Sudden Regression in Guatemala

During the 1980s official Guatemala launched a counterinsurgency program against a leftist guerrilla movement, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (abbreviated URNG in Spanish). What followed was the slaughter of not fewer than 40,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 civilians, most, according to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, at the hands of government forces.

In August, 1992, URNG chief Jorge Soto and President Jorge Serrano agreed to a peace plan brokered by the United Nations. A mediator was appointed, as was a prosecutor of human rights abuses. True, implementation of the 11-point agreement remained stalemated during the ensuing months, but time did not seem to be on the Serrano regime’s side.

The regime’s control was weakening, first because of a weakening economy. A second factor was the growing frequency and occasional violence of protest demonstrations; just days ago, a peaceful demonstration in Guatemala City attracted 10,000. Finally, this week, also in Guatemala City, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan Indian, convoked the first Summit of Indigenous Peoples.

Against this background, Serrano--or more likely the military strongmen for whom he is the polite public face--decided on a coup d’etat. Having backed out of the peace talks May 10, Serrano on Tuesday suspended the constitution, disbanded Congress, placed its president as well as the president of the Guatemalan Supreme Court under house arrest and sent the police to abduct the human rights prosecutor. Serrano will now rule by decree, he says.

President Clinton has quite properly called these measures illegitimate and called on Serrano to reverse them. The URNG is not Peru’s Shining Path guerrilla band. Not only is the URNG no longer a military threat, it is publicly and plausibly committed to restoring peace, civilian rule and human rights to Guatemala. This, of course, is almost certainly just the problem.

The Organization of American States should consider suspending Guatemala’s membership and imposing other diplomatic and economic sanctions to force the reversal of this coup.

The Western Hemisphere does not need and should not tolerate another military dictatorship.