An Abduction Puts Rebels in Guatemala on Defensive

Olga Alvarado de Novella is both a symbol of the oligarchy that once ran Guatemala in complicity with brutal military dictators and a frail, 86-year-old, wheelchair-bound woman.

The first characteristic led to her kidnapping more than two months ago. And although she is now free, the second has put her at the center of a controversy that threatens to derail peace talks to end Latin America’s longest civil war.

Guatemalans already savoring the end to more than three decades of civil war were jolted back into uncertainty this week by persuasive evidence that leftist guerrillas engineered Novella’s kidnapping, even as their leaders prepared for a final round of peace talks with the government.

Talks scheduled to begin Tuesday were suspended because of the abduction. The army was put on alert. And the country impatiently waited for an explanation from the guerrilla commanders--who, according to reports, were huddled here in San Salvador early this week meeting with their political liaisons.

“The peace process is hanging by a thread,” said Rosalinda Bran, a security expert in the Guatemala office of the Latin American Social Science Faculty, a regional think tank. “This is extremely disconcerting when we thought we were in the final stretch.”

The rebel leaders’ response came Wednesday night in the form of an apology and a promise to investigate the kidnapping.

“The leadership respectfully presents its apologies to Guatemalan society, the family and the international community for the pain and uncertainty this deplorable act has caused,” said the statement from the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, faxed to Associated Press.

The rebel leader responsible for the kidnapping did it without permission, said the statement signed by the four commanders of the rebel leadership.

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Events have raised questions about whether the guerrillas are taking the peace talks seriously and whether commanders living in exile can control their troops, analysts said.

Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu had appeared to be making great strides toward fulfilling his campaign promise of a prompt end to his nation’s 36-year civil war. Building on the efforts of his predecessor, he resolved two key issues that had bogged down earlier negotiations: agricultural reform and effective civilian control over the country’s powerful military machine.

All that was left to discuss was how Guatemala’s guerrillas could be reincorporated into civilian life. Arzu had told Guatemalans that by Christmas, their country would be at peace.

But this week, it became clear that the peace process has been unraveling for more than two months, ever since Novella, the wife of a cement magnate, was kidnapped at a roadblock by armed, uniformed men.

On Oct. 19, police arrested Rafael Augusto Valdizon, known as Comandante Isaias, a high-ranking officer in one of the four factions that make up the Guatemalan guerrillas.

In his pocket, they found a note from Novella to her family. Valdizon admitted that he was holding Novella and demanded his freedom for hers. The trade was made.

Throughout the civil war, guerrillas had financed themselves by abducting the wealthy, but they had promised to stop kidnapping as part of a truce declared earlier this year.

The government notified the United Nations mediator to the peace talks of the situation and asked him to demand an explanation from the guerrillas. When none had been made by Sunday--two days before negotiations were set to resume--the government went public and suspended the talks while awaiting a full explanation from the guerrillas.

“The president really had no choice,” independent Guatemalan political analyst Miguel Angel Balcancel said.

The rebels’ apology came only after U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali deplored the kidnapping in a statement Tuesday and called on the guerrilla command “to assume its responsibility and to take the action necessary to restore conditions in which a final peace agreement can promptly be reached in Guatemala.”

A source close to the guerrillas said: “The [rebel] commanders cannot always respond as quickly as everyone would like. It takes time to make the necessary consultations.”

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The guerrilla commanders’ meetings about the crisis were said to have included Gaspar Ilom, the high-profile commander who heads the faction accused of carrying out the kidnapping.

Ilom--the nom de guerre of Rodrigo Asturias, son of Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Angel Asturias--has been the most accessible of the four top commanders. Still, the faction he leads is considered among the most violent and aggressive of the guerrilla armies and, traditionally, the group least likely to accept dialogue with the government.

“It makes you wonder whether [the guerrilla] command has control over the middle and lower levels,” Bran said. “On the other hand, if Gaspar Ilom knew about the kidnapping, what is he doing at the negotiating table?”

The source close to the guerrillas said it is hard to believe that the kidnapping was planned by the entire front. “Each group has its own organization, and few decisions are approved by the entire organization,” the source said.

Analysts who have followed the civil war and peace talks closely are at a loss to explain why the kidnapping occurred.

“There are no winners in this, only losers,” Bran said.

The biggest losers may be the guerrillas, who have provoked the ire of the United Nations and the Guatemalan people, Balcancel said.

“Their credibility has crumbled,” he said.

The kidnapping, he noted, may have been provoked by the government’s tolerance of the guerrillas in recent months. Guerrilla groups have been allowed to briefly take over towns in the areas where they operate, and they even had a pavilion at the Independence Day fair in October.

“They misjudged how far the government’s tolerance would go,” Balcancel said.

Now, Bran said, “we are waiting to see if the conflict heats up again.”