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Back to the Future in the Guatemalan Elections
By Cyril Mychalejko
09/14/07 "ICH"
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The September 9 election to replace Guatemalan President Oscar
Berger featured more body bags than tangible ideas to improve
the country. Now facing a runoff election, voters are left with
the tired choice between a military strongman and an oligarch.
The last time Guatemala was a functioning democracy was during
Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán's administration, which ended prematurely
as a result of a CIA orchestrated coup in June of 1954. In the
decades that followed the country suffered under military
dictatorships, death squads, genocide and a 36-year civil war
that left hundreds of thousands murdered, tortured and
disappeared.
On Dec. 29, 1996, peace accords were signed which ended the
fighting formally. But since then not much has changed as
institutional racism, military and police abuses, criminal
violence, poverty and impunity continue to plague the suffering
Central American nation.
Last May,
UN High Commissioner
for Human Rights
Louise Arbour called out the Guatemalan government for ongoing
threats and violence directed at human rights workers, the
government's meager investment in social services (the lowest in
the region), the continued discrimination and marginalization of
indigenous peoples, and the continued rise of homicides.
Guatemala has the
highest murder rate
in all of Latin America
Amnesty
International reports that
"clandestine groups"
comprised
of members of "the business sector, private security companies,
common criminals, gang members and possibly ex and current
members of the armed forces," are responsible for the violence
and threats targeted at human rights activists.
Outgoing President
Oscar Berger, a former businessman and wealthy landowner,
has violently
displaced indigenous farmers
through evictions marked by house burnings and demolitions. He
even unleashed the military on indigenous protestors who opposed
a
controversial World
Bank mining project
run by Canada 's
Goldcorp Inc. (formerly Glamis Gold). Both actions are
interpreted as violations of the 1996 Peace Accords.
The September 9,
2007 presidential election to replace Berger sadly featured more
body bags than tangible ideas to improve the country. The
pre-election violence left over 50 candidates (or their family
members) and political activists murdered.
"There are
ambushes with automatic weapons, explosives, killing of entire
groups at once," Francisco Garcia, and election monitor,
told Reuters
in July. "It
shows there are mafia groups interested in gaining state power."
It is widely believed
drug traffickers are responsible for the violence and that they
bankrolled candidates from the local to national level.
What voters are
left with for the Nov. 4 runoff is the tired choice between a
military strongman and an oligarch, representing two segments of
the population largely responsible for the continued destruction
of the country.
Former businessman
Alvaro Colom and ex-general Otto Pérez Molina came out on top
with 28 percent and 24 percent of the vote respectively. Former
Nobel Peace Prize winner and indigenous activist Rigoberta
Menchu finished a disappointing, but not unexpected, sixth place
with just 3 percent of the vote. Her candidacy was doomed from
the beginning because unlike in Bolivia, there are very little
social movements in Guatemala.
Pérez Molina has
quite a resume. The ex-general is a School
of the Americas graduate
and was the former
Chief of G-2, Guatemala's feared military intelligence unit. The
self-proclaimed "general of peace" (he was involved in the
signing of the 1996 Peace Accords) was also formerly on the
CIA payroll
.
Molina's campaign
symbol is a fist, or "strong hand." He wants to get tough with
the "thugs" and drug gangs largely blamed for Guatemala's
increased violence and crime rates. Remarkably, he even told
Reuters that he wanted to
use the military
to police
the streets.
"Until we can get
out of this security crisis and strengthen the police, we have
to use the army," said Pérez Molina.
According to
Reuters, a UN report revealed that soldiers under Pérez Molina's
command in the 1980's were responsible for massacres in the
Western Province of El Quiche. It has also been alleged that he
was involved in the
assassination of a
judge in
1994.
The other choice
for Guatemalans is two-time presidential candidate Alvaro Colom,
who in the past has referred to himself as "the godfather of the
factories." Colom has adopted softer rhetoric than his
counterpart, instead promising to attack crime and violence
through education, healthcare and social spending. Between the
two, he may seem the more attractive. But, he most
likely will represent
the "self-interested dominant sectors in Guatemalan politics"
and "the old oligarchic business elites backed by international
capital," much like Berger. According to
The Carter Center
, Colom received illegal campaign contributions in the 2003
election, while he also refused, not surprisingly, to be
financially transparent within his campaign.
In the end, Guatemalans will have to battle against the
"invisible foot" of the market crushing down on them or the
"iron fist" of the military—or maybe both. Meanwhile, what we
can hope for is local level organizing to continue and
eventually blossom into large scale social movements. It may be
Guatemala's only hope to break out of the cycle of racism,
violence and impunity perpetuated by the state and the
international business community.
Cyril Mychalejko is an editor at
www.UpsideDownWorld.org
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