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. NACLA Report x aU 0 42update update update update 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.
