Guatemalans Start Perilous Journey Home

Thousands of Guatemalan Indians who fled more than a decade ago to escape civil war and military repression are returning home, abandoning squalid refugee camps in Mexico and embarking on a peril-ridden journey to new communities here in the highlands.

The hopeful refugees--some on foot, others piling in the backs of trucks--began leaving makeshift camps this week and heading south. The first group of 2,800 or so is expected to cross into Guatemala, over the Pan American Highway through the spectacular Cuchumatanes Mountains, within the next 15 days.

They will be the first of more than 43,000 refugees scheduled to be repatriated as part of floundering peace talks aimed at ending Guatemala’s civil war, the oldest armed conflict in Latin America.

“We have a moral and political obligation for (the repatriation) to be successful . . . for our people to be received with happiness and with dignity,” said 1992 Nobel Peace laureate Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan Indian whose family was killed and whose village was destroyed in the war. Living in self-imposed exile for 12 years, Menchu returned to Guatemala this week to exert pressure for the repatriation to take place.

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Guatemalan army--which often accused Indian peasants of collaborating with leftist guerrillas--carried out a “scorched earth” policy in which entire villages were razed. Thousands of people were forcibly relocated, made to flee or killed. Tens of thousands of them ended up in about 60 camps through the southern Mexican states of Chiapas, Campeche and Quintana Roo.

With the United Nations watching closely, the government is now promising the refugees safety and land so returning families can set up new farming communities.

Whether the program works--church leaders remain skeptical because of renewed army attacks in the rural highlands--is a key test of whether the country can live in peace.

Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano signed the landmark repatriation agreement Oct. 8, pledging support for the refugees and promising they would be welcomed.

Besides land and security, the agreement said male peasants will not be obliged to join civilian patrols that serve as the eyes and ears of the military in rural areas. Officially voluntary, the patrols have been accused of committing numerous murders, and men who refuse to join are often beaten or worse.

The arrival of the refugees into Guatemala was to begin this week but was postponed after last-minute disputes over the return route and the size of the returning groups. The disputes illustrated the continuing tension and mistrust that exist between the government and refugee leaders. It raised questions about the ultimate success of the repatriation.

Unaware that the return of the first group was postponed, hundreds of highland Indians gathered Wednesday at La Mesilla, a bustling crossing post on the Guatemalan side of the border with Mexico, to await an arrival that would not happen. Women dressed in their best, bright-red huipiles (embroidered blouses) with babies slung on their backs gazed toward the pine-covered hills of Mexico as men played wooden marimbas (a national symbol of Guatemala) and unfurled “welcome-home” banners.

But instead of refugees, a group of blond, sunburned, backpack-toting European tourists passed through the border checkpoint on foot. Then followed a couple from Southern California driving a motor home with two kayaks strapped on top.

Priests and campesino leaders eventually addressed the bewildered crowd to explain the latest obstacles and to reassure the peasants that the refugees would be coming home soon.

“There will be no return today,” said Father Marco Aurelio Alonzo, standing in the back of a white pickup truck. “But there is movement. The refugee population wants to come and will come . . . with their heads held high.”

Most of the last-minute problems, resolved in a late-night meeting Tuesday, were of a technical nature, but they gave rise to mutual recriminations between refugee and government representatives. Each side accused the other of trying to use the repatriation for political gain.

The government had insisted that the refugees return in groups of no more than 500 and that they use a more remote route known as the Ingenieros Road for travel into Guatemala. The refugee leaders insisted on the route that takes the group over the Pan American Highway, from La Mesilla to Huehuetenango, then into Guatemala City, where they hoped to hold a rally.

The government representatives finally agreed to the route. It was also agreed that repatriation would begin within 15 days, even as refugees began amassing in Comitan, Mexico, about 30 miles from the Guatemalan border.

By Thursday, according to church officials monitoring the return, about 850 refugees had left their camps and reached Comitan. There officials planned to process the refugees’ paperwork before the trip continued. About 950 more were well on the way to Comitan, the church officials said.

Buses were being provided for most of the refugees. One group of about 310 started out on foot, however. “It is better that once and for all, we just go,” said refugee Pedro Matias, who planned to walk with his wife and five children to Comitan, a trek that could take eight days. Another group of 350 leaving in six trucks from a camp in Campeche state were detained by Mexican federal police, who claimed the trucks did not have proper permits.

The first group that enters Guatemala will head for a community called Poligono 14, set up for them in the Quiche, the embattled zone where many of the peasants originally had their homes. Later groups are destined for other settlements in the Quiche, Peten and Huehuetenango provinces. In all, repatriation could take two years to complete.

The future that awaits many of the refugees remains uncertain. Fighting between the army and leftist guerrillas flared up late last year in the Ixcan region, where many refugees are headed. Several villages were burned in what human rights groups said was a warning from the military to the returning peasants.

Some of the settlements also are rudimentary at best. U.N. sources said few temporary dwellings have been built, cholera has been reported in some of the region, and it is unclear if the promised land is available.