Terrorism has been going on for a very long time and in many forms. The terrorism that kills Indian leaders kills other people too.
Just a few weeks ago, Guillermo Ovalle, an associate of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Quiche’ Indian leader Rigoberta Mench? Tum, was assassinated by unknown gunmen in Guatemala. Recently, a death threat was faxed to several of Guatemala’s most prominent human rights organizations. Early reports attribute the high-tech death threat, which targeted about a dozen human rights activists and journalists as “enemigos a la patria” (enemies of the state), to a clandestine organization allegedly linked to the army high command.
Things are not going well in Guatemala. The Guatemalan case is doubly troubling. It is a country of great social injustice that is, at the same time, a solid agricultural producer with a potentially strong economy. Among the great producing class in Guatemala are the millions of Indian campesino, artisan and business people who constitute a very hard-working population and hold up whole sectors of the country’s economy.
After 30 years of very brutal war, Guatemala suffers the consequences. A wave of violent crime has become the permanent reality. Perhaps it is the large numbers of orphaned children of war-torn families, many who are now tormented young adults. More likely it is the result of having a huge number of trained ex-combatants, left and right, in a country of high unemployment and many available weapons. Bandits roam. Assaults are common. Violence is for hire, quite openly, quite with impunity, if the contractor gets the right people to do the job. Assassination for hire can be a fact of life.
It is not an easy place for a Native culture to survive. But there are a lot of Maya in Guatemala, perhaps as many as six million. We hope all the pressures the Maya population is facing will not become points of violence that could be aggravated into another genocidal campaign against their communities.
The history is ugly enough. Enough mass graves are dug up every week to feed the narrative of massacre and brutality that were the 1980s for this beleaguered country. This history is alive in the psyche of the people, who do hunger for justice or retribution for their horrible suffering of 20 years ago, but not as much as they hunger today for want of food security and basic necessities. Among the most pressing need is for equitable access to lands by the agricultural producers among the Maya population. This huge need and social disparity is refueling old tensions. The hunger for land turns increasingly into the battle cry, “Land or death.”
In the midst of the harsh reality, Guatemala’s Indian country is flexing its muscle intellectually, politically and economically. At the same time movements are afoot including outright invasions of private farms that are dangerously reminiscent of the time just before the years of intense massacre. These movements can easily re-ignite the military madness that resulted in the torture and massacre of tens of thousands of Indians.
The recent brutal revelation of the shadowy hand of the Death Squads in a spate of assassinations going back to the 1980s also augurs badly. In Guatemala and other such dictatorship-to-democracy “successes,” recurring periods of intense repression and killing are all too often the norm. These intensify when the United States is in a militaristic mood; they lessen when economic visions fuel the world and promise appears possible.
We urge the United States, Canada and Mexico to request restraint on the part of the military in Guatemala. Their repression might be focused on the criminal element and not the social sector. When the tension of criminal violence fuels political instability, military force can sometimes impose its own justification, often with disastrous results for Native peoples.
Somehow, in the midst of its current war footing, we encourage the U.S. to also project and support peace and security issues that give hope of good life to good people. The world, including countries like Guatemala, cannot just be driven by the fear of retribution, which is the strategy of targeting broadly all countries perceived to be critical or oppositional to U.S. international policies and interests.
Maya Indians, who like to hold their community lands in common with collective titles owned by extended families called matrilineages and patrilineages and that form communities, might be perceived as exotic potential enemies in this context. Or they might be seen as a source of hope and stability if properly supported toward their own cultural approach to economic productivity and prosperity.
In Guatemala, the horror of mass, institutionalized terrorism remains fresh in the memory and is an historical cycle that could again become a lived reality. New models that include old, proven incentives are much needed at this time in history.