[ From the New Liberation News Service mailing list. ]
Interview with Guatemalan Leader
Michael James, CISCAP
(NLNS)--[Mario del Rosario is a close colleague of the CUC's Rigoberta
Menchu, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in October of 1992. Like
Menchu, she is a survivor of the political violence in Guatemala, the
Western Hemisphere's leading human rights violator, a situation for which
the U.S. bears the responsibility.]
mdr: What is happening in Guatemala is also happening in the rest of
Latin America. The situation of indigenous people in Guatemala is similar
to the situation of black people, as well as indigenous people in the U.S.
and other countries.
Guatemala's population is two-thirds indigenous, but we never
have a government that reflects this. Instead they are Ladino (non-Indian
or mixed blood). This is similar to South Africa where blacks do not
govern at all.
Our struggle is not an ethnic struggle. It's a struggle to own the
land and participate in the governing of the country. The good land, 70
percent of it, is owned by 2 percent of the people. This shows why a major
cause of the war relates to the land issue.
500 years ago the land was stolen. The Europeans came across the
ocean and cleared out for their own use the land they found, and in the
process they destroyed the indigenous peoples and cultures that were
already living there.
While people still die of hunger, Guatemala continues to export
agricultural products. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the workers
are dispossessed of land. The land issue affects not only the indigenous
people, but also the poor Ladino (mixed blood) who doesn't own the land
either and cannot live off it.
Faced with such a situation our communities have come together to
organize, hoping to make change. Unfortunately, when we have organized
and expressed ourselves the primary response to this expression has been
more military repression.
In Guatemala, there were large tracts of land that belonged to the
communities and this fact was written into law, but the indigenous people
didn't understand the colonizers' language, so the land was taken away
from them.
In this way the land owners helped themselves to most of the best
land. Later when some of us tried to reclaim this land legally, producing
the titles, the government did not listen and protected the thieves.
These gaping inequalities have resulted in an armed conflict which
has gone on for 30 years. There was struggle before that but it mostly
came to nothing. If you ask for something you need and you don't get it
you have to struggle just to eat.
This is not a race war, but a war between the powerful and
powerless. Thirty years of war have affected us as a people, as a family,
as a community. Each family has a member who has been killed,
kidnapped, or is a refugee.
But also through these years of struggle we have formed unarmed
political organizations that fight peacefully for land, liberty and freedom
of expression.
One of these is my organization, the CUC. Catholic Action, a
progressive Christian organization that worked among us mostly
indigenous country peasants, encouraged us to ask questions such as why
is there discrimination in class, race and gender. It was by reflecting on
this that the CUC was started.
How do you bring so many indigenous groups together?
mdr: Officially there are 22 groups, but there are in effect only 16. We
have many values in common. Some of the languages are more different
than others, but others have a common base enabling mutual
comprehension. When we talk about one particular language, we are
talking about thousands of people speaking only one language.
In the CUC all the different peoples are represented. Since we
have to communicate, it is through those of us who speak Spanish, it could
have been any other language, because Spanish is not our original
language.
Does the military have any experts in indigenous languages to infiltrate the
CUC and other indigenous organizations?
mdr: They have no experts right now. But they do have indigenous people
brought in to work for them in the army. The army captures people and
forces them to finger other members of the community
In the CUC we worked with the unions. We had to organize
secretly in order not to be killed. For example, in 1980, any union
organization at all was met by intense repression. First we started with
small groups of people, clarifying our thoughts together. Then we spread
all over the communities. Everything was done by word of mouth.
Occasionally we would get time on radio stations. And then we would get
help from this church and that union.
Organizing labor led us finally to the big plantations of cotton,
sugar and coffee. We struggled so that the workers can have better jobs
and salary. We do this through dialogue with the bosses and also through
other ways: our people work long hours, then we have a strike. Strikes are
necessary, otherwise the boss won't recognize the value of our work and
the extinction salaries will go on being paid.
How does the government defend its claim to be democratic?
mdr: They have elections. They have a Congress. In these elections there
are a lot of abstentions because people don't have any confidence in the
government. You see different people taking over the presidency, but the
system is the same.
The Congress doesn't consult with the people when they pass their
laws. Although there are three or four indigenous people in the Congress,
their presence is only symbolic: they have no real power at all.
They say "democratic" because it's a civilian government. That is,
the front is civilian. But in the back are the military, who control
everything. So many in the community don't know what democracy is,
because all they see is an army that tells them what to do and doesn't let
them organize.
In the villages there are curfews: you must be home by 8 p.m. and
don't leave before 6 a.m. If you are found out before that time you will be
shot. There are some freedoms on paper, but it is only on paper.
Is military terror still preventing many people from organizing?
mdr: Yes. It's a real thing that is happening, this terror. Breaking the fear is
one of the hardest things to do. If you are walking in the street you are not
safe; they can take you. Or a bomb can explode in your office. Or they can
brainwash the people to join their civil patrols, which we in the CUC are
struggling to end.
What are the civil patrols?
mdr: Civil patrols are para-military groups of kidnapped men who are
brainwashed and forced to do military service locally. The people who are
forced into these patrols are not just young people, but fathers of families
and old men. These people are obliged to continue doing the work they
have to do for their family and community on top of their military service.
Part of what the military makes them do is force them to commit
acts of violence against the people in order to be able to better control
them. When these men are reintroduced to their society they usually feel
grief and remorse for what they have done. Some people, however have
been so well brainwashed that they have difficulty readapting to their
community.
Are there defectors in the military who join the URNG (National
Guatemalan Revolutionary Unity) guerrillas?
mdr: We don't say it publicly, but some people have heard that the
guerrillas are a viable alternative. Many of the defectors are indigenous
people.
In the 90's, are the guerrillas better able to protect the people than in the
early 80's?
mdr: The URNG's main objective is not primarily to protect the people but
to fight the army. The people are learning different ways of protecting
themselves without conventional arms. But it is true that if the army
knows the guerrillas are in a particular place then they will not go there.
Now there are negotiations happening during the war between the
government and the URNG. We want all the civilian groups in Guatemala
to take part in the negotiations and to find a solution to the processes that
have made the war possible.
We want the participation of the indigenous people, respect for
their cultural diversity, and of their languages. We want respect of human
rights and freedom. This means changing the situation from the military
directing the civilians to the other way around.
Another important issue in the negotiations involves the refugees.
The military's war on the population in the early 1980s resulted in the
creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees who either fled to Honduras,
Mexico, and the U.S., or remained in the country, living in the jungle, as
the Communities of Populations in Resistance.
A major issue is to prepare the country for the refugees' return, so
that all these can claim their land without fear of being attacked and
dispossessed again. Of course, this requires first of all that the military
cease its massacring which caused the exodus in the first place.
This hasn't happened yet, and it's doubtful that it will in the
foreseeable future while the military still has the power. Nevertheless, the
fact that there are negotiations at all, however ineffectual, allows for some
hope, if only that the international community, for example, become aware
that the Guatemalan military has no real legitimacy.
One very important thing is our international work. We went to the
United Nations, not as part of the Guatemalan delegation, since we are not
part of the government, but as indigenous people of that country who have
been dispossessed by the government and murdered by the military.
We went to the UN to find an international forum for our struggle
for land and participation in the government's decisions that concern us.
We have a relationship with the humanitarian foundations in other
countries, as well as with other popular organizations in Guatemala.
What ways are there to resist the military?
mdr: Although the communities are non-military, there still is such a
thing as self defense. For example, there are dug out pits with sharpened
sticks protruding up from the bottom so that the soldiers fall in, and they
get frightened (laughter: obviously the soldiers got a little bit more than
frightened -- mj)
We see this as functioning two ways. Not only to keep the military
from attacking the village, but when a soldier falls in, gets hurt, and word
of this spreads to his comrades, this takes time, and that allows enough
time for the people to retreat. So the military's high-tech response to the
pits around the villages is to tie a lateral stick to the waist so that when
they fall into the pit they are prevented from falling all the way down by
the sticks.
The people's low-tech response to this is simply to stop building
rectangular holes going this way (gestures) and to dig rectangles going the
other way so that no matter how long your stick was, you were going
down. Now they have even advanced to the point where they have ropes
lying across the forest floor and when the soldiers hit this trip-wire, sticks
shoot in through the sides.
The military aren't capable of appreciating that the people are
intelligent enough to take this defensive action. They come across the
traps and say, " See? We were right! You are guerrillas! It's obvious that
you're receiving military aid from Cuba or Viet Nam, otherwise how could
you do these things?"
What was the reaction in Guatemala to Rigoberta Menchu's Nobel Peace
Prize?
mdr: It was a national festival of peace. The church bells of different
villages were coordinated to ring together on Oct. 16 and 17. In the streets
there was music and fireworks.
When we talk about these things we are just talking about the
physical manifestations: what you could see and hear. But there's a deeper
level on which we reacted, because for us, this was national recognition of
our struggle. We all became infused with a desire and a hope to carry on
and continue the struggle. Also it should not be forgotten that this is
recognition of a person who is a woman and who is indigenous.
In the morning, when Rigoberta first heard the news, she said that
this prize means recognition of the poorest people who don't even have a
shirt to their name. It's recognition of street children, not only of
Guatemala, but also of Brazil.
It's like a magical salve that's being applied to the bleeding wounds
of 500 years of oppression. But we don't just want salves -- salves can't
treat open wounds -- we want an actual change in the way things are.
So what you see going on in this year of resistance is a reflection
of what has preceded it for 500 years. You are seeing a people who have
been downtrodden but who have known how to survive by keeping the
memory of the very best things that defined their past culture.
When we, the Guatemalan people look at our situation and see the
repression, we see a direct parallel with what took place when the captains
of Spain arrived after Columbus. Because during this period following the
arrival the Spaniards tried to annihilate us first using the excuse that they
needed to convert us since we weren't Catholic.
In the last century the excuse has changed. Now they need to
repress us because they say we are communists. Today it is just a
continuation: we strive for democracy and they tell us it is because we
strive for democracy that we must be put down.
When we talk about people being massacred, about homes being
burnt, villages being attacked, and people being disappeared, we are not
just talking about something that happened 500 years ago, we are talking
unfortunately about something that took place in the last decade and
continues to happen now.
The U.S. ceased its military aid to Guatemala last year. But we
believe this does not reflect a real human rights concern, otherwise why do
arms sales continue? More alarming still is the fact that Israel, the number
one client state of the U.S., has resumed military aid and training to the
Guatemalan military.
What concerned people in this country can do is to pressure their
Congress on this point, and perhaps then will there be more hope for an
opening for democracy in Guatemala.
Michael James is a member of the Committee in Solidarity With
the Central American People (CISCAP); they may be contacted at 485
Blair Blvd, Eugene, OR 97402 or by calling (503) 485-8633.
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