[Peace-discuss] Report from Palmer Legare, working with campesino groups in Guatemala

[Phil Stinard]

I'm forwarding this article written by a friend of mine who works with 
campesino rights groups in Guatemala:

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US Enjoying Strong Relations with Guatemala

by Palmer Legare

“The business is here to help you,” said the self-described representative 
of the palm oil exportation business, although local representative of US 
foreign policy would have been more accurate.  Meanwhile 12 armed police and 
security guards surrounded us.  Why did I feel like I was looking at my 
country?  Or was it capitalism?  “We don’t want to destroy your crops,” he 
continued as the guards held back one of their dogs.  “But if you force us 
to, we will.”

We had just returned from planting corn near the border of the palm 
plantation.  The palm business had been using armed security guards and dogs 
to keep people from the small farming community Suiche III from planting 
near the plantation’s border.   So the community decided to support the 
family that needed to plant corn.   About 30 men, women and children ignored 
the guns and dogs and cut back brush.   We planted eight rows before being 
confronted.   Although the business doesn’t have legal title to the land, 
they want to plant more palm trees.

With the help of the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC), which they form a 
part of, Suiche III is trying to obtain clear legal rights to the land they 
live in.  But the process is slow, and they don’t have nearly the resources 
as does the exportation business.  Their struggle is that of millions of 
Guatemalans facing a brutally pro-US government which has accelerated the 
aggressive exploitation of the country’s poor majority.

When President Oscar Berger took power in January 2004, many “human rights” 
organizations applauded the change in administration.  Previous President 
Alfonso Portillo of the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) was the protege of 
former genocidal dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who is still head of the party. 
  Current President Berger was seen as more distant from the army.  The new 
Vice President, Eduardo Stein, was one of the generals who helped get the 
Peace Accords signed in 1996.  The Accords formally ended over three decades 
of internal conflict in which hundreds of thousands were killed or 
“disappeared” and the government committed acts of genocide.  Supposedly it 
would be a change from the army of genocide to the army of peace.

But within Guatemala many were fearful of the change in administration.  
Portillo was one of the most corrupt presidents in recent Guatemalan 
history, and he openly supported the reorganization of the nation’s largest 
paramilitary.  He also relied on a populist rhetoric, supporting increases 
in minimum wage (but not enforcement of labor laws) and opposing the 
frequent open use of the military in the countryside.

Berger, the candidate of the nation’s wealthiest business association, came 
to power with a strong emphasis on strengthening ties with the US and 
supporting the elite few’s concept of human rights, particularly private 
property.  After less than a year and a half in office, even Western human 
rights organizations have had to admit the worsening of conditions in 
Guatemala.

Guatemala now has the most unequal distribution of wealth in the Americas, 
and third worst in the world. Although Berger has cut the manpower of the 
army from around 26,000 to around 15,000 in partial compliance with the 
Peace Accords, the army’s budget has not decreased.  A series of agreements 
with the US has led to greater surveillance technology and higher weapons 
grades, as well as a historic increase in US military aid.  In exchange 
Guatemala has a higher information exchange with the US and is openly 
transitioning its military from a supposedly sovereign entity to a regional 
force pursuing the objectives sent down from Washington.  High on the list 
is using the military to suppress civil society, which Berger has been eager 
to do.

Large sections of the National Police Force (PNC) are also being militarized 
with the help of US training. This is despite massive corruption and 
violence within the PNC, which even the US State Department had to admit to 
in a recent report on human rights in Guatemala.  The new Special Police 
Force (FEP) receives US training and US arms, and is used to repress 
demonstrations.

Last week the FEP conducted door-to-door raids in the neighborhood I stay at 
in the city.  About eighty people from the community were locked up, 
including a friend.  He’s spent less then a week in Guatemala’s horrifying 
prisons.  He was beaten and told that he will be released soon in the middle 
of the night and killed shortly after.  His crime seems to be that he had 
several tattoos; the new government has pushed to criminalize certain 
tattoos affiliated with gangs. But Francis is not part of a gang but part of 
an art collective which has organized several peace parades and has taught 
children in the community how to juggle and walk on stilts.

Dozens of small farming communities have been violently evicted by the 
government, causing increased misery and rumors of a return to war.  This 
has been one of the most devastating and controversial of Berger’s policies. 
  CUC has maintained an aggressive stance against Berger’s attempts to widen 
land ownership inequality.  Guatemala already has one of the most unequal 
land distributions in the world, and a large portion of the land has no 
clear legal owner. As a result, wealthy landowners are able to contract 
others to keep unwelcome peasants off their land, and avoid paying taxes.

Guatemala’s government has the lowest revenue as a percentage of Gross 
National Product in all of Central America.  CUC is pushing for a new land 
registry law, which would create much greater government revenue and clear 
up many of the volatile land disputes that exist in the country.  It would 
also challenge the giant estates stolen by military officials during the 
war.

CUC has supported the invasion of numerous lands which have been left 
abandoned.  In nearly every case the supposed owner has not been paying 
property tax and does not have clear title to the land.  Nonetheless, the 
government has enforced dozens of evictions and called for dozens more.  In 
the Nueva Linda plantation last year, government forces massacred numerous 
peasants, some of whom were shot in the back of the head at close range.

CUC has shown its ability to organize large-scale demonstrations, and many 
government supporters have expressed fear that campesino (peasant/small 
farmer) and indigenous organizations will try to copy the “Bolivia model,” 
where massive demonstrations by such groups have forced the resignation of 
two presidents in recent years.  The government in turn has suggested that 
CUC is arming peasant communities, a charge which CUC rejects as a 
prearranged excuse for more massacres to come.

In March the country erupted in protests when the government tried to force 
through the Dominican Republic ñ Central American Free Trade Agreement 
(DR-CAFTA) with the US.  Berger threatened to arrest the organizers and 
called thousands of soldiers into the streets to repress the demonstrations. 
  In Colotenango, Huehuetenango, two protesters were killed and many more 
injured after security forces opened fire on the crowd.

CUC and other organizations leading the demonstrations called off protests 
during Holy Week and asked for a week of reflection on DR-CAFTA and the 
recent state repression.  Completely ignoring the current situation, US 
Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld made a surprise visit on Thursday and 
Friday.  He came to applaud President Berger’s actions and announce the 
largest increase in US military support to Guatemala in nearly two decades.

Nineteen-year old Juan Lopez of CUC was one of the protesters killed in 
Colotenango.  He is one of many martyrs of the organization, the largest and 
oldest campesino organization in Guatemala.  The growth of CUC in the late 
1970s and their demands for land and cultural rights was met by the 
“scorched earth policy” of the governments of Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain 
Rios Montt.  This policy of systematic torture and murder of civilians, 
taught at the US Army School of the Americas and based in large part on the 
US strategy in Vietnam, left hundreds of entire villages razed.

Many fear a return to the years of genocidal repression.  In the first 
anti-DR-CAFTA demonstration after Easter, CUC asked children and youth not 
to attend for safety reasons.  Many people in the communities I visited 
stayed home for fear of violence.  Still, the April 7 march in the capital 
was one of the largest since the end of the war.

Despite the popular outrage, the government passed DR-CAFTA.  It was voted 
on as a matter of “national urgency,” technically meaning that congress 
would not hold the otherwise required public debate on the accord.  It was 
clearly important for the government to avoid the type of open debate that 
occurs in democratic societies.  In a March Gallop poll, 65% of those 
questioned said that DR-CAFTA would hurt the country.  A poll in April by 
Vox Latino, the main Guatemalan polling agency, found that only a third of 
those questioned favored DR-CAFTA and over 85% wanted a referendum on it.

Despite its passage, campesino, indigenous, health, teacher, religious and 
union organizations have continued to take actions against the deal.  
DR-CAFTA is a weapon of mass destruction that will destroy individuals, 
families, culture, sovereignty and the environment.  It is one of the top 
priorities of the Bush administration and is a way to reinforce current 
power relationships and increase income inequality.

In Guatemala, the greatest fear of DR-CAFTA has to do with corn.  Corn is 
the most common harvest and diet of the people and selling corn is the most 
common source of income.  I’ve eaten thousands of corn tortillas during my 
trip, drank numerous types of corn-based drinks and benefited from tomales 
and other corn-based foods.  Every one of the hundreds of people I’ve 
interviewed and thousands I’ve met in the countryside grow corn.  The 
majority sell a portion of the harvest in order to buy other necessities for 
their family.

If DR-CAFTA is allowed to pass, Guatemala will be flooded with cheap US 
corn.  While the richest country in the world doesn’t adequately support 
sustainable or organic agriculture, it does give billions of dollars to 
giant corporate farms which are then able to sell their produce at below the 
cost of production.  Tax dollars that could go to improving health care and 
schools in the US are instead used to fatten shareholders’ and wealthy 
farmers’ pockets and drive poor farmers deeper into poverty and debt.

Guatemalans will no longer be able to get a fair price for their corn, and 
the results will be disastrous. Many will continue to rely on corn harvests 
and will suffer the results of artificially low corn prices. Forty nine 
percent of the population lives in chronic malnutrition, and this number 
will grow under DR-CAFTA.  Many more will go to the cities in search of 
jobs, often in foreign-owned factories.  Economic indicators used by the US 
will go up as large stockholders and corporate administrators will enjoy the 
profit potential of a large, desperate population.

Wages may actually increase slightly for those who move to the cities and 
are able to fill the limited job slots.  But cost of living will increase as 
families will no longer be able to grow their own food.  Not being able to 
produce their own food will also put people in greater risk of the numerous 
fluctuations of the global market.  Increases in prices of basic commodities 
will mean starvation for countless people.  Currently most Guatemalans do 
not use oil or gas, but if DR-CAFTA passes they will. Global petroleum 
consumption will increase and Guatemalans will be more susceptible to the 
volatility this creates.

Instead of growing up in a safe rural environment where they have plenty of 
room to adventure, children and families will be stuffed into tiny 
apartments and lose their freedom of movement.  Children will be less able 
to work with their parents and more likely to travel the city alone in 
search of income. Family-based Mayan culture will be forced further into 
material-based western capitalism.

Guatemala City is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and I’ve 
lost track of how many times someone has been killed within a couple blocks 
of where I was standing.  Just last night a teenage boy who lives in the 
apartment adjacent to where I’m writing this was killed.  This morning I 
walked by a funeral procession of an adolescent who was murdered about a 
week ago; they had wanted to hold the ceremony earlier but he had been 
decapitated and they only found the head last night.  Violence will only 
increase under DR-CAFTA as populations and poverty in cities increase.  
Already inadequate water and sewage systems will not be able to take the 
huge influx of people, and related illnesses will increase dramatically.

The new corn that Guatemalans will eat will be distinctly different.  The 
majority will be genetically modified, and no one knows what kind of damage 
this will cause.  It will also be less-nutritional yellow corn.  Guatemala 
has an incredible diversity of corn.  This morning I had blue corn tortillas 
with breakfast.  This biodiversity will be destroyed, also causing unknown 
damage.  The genetically modified corn will (already has) force its way into 
the hills and harvests of Guatemala.

Besides being an essential part of the diet here, corn has a significant 
spiritual and cultural value.  More than half of the population here is 
Mayan, many of whom consider themselves “people of corn.” According to the 
Popul Vuh, which includes the most widely recognized Mayan creation story, 
the gods created humans from corn.  Corn is part of and sometimes the 
subject of numerous Mayan ceremonies.

DR-CAFTA’s effect goes well beyond the nutritional, cultural and economic 
devastation which will be caused by the erosion of indigenous and rural corn 
production.  Another key aspect of the trade bill is its support of 
US-recognized “intellectual property rights.”  In order to pass DR-CAFTA, 
Guatemala first had to pass a law restricting access and production of 
low-cost medicines.  This will lead to the deaths of untold people.  HIV 
medication, for example, is now fifty times as expensive as it would be 
without “free trade.”  The suffering of people with AIDS in Guatemala has 
increased exponentially.

As misery continues on the rise in Guatemala, the Bush administration has 
made its satisfaction clear.  A recent State Department report on human 
rights in Guatemala concluded that the Guatemalan government no longer has a 
policy of systematic repression, despite countless evidence to the contrary. 
  According to US AID, “President Berger’s administration has steadily moved 
forward to mobilize the public and private sectors to increase economic 
growth and combat widespread poverty.”  And Rumsfeld’s visit  was labeled as 
a “courtesy visit to show that the relations are at an unsurpassable 
moment.”

It is clearly a critical time to demonstrate solidarity with our sisters and 
brothers in Guatemala. Anyone interested in discussing how to do this is 
welcome to write me at palmerlegare at yahoo.com or call me at 802-426-3783.  
An obvious way would be to financially support CUC.  This can be done by 
writing a check out to Rights Action, and (very important) writing CUC-VT in 
the note section.  Checks can be sent to Rights Action, 1830 Connecticut Av, 
NW, Washington DC, 20009, or just pass them on to me.