"MAY THEY REST IN PEACE"

-By Grahame Russell
January 1997

Little celebration, cheers, or joy in Guatemala; mostly sad relief that the war is officially over. Enormous loss of life, atrocious suffering and widespread trauma lie just below the surface of the peace.

After three years of steady United Nations mediated peace negotiations, the Guatemalan government and the URNG (National Revolutionary Guatemalan Unity) signed, on December 29, 1996, the final peace accord, ending 35 years of armed conflict.

Some say that neither side won or lost this war. This is not so. Through the eyes of the victims -- dead and surviving -- this is a very lost war.

"You will not find one single person in this country who was not affected by this war, ... [who was] either killed, kidnapped, tortured, persecuted or exiled, or knew someone who was. And for what? Nothing. Zero. Nada. Nothing was resolved at all. No economic, no political, no social issue was resolved." (1)

Guatemala is not known for the armed confrontation between the military and the URNG. Guatemala is known for the "dirty war," the systematic use of massacres, rape, torture, disappearances, etc. (2)

What the ending of the war-that-was-lost does is afford Guatemalans the chance to address the same issues that they were addressing in the 60s and 70s, before the worst years of repression: educating and organizing, especially amongst the Mayan populations, to work for the guarantee of all their rights, including economic and social rights, and issues related to the struggle for land.

These are the same issues that the democratically elected governments of 1944-1954 were addressing, before the US/CIA. engineered the coup that ended Guatemala's "democratic spring," and initiated 42 years of State repression.

Today, however, addressing the historical issues of exploitation, racism, injustice and impunity is much more complicated. Not only are these injustices and inequalities deeply entrenched, and relied upon by sectors of the population benefiting from them, but also Guatemala now has to deal with the legacy of the repression. (3)

The powerful sectors of Guatemala (and the US) that planned, ordered and benefited from the repression, particularly the policy of massacres in the 1980s, have "gotten away with murder", protected almost completely by the mantle of impunity.

How much harder will it be to construct a just country when the surviving victims know who are the killers, rapists and assassins, and see some of them on a daily basis, in their rural villages, and city neighborhoods, or see them running the military and police, and governing the nation?

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Directly related to impunity entrenched at the national level, little has been done to address the impunity with which the US acted in Guatemala (and throughout Central America), firstly, in orchestrating the 1954 coup, and, more importantly, in providing massive support (military training, military aid, financial support, and direct US involvement) to the Guatemalan "security" forces and "death squads" since 1954; notwithstanding President Carter's touted, but ineffective, temporary suspension of military aid to Guatemala, before the scorched earth policies were implemented in the early 1980s with strong support from the Reagan administration.

The structures that permit these impunities, at the national and international levels, are still in place.

The war was also lost because the same racial-economic status quo is in place that was in place before the worst years of repression began, the same that was in place before the democratic years of 1944-54. Many times more people -- mainly poor, Mayan children and babies -- were killed by the violence of poverty than by the war and repression.

Thus, though final peace has been signed, many lives were destroyed and lost by repression and poverty -- this cannot be remedied in any way. Even as there is little hope that justice will be done for the crimes of the past, or that the surviving victims will be compensated for their loss and suffering, there are signs of hope, that present themselves as challenges for people and organizations interested in international human rights.

Though the URNG (4) never came close to overthrowing the Guatemalan military, they were able to oblige the government to negotiate a series of Accords that, in their totality, address the wide range of historical and contemporary injustices that characterize Guatemala. [See box] Guatemalan and international organizations interested in guaranteeing all human rights for all people now must pressure the military, government and oligarchy to act in compliance with the Accords.

Internationally, US organizations are challenged. Perhaps the only positive thing to happen in the United States concerning the repression in Guatemala (and throughout Central America) over the past 20 years, is that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of US citizens have been educated about the extensive role that their government played in Central America. Many citizens have been shamed by the direct involvement of the United States in the systematic commission of political and civil rights violations in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and, in a different way, Nicaragua.

Similarly, over the past 20 years, awareness in the north has increased as to the complex but powerful role of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and of multinational companies and banks in perpetuating conditions of exploitation and poverty in countries of the south, such as those of Central America.

A challenge in the United States (and elsewhere in the 'north') is to translate this increased awareness about the preponderant military and economic role of the north into concrete actions to hold governmental, intergovernmental and private institutions of the north accountable for the impact of their actions around the planet, Guatemala and Central America being perfect case studies for the United States. (5)

International human rights efforts face two important challenges, that are pertinent but not particular to Guatemala. The notion that the State is the only violator of human rights (with certain exceptions in the case of armed guerrilla movements, such as the URNG) is limited and therefore wrong. In Guatemala (as elsewhere in Central America), the United States contributed considerably to the systematic violation of political and civil rights over the past decades, and the United States should have been apportioned responsibility for its actions and held accountable.

Furthermore, human rights organizations must begin to work on economic, social and cultural rights, as they do on political and civil rights. The biggest killer in Guatemala, even in the worst years of massacres, was poverty.

Human rights organizations must not only hold northern governments and private actors accountable for their actions, but also they must integrally address what often is referred to as the cycle of poverty, organization and repression: people educate themselves about their conditions of poverty (economic and social rights violations); they organize and mobilize to demand guarantee of these rights (exercising political and civil rights); and, in response, the State (and certain private sector forces) mobilize and repress (political and civil rights violations) the people and organizations struggling for their rights. As Guatemalans gather themselves to face these challenges, they take time to mourn and remember the dead and the destroyed.

What happened in Guatemala from 1954 forward, and particularly during the worst years of massified repression (1978-84), was not unique in history. Guatemala's Mayan majority say that these recent years of State repression, though particularly ferocious, are part of 500 years of exploitation and racism.

Formal peace will only be transformed into real and lasting peace if significant economic, political and military changes are made at the national and international levels. These challenges must be faced if Guatemalans are to achieve the elusive goal of nunca mas -- never again!

The author, a Canadian human rights lawyer and writer, lived and worked for seven years in Central America. He is presently director of Rights Action: T: 202-783-1123. E: info@rightsaction.org. w: www.rightsaction.org.

1.) Edmond Mulet, Guatemalan ambassador to the US, 1993-95. The Boston Globe, 12/29/96, Pg. A1. [back to article]

2.)National and international human rights organizations agree that since 1961 and particularly since 1978, close to 150,000 civilians were killed; 45,000 were "disappeared"; hundreds of thousands were orphaned and widowed; hundreds of thousands were tortured and raped; and, close to 1,000,000 were displaced internally or forced to flee as refugees.) Though the armed conflict and State repression directly overlapped, the distinction is vital. The fear, terror, silence and trauma that characterize Guatemala today result from the State repression. [back to article]

3.) See Unearthing the Truth: Exhuming a Decade of Terror in Guatemala, by the Grahame Russell, Sarah Kee and Ann Butwell, that looks at the process, going across Guatemala, of exhuming the first of hundreds of mass graves where the remains of massacre victims lie. [back to article]

4.) Another 'positive' aspect of the signing of final peace is that if gives people a chance to de-demonize the URNG. The Guatemalan military, government and oligarchy, and the US were very successful, often with support from a compliant, non-questioning press, at portraying the URNG as "Marxist" rebels, in this way 'justifying' the repression as part of the struggle against communism in the US's "backyard." This phenomena of demonizing enemies to justify repression and atrocities merits an entire article. Recommended reading: Bridge of Courage, by Jennifer Harbury (Common Courage Press, 1994, PO Box 702 Monroe, ME, 04951), which contains a series of interviews with men and women members of the URNG, allowing them to explain in their own words why they joined the URNG and for what they are fighting. [back to article]

5.) The relatively recent growth in northern citizens' organizations working to hold northern governments and other powerful actors accountable for their military and economic actions world wide, is a hopeful phenomena which merits its own article. [back to article]

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SUMMARY OF THE NEGOTIATED ACCORDS

Important reforms have been provided for in the written Accords signed by the government of Guatemala and the URNG (Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity) over the past three years, leading up to the signing of final peace on December 29, 1996. As many Guatemalans know, the challenge is to implement the written promises and aims of the Accords.

• Displaced peoples Accord The first Accord signed addresses the needs of the close to 1,000,000 Guatemalans who were displaced from and lost home and community by the war and repression.
• Human rights Accord This Accord reiterates the government's commitment to respect human rights and put an end to impunity. Since 1994, the United Nations has a 350-person human rights monitoring mission -- MINUGUA -- throughout Guatemala. MINUGUA will also have an important role over the next few years in ensuring compliance with aspects of the various Accords.
• Reconciliation Accord This partial 'amnesty' law will allow the URNG to return legally to civilian life and provide for the partial demobilization and down-sizing of the Army. It also forgives soldiers, government agents and guerrillas for such crimes as kidnapping and murder, committed in the context of the war. Though certain crimes, such as genocide and torture, do not benefit from the amnesty law, there has been strong outcry from human rights organizations, believing that whether by the word of the law or by the political reality of impunity, the vast majority of the State's crimes against civilians will be pardoned.
• Indigenous rights and identity Accord This Accord offers a wide range of provisions aiming to end discrimination against Guatemala's Mayan Peoples who comprise as much as 80% of the population, and suffered the most during the war. Critics point out that much of what is included in this Accord, as is the case with many of the Accords, has already been provided for in the country's constitution or legislation, and never respected.
• Socio-economic and agrarian Accord An estimated 75 percent of Guatemala's population is impoverished. Two percent of the population owns two-thirds of the arable land. The Accord provides a series of provisions to begin to address these historical injustices, including dealing partially with the issue of land distribution and ownership.
• Accord concerning the role of the military in a democratic society Guatemala's 45,000-man army was blamed for most of the atrocities during the war. The Accord eliminates elite counterinsurgency units and puts an end to the civilian defense patrols -- PACs -- that contributed to years of terror. It also calls for the creation of a new civilian-controlled police force free of Army influence. The Army's mission will be more strictly interpreted as that of protecting the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Guatemala. Guatemala will have a civilian minister of defense.
• Truth commission: A truth commission will investigate human rights abuses during the war. The effectiveness of the commission is limited by time constraints, it will have no legal authority to prosecute criminal offenses, and it is prohibited from naming the people who committed or authorized the offenses