Rightists Blamed for Wave of Violence in Guatemala

Alleged right-wing extremists have unleashed a campaign of kidnapings, assassinations and bombings in the worst wave of political violence to strike Guatemala since civilian President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo took office nearly four years ago.

In recent weeks, 10 San Carlos University students were abducted in the capital. Five were later found dead with signs of having been tortured, while the other five are still missing.

Guatemala’s former ambassador to Spain, also a leader of Cerezo’s Christian Democratic Party, was assassinated by unidentified gunmen, as was one of the nation’s wealthiest bankers.

And in the provinces of San Marcos and Quetzaltenango, where the army is fighting a small guerrilla insurgency, at least 21 peasants have been kidnaped and killed or have disappeared after being abducted this month, according to diplomats and human rights groups.

“The situation is very serious,” said Peter Kooijmans, a U.N. official who arrived in Guatemala last week to investigate human rights abuses. “The groups of society affected by the violence are very widespread, which contributes to the atmosphere of terror in the country.”

After the killings, scores of labor leaders and political activists who had begun to organize under the civilian government fled the country or dropped out of sight in fear. For example, seven of the 11 board members representing the Federation of State (employees) Union quit their posts, according to a union leader, and only four of 12 remaining leaders of the San Carlos University Students’ Assn. are still active.

U.S. Charge d’Affaires Philip Taylor has condemned the “terrorist crimes,” and in the wake of bomb and grenade attacks on public buildings in the capital, the U.S. State Department this month issued a strongly worded travel advisory for tourists.

Guatemalan officials blame the violence on rightist businessmen and former military officers who they say are trying to create chaos so there will be a popular clamor for a return to strongman rule and a coup.

“These are rightist groups or people who have been involved in coup attempts in the past,” Interior Minister Roberto Valle Valdizan said in an interview. “Obviously, there are former military men in the scheme.”

Current Intelligence

However, diplomats and human rights groups assert that the killers appear to be operating with current military intelligence, which would seem to implicate active-duty army officials.

They agree that the violence is not official government policy, but they charge that Cerezo’s is a “lame-duck” government that has failed to take action to stop it.

“The government’s attitude is worse than impotence--it’s indifference,” said one Western diplomat who asked not to be identified by name. “Guatemala is swooping into the bad old days, and all the prognoses are that it’s going to get worse. Cerezo is perceived as having decided not to do anything about it.”

The government has arrested two civilians and is looking for a third, allegedly responsible for directing the violence. But diplomats do not believe they are the real leaders behind the violence.

While on the rise, the violence has not reached levels of the early 1980s, when the army, in a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, reportedly killed tens of thousands of Indian peasants and labor, church and community leaders, including many Christian Democrats.

After that period, Guatemala was internationally isolated and economically bankrupt. A succession of four generals ruled the country for 16 years through coups and fraudulent elections before the military agreed to hold fair elections in 1985.

Cerezo won the vote by a landslide and took office in January, 1986, agreeing not to tamper with a last-minute decree of the outgoing regime granting amnesty to military personnel for any crimes committed in the counterinsurgency campaign.

Cerezo’s defense minister, Brig. Gen. Hector Gramajo Morales, believed that the leftist guerrillas, numbering only about 1,000 by early 1986, had ceased to be a military threat and were a political challenge instead. Human rights abuses decreased during the first years of Cerezo’s administration.

But some sectors of the military bristled when the government attempted to negotiate with the rebels last year under a Central American peace plan and the talks were broken off. The guerrilla movement has since picked up steam with increased attacks over a broader area, including urban operations within 25 miles of the capital.

Rightists restricted early government efforts to undertake tax and agrarian reform, but they were unable to keep labor unions, students and human rights groups from taking advantage of a civilian government to organize among the nation’s poor--more than two-thirds of the population.

Frequent Demonstrations

Demonstrations became commonplace, and teachers went on a two-month strike starting in July, while postal workers shut down mail service.

Three serious coup attempts--in May and August, 1988, and again last May--have whittled away at Cerezo’s power and room to maneuver, diplomats say. At the same time, he has lost popularity because of public insecurity and eroding salaries.

Many people say Cerezo’s only major accomplishment is that he is still president. But even that is too much for some groups.

“The people who have been trying to oppose the whole process openly and frontally through coup attempts have changed their strategy now,” said Edmond Mulet, a congressman from the opposition National Union of the Center party.

“That didn’t work, so they are attacking different flanks, trying to create friction between different sectors of society. They’re on the path of what they want to achieve. A lot of people say democracy is not working, that it is not a guarantee of their lives,” he said.

Among the solutions that rightists have offered is the candidacy of retired Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, an evangelical Protestant who took power through a coup in 1982 and ruled for 18 of the bloodiest months in modern Guatemalan history.

Conservative Sign?

While political observers give Rios Montt little chance of success, they say his campaign is a sign of the conservative mood.

Meanwhile, students, labor leaders and human rights workers report receiving a multitude of death threats over the telephone or in anonymous envelopes.

Luis Armando Ruiz, one of the four remaining coordinators of the University Students Assn., said he no longer sleeps at home, rarely attends class and varies his schedule so that no one can anticipate his route. But Ruiz, who was out of the country when his colleagues were abducted, talked to a reporter in the Student Assn.’s campus office, which he said will remain open and staffed.

“We can’t stop working. That’s what they want,” he said. “If we stop using the office, we would be clandestine, and to be clandestine in Guatemala is to be a dead man. They would consider us the enemy, communists, guerrillas.”

It is unclear why those who have been killed were targets and if the assassins were the same in all killings. In each case, theories abound about the victim’s enemies, alleged involvement in Guatemala’s growing drug-trafficking business, links to guerrillas or intentions to expose corruption. Rumor and fear have been substituted for information.

The spate of violence began Aug. 1 with the assassination of former Ambassador to Spain Danilo Barillas. His was the first high-profile political assassination in many years.

Rights Figure Disappears

Soon, bombs and grenades began to explode--at a fancy hotel, an upscale shopping center and warehouses. On Aug. 15 a bomb exploded at the offices of the Mutual Support Group, or GAM, a human rights organization, and the following morning GAM member Maria Rumualda Camey was kidnaped by unidentified gunmen in Escuintla. She has not been seen since.

GAM board member Miguel Morales was kidnaped on Aug. 23, blindfolded and held for 40 hours before he was released by unidentified men who said they had “mistaken him for someone else.” The students began to disappear over about two weeks starting in late August. The five dead are: Carlos Humberto Cabrera Rivera; Carlos Leonel Chuta Camey; Victor Hugo Rodriguez and his wife, Silvia Maria Azurdia Utera, and Eduardo Antonio Lopez Palencia.

Banker Slain

On Aug. 25, Industrial Bank President Ramiro Castillo Love was assassinated by gunmen at his home.

In a murkier case this month, three shoemakers were found dead in the capital with their hands hacked off. The government arrested a suspect who was said to have confessed to the killings because the men allegedly raped his wife. But human rights workers are suspicious of the case because of the mutilations, which are typical of political torture cases.

Six people died on their way home from a funeral in Escuintla on Sept. 14. Officials said they were caught in cross-fire during a rebel attack on the local military commissioner’s house.

Also this month, 21 peasants have been kidnaped and killed in various villages of San Marcos province, according to Factor Mendez, director of the Center for Study and Promotion of Human Rights. A Western diplomat said he had the names of 21 people killed in San Marcos, but did not know details. He said four others were found dead in neighboring Quetzaltenango.

There are no overall reliable figures on killings and disappearances, but it is generally agreed that the numbers are going up.

In a strongly worded letter last month, the Guatemalan Episcopal Conference wrote of the “feeling of desperation and fear” among Guatemalans.

“Guatemala does not want to and does not deserve to live another horrendous experience,” the Roman Catholic bishops wrote. They declared that the country “is falling precipitously into chaos, anarchy or a situation of extreme violence.”