"We simply cannot understand why a people must suffer so much to achieve their freedom." Rigoberta Menchu. Quiche woman whose father was killed in the Spanish Embassy March 23, 1983. Amid pomp and ceremony, Rfos Montt celebrates a year in power. The Guatemalan Right has bought time, but it is emerging from its scorched-earth euphoria to realize that its problems are not solved; the war is not over. Guatemala has the most skewed distribution of wealth in Central America, and reform is not on the agenda. The economic crisis deepens, hitting the mass of Guatemalans harder than ever. The objective basis of revolt remains untouched. Worst of all for the bourgeoisie, the Left, rooted in 29 years of history, has survived one of the most coherent, sustained and sanguinary counterinsurgency campaigns ever unleashed in Latin America. The most pressing goal of the Rfos Montt coup was to win the war; without this, the regime cannot begin to seriously address its deep crisis of power. What did Plan Victoria 82 accomplish? It mas- sacred anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 unarmed campesinos, and uprooted more than a million from their homes. One hundred thousand more languish in Mexican refuge, and all available tes- timony shows they blame the Army for their trauma. Large stretches of the highlands are devastated; the local economy is in turmoil. The Army could argue that it has begun to control the population by creating civil defense patrols designed to kill peasant morale and divide the communities. It could also claim to have con- fused segments of the Guatemalan middle class and the international community. But these are pyrrhic victories: the international situation will deteriorate as it becomes clear the war is far from over. Furthermore, they were made through a cam- paign breathtaking in its savagery. In some com- munities, the guerrilla infrastructure was inade- quate to withstand the onslaught; in others, pol- itical work had far outstripped military prepared- ness. The Left now traces these weaknesses back to the over-optimism which set in after the San- dinista victory in Nicaragua-the same "trium- phalism" which led El Salvador's FMLN to over-estimate its strength in January 1981. The Guatemalan conjuncture had seemed so favorable: with Lucas in the saddle, victory seemed only a matter of time. This triumphalism was spurred by-and in turn fueled-massive support from the mainly Indian peasantry. Some parts of the country had come close to spontan- eous insurrection, with peasants chafing to besiege garrisons with their homemade weapons. The net effect had been to spread the movement's strength too thin-even enthusiastic peasant supporters do not make a regular army overnight. It had been a boon under Lucas to disperse their resources, shredding Army morale; under Rfos Montt, it became a liability, as the Army concentrated its forces under new political camouflage and directed them at unarmed civilians the Left could not protect. Yet the Rios Montt offensive failed to deal the Left a strategic defeat-using the best-trained counterinsurgency army in Central America operating at full stretch. The brutality of Plan Victoria 82 was explicitly aimed at breaking the EGP, strongest of the four guerrilla groups, but it has failed to do so. In the new year, aerial bom- bing, village raids and kidnappings expanded to San Marcos in the west, with ORPA the new target.' In El Pet6n in the north, FAR areas too have been hit by Army sweeps, though with less publicity. The Left has devised new modes of operation, revamped its logistics, rethought military tactics and regrouped forces in its strongholds. After the premature fervor of 1981, the movement has returned soberly to its original strategy of pro- longed war with its principal assets intact. 34Mar/Apr 1983 Popular support, too, briefly cowed, is being reasserted. Since last September, there is again sustained guerrilla activity in the heart of mili- tary-occupied areas of the highlands-actions which would be inconceivable without civilian backing. 2 At the same time, the country as a whole now, not just isolated areas, is in a state of war. The Army offensive sucked into the conflict entire regions which the Left had never penetrated. The young and fragile unity of the Left was severely tested by the travails of 1982, but the ori- ginal agreements are still in force and the unity process has begun to move again after last year's post-coup stagnation. Finally, international sym- pathy for the Guatemalan people is simmering, even though it has not yet been translated into solid diplomatic terms. Rios Montt, though undeniably boosted by Reagan's support, is otherwise in little better shape than Lucas was internationally. Where does the military regime turn next? It has exhausted much of its margin for maneuver in the search for a rapid victory. The crisis of 1982 forced the ruling sectors to destroy the last ludicrous layer of legitimacy-elections. In do- ing so, they exposed deep fissures within the military itself, within the private sector and bet- ween the two. The national economy has been disrupted by the war effort, exacerbating the economic crisis and causing further rifts within the bourgeoisie. The country is militarized as never before, with class conflict polarized beyond repair. All these political and economic setbacks, coupled with heavy Army casualties in combat, made 1982 an arduous year for the regime, despite its veneer of self-confidence. For the Left, a new period of harassment of the Army is underway, designed to wear down troop morale. It will likely be followed by an escalation of the military level of the war once the Left has regrouped sufficiently. Columns may grow larger, combat more fierce, with vital stocks of weapons fed by successful encounters with government forces. Such military escalation could force the regime back to the defensive, raise the profile of the Guatemalan war in the in- ternational arena and restore the confidence of a battered population in "its army." If the effort works, it will probably be accompanied by in- creasing rank-and-file pressure to press ahead with the creation of a unified political front for the mass movement. 3 On March 23, Rfos Montt will announce his timetable for constituent assembly elections, the vaunted "return to constitutionality." The law is expected to demand the dissolution and re- inscription of existing parties, forbidding them to make electoral alliances. The Army will con- tinue to run the country. If this is the case, a private sector already seething at broader state control over its arbitrary prerogatives, will be further demoralized. As things stand today, the Army is run ragged trying to control the population, supervise the untrustworthy civil defense patrols and guard the strategic hamlets. Having exceeded all restraints in even getting this far, where does it go from here? Needing to swell its manpower and its arsenal, it is more dependent on infusions of U.S. aid than ever. But can it boost its strength and win the war without the monstrous scale of human rights violations which make Congress so mulish and would again tie Reagan's hands? The $50 million in U.S. military assistance for FY 1984 is a token that the Administration is prepared to stay the course. As the Left advances in El Salvador, Reagan will likely want to plunge even deeper into the Guatemalan mire. But will Reagan dare to sell the "new" Gua- temala as a democracy that must be defended? We have been dragged up this road before in El Salvador, only this time the options are even nar- rower. As in El Salvador, the U.S. commitment is to form rather than substance. International consumption demands democracy; Guatemala's internal logic suggests its -negation. The very political party leaders who hailed Rfos Montt's coup as an opening-men who might have prov- ed Washington's most serviceable allies-now head north to tell the State Department that there will be no democracy under Rios Montt. 4 Speak- ing before the General Assembly of the Organi- zation of American States, Secretary of State Schultz lauded the hemispheric trend toward democracy. El Salvador, of course, was the star turn. Even the dictatorships of Argentina and Uruguay, Schultz enthused, were examples of "democratic transformation' But Guatemala, perforce, was not on his list.5 Ultimately, it is the unswerving commitment to democracy, rooted in three decades of frus- trated history, which is the strongest card of the Guatemalan revolutionaries; it is the improba- bility of Rios Montt's which is Reagan's greatest liability. THE WAR GOES ON 1. Washington Office on Latin America, "Press Release," January 1983. 2. Inforpress, January 27, 1983. 3. NACLA interviews with opposition leaders in Mexico City, Fall 1982. 4. Washington Post, October 12, 1982. 5. George Schultz, "Reflections Among Neighbors," speech delivered to the General Assembly of the Organiza- tion of American States, Washington, D.C., November 17, 1982.
