The brother of Moisés Fuentes, leader of the National Teachers’ Assembly, was kidnapped and killed, execution-style on March 9; and elementary school teacher and strike supporter Enma Aguilar Durán, seven months pregnant, was shot by three unknown men in front of her 6-year-old son in Quetzaltenango on March 27.
At the same time that teachers were confronting deaf ears, Portillo and the FRG were finalizing a financial plan to compensate former members of the Civilian Defense Patrols (PAC) for “services rendered to the country.” The PAC is the paramilitary organization used by the army to control the population during the civil war; it was responsible for gross human rights violations. The PAC were supposed to be dismantled during the final phase of the peace negotiations process, but the process took place without formal U.N. monitoring and is apparently incomplete.
Abundant evidence exists showing continued links between PAC groups and the armed forces. In its 2000 special report on the scourge of lynching, MINUGUA stated that it had verified that authorship by instigation, which was present in many cases of lynching, corresponded to former members of the PAC. In 2002, the PAC officially reappeared as “ex-PAC,” by occupying the airport at the world-famous Mayan archeological site of Tikal, detaining tourists as hostages, and demanding personal compensation for having served the Guatemalan state.
Portillo was quick to respond to the ex-PAC and validated its claim by offering to pay despite the fact that victims of the state’s repressive policies have yet to be compensated by the government, thereby putting himself in direct violation of recommendations made by the U.N. Historical Clarification Commission (CEH). Both foes and friends of the government understood the recognition of the ex-PAC as a political maneuver aimed at guaranteeing ex-PAC members’ votes, and the votes of poor rural communities, through false expectations and fear.
The maneuver has backfired, however, because the government has found great difficulty in meeting the ex-PAC’s demands. First, there are financial limitations; patrollers are demanding $2,500 per person and the government is suffering a financial crisis. All efforts made by President Portillo and the FRG to scrounge the necessary funds failed: the international community and donors denied any resources for that purpose; new taxes were rejected; and placing special bonds in the financial market, despite the misuse of national resources from state agencies, has not yielded enough money. The real setback came when those who were forced to serve the army and participate in the PAC system against their will also applied for compensation. By the end of last year the government was left with a demand by approximately 628,000 former patrollers, for which a payment of $1.57 billion was due. The government is now offering to pay a smaller amount—less than $700, with one payment by this administration, and two payments by the future government—and only to some 250,000 ex-PAC members.
In response, ex-PAC members took over highways, border posts, an oil drilling station and violently confronted the police in the first weeks of April. The armed forces and the President are threatening to use force against any further violent demands. Now a split exists between ex-PAC members linked to the army, who are to get compensation, and the rest of the former patrollers. It is worth noting that according to polls and public expressions, a majority of Guatemalans oppose compensating the PAC on a matter of principle: It is unthinkable to pay victimizers, the perpetrators of massacres and other serious human rights violations, while ignoring the victims.
The army is returning to public life as well. One of the crucial amendments to the Constitution mandated by the Peace Accords was the elimination of the army’s internal security role, aimed at the demilitarization of state and society. The FRG and other right-wing forces defeated this and other amendments in a 1999 referendum. Since then, all the provisions in the Peace Accords regarding the transformation of the army have been ignored. The sinister Presidential High Command (EMP) has not been dismantled and continues to be in charge of security matters for the presidency and internal intelligence. The military’s doctrine and education has not changed. Troops continue to play a role in internal security, such as patrolling towns and cities and guarding prisons. And the military budget is again drastically increasing—in the second part of December 2002 by 24 percent.
Although it is true that many generals and other officers have retired since 1996, most of them retain military-economic power outside and within the army. Generals Ortega Menaldo and Alfonso Callejas, for example, are using the organization of veteran officers to promote their political-economic-military agendas. Institutionally, however, the main alliances within the armed forces now seem to be moving in the direction of General Ríos Sosa, Ríos Montt’s son and potentially the next Minister of Defense. Through internal rotations in the last few years the FRG has guaranteed that most troop commanders are loyal and supportive.
Trying to appeal to the poor population, the FRG and its leader General Ríos Montt have appointed a number of leftists to government posts in the last three years. Their strategy also includes co-opting other opposition figures and dividing the opposition, as well as confronting the private sector and the media associated with it to maintain a populist image. The strategy also includes winning over rural poor communities with some infrastructure, food and agricultural supplies.
The FRG approach to the ex-PAC members serves two main purposes. First, it guarantees the support of the hardliners within the former PAC system. Second, actions of ex-PAC members, including killings and lynchings, instill fear in rural communities. By tolerating and encouraging secret groups and clandestine intelligence structures, those in power maintain a climate of intimidation and fear, which helps minimize dissent. Finally, they have moved to have full control of the armed forces, Congress and key judicial bodies, like the Supreme Court and the Court of Constitutionality.
Although CACIF, the main organization representing the private sector, opposes the government, the FRG has accumulated substantial funds. Many people with close ties to the FRG have amassed fortunes through corruption and illicit business. Additionally, as in the 1999 general elections, the FRG will have access to funds from the United States, both from the extreme right and from fundamentalist churches. Analysts also believe that state resources and foreign aid will probably be used for the electoral campaign. Finally, it will not be a surprise if the FRG resorts to widespread fraud to win the elections.
Meanwhile, the opposition political parties in Guatemala find themselves fragmented, with more than 15 already registered at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal and about 10 more waiting for final admission. Even worse, they tend to blindly believe in polls, which by relying on urban-oriented samples are presenting the FRG to be weaker than it is. Most of these parties are from the right and are acting under the premise that the FRG will be defeated, because the population is seeking a new option; several “caudillos” see themselves as that new option. Based on these unreal assumptions, they are disregarding the support that the FRG still enjoys with apolitical poor masses. The URNG, the guerrilla movement that signed the Peace Accords and transformed itself into a political party, is the strongest expression of the left, but other smaller parties may attract URNG dissenters and new progressive groups. The social movement and other important sectors of civil society, which continue to identify themselves as progressive forces, will be equally split, with some organizations even willing to support moderate center-right parties.
Therefore, alliances will be difficult before November 2. It appears now that the FRG will be the first or second strongest force. Although it is too soon to reach conclusions about the forthcoming electoral process, it looks like no party will reach the necessary majority to win. The electoral system provides for a second election for president and vice president if no majority exists in the first round; a second round is already scheduled for December 21. That moment is going to be crucial for the next four years. If the opposition does not realize that the strategic objective should be “regime change,” Guatemala, under a new FRG government, will undoubtedly enter a much more violent and regressive period. Sadly, that would be the end of the Peace Accords.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Raúl Molina-Mejía has been a Guatemalan human rights advocate since the early 1980s, and he served as an adviser in drafting and discussing the 1996 Guatemalan Peace Accords. Now he teaches at New York University and directs the New York Office of the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation. In Guatemala, he has been President of San Carlos de Guatemala National University and candidate for mayor of Guatemala City in the 1999 elections.
