Refugees Returning to Guatemala Face a Lack of Food, Shelter, Land

Kenneth Williams Bartolome, a refugee from violence in Guatemala, decided to abandon a dusty refugee camp in Mexico, where corn and beans could barely grow, and return home. He thought he was moving back to a fertile Guatemalan valley to rebuild his life and home on government-supplied land.

Surprise. Bartolome, his wife, two children and about 100 other returning refugees found themselves instead at an equally dusty farming project here, with no available land, homes or food. The government of Guatemala, which had invited them back, was unprepared to supply them with anything but corrugated strips of metal that, without poles or framing to rest on, were useless as building material.

“We have only the corn we brought from Mexico,” said Bartolome, a 20-year-old from the highlands in north-central Guatemala. “And they say there’s no land for us. We did not expect this.”

Refugees are slowly trickling back from Mexico to Guatemala and into uncertain futures.

They had fled this country in the early 1980s, when army counterinsurgency troops swept through mountain villages and cruelly routed anyone with the least suspicion of ties to leftist guerrillas.

Now, some refugees are coming back on their own. Others, like Bartolome, are returning with the help of U.N. and Guatemalan refugee officials.

When the refugees agree to return with government support, they are told that land they abandoned will be given back to them or that new land somewhere else will be provided, together with food and material to build new homes.

Such promises are often unkept. The elected Guatemalan government, which replaced military rulers last year, is ill-equipped either financially or administratively to provide for even small numbers of returnees.

Last week for the first time, the Guatemalan government admitted that it cannot accept large numbers of returnees.

Infrastructure Lacking

“The government at this time does not have adequate infrastructure to receive the refugees who currently live in Mexico,” Defense Minister Hector Gramajo said in an interview with a local newspaper on Tuesday.

“It would be best if the refugees came back slowly,” said Jorge Luis Hernandez, the governor of Huehuetenango, a northern Guatemalan province from which perhaps 30,000 refugees fled and to which some are coming back. “We have to do studies, we have to prepare better.”

The government, headed by President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, considers the repatriation of refugees an important gauge of confidence in civilian rule. Their return is seen as confirmation that human rights abuses have been curbed, an important goal of his administration.

Last year, Guatemalan officials, including Cerezo’s wife, visited refugee camps in Mexico to urge refugees to come home. However, Guatemala’s Development Ministry, which is supposed to help new refugees, has virtually no money budgeted for that purpose, Western diplomats say. Instead, the government is counting on foreign aid to make up the difference, the diplomats say.

Many Uncertainties

The lack of government help is but one of many problems faced by an estimated 60,000 Guatemalan refugees in camps inside Mexico. Uncertainties over everything from livelihood to safety has discouraged many from returning. The hesitancy perhaps offers a preview of difficulties that refugees from places such as El Salvador and Nicaragua might face when they eventually try to go home.

Last year, only 250 returned to Guatemala. This year the pace has quickened somewhat; 300 arrived in January.

Before fleeing to Mexico four years ago, Bartolome and several other refugees lived in Pueblo Nuevo Resurreccion, a village in the remote northern mountainous region called Ixcan. They fled Pueblo Nuevo after a slaughter of villagers in nearby Cuarto Pueblo at the hands of the Guatemalan army.

They say they do not want to return to Ixcan now because, despite the dwindling of the guerrilla war and counterinsurgency campaign in recent years, the area still is an enclave of rebel activity. Instead, the refugees agreed to come to Chacaj, a former plantation-turned-farming community and military-designated “strategic hamlet” in northwestern Guatemala on the Mexican border.

Group Defense

Such communities, called development poles, were built by the armed forces to bring dispersed villagers together into protective places where the farmers, grouped into civil defense patrols, would defend themselves against guerrilla attack or influence.

However, no resources are available for the refugees who came to Chacaj, which is located on a dry plain. Technicians from Taiwan have established an irrigation project here, but 62 of about 600 permanent residents have yet to receive arable land of their own. The new arrivals are far down on the list of those scheduled to receive plots.

“We more or less don’t know what to do,” Bartolome said. “We don’t want to go back to Mexico, but here we are running out of food.”

For the moment, the refugees are living in a large, empty shed called the “multi-use room” where their children play on a dirt floor and the women grind the remaining corn they brought from Mexico to make tortillas.

Bartolome and the Ixcan refugees were not the only surprised returnees. Six families originally from Ojo de Agua, a nearby village, returned from Mexico to reclaim their land. And although their adobe homes in Ojo de Agua have crumbled into ruins and weeds have overrun their fields, they had come back with high hopes, for their village, unlike Chacaj, is located near a natural spring that can be used for irrigation.

Unexpected Diversion

When they returned, however, they found that the Taiwanese experts had diverted the water for use in Chacaj.

“This was unexpected,” said Gov. Hernandez, whose jurisdiction includes Chacaj. “This is why we have to do studies to prepare for the return of refugees.”

Hernandez said the Ojo de Agua refugees will probably siphon water from the pipes that carry it to Chacaj and that the two communities will thus share the precious resource.

Refugees who returned recently to the northern town of Barrillas face other problems, the governor and refugee officials said. While they were living in Mexico, their lands were occupied by other farmers who, under arrangement with a local civil defense commander, farmed it for profit.

When the refugees returned last year, they could not dislodge the new landholders because the civil defensemen enforced the squatters’ claims.

“We have suggested to the local military commander that the civil defense chief be changed. It hasn’t happened yet,” the governor said.

Such an incident raises the question of the safety and rights of the refugees, which the Guatemalan military, at least, suspects are guerrilla sympathizers.

Before refugees enter Guatemala, they must sign an amnesty proclamation affirming that they never supported the rebels and never will. Even the military, authors of the amnesty, do not believe it is foolproof.

“Let’s face it, those who were guerrillas won’t ever say they were,” said Col. Raul Molina, commander of the army in Huehuetenango.

Molina said it will be up to civil defense members to keep an eye on the new arrivals to make sure they do not engage in “subversive” activities.

Several refugees interviewed by The Times recently said that fear discourages others from returning.

“For us, it was a precarious situation. We didn’t know what to expect back in Guatemala. It is the same for others,” said Francisco Felix Mendez, who led a group of Protestant refugees to Chacaj. “We took the risk because we wanted to come back to our homeland.”

He, like several other refugees, said he would participate in civil defense patrols as a show of support for the government--when they have a place to live.