Guatemala’s Despot Redux

Old despots never fade away, though they should -- especially in the case of Efrain Rios Montt, the “scorched earth” general and once-deposed Guatemalan leader. Twice before, he tried but failed to circumvent a Guatemalan constitutional provision barring those who participate in coups from becoming president. On his third try, on July 14, he got a boost from a crony-packed Constitutional Court, which let his latest presidential candidacy advance. This is a disturbing setback for human rights, and the U.S. and other nations have correctly let Guatemala know that it could have repercussions.

Though Guatemala’s Supreme Court has temporarily suspended the Constitutional Court’s twisted ruling, it still may fall to Guatemalans -- using voting rights they labored to secure -- to send the general and his blood-soaked career into ignominy.

It won’t be easy. Rios Montt, who leads Congress and heads the political party of President Alfonso Portillo, is a master of populist campaigning and a ruthless manipulator of government power. He’s focused on winning votes in rural areas, where the desperately disenfranchised poor might succumb to his religion-tinged demagoguery.

Though opponents stoned him at a June rally, his allies mobilized thugs Thursday and Friday to back him, resulting in riots that paralyzed the capital and forced the U.S. Embassy to shut. Besides using shows of force, he also will seek to benefit from his nation’s fragile democracy.

Unlike Costa Rica or Mexico, Guatemala can’t run a smooth, clean election without international aid. The Organization of American States, the European Union and the National Democratic Institute plan spot-monitoring in Guatemala. But time is running out for them to mount a major national presence for November’s election.

Human rights groups, the EU and the U.S. State Department have expressed dismay about Rios Montt and say relations with Guatemala would be strained if he were president. They recall all too well that Rios Montt, who came to power in a 1982 military coup and was backed by the Reagan administration, advocated the scorched earth policy to fight leftist guerrillas. That let Guatemala’s army wipe out hundreds of villages; tens of thousands of Mayan Indians disappeared or were killed. Rios Montt says he has no direct complicity in the slaughter. But in his term, which lasted not more than 18 months, the army perpetrated what a United Nations truth commission termed an “act of genocide.” And Human Rights Watch Executive Director Jose Miguel Vivanco, noting Rios Montt’s history, says he “should be on trial, not running for president.”

The courage of Guatemalans like Nobelist Rigoberta Menchu had started to reverse the nation’s horrific past. But Rios Montt’s candidacy only opens terrible old wounds.