history

Most travelers are curious about Guatemala's rich, if often grim history.

Guatemala has a long history of internal strife that goes back to well before the arrival of Columbus. Archeology has shown that the ancient Mayans were not the a particularly benevolent, peace loving people. Certainly the arrival of the Spanish and the diseases that came with them was beyond gruesome. However the Civil War of the late 1970s and 1980s is of particular interest to the present day traveler.

Central America was essentially a battle ground in the Cold War. There was nothing cold about the Cold War in Guatemala.

War is expensive and no Central American country could not have begun to pay for war on this scale. While both the U.S. and the Soviets made pretences to the contrary, there is no doubt they financed the war. What Guatemala did have was bodies; lots and lots of bodies to be thrown into the fray; and throw them in they did. There is no way to know how many died, but estimates range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.

The vast majority of the dead were illiterate Mayan farmers who spoke little if any Spanish. These were people on whom intellectual rationales for free trade and capitalism were lost. Promises of a communist utopia didn't make much sense either. More importantly anyone presenting either political point of view was armed to the teeth. These were not issues debated in an open and public forum.

Politicians from the left and right had the wholehearted support of their perspective journalistic and academic constituencies. The result was that no one was there to hold the politicians accountable. Hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans were quite literally caught in the crossfire.

Right wing death squads were guilty of most of the murder, but the guerillas knew they could win converts through tactical strikes that would goad the military into massacring the very people both sides claimed to be defending. Many survivors became leftist sympathizers out of anger and fear, not political sympathy. This was not a war of "Good" against "Evil".

Most people outside of Guatemala who could have said or done something to make a difference ensconced themselves in their own self righteous opinions. The right stood bravely at the brink; shoulders back, holding off the Red Hoard. The left beat their breast and loudly bewailed the plight of the poor peasant. Both proudly claimed the moral high ground; both forgot (or didn't care), that the moral high ground mattered nothing to the dead.

In hindsight few give much credence to the right, nor should they; but there is a romantic appeal to the leftist rhetoric that lingers to this day.

Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala
by David Stoll

"This book in intended to challenge how the human rights and solidarity movements think about Guatemala. It is not that activists have been hopelessly wrong, only that it is time to think about the situation in new ways."

From the preface.

In 1997 an American, John Sayles ("One of America's preeminent and best-respected independent filmmakers" New York Times) made a movie in Spanish called Men With Guns, that condemns Guatemalan military conduct in the war. No reasonable person defends the right wing death squads who raped and murdered with impunity during the Guatemalan Civil War. I emphatically do not, but the left was hardly without fault.

Mr. Sayles spoke no Spanish before he made the movie and his ignorance of both the language and the Mayans was repeatedly demonstrated. One exapmle is his repeated use of the word "indio". The Mayans never refer to themselves as "indios". Calling a Mayan "indio" is extremely rude.

"It's difficult to live and to act if you know too much," Sayles says. "It paralyzes you. One of the things Men With Guns is about is the price of willful ignorance. The Indians here live in a kind of willful ignorance. They try to keep themselves pure." (http://www.metroactive.com/)

No they don't. They are proud of who they are, but the world beyond Guatemala fascinates them. They do strive to maintain their cultural identity, but they also enthusiastically embrace Western cultural mores as well as all the trappings of the modern world they can afford.

For better or for worse, "purity" couldn't interest them less.

For someone to make movies, write books or form foreign policy without bothering to look beyond his or her own political predisposition is simply wrong. Too much of Guatemalan history has been both made and recorded by outsiders who do just that. Their bias, like Mr. Sayers's, has seldom been anything more than politically correct "willful ignorance".

Five hundred years ago the Spanish crown and the Catholic Pope knew what was best for Guatemala. On June 18, 1954 Eisenhower felt fully justified in dropping American paratroopers on Guatemala City to protect American bananas. In the late 1970s and 1980s both the Soviets and the U.S. flooded the country with arms. In the end neither super power accomplished anything more than aiding and abetting mass murder.

We don't have a good track record.

It's time to let Guatemalans run their own affairs.