Don’t Hold Your Breath : New Guatemalan government may not be the answer to decades of repression

In a world of larger nations and bigger events, last week’s inauguration of a new president in Guatemala was barely noted. Yet when Jorge Serrano accepted the presidential sash from his predecessor, Vinicio Cerezo, it marked the first time in that nation’s history that one civilian leader handed power over to another.

Normally, that might be seen as a sign of progress, maybe even hope, in a troubled Central American nation whose political turmoil predates that of nearby Nicaragua and El Salvador. But too many other things need to change before the rest of the world can rest assured that everything’s working out well in Guatemala.

To begin with, an on-again-off-again guerrilla war that has plagued that nation since 1962 is very much “on” once more. The day after Serrano pledged in his inaugural speech to resume peace talks with the guerrillas, they sabotaged an oil pipeline. Worse, in the months leading up to Serrano’s Jan. 6 election, there was a frightening upsurge in political violence throughout Guatemala--not just guerrilla attacks, but death-squad murders and repression by the most brutally efficient army in Latin America. In one especially appalling incident, soldiers opened fire on a peasant protest and killed 15 people.

Guatemalan human-rights activists point to the massacre as evidence that the army remains an arrogant power unto itself despite the facade of civilian control. They question whether a rightist politician like Serrano will have any more success controlling the army than Cerezo, a Christian Democrat.

The record is not reassuring. A leading Serrano political supporter is retired Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, one of the most brutal military presidents Guatemala has had in recent years. That’s saying something when you consider that more than 100,000 people have died in political violence there since the 1960s.

If there is anything at all upbeat about the Guatemalan situation for the United States, it is that in recent years there has been no blood on our hands down there. Although the CIA was behind a right-wing coup in 1954 that began Guatemala’s downward spiral toward the present tragedy, no large-scale U.S. military aid has been given to Guatemala since the late ‘70s, when the generals refused to accept it if they also had to listen to human rights lectures by the Carter Administration.

U.S. relations with Guatemala have remained cool since then, and they should stay that way unless the Serrano government shows a lot more respect for human rights than it is expected to. Washington should not even think about helping the thugs in Guatemala’s army until Serrano shows that he, too, is able to hand power peacefully to another civilian. But don’t hold your breath waiting.