Guatemala ‘Model Cities’ Prove More Like Prisons

This tiny hamlet in the remote mountains of Guatemala is to be a model city, government officials say, a place where people displaced by civil war can renew their lives with all the services and security the government can provide.

But to many of the people who live here, Xexucap is a kind of prison.

Xexucap, pronounced Shay-shu-cup in the language of the area’s Ixil Indians, is the newest of half a dozen villages ordered built since 1983 to resettle peasants hiding in the mountains as a result of Guatemala’s war with Marxist rebels.

About an hour’s walk to the east, over the dirt path that connects Xexucap with the rest of the world, lies Acul, one of the oldest and most complete of the model cities. Acul appears to be an almost idyllic place--neat rows of wooden houses with red-tile roofs laid out on an orderly grid halfway up the mountainside.

There is electricity (even a couple of television sets) and community water taps within easy walking distance of every front door. Each house has its own garden, and the residents share the fruits of a fertile common growing area in the valley below.

But this is no Happy Valley. Most of the families cannot afford to pay for the electricity, so they sit in the dark and too often drink the night away with moonshine that rots the mind and body. After dark, the streets are an obstacle course strewn with people passed out in the mud.

The Swiss-like order of the place offends most of the 1,600 residents, Indians who for centuries lived far from their neighbors, free to farm their own small plots, free to let their pigs and chickens roam, free to come and go at will.

None of this is possible in Acul or Xexucap, or in any of the other resettlement villages. These people--now totaling 4,600--were brought in by force. They cannot live on their own land or leave the village without the permission of the head of a civil defense committee appointed by the army. Houses must be within a few yards of one another and livestock must be kept separate from the village.

Aid Seldom Delivered

Worst of all, according to many residents, the promised government aid is seldom delivered.

“There is no work, no money, and the people are hungry,” an Acul resident said. He said his name is Juan, and like nearly all the people interviewed in the villages, he asked not to be fully identified.

Another resident, Tomas, said that until 1982 he, his wife and their seven children lived on their own land, a boulder-strewn plot of less than an acre about 10 minutes’ walk from Xexucap. They grew corn as a cash crop and raised chickens and pigs for their table.

It was a severe existence, but for the Ixil Indians, who still wear the brightly colored clothing of their Mayan ancestors and follow the ancient customs, it was their way of life.

For Tomas, the war became a reality when guerrillas began operating in the region and the army reacted. The army has a reputation for disregarding human rights, to the extent that the United States has refused to provide military aid.

More Than 30 Killed

One night, troops purportedly looking for guerrillas worked over the area from Acul to Xexucap, killing more than 30 people, including women and children, and destroying dozens of houses.

“I went to a controlled area,” Tomas said, referring to the mountainous areas where the rebels held sway until the military, aided by helicopters armed with bombs and rockets, recently drove the rebels away and reduced their strength from 12,000 to about 1,200.

Even though “there was nothing to eat,” Tomas and his family stayed with the guerrillas until last February, when the rebels were forced to retreat and the army bombed the camp where Tomas was living.

Government officials in Guatemala City say that people like Tomas were persuaded to leave the mountains voluntarily after the army assured them they would be safe and would be given health care, food, housing and job training.

But Tomas said he left “because of the helicopters.”

Temporary Shelter

He spoke softly, aware of the government agent with a rifle who had quietly edged up to the clearing in front of the hut Tomas had built from branches as a temporary shelter, until the government provides building materials.

“They told us everything was all right,” Tomas said, “but then they bombed us. They bombed us one day for four hours. It was very close, and we were afraid. Then they landed and took us out.”

At first, Tomas and his family were kept in a military camp near the town of Nebaj, where he was interrogated.

“We sat there,” he said, “with no work, no food, no clothing.”

This was followed by three months at a re-education camp called Xemamatze on the outskirts of Nebaj, a muddy place about the size of a football field within a horseshoe-shaped collection of dank, foul-smelling buildings with raw, Sheetrock walls that can accommodate about 600 people and a couple dozen heavily armed soldiers.

Teaching Them a Trade

The government says the purpose of Xemamatze is to re-educate the displaced people, to teach them a trade while restoring their health and, at the same time, instilling in them a sense of patriotism. In the beginning, there were as many as 300 people in the camp at any one time. Now there are about 70 at a time.

The job training often ended up being work--baking, weaving and repairing roads. When the Indians said they wanted to be paid for this labor, the government stopped the training programs.

“There were no courses in education,” Tomas said. “We asked for lessons, but there were only lessons on saluting the flag, lessons on the dangers of communism.”

With a smile that revealed his broken teeth and scurvy-shrunken gums, he said: “We learned the national anthem. It didn’t bring any pay or food, but I know the national anthem.”

Told to Build a House

Tomas said he was taken to Acul, without being asked, and told to walk to Xexucap and start building a house on a plot chosen by the army. He said he was told that building materials “would be brought to us.”

Government officials in Guatemala City said that wallboard and other materials will be sent in, but they had no idea when.

If materials are sent in, it will be no easy task to get them to the building site. Because there is no road to Xexucap, the people will have to haul them on their backs from the end of the road at Acul.

This is what happened at Janlay, a resettlement village on a site so steep that getting to it requires ropes. The people of Janlay hauled up cement foundation blocks and Sheetrock, one piece at a time. A road was built only after the village was completed and President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo was ready to come up for an inaugural ceremony.

Still uncompleted is a water-purifying plant and pump. The 1,200 residents are served by a single water tap.

No Windows, Rotting Walls

“Life is calm here,” a man in Janlay said, “but the houses don’t have windows and the walls rot. We should have wood but the government wouldn’t give us any.”

Another complained that “we can’t make enough money” from the corn and fruit they grow. To survive, the men in Janlay and the other villages work “on the coast,” as they call the lowland plantations near the Pacific coast. And they have to get the authorities’ permission to do so.

To get to the coast takes as much as eight hours on foot and by bus. Pay on the plantations there is at best the equivalent of $2.40 a day.

There may be a lack of work in the villages, but the army, which is in charge of all the resettlement villages, finds non-paying tasks for the men. Every male age 16 to 60 is forced to join the civil defense committee, even though Gen. Gonzalo Menendez, the government’s human rights attorney general, said that “service is voluntary; it is unconstitutional to force anyone to join.”

Still, according to Tomas and others, they have no choice.

“When I arrived in Acul,” Tomas said, “the military commissioner told me I had to serve several days a month.”

A Form of Coercion

According to government officials, the civil defense committees organize patrols to protect the villages from the guerrillas. But human rights officials say it is really a form of coercion and control, a way to compromise the people and make the rebels think they are government agents.

At bottom, though, the village people say their principal problem is the lack of services.

“We have a clinic,” a man in Janlay said, “but there is no doctor, no medicine, no food, nothing.”

There are no teachers for Janlay’s newly completed school, so the children are as illiterate as their parents. Instead of going to school, they work. Girls and boys alike, some as young as 4, make their way to Acul with bundles of firewood weighing 50 pounds or more, hoping to sell the wood for a bit of money.

In all the villages of the area, there was general agreement with the sentiments expressed by Tomas, who said:

“Coming here was not our idea. The army told us we were going to do it. Life was hard before, but it was our life. Now it isn’t.”