The Guatemalan Conflict
Historical background
For 45 years of violence, 150,000 deaths, countless massacres, destruction of nearly 700 villages, assassinations, death squads and dislocation of over a million people in Guatemala, most of the outside world knew nothing, according to jpsviewfinder.org. With the 1999 release of the final report by the Commission for Historical Clarification established by the UN in 1994, the world came to know the horror of Guatemala’s history and the violence against its mostly indigenous population.
In the 60’s the trend of militarization of the government was irreversible which resulted in early protests and insurgencies. By 1962 the government had established a military cabinet. Primary among its priorities were to initiate repression of opposition groups and leaders and policies of forceful intimidation and threats of violence became common. Early student protests were repressed by the military (Dakin, 2005). The more militant groups splintered off and started to mobilize arms. By 1963 these early insurgent groups began to unite and look to sabotage and violent guerrilla as the solution. These trends would only escalate and in turn define Guatemalan politics for the next 30 years.
The different sides of Guatemalan conflict
According to Minority Rights Organization, there are three sides of the conflict represented by the military government, the insurgent groups and the various ethnic Mayan communities that were victimized by both. The military was comprised of various factions that all perpetrated common policy against the insurgents. Besides the main army, the police, rural and urban patrols and Death squads all were involved in military operations. The insurgent groups, on the other hand, were factionalized and numerous until unification in the early 1980’s. Early groups such as the PGT, FAR, EGP and MR-13 operated independently with similar goals in the 1960’s and became unified in their efforts in the late 1970’s, often recruiting members from local communities by force. The result of the unification in 1981 was the URNG, the National Guatemalan Revolutionary Unit. Finally, the rural indigenous peoples, the pawns in the deadly struggles between the insurgent groups and the military, make up the most disadvantaged sector in this conflict. The members of Guatemala’s rural communities are mostly made up of different subgroups of Mayan descendents. Generally sympathetic to the insurgents they were often forced into cooperation and victimized by both sides. Guerrillas requesting food and support or new members often used the threat of violence and ostracism on any non-compliant communities. The military, upon receiving any intelligence of cooperation with guerrillas, often massacred the entire village and dumped the bodies in unmarked mass graves.
Violence against Mayan Peoples
According to the minorityrights.org, the history of Guatemala is characterized by a policy of extermination of the Maya. In 1996, 36 years of internal war were ended when peace accords were signed. The exact number of people killed and displaced during the conflict will never be known but independent sources estimate that from 1980-84, at least 50,000 adults were killed, 1 million people were displaced from the highlands and 120,000 people fled to neighboring countries.19 Mayan social and political organization was disrupted, due to the militarization of society and the establishment of the so-called ‘development villages’, where large portions of the Mayan population had to live under strict military control. Official data is gathered according to geographical regions, and the conclusion is that poverty is more severe in regions with a predominantly Mayan population.
Human rights in Guatemala
Dakin (2005) said that Guatemalans who promote human rights in their country tread on dangerous ground. Real politics threaten personal attack and a general backlash of violence of the kind the population knows well from 36 years of civil war under a military dictatorship, which aimed an intelligence apparatus against its own citizens. Guatemalans violated the human rights of other Guatemalans, particularly government army forces against indigenous peoples. While the peace accords of 1996 seemed to promise a new beginning, current news suggests that Guatemala is now facing a resurgence of human rights abuses, especially in the light of the post-9/11 security context that has given a green light for renewed military strength.
Guatemala after Stan
According to the Red Cross (2005), Hurricane Stan, which made landfall south of Veracruz, Mexico on October 4, 2005, brought severe flooding and landslides to several Central American countries and southern Mexico, which were in the midst of the region’s rainy season when the tropical system came through. El Salvador and Guatemala were particularly hard hit, as they were not only struggling with the flooding and landslides, but with recent volcanic activity and earthquakes also.
In Guatemala, Hurricane Stan caused 669 deaths, and led to the sheltering of 31,971 people, according to the Government of Guatemala. The hurricane left more than 800 people missing, directly affected more than 470,000 others and damaged or destroyed almost 35,000 homes. On November 8, 2005, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said that the food situation in Guatemala after the passage of Hurricane Stan was “catastrophic,” and called for the international community to increase aid to the country.
Wheeler (2005) of World Press reported that landslides caused by the rain from Hurricane Stan in the Caribbean wiped out a town next to Santiago called PanabÃ?¡j, burying more than 500 people under mud and rock that fell from thousands of feet above them. By last weekend, recovery efforts were abandoned, and desperate locals who had been digging with shovels, and tools as simple as brooms and tree branches, were asked to stop. “PanabÃ?¡j no longer exists,” Mayor Diego Esquina of Santiago admitted to reporters, and the town was declared a mass grave.
Moreover, according to Wheeler, when military forces arrived for the first time since 1990, this time on a humanitarian effort, with food, water and supplies in tow, they scared away many of the people they were trying to help. The scars of the 36-year internal conflict, which killed or “disappeared” 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians from the western highlands, are still very real among the Guatemalan people. Those forced to build makeshift houses on the edges of mountains and volcanoes out of sheet metal and sticks undoubtedly feel kicked when they are already down.
A Process of Healing
Lloyd and Emery (1994) described a system that legitimizes intimate aggression as a tactic of. Such control serves to subordinate, by striking fear into the victim, denigrating and intimidating, preventing autonomous actions, and maintaining dominance. Themes of military control in Guatemala pervade the explanations that aggressors provide for their use of aggression against their indigenous counterparts.
The Guatemalan society is organized along vertical lines. Experts says that in Guatemala, there aren’t institutions in that society bringing together people at an early age. But organizations such as Centro ESTNA are striving to build relationship bonds between generations and socio-economic layers by organizing year-long programs that bring together, for example, Mayan people and army colonels.
Part of the healing process, according to experts, involve assessing conflicts as suggested by Papp, Silberstein, and Carter in 1973. According to them, conflicts in systems occur in chain reactions, and people should not be identified with labels such as villains or heroes. Rather they must look at the entirety of the people involved in the conflict to see how each person effects another, because this principle states that, “one cannot not affect other members of a system.” Hocker and Wilmot’s conflict assessment guide could also prove effective when used in the proper context. Centro ESTNA said that in 1994, graduates of the program helped stop a coup because individuals from these two parts of society could call each other as friends. “The program helps people reinvent themselves,” Phillips said, “and is a comprehensive way to promote civil society and social capital.”6 The model was adapted for El Salvador and could be used in other regions of conflict and social separation.
References:
Dakin, A. (2005). Human Rights in Guatemala: Intelligence Control and Responses to Atrocity. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from http://www.peacemagazine.org/archive/v18n2p16.htm
Haley, J. (1976). Problem solving therapy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Hernandez, J.A. (2005). Hurricane Stan adds to Mayans’ misery. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096411820
Hocker and Wilmot / Conflict Mapping. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from
http://spot.colorado.edu/~wehr/40GD1.HTM
Indigenous peoples’ experiences with poverty. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from http://www.minorityrights.org/Dev/mrg_dev_title12_LatinAmerica/mrg_dev_title12_LatinAmerica_6.htm
Lloyd, S. and Emery, B. (1994). Physically aggressive conflict in romantic relationships. In D. Cahn (Ed.), Conflict in personal relationships (pp. 27-46). New York: Erlbaum.
Papp, P., M. Walters, E. Carter, B. Carter, and O. Silverstein. (1988). The Invisible Web: Gender Patterns in Family Relationships. New York.
Recent History of Guatemala. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from http://www.jpsviewfinder.com/travel/country/guatemala/truth.htm
Red Cross. Guatemalan Disaster Overview. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from
http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/profiles/disaster_profilei-stan.html#Overview
Wheeler J. (2005). Under Mud and Despair, Guatemala Looks Abroad for Help. Retrieved November 17, 2005 from http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/2163.cfm
