When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Quiché human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú Tum this October 16, the awful history of Guatemala's past decade was suddenly and brutally illuminated. Rigoberta Menchú embodies Guatemala's long struggle--grown murderous in the 1980s--against military violence and impunity. And while through most of the 1980s, it was too dangerous even to begin to demand an accounting for the violent actions of the military, Menchú’s own life experience shows that the struggle against military impunity was inseparable from the decade's other great social and political movements: the movements for land rights, for the rights of the indigenous Maya, and--closely connected with Guatemala's trade unionism--for the rights of the urban population to attain a survivable standard of living.
From 1978 to 1982, Guatemala suffered under the rule of General Romeo Lucas García, a regime so corrupt and so violent that even in the context of Cold War politics, the Reagan Administration was forced to withdraw its support. In March, 1982, a coup headed by young military officers brought the evangelical preacher General Efraín Ríos Montt to power. Ríos Montt played his role well, and served the interests of the military high command for almost two years. He allowed the military to be as brutal as they wanted to be in their attempt to drain the highlands of support for the combined guerrilla forces, the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG). He also began the process of "cleansing" urban Guatemala of the corruption and increasingly indiscriminant violence that had prompted so much opposition to the government of Lucas García.
After the prospect of an imminent guerrilla victory receded by mid-1983, Ríos Montt became a problem for the military high command. They found his calls for reform inconvenient, and his tendency to give power to young officers upset the more senior officers. Consequently, in August, 1983, the high command forced him out of power and placed an older, more "respected" colleague in control: General Oscar Mejía Víctores.
Mejía Víctores and the army high command began the process of carefully guiding Guatemala back to a form of electoral democracy--and the good graces of the U.S. government. They enacted a variety of laws which protected the army's position of control in much of the highlands, and ensured against political meddling in the institution itself. In January, 1986, just before the newly elected government of Vinicio Cerezo was to take power, they passed a broad amnesty law which insured no army officer would be prosecuted for his actions.
That law made it clear that the military would not countenance any attempt to bring military officers to trial for their part in the country's violence. Further, the new Constitution, framed in late 1985, gave substantial judicial privileges to military officers and government members. These ranged from antejuicios, a kind of preliminary trial by peers to determine if the accused should be made to stand trial, to the right to trial by military courts for many charges. Assaults on union members, during the Cerezo Administration, for example, indicated that these protections--and the still prevailing temper of violence--have allowed attacks to be launched against popular sectors with relative impunity.
Guatemala remains a predominantly rural country.[1] It was peasants, especially Maya living in the highlands, that suffered the worst repression during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Guatemalan human rights and popular groups, especially the Mutual Support Group (GAM) and the Coordinating Council of Guatemalan Widows (CONAVIGUA), have been working to uncover and exhume clandestine communal graves throughout rural Guatemala. CONAVIGUA, headed by Rosalina Tuyuc, an extremely courageous Quiché woman, says that the organization knows of at least 145 communal graves throughout the country.[2] In September, 1992 a clandestine cemetery containing 12 bodies was uncovered in San José Pachój Lemoa, Quiché. The events there illustrate the level of fear which persisted in the highlands throughout the 1980s. The families of the dead recounted how the military had removed 12 men from their aldea more than 10 years ago, No one had seen them since, but for a decade the survivors had been too frightened to question the authorities concerning their whereabouts.[3] The dead in San José Pachój Lemoa join a long list of victims of brutality in rural Guatemala.
As late as 1988 one leader of the GAM suggested, "The majority of human rights violations occurring in the countryside are not reported, because the people are still too afraid.[4] Ríos Montt's military counter-insurgency policy of 1982 and 1983 was extremely successful. In the aftermath, the military was determined to keep control of rural Guatemala and to smother the guerrilla forces completely. In the words of Héctor Gramajo, then Minister of Defense, “We will win the war and we will impose the peace.”[5] Imposing the peace took the shape of strategic hamlets, poles of development—in which the military controls rural 'development' projects—and Civil Patrols (PACs).
The PACs were created in 1982 as one of the army's answers to the guerrilla challenge. They were meant to insure military dominance by integrating all male residents into a military structure. The PACs not only provided an important tool for patrolling the surrounding countryside, but they also allowed the military to keep close tabs on residents within the communities. The patrols dramatically increased the general level of violence in rural areas, as they were used as weapons in inter-ethnic or inter-community violence.
The PACs were instantly condemned by residents in most communities, and the refusal to join or form them accounted for many of the massacres that occurred in the highlands in 1982 and 1983. Civil patrol members are constantly cited in the continuing violence, and refusal to join the patrols still merits violent retribution. The military jealously guards control over the PACs, and has refused any demands to dismantle them, despite increasing pressure to do so.
Recently the United Nations declared that the PACs were a violation of human rights because they were not voluntary. The military's response was to rename the patrols; they are now officially called Voluntary Civil Self-Defense Committees. No one has been fooled by the name change. Municipality after municipality, aldea after aldea, villagers have demanded that the PACs be removed.
By the mid-1980s many people in rural Guatemala who had looked to the guerrilla forces as a solution no longer believed they offered one. The guerrilla forces lost both active recruits and support networks through the 1980s. By February, 1988, Héctor Gramajo argued that guerrilla strength had been reduced to between 500 and 700 combatants. He had earlier argued that they were "cornered, living from acts of violence."[6]
A discussion in 1986 encapsulates one response to the changing conditions. In a small town in the mountains of Huehuetenango, as the bulk of the area's young men prepared to leave the next day for the harvest, a chance encounter and a series of introductions led to a long night and following day of talk with a young man recently returned from the guerrillas. After recounting the attacks on the town which had prompted him to join the guerrillas, the young man talked about why he had decided to come back to his community. Beyond the real imperative of wanting to be with his family for longer than one or two nights at a time, he stressed that he no longer thought the guerrillas would win. He didn't believe that there was any less need for them, but was prepared to work with a newly formed health clinic in his community to see what could be done within the new political opening allowed by the Cerezo government. Multiplied a hundred times, this type of personal decision changed the shape of the struggle in the highlands through the course of the 1980s.
A significant part of that struggle, of course, revolved around land, as it had for decades. Following the overthrow of the Arbenz government in 1954, tens of thousands of peasants lost the land they had received under the agrarian reform of 1952 to 1954, when the new government returned the land to its previous owners. Lip service was paid to agrarian reform until 1970. Meanwhile, the number of landless and dispossessed continued to grow as land in different regions was turned over to export agriculture and the population increased. Consequently, the question of land still had great social and political resonance in the 1980s. By demanding that peasants be guaranteed title to the land they sowed, or to lands expropriated from peasant communities, the guerrillas built significant rural support in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The counter-insurgency of the 1980s did nothing substantial to address the land issue. Rather, the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of people created new problems over land.
There are persistent rumors and some evidence that Ríos Montt was hastily expelled in 1983 in part because he was contemplating an expropriatory agrarian reform. Unrest surrounding the question of land tenure also marked the early years of the Cerezo Administration. Cerezo's Christian Democratic Party had adopted a party platform in 1984 that called for the use of public funds to purchase land on behalf of landless peasants. It is not clear how actively the government would have implemented this policy had it not been for the tremendous pressure that grassroots organizations placed on the government.
The biggest of these organizations was the Pro-Tierra movement headed by Padre Andrés Girón. Mainly in late 1986 and early 1987, Girón led land occupations in an effort to force the government to purchase land to divide among his followers. By the end of 1987, seven fincas had been partitioned. But the Cerezo government was under constant pressure from the other side as well. Business organizations, private-sector organizations, and landowners' associations denounced any whisper of "agrarian reform." Even if the Cerezo Administration had desired something more substantial, as Girón himself argued, “This government is too weak to carry out a real land reform program for peasants. And it is getting weaker by the day.... The poor believed in Vinicio. But they have lost faith. He has no real power. It's the military who have the power here.”[7]
One of the goals of the military’s counter-insurgency strategy was to weaken Maya culture. The military repression in the highlands and the increasing participation of Maya in guerrilla organizations certainly placed severe strains on the fabric of Maya life. Forging an existence in Guatemala City, in displaced communities in the highlands, or in refugee camps in Mexico--or participating in a guerrilla organization--meant loosening that particular adhesion to one community, to one place, that had been a central feature of Maya culture in Guatemala since the conquest. Education and social organization in the "poles of development" were also designed to inculcate a sense of nationalism and attachment to national symbols and institutions. Increased internal violence and growing social problems in many highland communities through the 1980s were partially the result of social breakdown in native communities.
Yet, a number of countervailing tendencies served to strengthen indigenous communities. As a result of increased violence in some highland regions, ladinos (non-Indians) who had dominated local government and marketing opportunities were forced to flee. In the aftermath, Maya almost completely controlled community structures in some areas. Maya have also--very recently--begun to take a much more aggressive political stance toward the national government.[8]
A number of community organizations have begun to link up with one another throughout the highlands. Some of these connections have been formalized through popular organizations. Among the most important of these are: the GAM, which linked families of the disappeared throughout Guatemala in the mid-1980s; the CONAVIGUA since 1988; the national commission organized to protest celebrations of the Quintcentennial; Majawil Q'ij, which groups together nine peasant, human rights, and indigenous organizations; and CERJ, an ethnic community organization headed by Amilcar Méndez.
These organizations are, at least indirectly, supported by an emerging Maya intellectual movement. The Maya diaspora, prompted by the violence of the 1970s and 1980s, allowed a number of exiled Maya to attend universities. Their studies, primarily in linguistics and anthropology, were formative in the development of an intellectual Maya nationalist movement which, from the late 1980s, began to research and disseminate information and ideas on a national level in the various Maya languages.
These Maya intellectuals began to formulate a new framework for what it means to be Maya in Guatemala. They eschew the archaic view that Maya can only be poor peasants tending their milpas (small plots of corn and beans), encased in isolated communities and bound by ancient custom. Community has become more portable, surviving transportation to Guatemala City, refugee camps in Mexico, and even Indiantown in Florida. Tradition and custom are considered a means for Maya to reinforce a sense of themselves as a people distinct, in which cooperative values temper individualism. While there are conflicts between this more intellectual posture and the popular Maya organizations, especially concerning links to the Left and the importance of class, there is a strong basis of mutual support.
Finally, the government’s violent response to the struggle in rural Guatemala might be best understood in the context of the simultaneous struggle of the urban--and urbanizing--working class. The recent threats by the United States to drop Guatemala's preferred trade status because of labor practices, particularly in the maquilas, starkly illustrate the continuing problems of organized labor in Guatemala. Organized workers suffered terribly in the violence that followed the overthrow of President Arbenz in 1954. Workers' organizations slowly rebuilt and shed the weight of government persecution. By the late 1970s, the military governments were truly fearful of the power of workers' organizations, coordinated to some extent by the National Committee of Labor Unity (CNUS), formed in 1976. These organizations regularly flexed their muscle during the regime of General Kjell Laugerud (1974-1978), culminating in the strikes in the wake of the decision to raise urban bus fares in October, 1978.
The government of General Romeo Lucas García put its foot down. It relentlessly attacked the urban labor movement. The most serious blow was the kidnapping and killing of 45 labor leaders in 1980. Despite some courageous stands by labor leaders and individual unions such as the Campesino Unity Committee (CUC) which continued to organize rural workers into the early 1980s, organized labor was so decimated that it was no longer considered a substantial threat.
By 1983, with urban violence ebbing somewhat, labor organization began once again. In May, 1983, the Guatemalan Confederation of Labor Unity (CUSG), supported by the American Institute for Free Labor Development, was formed. The military government viewed the confederation as a non-threatening labor alternative. It was thus freer to act in the early 1980s than other organizations. Despite its mainstream origins, it has on occasion taken a surprisingly independent stand, and by the late 1980s had over 100,000 members?[9]
In 1985 and 1986 two new labor federations formed, UNSITRAGUA and CGTG. The former is certainly the most radical, with many old unions within the federation, while the CGTG was closely linked to the Christian Democratic party. In December, 1986, the Cerezo government passed Decree 71-86 which legalized the formation of unions among government employees. The powerful National Federation of State and Government Employees has close to 50,000 members. By 1988 it had joined with other popular groups, such as the GAM, the CUC, the teachers' union (STEG), and the two labor federations CUSG and UNSITRAGUA, to form the Unity of Union and Popular Action (UASP).[10] Popular and union organization has continued at a fast clip since then. Nevertheless, by early 1988 less than 5% of Guatemalan workers were unionized.[11]
These unions engaged in a variety of actions to press their demands, beginning in 1984 with a courageous struggle and sit-in at the Coca-Cola plant which gained much international attention. In April, 1987, 175,000 public employees went on strike for two weeks to demand a wage increase. They returned to work after promises--subsequently broken--from the Cerezo government that a fair settlement would be negotiated. This set the pattern for the rest of the Cerezo Administration. Time and time again when faced with public-sector strikes, Cerezo promised settlements which never materialized.
And while the wholesale violence of the late 1970s and early 1980s has not returned, violence against union organizers and members has continued throughout the 1980s. There were more extrajudicial killings in 1987 than in 1985, the last year of the military dictatorship.[12] To the sporadic and selective killings that punctuated the Cerezo Administration must be added the numerous death threats, often accompanied by kidnappings, which at times proved just as effective. During the public-sector strike in 1987, for example, armed men surrounded the main post office in Guatemala City, and four union leaders were threatened. In one particularly disturbing example, a labor lawyer that same year continually received threatening phone calls. If he wasn't at home, the caller would ask his children, “Is it true that your father is dead?”[13]
The fastest growing sector of the economy is the free trade zone factories or maquilas, encouraged to locate in Guatemala by a 1984 law exempting them from import levies and (for ten years) taxes. The maquilas have expanded production 23% a year on average from 1986 to 1991; a majority have Korean ownership. By 1991, the maquilas accounted for $219 million of Guatemala's $900 million in export earnings. Thirty-six percent of Guatemala's exports to the United States came from this sector.[14]
Four hundred maquilas employ 79,000 people, 70% of whom are women. The maquila workers earn about $2.50 a day on average. The maquila owners have fought hard to circumvent union organization in their factories, and have so far resisted demands for better working conditions, safer practices, and shorter hours. Carlota González's experience is typical. “I am a machine operator and earn 13 quetzales (about $2.50 a day) plus a little for piece work,” said González, who works in the Asa International textile factory. “I work from 7:30 in the morning to 10 o'clock at night, and what I earn doesn't cover what I need to eat.”[15] The new labor code which was passed in November is meant to address some of these issues and to make labor organization easier. It will do little in the short run to improve the lot of Guatemalan workers.
In this context, the most important concern of Guatemalan workers throughout the 1980s was simple economic survival. Real wages have fallen steadily during the last decade as under- and unemployment increased. Between 1980 and the end of 1991, prices rose by over 250%. During that same period, real wages fell by slightly more than 30%. A 1991 government study found that more than 5 million Guatemalans did not receive the basic minimum nutritional requirements, 80% of the population was malnourished, and seven out of 10 children lived in the worst conditions of poverty.[16]
In the early 1980s an urban worker lucky enough to have regular, paid employment could expect to be able to rent a small apartment and feed his/her family, if little else. In the 1990s, that bare minimum of existence was increasingly tenuous. A 1991 government study suggested that a family of five in the capital needed 1028 quetzales (about $200) a month for basic needs. However, the average monthly salary in Guatemala City was only 264 quetzales (about $50), and in 1989 fully 73% of the city's population earned less than 336 quetzales ($65) per month.
The changes in Guatemala over the last decade--the last half decade in particular--have been important. But in 1989 and 1990, Guatemala still had the worst human rights record in Latin America, according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. And while the military sounds increasingly out of step with the rest of the country, they still have the guns. Yet, after Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize, one of Guatemala's major newspapers asked her if she would contemplate running for president, implicitly suggesting they would support her. She smiled, hesitated a moment, and said she had never thought of that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jim Handy is the author of Gift of the Devil: A History of Guatemala (South End Press). He teaches history at the University of Saskatchewan.
FOOTNOTES: [1] In 1988, the general consensus was that about two thirds of the population was rural. [2] "Pachój Lemoa, testimonio de la impunidad," Noticias de Guatemala, August, 1992, pp. 2-4. [3] Prensa Libre, September 13, 1992, p. 9; "Pachój Lemoa." [4] James A. Goldston, Shattered Hope: Guatemalan Workers and the Promise of Democracy (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1991), p. 31. [5] Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1991), p. 167. [6] Cited in Goldston, Shattered Hope, p. 74. [7] Cited in Goldston, Shattered Hope, p. 33. [8] "Cabildo en Solalá," Noticias de Guatemala, August, 1992, pp. 11-13. [9] Goldston, Shattered Hope, pp. 20-21. [10] Goldston, Shattered Hope, pp. 22-23. [11] Goldston, Shattered Hope, p. 20. [12] According to Inforpress Centroamericana, cited in Susanne Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala, p. 163. [13] Jonas, The Battle for Guatemala, pp. 64 and 66. [14] "La Historia de una demanda contra Guatemala," Crónica, October 9, 1992, pp. 16-19; "Estamos ante una desaceleración," Crónica, October 16,1992,p. 40; "La industria de la maquila; fuente de riqueza y explotación," Tinamit, October 15, 1992, pp. 16-19. [15] “La industria de la maquila,” p. 17; Goldston, Shattered Hope, pp. 48-49. González's 13 quetzales a day barely covers the cost of the most basic daily food basket (excluding all other costs), which the government estimates at 7.9 quetzales per person. See also Central America Report, July 27, 1990 and May 31, 1991. [16] Siglo Veintiuno, October 16, 1992, pp. 15-17.
