Safety Net for Guatemala

The political career of Guatemalan President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo has been a dangerous tightrope act since it began two decades ago. So it is not surprising that, halfway through his five-year term, Cerezo is struggling to prevent yet another military coup in Central America’s largest and, arguably, most important republic.

Cerezo is Guatemala’s first legitimately elected civilian leader since a CIA-supported coup overthrew the leftist government of President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. Since then government has been in the hands of the Guatemalan military, one of the most reactionary castes in Latin America. Cerezo began his career as a leader of the nation’s Christian Democratic Party in the darkest period of military rule, when suspected “subversives” like Christian Democrats often wound up dead or “disappeared.” He survived three assassination attempts before winning the presidency in 1985, when the military allowed an honest election because the generals were frustrated by a sour economy and with the diplomatic opprobrium that made Guatemala an international pariah.

Because Cerezo took office at a time of severe economic and political crisis not just in Guatemala but throughout Central America, he did not expect to create a model democracy overnight. Indeed, his goal is modest enough: to hand over power to another civilian president. But even that goal is endangered by continuing opposition to his government both in the military and within Guatemala’s neo-fascist civilian right. It is civilians who are prodding middle-level military men to turn on Cerezo, playing on young officers’ opposition to his government’s negotiations with a nearly decimated guerrilla movement. (The military regimes defeated several rural insurgencies with brute force that left thousands of innocent peasants dead or displaced.)

Faced with danger on the right, Cerezo has dismissed some ministers to appease the military. He also is accepting U.S. military aid that the generals urgently wanted when they handed power to civilians. The level is small--machine guns and a handful of helicopters--compared to the arms that this country sends to El Salvador, but it gives the Reagan Administration leverage with Guatemala’s military officers.

Officials in the Reagan Administration point to a resurgence of democracy in Latin America as one of their proudest achievements. Guatemala is always high on the list of democracies that they cite. But the Administration has been criticized for doing too little to help the fragile new governments to sustain themselves. Guatemala is one place where the Administration could put its money where its mouth is by giving Cerezo the economic aid he needs to further revitalize the nation’s economy and by warning the generals that military aid will be cut off, yet again, if they do not give Cerezo the political leeway necessary to govern effectively. A firm U.S. policy in favor of Cerezo would provide the safety net he needs to safely finish his political tightrope act.