Guatemala’s New President: Democrat, Survivor, Optimist

When I first interviewed Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo in 1983, a contingent of bodyguards picked me up in an armored van and made me put on a bulletproof vest before driving to his home. When I asked about the security measures, Cerezo replied “Actually, things are better in Guatemala than they used to be. I sleep in my own home every night nowadays, instead of moving around all the time.”

I suspected then that Cerezo, the head of Guatemala’s Christian Democratic party, was a remarkably optimistic man. Now I know for sure. Last December, Cerezo was elected his country’s first civilian president in 16 years. And, despite a host of internal and international problems, Cerezo is still an optimist. He talks as if he he needs only a single five-year term to turn things around.

It’s easy to be optimistic, I suppose, when you survive three assassination attempts, as Cerezo has. Characteristically, he considers the attempts on his life to have been “no big thing,” just part of political life in Guatemala, where 40,000 persons have died in political violence in the last 20 years.

It is clear in retrospect that Cerezo was right in 1983 when he said that things were improving in Guatemala. The year before, the last in a long line of corrupt, brutal military rulers had been overthrown by younger, more progressive military officers who named the fervently religious Gen. Efrain Rios Montt president.

Rios Montt gave the young officers permission to combat a growing guerrilla movement with a counter-insurgency campaign called fusiles y frijoles-- bullets and beans--that mixed military force with social programs designed to win the support of Guatemala’s desperately poor rural population. Repression was lessened (at least by Guatemalan standards) and the insurgency was reduced to a mere nuisance. Rios Montt also began the political process that lead to the presidential election and Cerezo’s inauguration in January.

Cerezo has cultivated the support of the same young officers who put Rios Montt in power. At least publicly, they claim to now support Cerezo’s effort to move Guatemala toward more democracy. But while the army may be content, the rest of Guatemalan society is not. The economy is in recession; there are shortages of staples like sugar and rice; joblessness and underemployment is estimated at 50%; inflation is approaching 60%.

The nation’s private sector, one of the most rigidly conservative in Latin America, is unhappy with Cerezo’s plan to use government funds to buy land for distribution to peasants. Cerezo won’t call this process “land reform,” a term that Guatemala’s right wing equates with communism, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable to the 3% of landowners who control 80% of the farmland.

Cerezo’s old friends on the Guatemalan left are also upset with him. On May Day, some labor unions paraded with banners claiming that Cerezo’s economic policies were anti-worker.

International and Guatemalan human-rights groups fault Cerezo for not arresting former military leaders suspected of corruption and brutality. Instead, he promises to appoint a commission to investigate human-rights abuses, including disappearances of thousands of political activists.

Asked about all of these criticisms, Cerezo reminds the questioner that he has been in office five months, while Guatemala’s political problems have festered for more than 30 years--since 1954, when a CIA-inspired coup overthrew a leftist government and brought Guatemala under rightist and military control for a generation. A brutal system in place that long can only be changed “very carefully,” he says.

Cerezo, who is 44, was a student in 1954. To explain his patient approach to politics, Cerezo likes to tell the story of a friend he had in college. Like Cerezo, the young man was active in politics, but he often criticized Cerezo for aligning himself with the Christian Democrats.

“My friend was Marxist, and insisted that he would come to political power faster and more decisively through guerrilla warfare,” Cerezo recalled. “He went his way, I went mine. It took a while, but today I’m in the National Palace and he’s still in the mountains.”

Such faith in peaceful political reform is so desperately needed in Central America these days that one might expect prompt and eager U.S. support for Cerezo. But he does not get on well with the Reagan Administration.

Like the military leaders that preceded him, Cerezo will not support President Reagan’s covert war against Nicaragua. Cerezo believes that the Sandinistas should be bargained with, rather than overthrown. He points out, with some annoyance, that the Administration has asked Congress for only $40 million in aid for Guatemala while seeking $100 million for Nicaragua’s contra rebels.

Cerezo is a vocal supporter of the Contadora Group’s efforts to write a peace treaty for Nicaragua and its neighbors. He is also promoting the idea of a Central American parliament, to include elected representatives from every country in the region, to be used as a permanent forum where border incidents and other regional problems can be discussed. It will be on the agenda when Cerezo hosts a summit meeting of Central American presidents later this month.

Given the harsh reality of Central America these days--Nicaragua gearing up for war with the United States, El Salvador’s government beset by guerrillas, Honduras and Costa Rica letting anti-Sandinista rebels use their territory for attacks against Nicaragua--Cerezo’s talk about a regional parliament may sound like a foolish dream. But it used to sound foolish when he talked about being president someday.