_-- Public Policy Network - Posting to [log in to unmask] --_ On Mon, 1 Mar 1999, the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA <[log in to unmask]> posted this Washington Post Editorial: "The Truth About Guatemala": The Washington Post The Truth About Guatemala Monday, March 1, 1999; Page A18 For whole groups of countries, what post-Cold War politics is mostly about is moving beyond earlier horrors, some arising from rule by the left, others from rule by the right. In this demanding passage, no country has set a braver example than Guatemala. The latest landmark in its long trek back from human and social disaster is a huge report on human rights violations committed by the contestants in its 34-year fratricidal war. The report was commissioned as part of a post-Cold War package of measures aimed at national reconciliation, in this instance at "reconciliation through truth." In a reflection of the military's much-reduced but still lingering influence, the report does not name the guilty, set up trials or otherwise point toward justice. But it tells truths whose acknowledgment can only help Guatemala return from the dark. Historical and cultural considerations made Guatemala a bonfire waiting to be kindled. Political considerations supplied the torch. Fidel Castro had come to power in Cuba, stirring in other Latin places both revolutionary hopes and counterrevolutionary fears. In Guatemala, war -- civil, class, ideological, racial -- exploded. When it was over, says the independent "Historical Clarification Commission," the actual count of civilian dead was 42,275 and of "disappeared," 6,159; the estimated total of dead was 200,000. The scale and savagery of Guatemala's losses, especially among the communities of the majority indigenous Mayan population, made the toll in Central America's other wars pale. Nor is it all over. Just last year a Roman Catholic bishop who had directed a human rights study was beaten to death with a concrete block. The report confirms the common impression that military governments and the armed forces were responsible for the great majority of Guatemala's violence -- 93 percent. The share of violence attributed to the guerrillas is 3 percent. Cuba, says the report, provided the guerrillas political, logistical and training support -- though never enough to give them a military advantage. Meanwhile, the American role was going well beyond the report's note of involvement in "some illegal state operations." Washington arranged a coup in 1954 to depose an elected leader whose reform program, which struck a good number of Latin democrats as giving Guatemala a chance, struck the CIA as incipiently communist. In some but not all of the Castro years, Washington supported the rule of the anti-communist officers and oligarchs whose human rights practices form the substance of the new report. The inferno actually accelerated in some of the years when a horrified U.S. Congress forced a suspension of military aid, thereby removing what minimal restraint even a feeble American presence supplied. Whether the success of reform in the 1950s could have preempted the immense tragedies that unfolded later must be left to the historians. The CIA still bars the public from the full documentation. We need our own truth commission. © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company -- To subscribe to the CERJ E-Mail distribution list, simply send an E-mail message to <[log in to unmask]>. Please include your name and your state, province, or country of residence. Thank you! -------------------------------------------------------------- John Wilmerding, Gen'l Secretary | E-Mail: <[log in to unmask]> =================================| Web: http://www.cerj.org *CERJ* International Secretariat | ICQ Number: 18723495 ---------------------------------+============================ Campaign | 217 High Street | For | A for | Brattleboro, VT | Justice | AR Equity- | 05301-3018 USA | that | ART Restorative | Telephone & FAX | Restores | EAR Justice | [802] 254-2826 | Equity | HEAR ================================================= HEART Work together to reinvent justice using methods | EARTH that are fair; which conserve, restore and even | HEARTH create harmony, equity and good will in society | >>>|CERJ|<<< ============================================================== We are the prisoners of the prisoners we have taken - J. Clegg You must *be* the change you wish to see in the world - Gandhi _------- -------_ Public Policy Network - PUBPOL-L http://www.hhh.umn.edu/pubpol/pubpol.htm Commands to: [log in to unmask] Subscribe: SUB PUBPOL-L "Your Name" _ Unsubscribe: UNSUB PUBPOL-L _ ------- -------