A civilian government under military control FOR TWO YEARS we have been seeing a strong revival of the mass movement in Central America. This is especially true in those countries where there has been savage repression since the start of this decade, such as El Salvador and Guatemala.
But if these regimes succeeded in dealing defeats to the mass movement and to revolutionary organizations, their brutality was too glaring, and because of their detestable international image they ended up becoming obstacles to the US's regional strategy for combating the Nicaraguan revolution. This is the fundamental reason why the Reagan administration has been putting pressure on the armed forces of these countries to "clean up their act."
The clean-up operation was undertaken in 1984 in El Salvador when Napoleon Duarte was elected. (1) It was continued in Guatemala for the election of Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo to the presidency on December 8, 1984. With a "democratically elected" govern-
GUATEMALA went on strike. At the end of July, public transport users opposed an increase in bus fares. In some provincial cities, the conflict threatened to lead to riots, as in San Juan Tinotepec. Every week, the Mutual Support Group (GAM), made up of relatives of the "disappeared" (missing persons) and prisoners, has been organizing a demonstration in front of the National Palace. [See box.]
Since 1954, when the army and the United States overthrew the government of Jacobo Arbenz, Guatemala has experienced a series of military dictatorships and civilian governments under tight army control. (2)
With the advent of Cerezo, Guatemala once again has a civilian president. But the transfer of formal power from the military dictatorship to the civilian authorities took place without the Guatemalan army suffering the sort of defeat experienced by the Argentine army. On the contrary, it was the army itself that set up this transition.
The army general staff decided to refurbish the regime's international image in order to get more aid from US and European imperialism. Because of pressure in the US congress, Ameri can aid to Guatemala was cut sharply at the beginning of the 1980s. However, in 1986, it was increased by 180 percent over 1985, and congress once again authorized arms congress once again autonized aris sales, which were suspended between 1979 and 1985.
The Guatemalan capitalists also pressured the army to adopt this course. It wanted to maintain a tough government that would undertake some economic reforms, among other purposes to end certain forms of state control over foreign trade. After six months of a civilian administration, the army continues to keep firm control of the situation, and Cerezo's room for maneuver is extremely narrow.
The class-struggle current in the unions has a long tradition in Guatemala, but it was crushed by the repression, as was the National Committee for National Unity (CNUS), which was formed in 1976 and then decapitated in 1980.
The trade-union organizations that managed to maintain their structures during the worst years - and which
1. The March 25, 1984, presidential elections were won by the Christian Democrat Napoleon Duarte. See 'International
Viewpoint' No. 50, April 9, 1984. 1954, Colonel Jacobo Arbenz undertook 2. In power from 1950 to an agraricn reform in 1952 which, despite its reformist limitations, was unacceptable to the Guatemalan oligarchy. A military coup d'etat, backed up by US troops, removed Arbenz in June 1954, opening up a long period of repression and successive dictatorships.
15 ment, Guatemala could try to sphere of US diplomacy. ARNOLD BERTHU PARTHIT
The governments of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have just formed a counter-revolutionary front, called the "Tegucigalpa Group," to support the Reagan administration. Previously, the conflicts among these states and the domestic situation in some of them had blocked the formation of such an alliance.
The front set up among Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras has the objective of decisively blocking the Contadora group and providing a basis of support for US intervention. These countries could, at a convenient time, appeal to the United States to intervene directly in Nicaragua, in a scenario similar to the one that was set up for the US invasion of Grenada.
Guatemala had been isolated for two years owing to commercial conflicts with its Honduran and Salvadoran partners and the distance that the military dictatorship took from US foreign policy at the time of the Malvinas war.
Since 1960, the Guatemalan regime shyed away from aligning itself completely with US foreign policy. Before that, its Atlantic coast was used as the staging area for the US-backed landing staging area for the Us-backed landing regain an international role in the in Cuba, and a section of the army rebelled against that on a nationalist basis. At the time, some top officers even joined the guerrillas.
In addition, in El Salvador and Guatemala, the mass movement has regained its strength, even if it has not yet reached the level it had attained at the end of the 1970s. It is on the rise in a context where, in El Salvador at least, the revolutionary forces have consolidated their positions and scored important pollitical points. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) has become a force that Napoleon Duarte's government in El Salvador has to deal with.
In the six months since the inauguration of the Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo in Guatemala, mass mobilizations have assumed a scope unknown in the previous three years. On May Day this year, for the first time since 1980, 5,000 workers marched through the streets of the capital. In the wake of that, 16,000 peasants demonstrated at the National Palace demanding agrarian reform.
In July, 2,000 workers in the Arizona banana company in the province [departamiento] of Izabal
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
GAM organizes against disappearances
FORMED IN June 1984, the Mutual Support Group of Families of Prisoners and Missing Persons (GAM), is playing a propelling role in Guatemalan political life. In a very short time, it has managed to unite several hundred families of missing persons and has demanded that the military dictatorship tell the truth about the disappeared. "They were alive when you took them away, and we want them back alive," the group declares.
GAM representatives were received several times by General Mejia Vitores in the second half of 1984. After months of waiting, when the bloody repression was continuing and hitting leaders of the group, the GAM accused Mejia Vitores of being responsible for the disappearances and the secret prisons.
On October 12, 1984, the GAM organized a public demonstration of about a thousand participants, including many Indians and a large delegation from the Coca-Cola factory that had been occupied since March of that year. It was the first public demonstration of opposition since May Day 1980, during which about a hundred people had been arrested and were later executed.
In reprisal against the GAM, the special repressive forces arrested two members of the group on October 13. A month and a half later, their horribly mutilated bodies were found near their homes. In January 1985, the GAM held a demonstration in front of the US embassy, and in January 1985 it began organizing a demonstration every Friday afternoon a few hundred meters from the National Palace. In March 1985, General Mejia Vitores began publicly accusing the GAM of being a subversive group. The repression then rose to a higher level.
On April 4, the vice-chair of the GAM, Rosario Godoy, 24 years old, "disappeared," along with her two-yearold son and 21-year-old brother. A few hours later, the three bodies were found in Rosario's car at the bottom of a ravine. They bore the marks of torture.
Since then the GAM has continually stepped up the pressure. Its chair, Nineth de Garcia, 26 years old, whose husband, a union leader at Vidrio Cavesa, disappeared in February 1984, is now being protected by a permanent civilian escort made up of US and European pacifists from the International Peace Brigades.
Since the installation of a civilian president, the GAM has been demanding the repeal of the law that the armed forces got adopted in December 1985 giving themselves amnesty, just before the elections. At the same time, it has called for the setting up of a tripartite commission of inquiry on the missing persons, made up of representatives of the GAM, of the government and international personalities such as Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a Nobel Prize winner.
The GAM has rejected the arbitrators proposed by the government, including the president of the Guatemalan Red Cross, whose attitude on the question of the "disappeared" it considers too ambiguous.
In the first months of his administration Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo wanted to present a democratic face by meeting several times with Nineth de Garcia and by making promises. He organized a substitute for a commission of inquiry, appointing a single pre-trial judge no The in fire out the inter himself had in, judge to "try" to find out what happened to the missing moreover, on January 30, 1986, that he had counted 1,600 missing persons since 1983. The GAM has put together a list of 1,367, with the help of those families that have dared to associate themselves with its activity.
The setting up of the commission of inquiry is proving difficult. Cerezo is showing a worse and worse will about meeting the demands of the GAM in this regard, ihereby demonstrating that he has never had real powers and that the Armed Forces, which stand behind him, are doing their uimost to hold this process back.
It is also interesting to note the role played by the Catholic hierarchy in this affair. Archbishop Prospero Penados, while not really opposing the GAM's activity, is denouncing in the press the methods it is using, which in his opinion are quite "inopportune."
Faced with this attitude, the GAM is maintaining its demands and holding larger demonstrations to back them up. So that a commission of inquiry can really function, it is demanding:
• that it be given legal status through decree; • that the government extend it political support as a member of the UN, which confers the obligation of respecting human rights;
• that the commission function for at least 10 months;
• that international observers follow its work; • that a code of conduct be formulated and approved to define the commission's juridical status, its competence, and so on.
In this way, the GAM is playing a central role in Guatemalan political life, in particular since it includes hundreds of Indians and depends directly on the support of the militant trade-union currents.
have the strongest tradition - are concentrated in the country's two major industries, which employ most workers. But a section of the economically active population remains unorganized by the industrial trade-union movement.
The impact of the economic crisis has promoted the growth of a whole section of society that oscillates between unemployment informal between underemployment and the economy." (3) In the capital alone, it is estimated that 50 percent of the economically active population fits into this category.
There are today three trade-union confederations in the country -16 the National Confederation of Trade-Union Unity (CUSG), the Workers Union of Guatemala (UNSITRAGUA) and the General Coordinating Committee of Workers of Guatemala (CGTG).
The oldest of these three confederations is the CUSG, which was formed in 1983 under the Rios Montt dietatorship, which permitted this progovernment confederation to function in order to improve its international image. In this operation, the government was assisted by the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), which subsidized the CUSG to a considerable extent. (4)
According to the director of the confederation's research center himself, AIFLD paid out around 50,000 US dollars a year to the
3. Between 1977 and 1983, nearly quarter of the industrial plants were eliminated. Only 12% of the remaining 2,000 enterprises employ more than 50 workers. In the capital, about 40,000 persons work in enterprises employing more than 50 people, out of a total of 75,000 employed in industry in Guatemala City. The total economically active population in the area is estimated at about half a million people.
4. The AIFLD was formed in 1962 to help "fight communism" and foster US foreign policy interests. Along with the American Federation of Labor/Congress of Industrial Organizations [AFL-CIO], the institute plays a key role in financing anti-Communist unions all over the world.
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
CUSG, not counting aid "in kind" (office materials, furniture and so on).
While the CUS claims no less than 216,000 members, its figures have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. They are challenged by the other confederations, who point to the official character of the CUSG in the final years of the dictatorship. A lot of the unions that it claims to include have only existed in the papers of the former Ministry of Labor. The failure of the confederation's attempts at mobilization since power was transfered to Cerezo confirms such assessments. Government funding
The CGTG is the youngest of the three, since it was founded in March 1986 and is still in its formative period. Linked to Christian Democracy through the Latin-American Workers' Confederation (CLAT), it gets material and technical aid from Venezuela's powerful Federation of Rural Workers (FMC), which is Social Christian in orientation. At the same time, although it strongly denies this, it is getting money from the Cerezo government through the newly created Ministry of Development.
Likewise, the Ministry of Labor has given a big boost to the organization of the Association of State Workers (ANTEG), which constitutes the bulk of the CGT's forces. It is this ministry that deals with applications for recognition by new unions. From these facts, it is not hard to conclude that the Christian government is likely to promote a Christian Democratic union.
The only concederation what can The only confederation that can really be considered to be independent is UNSITRAGUA. It was formed in February 1985, even if it did not come out publicly until September of the same year.
Founded after the victory of the workers at the Guatemala City CocaCola factory [see the interview that follows], UNSITRAGUA today includes the more militant unions and, in opposition to the other two confederations, is following a line of class independence. It is made up of about 30 unions, representing nearly 35,000 workers, and has a strong base in the banks and insurance companies, among municipal workers (it is in the majority in the capital in this sector), among agricultural workers in the banana plantations in the province of Izabal on the Atlantic coast, and among university workers.
Recently, it has been joined by the strong private sector unions, such as the one at the Coca-Cola bottling plant (STECA). Other trade-union organizations, such as the 35,000member National Council of Teachers, are discussing affiliating to UNSITRAGUA.
Unlike the CUSG and the CGTG, UNSITRAGUA gets no financial aid. It can only count on the resources of its members. Today it is focusing its energies on training its activists and cadres in trade-union organization and leadership, as well as on demanding the right to work. It plans to launch a bi-monthly publication shortly, as well as opening up a headquarters and a bookstore.
The UNSITRAGUA leaders have few illusions about the real extent of the liberalization that Vinicio Cerezo's election was supposed to represent. They hope only to be able to get the maximum benefit from the new situation created by the transfer of power to a civilian government.
Anxious to appear more independent than it is claimed to be, the CGTG organized a march this May Day together with UNSITRAGUA, while the CUSG stood aside.
Cerezo also intends to build a popular base for the Christian Democrats, but he has very little room for maneuver. Hemmed in by the demands of the International Monetary Fund, the bosses' rejection of all wage demands and the all-pervading presence of the army, he has little possibility for offering concessions to the mass movement.
On April 28, 1986, 16,000 peasants from the south-east coast started a 147-kilometer march, which culminated in a demonstration in front of the National Palace. For five days, they formed a two-kilometer-long human chain, marching in twelve columns single file.
In view of the size of the demonstration, President Cerezo decided to greet the peasants himself on their arrival. Facing banners saying, "Cerezo, we voted for you, give us the land," he said that he would do everything possible to solve the problem, and then invited the peasants to get into the buses that the government provided to take them home as fast as possible!
In the following days, Cerezo made it clear that he could not expropriate land for the benefit of the peasants because he had sworn to respect the constitution, which guarantees private property. The president went on to say that all he could do was to wait until the big landowners offered to sell a part of their land. In that event, he concluded, he could not even promise to buy up the land in question because the government was short of money!
Father Giron, who organized the march on the capital and had returned there for discussions with the presi dent, then went to the National Assembly. He broke into the chamber to ask every deputy to put some change into his big straw hat to give to the government for buying land.
Father Giron had begun the march by declaring that he supported Cerezo on the condition that he carry out a real land reform. He added that if that was not done, the democratic process would have failed. In response to Cerezo's first evasions, Father Giron said: "The president has to define his position: either he is with the rich or he is with the poor."
Finally, when Cerezo clearly rejected agrarian reform, Father Giron concluded: "In fact, it is not Cerezo who is running the country, it is the army and the other sections that hold the money.... The power should rest with the people and not with
Chajul in the Quiche province (DR)
International Viewpoint 13 October 1986
GUATEMALA the army or the capitalists. If the power rests with the people, then an adequate agrarian reform can be carried out that is thoroughgoing and not just theoretical."
Father Giron has been living with the peasants for years. His father was murdered by the army, and he himself was almost killed in the early 1980s. He had to go into exile in Colombia for two years. He returned in 1984 to start organizing the peasants in the south of the country. When journalists asked him to define wnen journalists asked him to deline his position, he said: *I am a mad priest who knows the real needs of a people who lack medicines, food and rights."
Since the march, illegal land occupations have started up in various places. So far the army has received orders not to intervene, at least when there were journalists around. For his part, Father Giron has drawn up a list of landholdings that the government should expropriate.
The bloody repression at the start of the 1980s dealt real blows to various guerrilla forces in the mountains as well as in the cities. In the regions with a strong concentration of Indians, the army has been carrying out a veritable genocide (50,000 dead) in order to deprive the guerrillas of a base. There are nearly a million refugees in the country and a further 120,000 in Mexico.
The armed forces have regrouped the population in villages they control (the so-called model villages), which are in fact modelled on the "strategic villages" of the Vietnam war. Some 300,000 people have been forcibly enrolled in the Civic Action Patrols (PACs), which are designed to provide a human wall shielding the armed forces against guerrilla attack.
The various components of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (URNG) have managed to hold out against this very severe repression, and since the first half of 1985, they have been inflieting increasing losses on the armed forces. (5) Nonetheless, the URNG is in a much weaker position than the Salvadoran FMLN, even though -according to the armed forces' own figures — there are 5,000 guerrillas.
Since 1984, the URNG has clearly understood the contradictory aspect of the situation arising out of the National Assembly and presidential elections - on the one hand a refurbishing of the regime's image and on the other a possibility for reviving the mass movement, starting in particular from a fight for democratic rights (e.g. the role of the GAM).
The URNG rejected the elections as a mascarade. At the same time it held back from trying to prevent them, and avoided cutting itself off from 18 those sections of the masses that harbored illusions about these elections.
When Cerezo was elected, the URNG published a statement in which it said, "we will not be the cause of [this regime's] failure." It thought that Cerezo would quickly demonstrate his incapacity to respond to the demands of the masses.
Sections of the masses are experiencing the narrow limitations of the liberalization, while at the same time taking considerable advantage of it to go back into the streets and fight for their demands.