Guatemala Leader Seeks Hearts, Minds, but His Military Wants Scorched Earth

It was like any other day at the office for Guatemalan guerrilla Elena Cobo Gomez--until the army showed up.

In August, the 20-year-old information officer for the Guerrilla Army of the Poor was lecturing peasants on the movement’s merits when she was suddenly apprehended by government troops. She was taken to a military compound in this small highland town for “re-education.” “They (army officers) tell me that I must change my ideas,” she said.

Several years ago captured rebels like Cobo, an Ixil Indian who joined guerrilla ranks along with thousands of other impoverished Indians, were routinely tortured or executed. But the two-year-old civilian government of President Vinicio Cerezo wants to win over “hearts and minds” of the populace.

Under Cerezo’s influence the military has increased its discipline, installed more likeable officers in war zones and doubled its efforts to woo peasants from rebel strongholds. Instead of bombs, planes drop leaflets promising food, clothing and shelter--and money for surrendered weapons.

Thousands of peasants have accepted Cerezo’s offer and are returning from the mountains, according to diplomats, civilian aid workers and government officials. Disillusioned by 27 years of war and unfulfilled rebel promises of a better life, 10,000 of the 13,000 who lived with the guerrillas have been coaxed back, according to Cerezo. The Guatemalan leader also claims that 4,500 insurgents have asked for amnesty, leaving only 700 nationwide, although diplomatic sources put the number at almost twice that number. At their height, the insurgents had an estimated 6,000 fighters and 250,000 civilian supporters. Without a doubt, Central America’s longest war is winding down. Yet despite government inroads, Cerezo is under constant pressure from a right-wing clique of army officers and wealthy landowners who vehemently oppose his handling of the war. Over the years, this military-civilian alliance has toppled governments it deemed as a threat to its political and economic interests. Its members view Cerezo as a dangerous leftist who is foolishly moving away from the iron-fist war policy of past military regimes.

Cerezo’s adversaries are also angry at his insistence on negotiating a settlement with the three main rebel factions. His opponents are proud that the army beat back the guerrillas without the massive U.S. aid that El Salvador’s army has needed; they believe the army is close to a military victory.

Cerezo is only the third democratically elected president in this century to govern the Ohio-sized nation of 8.6 million inhabitants, of which half are Indians descended from the Mayas. The 45-year-old lawyer assumed the presidency in 1986 after 32 years of military-dominated governments. In the face of economic collapse and a tarnished human-rights image, the generals had little choice but to allow his election for a five-year term.

The roots of the conflict are Guatemala’s unequal structure of land ownership and income distribution, the most skewed in Latin America. The guerrillas were able to attract thousands of landless Indian peasants by promising to change these inequities. A 1982 U.S. Agency for International Development report found that 1% of landowners own 35% of the nation’s farmlands. Recent studies show that 79% of all Guatemalans live in poverty and that the nation’s infant mortality rate trails only Haiti in the hemisphere with 79 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Cerezo’s staunch critics want a return to the scorched-earth policy practiced in the late 1960s and again between 1978-84. In an effort to deny the rebels a base of support, hundreds of villages were destroyed and thousands of peasants were killed or forced to seek refuge in the mountains or in squalid refugee camps in Mexico. In the cities, death squads directed by senior government officials kidnaped and killed politicians, students, professors and union leaders, dumping their mutilated bodies along highways.

Subsequently, “no other country in the hemisphere endured such sustained and pervasive political violence during the past two decades,” stated a 1987 Americas Watch report. In that time, there have been an estimated 200,000 deaths, 40,000 disappearances, 80,000 orphans and1 million displaced.

The military’s brutal campaign caused President Jimmy Carter to link future U.S. aid to an improvement in human rights. His policy was an abrupt change from previous years when the United States committed vast resources to the counterinsurgency program, including Green Beret advisers. Outraged by Carter’s action, Guatemalan army leaders refused to accept his terms; no U.S. lethal weaponry has been sent since 1977.

Just a few years ago, planes and helicopters continually bombarded villages and guerrilla fronts near Nebaj’s rugged Cuchumatanes Mountains. Today, life in this picturesque Ixil town has returned to normal. On the town’s outskirts, some 350 refugees are huddled under tin-roofed shelters and given food, clothing and medical attention. In the first six months of this year, 2,900 Ixils have come down from the mountains to turn themselves over to local military authorities, according to army records. Most have come naked or dressed in rags, ill with goiters and nagging coughs and near starvation from a subsistence diet of grass soups and bark teas.

Those without families are allowed to return to their villages. Most often, their homes have been destroyed years ago and the peasants are sent to “model villages” built by the army.

These controversial villages are part of the military’s counter-insurgency strategy to maintain its control over the countryside. Although the refugees are provided adequate housing, potable water, electricity and schools, their movements are closely monitored and almost every able-bodied male is pressured to join a “voluntary” civilian patrol. These patrols search local areas for insurgents in 24-hour shifts under the careful scrutiny of the army.

For the returnees, Cerezo remains their main source of hope for continued support. But that hope is dwindling. Last May, two military battalions headed for Guatemala City to overthrow the Cerezo government. The rebellious troops never reached the capital; most observers agree they ended their attempt after the president reluctantly accepted a series of imposed conditions. According to several sources, the major grievance was the government’s negotiations with the guerrillas. Direct talks have since been scrapped.

In the ensuing months, there have been more rumors of coups and further imposed conditions, including a promise by Cerezo to buy the army new weapons in the war against the guerrillas. And Washington appears ready to comply.

Last month a group of concerned U.S. senators and House members sent a letter to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, asking him to halt a $13.8-million sale of U.S. arms--20,000 M-16 rifles, the largest U.S. arms purchase by Guatemala since the Carter ban. The letter reminded Shultz that Congress had refused to send lethal weaponry because of past human-rights violations.

Despite his apparent weakness, Cerezo remains determined to advance his hearts-and-minds policy on the nation’s civil war even though the guerrillas continue to ambush soldiers, lay mines and stop buses in remote areas to extract money or give passengers a political lecture.

If Cerezo is toppled, there will be few hurdles left for his conservative critics, who are waiting to launch a “final offensive” against the insurgents and their civilian supporters.