Guatemalan Town Seeks Ways to End Violence

Nine people have been killed or kidnaped in this mountain town in the last three months, in a wave of violence that residents and human right workers say stems from an army counterinsurgency campaign.

Seven schoolteachers and two bus drivers have fled the town in recent weeks after the army circulated a list, said to have been taken from guerrillas, bearing the names of 192 people. Soldiers told townspeople that the names were those of suspected army collaborators whom the rebels planned to kill, but some residents and human rights workers said they believe that the army made up the list to try to pressure the town into forming armed civil defense patrols.

The army increased its troops in the area last year after stepped-up attacks by leftist guerrillas. The guerrillas apparently were responsible for the killing last year of at least eight armed civilians, called military commissioners, who were informants for the army.

Emergency Meeting

The violence prompted the provincial governor recently to convene an emergency meeting of local officials, community leaders and military representatives.

“We must come up with a peace project for Santiago Atitlan,” Gov. Victor Manuel Rodriguez of Solola province said. He said two schools had closed in Santiago because the teachers were too frightened to do their work.

Mayor Antonio Ixbalan of Santiago said the nine recently killed or abducted include two women and a 13-year-old boy.

“It is a dangerous situation,” Ixbalan said. “The people can’t do anything or say who is doing it. We are afraid to go out at night.”

25,000 Indian Farmers

Surrounded by giant volcanoes, Santiago is home to nearly 25,000 Tzutuhil Indian farmers and fishermen on the edge of the highland Lake Atitlan, about 50 miles west-northwest of the capital. Motorboats ferry tourists across the picturesque lake from Panajachel each day to shop here for the Indians’ colorful weavings and embroidered cloths, seemingly unaware of the town’s current strife and history of violence.

For nearly a decade, guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, an umbrella group uniting several factions of leftist and Communist insurgents, has fought military governments and now a civilian one.

For most of that time, the army has considered the Indians of Santiago to be rebel supporters, especially since a guerrilla assault on army troops in 1980 brought cheers from residents and gifts of Coca-Cola for the rebels. Today, the army says that at least a quarter of the townspeople actively assist rebel camps on the nearby Toliman volcano.

The army killed tens of thousands of Indians throughout the highlands during a brutal counterinsurgency campaign in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to human rights workers. They estimate that at least 60 townspeople--teachers, catechists and community leaders--were killed or disappeared from Santiago during those years.

Priest Among Victims

An American priest from Oklahoma, Stan Rother, was among those killed. Masked gunmen sneaked into his bedroom one night in July, 1981, and shot him in the head.

The repression began to diminish in 1985. The numbers of dead and disappeared have dropped further since President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo took office in January, 1986, the first civilian head of state since 1970. But in rural areas such as Santiago, the record still looks bad. The armed forces have not been prosecuted for past or current political crimes.

Officials estimate there are only about 1,500 to 2,000 guerrillas--less than a third the number of rebels believed to be fighting in neighboring El Salvador. The guerrillas are largely confined to highland and jungle areas in such provinces as Solola, Quiche, Huehuetenango, San Marcos and Peten.

For years, the army has recruited men in the countryside for civil defense patrols to keep the guerrillas away from towns and villages. At their peak, the patrols had nearly 900,000 members armed with guns, machetes, sticks and Guatemalan flags.

300,000 Quit Patrols

The army said the patrols were voluntary, but after a new national constitution in 1986 made them voluntary by law, about 300,000 men quit the patrol. Peasants and residents of the provinces said that even today, many of the remaining patrols are “voluntary--obligatory.”

Santiago disbanded its civilian patrols after Cerezo took office, and the army raised no objections, residents said, until guerrillas launched a series of attacks on the military beginning last April. In response, the army added hundreds of troops to its base on the edge of Santiago and soon began efforts to resurrect the civil patrol.

Along with stepped-up attacks on the army came an increase in the assassinations of former inactive military commissioners, who among other duties oversee the civil patrols. In August, masked gunmen pulled a plantation administrator and his two sons, all alleged army collaborators, off a bus. When the driver protested, he, too, was taken. All four were slain.

Guerrilla Campaign

The rebels never claimed responsibility for the killings, but they appear to have been part of a guerrilla campaign.

In October, the army told townspeople that they had found the so-called guerrilla hit list. As proof of its legitimacy, the soldiers noted that several military commissioners on the list already had been killed.

But the list was baffling. While it included the military commissioners, it also included the sort of community leaders that the army had been accused of killing in the past, some residents thought to be collaborators with the guerrillas, and residents who apparently were not involved in any community or political activity.

Soldiers visited the homes of teachers and community leaders to warn that the army could not protect them from the guerrillas, according to three residents. Suspicion and fear spread quickly and rumors flourished.

Helicopter Overhead

Soon the army gathered townspeople in the central square and, with a military helicopter circling overhead, proposed that the town resume civil patrolling, according to residents and a government official.

“The list was a subtle threat,” said Jean-Marie Simon, representative of the U.S.-based Americas Watch human rights group. “They are saying, if you want to protect yourselves from the guerrillas, you will form civil patrols, and if you don’t support the civil patrol, then you support the guerrillas.”

The town opposed the civil defense patrols. A few people said they would join patrols only if the army abandoned its base on the edge of town, a suggestion the army took as further proof of sympathy for the guerrillas.

“They said it was not voluntary, that it was the obligation of every citizen,” said a local official. “People are afraid of what will happen if they don’t obey the army.”

Four residents interviewed in Santiago all spoke on the condition that they would not be identified by name. An army major, the commanding officer at a base outside of Santiago, answered questions briefly but declined to give his name. He denied that the army was trying to form the civil patrol.

“We don’t organize that. The mayor is doing it. The people see the need to organize themselves to protect themselves,” he said.

Asked about the town meeting to propose civil patrols, the major said, “That was just a suggestion.”

Body Brought In

In December, the army brought the body of a guerrilla into town and laid it in front of the mayor’s office without explanation. Soldiers then conducted a house-to-house search for guerrilla propaganda and weapons.

It was after that that the wave of civilian killings began, according to residents, local officials and press reports.

On their way home from an Evangelical meeting the night of Dec. 27, Barbara Ramirez and Delores Pospoy were raped and killed by masked men. The army major said guerrillas had killed the two women because one had given information to the army after a rebel attack on army boats.

Residents blamed the army for the killings. The guerrillas were not known to rape their victims, they said, but army soldiers often have been accused of doing so.