Army Still ‘Power Behind Throne’ : Guatemala Chief Survives--So Does Civilian Rule

Two years after taking office following a succession of army generals, civilian President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo still packs a pistol.

Critics say the president carries the weapon to foster an image of David confronting an anti-democratic Goliath. Cerezo, who has survived three attempts on his life, says he is motivated by habit and by Guatemala’s history of political violence.

“There are still people here who think violence is a means to resolve political differences,” Cerezo said the other day. “If I need to be defended, I want to participate. Independence and autonomy depend on your capacity to do things yourself--in every sense.”

Autonomy and independence are basic issues for Cerezo, who took office in January, 1986, promising to transform Guatemala into a democracy after 16 years of military regimes.

Repression has declined under Cerezo’s government, but he has wrested little power from the armed forces, according to diplomats, other political analysts and leaders of the Roman Catholic Church.

Like his Christian Democratic colleague in El Salvador, President Jose Napoleon Duarte, Cerezo has made an alliance with sectors of the military to break a partnership between the armed forces and the ultra-rightist oligarchy that traditionally ran Guatemala.

Also like Duarte, Cerezo has not prosecuted military personnel for human rights abuses committed during the military regimes. As in El Salvador, the military remains strong throughout Guatemala.

“The army is the power behind the throne,” said Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barraos of Guatemala City.

Penados echoed the opinions of several analysts who would not speak for attribution. Few Guatemalans will openly criticize the military, despite the greater freedom of speech under Cerezo.

“The president is obliged to stay close to the military,” the archbishop said. “The day the military says go home, he will have to go.”

Critics and supporters alike point to Cerezo’s completion of two years in office as a remarkable accomplishment.

“He is there because of our traditional political life,” said Edmond Mulet, a congressman of the opposition Union of the National Center. “That is an achievement.”

The military has ruled or controlled the government in Guatemala since 1954, when a rightist coup led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas and backed by the CIA ousted the reformist elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, himself an army lieutenant colonel.

Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro, a civilian elected president in 1966, was forced to yield much of his power to the military to stay in office. Before Cerezo, four military leaders in succession occupied the National Palace by means of coups or of elections judged to be fraudulent.

Mass Killings Alleged

The military presidents oversaw a brutal counterinsurgency against leftist guerrillas. The armed forces are accused of having slaughtered tens of thousands of Indian peasants, students, teachers, union workers and community leaders.

With the economy and Guatemala’s international image in ruins, the military agreed to the election in 1985 that Cerezo won by a landslide. Cerezo inherited a corrupt, nearly bankrupt system and a terrorized country, where the distribution of wealth is among the most unbalanced in Latin America.

Political analysts say the army maintains its influence through the minister of defense, Brig. Gen. Hector Gramajo Morales, and the presidential chief of staff, Gen. Roberto Mata, who stay close to Cerezo.

At the regional and local levels, the army exercises its authority by means of garrisons in each of the 22 provinces and by means of a civil defense program that embraces 600,000 people. Armed civilians, known as military commissioners, report to the army from virtually every town and village.

The army, 45,000 strong, continues to fight against about 2,000 rebels of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, who are confined largely to highland and jungle areas.

Continued Pre-Eminence

Congressman Mulet said the military’s continued pre-eminence is evident at official ceremonies such as the inauguration of public works.

“During introductions, the colonel is always addressed first, then the governor, the mayor and the congressman,” Mulet said.

The number of murders and disappearances has declined significantly since the early 1980s, but human rights activists charge that the military maintains control through continued selective repression.

According to Central America Reports, a biweekly Guatemalan newsletter, 1,021 cases of political violence were reported in local newspapers in 1987, including deaths, disappearances, injuries and assassination attempts. The newsletter said the figure was higher than in either of the two previous years.

It is not known how many of these cases might involve the army or security forces. The government and the U.S. Embassy say that most of the reported violence is committed by guerrillas, rightist extremists and common criminals.

Casualty Figures Differ

The U.S. Embassy calculates that “possible politically related deaths” in 1987 numbered 192 through November, of which 83 were civilian noncombatants. The embassy says it recorded 148 abductions.

Jean-Marie Simon, a representative of the U.S.-based Americas Watch human rights group, said the embassy figures are low and blames the military for much of the reported violence. She said that at least 15% of the murder victims showed signs of torture.

“Everyone is playing a numbers game,” Simon said. “There has been a quantitative drop since 1985 . . . but the same patterns are being repeated.”

Before turning the presidency over to Cerezo, Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores proclaimed an amnesty decree that absolved the armed forces of political crimes committed while the military was in power. Cerezo has made no effort to overturn the law. He created a commission to monitor human rights investigations, but it has yet to function.

Most Killings Unpunished

Recent killings and disappearances have gone largely unpunished, with one notable exception. In December, the police chief of the provincial capital of Quetzaltenango and five officers were arrested in connection with the kidnaping and killing of two former student leaders.

Cerezo said in a recent interview that his government has brought charges against 150 members of the army and police forces for violent crimes--including two colonels charged with murder. Simon, the Americas Watch representative, said that 95% of the cases were for common crimes.

Archbishop Penados said the president has the will but not the power to prosecute military personnel for political crimes. Investigations are carried out by the military itself, and cases against soldiers are heard by a military tribunal.

Penados defends Cerezo against critics who say the president failed to take advantage of his sweeping electoral victory to move quickly on human rights and social reforms. Critics charge that while Cerezo has been placating the military and private sector, he has ignored the poor peasants and workers who elected him. With the loss of popular support, they say, Cerezo is more dependent on the military.

‘Time of Transition’

“This is a time of transition from coups to democratic government,” Penados said. “If the president had been more audacious about social reforms, the military would have thrown him out.”

Cerezo said his principal goal is to “consolidate the democratic process.” By this phrase, he said in a recent interview, he means to finish his five-year term and turn the government over to another elected civilian.

He said he dedicated his first two years to “creating a climate of political freedom” and strengthening the economy. In this, many analysts say, he has showed some success.

Protests by labor unions and human rights groups, rare under the military government, are commonplace now in the plaza outside the National Palace. They are so frequent that the site is sometimes referred to as “the Wailing Plaza.”

Rightist newspapers criticize government policy daily and even discuss Cerezo’s personal life. They accuse the president, who is married, of being a womanizer. Some have printed cartoons in this vein, and a news magazine, in a column headed “Unanswered Questions,” recently asked, “Where does the First Lady live?” and “How will the president spend his Valentine’s Day?”

Tolerates the Gossip

The president, who is 45, tolerates the gossip and even seems to enjoy it.

“I would have to be a super-macho to sleep with all the women they accuse me of sleeping with,” he said with a laugh.

The press does not question the personal or public lives of military men. References to killings and disappearances are couched in careful language.

Cerezo’s open style, plus his participation in drafting a Central America peace plan, have improved Guatemala’s international image and, in turn, its economy. U.S. aid totaled $15.7 million in 1984 and reached $198.6 million last year, including $5.5 million in military aid. Other aid has come from Europe and Latin America.

The Guatemalan currency has been stabilized, and the rate of inflation has been reduced from 35% to 10%. The economy expanded last year by an estimated 2%, the first growth in years.

Poor Have Not Benefited

But even Cerezo admits that the country’s poor have yet to see any benefits from the economic upswing. He raised the minimum wage to an average of $2.30 a day but also removed price controls on beans and other basic commodities. Apparently under pressure from international lenders, Cerezo announced a 40% rise in electricity rates, and unions and business groups are fighting it.

Cerezo has been successful at reforming income and property taxes, areas in which his military predecessors failed.

He managed the tax reforms with the backing of the military, analysts say, and has earned the wrath of the rightist business community, which is taxed at rates that are among the lowest in Latin America. The businessmen called two strikes--both unsuccessful--and charged that the government is trying to compensate for wasteful spending. They threatened to pass on to consumers the cost of paying higher taxes and higher wages under the new minimum wage.

“The real conflict with the oligarchy,” Cerezo said, “is not taxes or the minimum wage but who makes economic decisions in the country. It is a problem of transferring power.”

Seeks to Pay ‘Social Debt’

Analysts estimate that the new taxes will increase government revenues by between 5% and 13%. Cerezo said he will use the new money to begin social programs, to pay what he calls “the social debt.”

He said he will not nationalize banks or agricultural exports or expropriate land for an agrarian reform program, as Duarte did in El Salvador. He said he will broaden a pilot project of buying uncultivated lands to resell to peasants and organizations at favorable prices.

Over the next three years, Cerezo said, he plans to build more schools in a move to lower the rate of illiteracy (now 52%), to develop health centers, create jobs through government investments and expand credit to peasant farmers.

In a recent newspaper advertisement, leftist guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity criticized Cerezo’s economic programs, which they said had failed to promote “an authentic agrarian and industrial development that creates long-term employment and promotes real internal development.”

Little Rebel Impact

The rebels have had little impact on national political life. The government had a round of cease-fire talks with them last October in Madrid, as required by the Central American peace plan. But Cerezo, bowing to military pressure, some analysts said, discontinued the talks.

The military has backed Cerezo in a policy of “active neutrality” in Central America. Neither the armed forces nor the government wants to support the U.S.-backed Contras against the Marxist-led Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Before Cerezo took power, the Guatemalan military and the Sandinistas reportedly agreed not to support each other’s rebels.

According to sources here, U.S. pressure on Guatemala to participate in the Contra assistance program eased in late 1986, when the Iran-Contra scandal erupted.