Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 5, 1993 TAG: 9309020318
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: EDWARD H. DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Early 1993: Public protests grow against government's economic austerity measures and cost of living. There are accusations of corruption and embezzlement within the Serrano administration.
May 25: President Jorge Serrano Elias ousts the Congress and Supreme Court, claiming the need for a cleanup of corruption.
May 26: International outrage is expressed against Serrano and most aid sources are cut off.
June l: The army removes Serrano (now in Panama) and names the defense minister as temporary president.
June 1-4: Large public protests are led by members of Congress and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Rigoberta Menchu. International pressure extends to threats of halted trade relations.
June 5: The army allows Congress to hold an ``election'' with a slate of three candidates created that same day by committee.
June 6: Having received the most votes, Ramiro de Leon Carpio, government human-rights ombudsman, is named president.
June 8: President Carpio meets with international diplomats and gets their congratulations on restored ``democracy.''
These events could signal a change for the better in Guatemala. Decades of repression by torture, kidnapping and murder have made Guatemala a horrible place to be poor, liberal, Indian, critical of government policies, or favorable toward unions. Many university professors, journalists and illiterate, unarmed peasants have been targeted by the army as subversives. The usual reward for that is death.
Certainly, having a human-rights expert as president will improve the situation, right? Indeed, Carpio was well-known for publicly criticizing the actions of the army.
Unfortunately, even if Carpio is well-intentioned, the conditions for democracy are not so easily created. An examination below the sound-bite level indicates that Little has changed.
First, the army, with nods from its many associates in Congress and the courts, still refuses to admit any wrongdoing in the deaths and disappearances of 200,000 unarmed civilians since 1962. (A large percentage of these atrocities occurred in 1981-83.)There have been convictions of a handful of officers, but the official line of every administration has been that the past is best forgotten, and that those who prefer to press the issue are connected to the guerrillas.
Amnesty International still lists Guatemala as one of the world's worst human-rights offenders. Some 200,000 political refugees in Mexico and elsewhere also are labeled as guerrilla sympathizers and are afraid to return.
Second, the majority of Guatemalans are alienated from the political process by fear, illiteracy and lack of faith. This means The members of Congress who just ``elected'' the new president are not at all representative of the populace. Admittedly, union leaders were allowed to participate in the selection of three candidates, but the only union leaders to be found in Guatemala after so many years of repression are those coziest with the corporate elite. Thus, the ``democracy restored'' on June 5 could hardly be seen as legitimate by most Guatemalans.
Third, the June 5 election was held with the permission of the Guatemalan army. That huge institution owns the largest bank, two of the larger television stations and vast areas of land, besides having occupational control over much of the country. The willingness of the army to allow this election should notbe seen as a sign of failing power, but as is an indicator of how little they believe Carpio can do besides win back the respect of the country's international business friends.
Carpio was originally selected by the national elite to the post of human-rights ombudsman because he would not buck the system too much. In fact, he was more vocal in his criticisms than the leadership desired, but he was never seen as a threat to those in power.
It is unlikely that the poor majority (80 percent live below the government's own poverty line) will have the clout (or that international pressure will remain long enough) to push through major policy changes. The army must have guessed this when it developed its strategy for removing the weeklong dictatorship of Serrano.
It is best, they must have thought, to have the appearance of a democracy under a liberal president. They are gambling that Carpio can do little damage to the repressive system. The odds are they're right.
\ Edward H. Davis is a professor of geography at Emory & Henry College.
by CNB