Put Truth About the U.S. Role on the Agenda

When President Clinton visits Guatemala next week, he will have a historic opportunity to deliver a long overdue message to the Guatemalan people: He can acknowledge and apologize for the decades-long U.S. role in supporting the repressive Guatemalan army. By acknowledging the truth, the U.S. government can participate in Guatemala’s process of healing the wounds of war.

Guatemala’s long-awaited truth commission report was released last week in an emotional ceremony attended by thousands of Guatemalans. It focuses primarily on the brutal, at times genocidal, state policies of the Guatemalan military and civilian authorities that were responsible for an overwhelming 93% of the atrocities committed during the 36-year war (as compared with 3% by the guerrillas).

But the report also highlights U.S. responsibility for directly and indirectly supporting illegal operations of the Guatemalan government from the 1960s through the 1980s. Just after the presentation of the report, U.S. Ambassador Donald J. Planty responded defensively, referring to the bloodshed as simply an internal matter among Guatemalans, denying a central U.S. role and characterizing the report as a “wrong interpretation.”

Indeed, Guatemala’s was a civil war--Latin America’s longest and bloodiest, leaving a toll of 200,000 unarmed (primarily Mayan indigenous) civilians dead or “disappeared.” However, it was a Cold War civil war. It began largely as an outgrowth of the CIA’s 1954 intervention, at the height of the Cold War, to overthrow the progressive and nationalistic--democratically elected--government of Jacobo Arbenz. The intervention left no space for political dissent within Guatemala. As a result, opposition forces concluded in the early 1960s that the only available avenue to political and social justice was armed uprising. While Cuba supported leftist insurgents during the 1960s, even U.S. authorities have acknowledged that since the 1970s, Guatemalan guerrillas received virtually no outside support. By contrast, the U.S. played a significant role in the war for several decades.

During the 1960s, U.S. counterinsurgency advisors became deeply involved in training and equipping the Guatemalan army, transforming it from an inefficient force into a brutal killing machine. U.S. advisors were involved in reinforcing Guatemala’s intelligence apparatus, as well as paramilitary forces and death squads. They also transmitted the polarizing national security doctrine used by the Guatemalan army to justify virtually any and all acts of repression in the name of anti-communism.

The second round of the war, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was fought in the indigenous highlands. During the army’s scorched-earth counterinsurgency offensive of 1981-83, hundreds of villages were wiped off the face of the map, 150,000 Guatemalans were killed or “disappeared,” and more than 1 million were displaced. During these years, the U.S. Congress prohibited direct U.S. military aid to the Guatemalan army. But the Reagan administration continued to support its counterinsurgency allies covertly and indirectly, through the CIA end other government agencies.

Direct U.S. military aid was restored in the mid-’80s, and then cut off again in 1990 because of ongoing human rights abuses. But even then, the U.S. continued to regard the Guatemalan army as its strategic ally and secretly substituted CIA funds for overt military aid. Just four years ago, the U.S. press revealed that the CIA had maintained close ties with human rights criminals in the Guatemalan army through the mid-1990s, long after the Cold War was over. Given those 1995 revelations and the ensuing scandal in Washington, today’s truth commission conclusions about U.S. involvement should not surprise anyone.

The U.S. government did begin changing its relation to Guatemala by supporting the peace talks of the mid-1990s. It also provided funds for postwar peace projects, including the truth commission itself, and it collaborated with the commission by declassifying some documents. However, the declassification process was partial. The Defense Department, for example, revealed nothing. Guatemalans--and Americans--deserve a fuller disclosure of U.S. documents.

When Clinton visits Guatemala, he should accept responsibility for past U.S. actions. By doing so, the U.S. would not be absolving the various Guatemalan actors but setting an example, above all, to the still-resistant Guatemalan army. This would be remembered as a historic contribution to Guatemala’s difficult task of reconciliation and healing. It also could help balance the great weight of U.S. interventions and signify Washington’s understanding that the Cold War is truly over in Central America.