Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation

Race, Citizenship and Violence in Transitioning Societies:
A Guatemalan case study

by
Nahla Valji

Race and Citizenship in Transition Series, 2004.

Nahla Valji is a Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.

Acknowledgements

This report is one in a series of products in the Race and Citizenship Series. Thank you to the Ford Foundation, Development Cooperation Ireland and the Charles Stewart-Mott Foundation for generously funding this report and the series.

Thanks are extended to Bronwyn Harris for her day to day management of the project, thorough editing and content input. Thank you also to Carnita Ernest and Alison Davidian for their editorial contribution.

Contents:
 

The Race and Citizenship in Transition Series1

Bronwyn Harris, Nahla Valji, Brandon Hamber and Carnita Ernest

Race and citizenship are extremely complex concepts. In post-apartheid South Africa, they find expression on many different levels, including identity, conflict, nationalism, history, politics and inter-personal relationships. They occupy a spectrum ranging from everyday practices and interactions, to formal political and macro-economic forces. They also overlap with notions of reconciliation, justice and reparation, and, although they are separate notions with different histories, they overlap with each other. This creates an added dimension of complexity. Both race and citizenship can be (and commonly are) articulated and/or silenced to serve particular interests. Both can also feed into certain forms of violence, including xenophobia and racially motivated hate crime. Any analysis of race and citizenship must therefore acknowledge the complexity of their expression, representation and impact. Such complexity in the South African context must be assessed in relation to the country's apartheid history, as well as the processes of reconciliation best captured by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Apartheid created race as a mechanism for violence. Race, in and of itself, was the social and psychological reality through which repression and violence functioned. Racism was institutionalised, legalised and internalised. South Africans saw the world in 'black' and 'white' terms and violence was commonly used to maintain this status quo. However, during the Mandela era (1994-1999), a new vocabulary emerged to describe the social order. This vocabulary spoke of nationhood, unity, racial harmony and reconciliation. South Africa was described as a 'rainbow nation'. Reference to race entered a sensitive and delicate terrain. This was a positive attempt to give South Africans a new language for speaking about – and to - each other. But, at the same time, it rendered the real, often violent, consequences of race invisible. In the Mandela era, there was little national debate on how race had influenced past human rights violations. There was also little recognition that race continues to shape identity and interactions – violent or not – within the present.

By contrast, the Mbeki era (1999-ongoing) has been characterised by a 'return to race'. This is partly a consequence of different presidential styles and roles – while Mandela had to stress forgiveness and underplay racial issues in order to consolidate a peaceful (and at times precarious) transition, Mbeki, as he stated in his 'two nations speech', has had to deal with economic inequality rooted in past racial practices. Additionally, the 'return to race' has been forced upon the society by violence: through the actions of white extremists like the Boeremag, as well as less political cases of racist hatred. Less violent expressions of/about race have also re-entered popular and political discourse: in 2000, the Human Rights Commission held hearings into racism in the media, and, in 2001, South Africa hosted the World Conference against Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

Although race can be read across these two discrete eras - 1994-1999 and 1999-ongoing - it is important not to oversimplify or reduce the differences to how race has been articulated. Despite a general 'return to race' post-1999, there have been numerous contradictions and striking silences on the issue; for example, within the realm of violence and conflict, as well as Mbeki's own discourse (in 1996, he gave his inclusive 'I am an African' speech, which contrasted with his 'two nations' speech in 1999, but at the opening of parliament in 2001, he seemed to discard the two nations analogy in favour of a 'united' South Africa, irrespective of race). Also, while issues of race have partially emerged in the Mbeki era, the notion of reconciliation – particularly racial reconciliation - has become increasing invisible. The TRC finally completed its work in March 2003. Many have interpreted this as the end of South Africa's reconciliation process. However, incidents of racial prejudice, intolerance and violence, both within South Africa and internationally, suggest that the TRC was just the beginning and not the end of a sorely needed social dialogue about racial reconciliation.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)

South Africa did not 'invent' the truth commission. Since 1974 there have been more than twenty-five truth commissions around the world. But it was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that captured the world's attention. This is partly due to international interest in the fight against apartheid. Also, the TRC was the largest and best resourced commission, and it was afforded extensive media coverage, both domestically as well as internationally. This ensured that the world was exposed to the Commission, and the openness of the process meant that the violence of the past could no longer be denied. The South African model also attracted scrutiny because it promised an alternative way of peacefully resolving entrenched difference through the unique 'truth for amnesty'2 deal upon which it was premised. Consequently, the notion of using a truth commission to deal with political conflict has gained momentum and many countries are now holding their own Commissions.

TRC Chairperson Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that without the compromises made during the negotiations to ensure majority rule in South Africa, the country would have gone up in flames. From this perspective it follows that the agreement by the African National Congress (ANC) to grant amnesty to perpetrators of apartheid violence was a pragmatic choice. Amnesty was the price, albeit a costly one for victims, for saving the innumerable lives that would have been lost if the conflict had continued. However, unlike in most transitional countries to date, amnesty in South Africa was neither blanket nor automatic. Conditions applied to the South African amnesty and the TRC was the vehicle for this process.

The TRC process began in December 1995 and finished in March 2003, when the Commission handed over the final 2 volumes of its 7 volume report. 7 116 people applied for amnesty. Almost 22 000 people came forward and told how they were victimised under apartheid. The TRC made a number of recommendations to the South African government regarding financial and symbolic reparations, issues of justice and ways to address relationships between South Africans. It is these issues that still need to be grappled with and addressed.

Evaluating the TRC

The public acknowledgement of past violations was perhaps the TRC's greatest success; as the brutal horrors of apartheid found their way, via the media, into the living rooms of every South African. An undeniable historical record has been created. However, apartheid history still remains contested and fraught with racialised interpretations; for example, many white South Africans continue to deny the impact of apartheid and many dismissed the TRC itself as a 'political witch-hunt' (cf. Thiessen, 19963). The role of the TRC - in both writing history and as an historical process itself – demands ongoing scrutiny.

At a narrower, more immediate level, a minority of victims did uncover suppressed truths about the past. In some cases, missing bodies have been located, exhumed and respectfully buried. For others, the confessions of perpetrators have brought answers to previously unsolved political crimes – crimes, which the courts, due to expense and inefficiencies, may never have tried. However, for many, the TRC began a process that it was unable to complete. Many of the victims who went before the TRC, with the hope that their case would be investigated, feel let down and no closer to the truth than before they publicly told of their suffering. Irrespective of the feasibility of investigating every case, victims' high expectations of the TRC have been dashed, and in their eyes, this has undermined its credibility.

Justice also remains a burning issue. Politicians may be able to justify the exchange of formal justice for peace, but it was difficult for victims to watch while the perpetrators received amnesty. Not only were many perpetrators 'let off the hook', victims feel let down and disappointed by the government's response to the TRC. Regarding financial reparations, the Commission recommended that the government should pay those victims identified through the TRC process R3 billion, in annual installments over a 6 year period (this total figure represents 0.001% of the country's annual R300 billion budget, which translates into R136 000 per individual). However, the South African government has only agreed to pay R30 000 per individual, in a once off payment. The Commission also recommended that business and other apartheid beneficiaries should pay a once-off wealth tax and that the country's inherited apartheid debt (which accounts for approximately 20% of the government's annual budget) should be restructured in order to free up money for development and redistribution. Again, the government chose to ignore these recommendations. This has left victims feeling betrayed. It also does not bode well for long-term reconciliation. As CSVR researchers, Polly Dewhirst & Nahla Valji (2003) note,

The 'miracle' of a new SA is hardly sustainable if it is built without restoring the dignity and humanity of the majority of its citizens, nor if it fails to address the economic inequalities which fuel social conflict.4

There are also debates about the broader merits of the TRC. At the very least the reconciliation project, with the TRC at the helm, has brought South Africa through the transition period with relative political stability. The humanist approach of Mandela and Tutu brought compassion to a brutalised country. Despite the horrors revealed by the TRC, glimmers of humanity shone through and provided hope for the future.

However for some, despite the merits of the TRC, 'reconciliation' is merely a euphemism for the compromises made during political negotiations - compromises that ensured continued white control of the economy. From this perspective, reconciliation is meaningless without structural change. A related, more cynical view is that the rapprochement between the old and new regimes was a strategy to consolidate a new black elite under the banner of reconciliation.

Many argue that the TRC missed the bigger picture by defining victims only as those who suffered intentional violence. Because the TRC focused on victims of gross human rights violations, such as torture and murder – it did not include the 'ordinary' victims of apartheid – the millions of South Africans who suffered from land removals, forced displacements, the migrant-labour system, Bantu education etc. As such the TRC did not engage directly with the institutionalised, structured ways in which racist policies affected and victimised people on a daily basis. Those who suffered more broadly from the economic ravages of apartheid and were not victimized directly by political violence were excluded from the TRC. An important question to ask is: what mechanisms do those, excluded from the apartheid state and then from the TRC, have for defining and consolidating a sense of citizenship in the 'new' South Africa?

Similarly, the degree to which the TRC used race as an explanatory variable in its understanding of the abuses it investigated remains questionable. In some cases, 'race' was generally collapsed into 'political motive', as exemplified by the amnesty decisions in the Amy Biehl, Chris Hani and St James' Massacre cases. However, this was done inconsistently and the relationship between race and politics was not clearly defined. Overall, the reconciliation process engaged less with 'black and white' issues then with inconsistent 'political' definitions of perpetrators and victims. This has had the after-effect of divorcing race, and racial identity, from the violence of the past. It similarly keeps race separate from understandings of violence in the present.

A related point is that, as a transitional justice mechanism, the TRC accepted and legitimated certain explanations for the violence of the past. In this way, it has played a key role in influencing the society's moral reactions to violence. This is specifically evident in the area of amnesty. The question needs to be asked, despite the compromises made to set up the TRC, has amnesty undermined South African citizens' sense of morality? Has it contributed to ongoing violence and impunity? Has it impacted upon how different race groups see each other? There have been various evaluations of the TRC, but none have taken into account the ways in which it has explicitly addressed race, morality and citizenship as components of past human rights violations and factors in contemporary social relations. It is precisely these questions that the Race and Citizenship in Transition Series has sought to address.

The different perspectives surrounding the TRC demonstrate the complexity of dealing with oppression and violence – and how past events shape the process of reconciliation.

The TRC was not alone in its attempts to build reconciliation in South Africa. A number of other institutions were set up to deal with the legacy of the past. These included for example the Land Claims Court and the Human Rights Commission. Other structures, such as the Independent Complaints Directorate, were set up to monitor ongoing abuses by the police. However the degree to which these institutions, and the TRC can be said to have consolidated reconciliation and effected transformation can, at best, be described as ongoing but desperately incomplete. There are ongoing police abuses, young people still express feelings of marginalisation, racism and racist incidents continue to take place, and the poor have not substantially benefited from the changes in the country.

Levels of Reconciliation

The process of reconciliation can be said to operate on a number of levels, i.e. the political, community and individual levels.

At the political level, reconciliation has been embodied in the compromises that lead to a political peace. This process can be said to be broadly successful, as it has brought political stability to South Africa.

At the community level, despite some successes by the TRC, reconciliation is largely incomplete, with many of the old racial and political divisions remaining in place. This is evidenced through high levels of residential segregation between black and white South Africans residentially. It is also expressed between different groups divided along political affiliation, such as ANC and IFP supporters, and xenophobic hostility between South Africans and foreigners, particularly those from elsewhere in Africa.

At the individual level, the question is far more complex and is bound to how individuals feel in relation to the process of reconciliation. Many individual victims feel that their needs have not been met by the TRC. At the same time, many of those who benefited from apartheid are still denying their complicity status. This is linked to the many who refuse any responsibility for reparations and redressing the past. There is also an expectation that the next generation will somehow begin with a 'clean slate' (Oakley-Smith5). The ongoing impact of a racist and violent past continues to play out through incidents of racist hate crimes and expressions of xenophobia. Hostility towards foreigners, particularly black Africans, commonly results in violence and is spurred on by overly zealous views of nationalism in the 'new' South Africa. In addition, many South Africans are finding themselves questioning their role in the country. This could be linked to the many young people who are leaving the country as they feel there is no future for them in South Africa.

A Crisis of Citizenship

We would like to suggest that there is a 'crisis of citizenship' in South Africa at present, which threatens the genuine reconciliation begun through processes such as the TRC. This crisis manifests itself in ordinary people asking where they belong in the new society. This crisis suggests that there is much work that needs to be done to consolidate the process of reconciliation and a sense of inclusive citizenship. The Race and Citizenship in Transition Series is a space for exploring this citizenship crisis, along with the related issues of race, reconciliation, violence and identity in South Africa. Key issues to be examined include:

The Race and Citizenship in Transition Series is funded by the Ford Foundation, Development Cooperation Ireland and the Charles Stewart-Mott Foundation.

Series Editors

Bronwyn Harris
Nahla Valji

 

Executive Summary

Over the past two decades South Africa has experienced the upheaval of a democratic transition that has restructured not only society and its institutions, but core concepts of social organization such as racial identity and citizenship. The CSVR Race and Citizenship in Transition Series has set out to examine the ways in which ordinary citizens engage with issues of race and citizenship in a post-transitional society, ten years into the country's democracy. The goal of the project is to understand the long-term impact of structures, in particular truth commissions, as well as the model or type of transition and democracy, in order to examine the impact these elements have on violence and racial identity during times of transition.

In addition to looking at South Africa's own experience (cf. reports in the Race and Citizenship in Transition Series), the series incorporates an in-depth examination of these same elements during the course of Guatemala's transition to democracy.

The following paper focuses on race, and the nature of negotiated transitions, as well as the thin line between political and social conflict; a line which is often blurred during democratic transitions.

In many ways, Guatemala reflects important similarities with South Africa. These include:

Whilst the parallels between these countries are striking, there are also important limitations to any comparison as each country has a unique history. Key differences between Guatemala and South Africa include:

It is in looking at the similarities and, indeed, differences between the countries that lessons can be extracted about the nature of violence and social relationships during periods of political transition. It goes beyond the scope of this report to provide a detailed comparison between these countries and as such it is not a comparative report. Rather this study details the trajectory of Guatemala's history and transition and notes similarities and points for comparison with South Africa to highlight the impact of various elements on a democratic transition, as well as relationships between citizens in a historically divided country. Where similarities with South Africa are specifically noted, summarised information on the South African context is provided in incorporated boxes in the text.

Guatemala: A Brief History

In 1996 Guatemala signed a comprehensive peace accord, which brought to an end 36 years of brutal conflict. It was hoped that the accords would also begin to transform the country - from a deeply divided nation that had denied the rights of a majority of its population for so many years, to a culturally inclusive state. Seven years on, it appears that the opportunity to consolidate democracy has faltered, and that other than initiating new opportunities for social mobilisation Guatemala's transition to a racially inclusive democracy has been incomplete.

Guatemala is a geographically small country on the Central American peninsula, with a population of approximately 11 million. It is racially divided between a 40 percent ladino population (a mix of European and Mayan) and the 60 percent indigenous Indian population.6 From the time of the 'discovery' of the New World some 500 years ago the indigenous population has been subjected to a prolonged history of oppression. The Spanish invasion of Latin America has been described as a 'demographic, social, and cultural "holocaust"' (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996); and it initiated in Central America a system of racial oppression that has reproduced itself in a variety of forms through the centuries.

Race itself has a complex history in Guatemala, much as it does in Latin America broadly (and indeed, South Africa). Historically, the nation-building project pursued in Guatemala was one of mestizaje – the belief that all indigenous persons should become Mestizos.7 Contrary to Euro-American thought at the time which actively pursued segregation, the ladino population did not believe that race mixing would lead to the degeneration of the white race, but rather that the achievement of the mestizaje ideal would in fact strengthen the nation by creating a homogenous population and thus the basis for universal citizenship (Hale, 2002).8 The myth of mestizaje held that 'indigenous culture is inevitably, almost naturally, destined to disappear, replaced by a hardy and unique hybrid national culture that draws sustenance from both indigenous and European traditions' (Hale, 2002, p.500). Whilst such a hybrid was propagated as a lofty and charitable goal, its effect was in fact to deny the indigenous population citizenship on the basis of being members of a common nation, and rather to premise it on the condition of assimilation. Hale (2002) notes that this philosophy of a mestizaje ideal was dangerous to the Mayan culture precisely because it 'extended a small but significant promise of redemption to those who would become "Mestizos"' (p.501). The end goal of this nation-building project was to eradicate the Mayan population by replacing its culture, tradition, and community in pursuit of a 'whitened' homogeneous population (Wilson, 1997).

As the state pursued the elimination of the Mayan culture through assimilation it continued with a simultaneous policy of segregation in practice. Indians were kept in separate schools and communities and had separate local political authorities. Laws during colonialism were administered on the basis of race; Indians were regulated by the Ley de Indios whilst the dominant population was governed by their own laws: '[s]ocial and legal inequality was justified on the grounds that people had inherently different natures' (Sieder, 1998, p.99). With independence in 1821, power did not shift to the indigenous population, but rather to the minority elite ladino population, which continued to exercise a system of internal colonisation similar to that of South Africa. Racial discrimination ceased to be legally institutionalised in the 1930s (Wilson, 1997),9 however the legacy of exclusion persisted in all sectors of public life. Amongst other means, this exclusion was ensured through language. Guatemala is constituted of over 25 linguistic groups (MINUGUA, 2001), however Spanish is the only official language and is the only language through which the services of the state are provided. This exclusion of those who did not assimilate manifested itself in their isolation from the benefits of citizenship, as well as their political isolation from the process of nation-state construction (Sieder, 1998).

It was during this period that the Maya, as a colonised group, were given the stark choice of assimilation or exploitation – a 'choice' that was to become a key feature of Guatemalan race relations. An early example of this harsh trade-off was the 1894 Decree which allowed Indians to avoid compulsory military service either by having a minimum debt to a coffee plantation (i.e., forced labour), or by learning to read and abandoning their customary dress (Sieder, 1998). Forced labour for the indigenous population as a whole was legally enforced until 1944 (Jonas, 2000) and those that were forced to serve landowners in this capacity were treated harshly. Latifundistas (large landowners) were 'effectively a law unto themselves' (Sieder, 1998, p.101): there was no protection in the law against abuse, physical or sexual, and a law passed in 1932 exempted landowners from any measures they may take to safeguard their goods and lands; in effect legalising murder on these holdings (Sieder, 1998).

Mayan land was expropriated and its inhabitants forced to take up small holdings on the harshest and least fertile land. The best land was given over or sold cheaply to large landowners and businesses. The effect of this expropriation was to create a captive labour pool with little option other than to sell their labour cheaply to survive. Through this cycle, the domination of an elite minority was consolidated by both the material benefits of massive land expropriation as well as a farming sector that was fuelled by essentially free labour. This benefit was to serve the elite well during the coffee market boom in later years (Wilson, 1997).

The creation of an oppressed racially defined group coupled with the contradictory pursuit of assimilation by the state has led to a tight interweaving of class and race. Social status has become closely affiliated with race and as such, an individual who pursues a job in the city, speaks only Spanish and has discarded indigenous dress is considered to be 'ladino' (Gonzalez, in personal communication).10 This avenue for escaping discrimination has only reinforced the assimilation/exploitation dichotomy.

Internal colonisation has created in Guatemala a situation similar to that of South Africa – where the wealth of the nation is held in the hands of a racially defined few, and where the majority population lives in desperate poverty. In both countries, the gap between the rich and the poor is amongst the worst in the world,11 and although Guatemala ranks as a middle-income country, only 10 percent of the indigenous population lives above poverty.12 According to recent government statistics, life expectancy amongst the Mayan population is 17 years lower than it is for ladinos. Levels of education and access to all social services are far lower amongst the Indian population with illiteracy amongst Mayan women estimated at over 90 percent (Sieder, 1997).13

Inequalities have been entrenched and aggravated in Guatemala by a historical absence of any social spending. According to the World Bank, Guatemala spends less money on social services for its population than any other Latin American state, in spite of its comparatively high GDP (Jonas, 2000).14 What little money has been spent on public investment was done in such a way as to perpetuate regional and racial inequalities and discrimination (MINUGUA, 2001). Linked to this are the lowest taxation rates in the region - meaning that the state has little role in the redistribution of citizenship benefits. Jonas argues that poverty in Guatemala has been unique from that of neighbouring Central American countries on three counts: this absence of spending or tax reform; its ranking as last in the region on a number of poverty indexes; and its ethnicisation (and feminisation) of this poverty (Jonas, 2000).15

Creating Race in South Africa: Racist Citizens, Racialised Subjects

Background and history

South Africa's racial history can be defined in terms of three phases – colonialism, segregation, and apartheid (Terreblanche, 2002).

  • When the Dutch 'discovered' the tip of Africa in the 17th Century, they established a relationship with the indigenous population that although based on exploitation, did not seek to exclude or segregate in the manner that would later develop. In fact, the Europeans mixed freely with the indigenous population, contributing in part to a racial grouping that would come to be known as 'coloured' under apartheid. This intermixing was later rejected and de facto segregation was put in place.
  • In the Boer War of 1899 the Afrikaners and the English waged war over control of the country and its inhabitants. In particular, the discovery of diamonds and gold made South Africa a desirable conquest. It was from the roots of this colonial legacy that emerged the indivisibility of political oppression and economic exploitation, as cheap labour was necessary to make the mining of these minerals profitable.
  • The system of exploitation and segregation that existed in the early 1900s was partially codified in legislation (eg, the Land Act of 1913 which dispossessed blacks of their land in order to give it to white farmers). For the most part however, relationships of exclusion were social practice premised on notions of white superiority.
  • In the 1940s, as Guatemala was abolishing legalised racism (and rather just instituting it in practice), South Africa was moving in the opposite direction. With the election of the National Party in 1948 the system of apartheid, or legalised 'separatism', was put in place.
  • Apartheid codified four racial categories – whites, Indians, coloureds and Africans. Each was ranked along a hierarchy of privilege. Whilst Indians, coloureds and Africans were collectively considered 'blacks' and thus secondary citizens to the white population, Indians and coloureds did enjoy a handful of petty privileges denied to the African population, thus dividing the population further and ensuring a measure of social control by the white government.
  • Under apartheid the organising principle of the state was that of race. Different racial groupings were allocated separate living areas, schools, general amenities etc. Relationships across the colour bar were forbidden and the 'classification' of individuals often took the most absurd forms.16 This sometimes meant that members of the same family were classified in different racial groupings – forcing them to live in different areas of the country and live very different lives.
  • By the end of apartheid there were three hundred apartheid laws on the statute books 'designed to disadvantage black South Africans from the cradle to the grave' (Hausfeld, 2003, p.1). The Truth and Reconciliation Commission summarised the brutal impact of apartheid laws: Laws tore millions of workers from their families, forcing them to work in white areas and live in enclosed compounds to which their families had no access. Laws forced people to work for grossly insufficient remuneration and to endure the indignity of pay scales determined not by competence or experience, but by race. Laws forced people from their homes and communities and from their ancestral lands. Laws dictated with whom one might and might not have sex, marry or even drink. Laws allowed people to die rather than violate 'whites-only' hospital edicts, and then determined in which plot of land they could be buried. (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1998, Vol.1, p.41)
  • Blacks were denied the most basic rights and freedoms under apartheid, forcing them to live in conditions of poverty and state enforced inequality. Political repression and subjugation was ensured through the use of violence and force on the part of the state.
  • In 1976 the apartheid state declared the creation of Bantustans, or homelands: ethnically segregated, territorially separate and nominally independent areas of land just beyond the borders of 'white South Africa', Through the creation of the homelands the apartheid regime completed its project of dividing the country between citizens and subjects. Of the twenty-six million South Africans living in the country in 1976, only the four million considered 'white' had full rights of citizenship. The remaining 'who were born in South Africa, worked in South Africa, and died in South Africa were considered foreigners in their own land' (Hausfeld, 2003, p.1).
Class/race relationship

State spending in both countries was determined by race. Whilst in South Africa the disparities were codified in law, in Guatemala this was merely reflected in practice.17 Little was spent on rural areas and as a result there were no public services for the majority indigenous population that resided in these areas. Hierarchical spending in both countries created a clear convergence of race and class, where the impoverished and excluded majority were a racially-defined population. In South Africa:

  • World Bank figures estimate that two-thirds of the black population are poor or ultra-poor. On average, whites earn 9.5 times as much as blacks and live 11.5 years longer (Wilson, 1997, p.5).
  • By the 1990s approximately seventy percent of SA land was owned by 50,000 whites (Wilson, 1997, p.6).
  • The legacy of racial policies in both South Africa and Guatemala has been to create societies that have the highest levels of economic inequality in the world. In South Africa, The standard of living for blacks is comparable to the 124th wealthiest nation in the world, that of whites is comparable to the 24th (Hamber, 1999).
  • During the conflict, communism appealed to the poor of both countries (much as it appealed to the poor globally during this time), who, because of structures of discrimination, were a racially-defined group. Hence the Cold War was played out on a domestically racialised terrain in both countries.
Labour, land and access to resources

As noted above, the apartheid system was one of political oppression hand in hand with economic exploitation. The dispossession of land under the 1913 Land Act18 not only provided land for white farmers, but by placing eighty percent of the population on less than thirteen percent of the land, the government created reserves of desperately poor Africans who were forced to provide cheap labour as miners, farm workers and domestic workers. Dispossession was continued through the practice of forced removals, described by one human rights writer as 'the South African Gulag' (Mamdani, 2000, p.180). It is estimated that between 1960 and 1982 more than three and a half million Africans were forcibly removed from their communities, their houses bulldozed and their possessions dumped in a far off area designated as a 'black spot' (Mamdani, 2000).

There was no legal protection for black labourers and farmers viewed workers and their families as property. This meant that beatings were often used as discipline, murder of labourers went unpunished, and a family who had dedicated their lives to a farm could find themselves evicted and penniless at the discretion of the farmer.

Education

The education system under apartheid was designed to serve the purposes of the white owned economy and as a mechanism of oppressive control. In the infamous words of Hendrik Verwoerd, the father of 'separate development', the inferior system of Bantu education (as the education system for the Africans was known) was justified as serving the purpose of preparing blacks for their place in society - as 'hewers of wood, drawers of water'. To this end the government spent between four and seven times the amount on white learners as they did on blacks (Khan, 2003).

Prejudice, exclusion and citizenship

If there is one common experience of everybody in the nation that is poor, it is racism. Racism has many facets: social, psychological, cultural and economic. It is about the continuation of colonial and apartheid power relations, the exclusion of … blacks regardless of class and the virtual conditions of slavery endured by millions of farm workers, domestic workers and miners. (Article in the Sunday Independent, quoted in Terreblanche, 2002, p.39)

As noted above, racism in Guatemala differed in an important respect from the racism experienced in South Africa. Whilst both countries sought to exclude their majority populations, South Africa did so legally and formally, whilst Guatemala did so implicitly and in practice. The end result however was similar – an entrenched ethnicised poor whose relationship to the state was one of captive labour and not as citizens. In both countries racism continues to play a role in depriving the poor of opportunities, further marginalizing and excluding them.

Social fabric, control and violence

Violence has been the single most determining factor in South African political history. The reference, however, is not simply to physical or overt violence – the violence of the gun – but also to the violence of the law or what is often referred to as institutional or structural violence. (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1998, Vol.1, p.40)

  • The difficulty faced by the minority governments in both South Africa and Guatemala was 'how do a few control the many' (Padilla, in personal communication)? In South Africa segregation was the primary tool to social control and the imposition of apartheid took enormous administrative power and resources. In Guatemala, the majority was controlled purely through terror (Padilla, in personal communication). Both regimes however used violence and the threat of violence to maintain control, and both enforced institutional violence in the form of systematic deprivation.
  • Similar to Guatemala, South Africa experienced a long history of armed conflict within the context of the Cold War which gave them the opportunity to define the conflict in relation to anti-communism and thus gain legitimacy and support from the United States for oppression of their population.
  • The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the state security forces:
    'used both overt and clandestine methods to suppress resistance and counter armed actions by opponents of apartheid. Overt methods included bannings and banishment, detention without trial, judicial executions and public order policing. More clandestine and covert forms of control included torture, extra-judicial killings and support for surrogate forces.' (Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1998, Vol.2, p.165)
  • Although the systems of both countries translated into conflict that was political and, from a macro-perspective, largely racialised, this was not the only form of violence in each society. It goes beyond the scope of this report to engage with the complex manifestations of violence but it is crucial to note that race was but one site of conflict. In South Africa, for example, the apartheid state maintained some of its control through covert methods (i.e. the Third Force), which resulted in violence that was publicly represented with the reactionary term 'black on black' violence. Ethnicity, rather than race per se, was commonly exploited to reinforce social divisions. Gender, set within a militarised context, was also a space for struggle and violence. Relationships within certain communities similarly suffered from violence linked to local structures of power and privilege: warlord economies in KwaZulu-Natal; gang-based violence in various communities; and violence between rural and urban areas are just a few such examples (cf. http://www.csvr.org.za).

Years of Conflict

From 1870 until the 1940s Guatemala was ruled by dictators, establishing a history of governance 'by the few' that was to have only a brief respite. In October of 1944 a coalition of democratic forces in the military joined with armed students and workers to overthrow the government of General Castañeda in what became known as the October Revolution (Kobrak, 1999). What followed were ten years of the only true democracy in Guatemala's history. Free and democratic elections were called and two successive governments established basic liberties, increased social spending and abolished forced labour (Jonas, 2000). They also embarked on a comprehensive programme of agrarian reform and land redistribution. In 1952 Congress approved the expropriation and redistribution of government-held land, rural communities' common lands, and the unused properties of large landowners (Kobrak, 1999). As the largest landowners in the country were US-based companies, the nationalisation of property raised alarms on the American government's radar. Although the government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz aspired to a 'nationalist version of capitalist development' (Kobrak, 1999) and followed market-led redistribution (which in the end benefited the upper classes), the challenge to the system of property was unpalatable to the Americans. When the Arbenz government expropriated the unused land of the American-based United Fruit Company (the largest land owner in Guatemala) it was accused by the American government of being a beachhead for Soviet expansion in the hemisphere (Jonas, 2000); thus placing them in direct opposition to American interests at the height of anti-communist hysteria and the Cold War. The CIA began to work with internal opposition groups – largely the elite who opposed the impact that Arbenz's rule was having on their privileges – and in 1954 the elected government of Guatemala was overthrown and a pro-American regime installed. The regime moved quickly to reverse all progressive legislation and establish a repressive counterinsurgency government (Jonas, 2000). Noam Chomsky later summed up this period of Guatemalan history by noting:

The first democratic government in Guatemala's history, modelled after Roosevelt's New Deal, produced a bitter antagonism with the United States. In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup that transformed Guatemala into a hell on earth. This has remained the case ever since … (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996)

With the full weight of American support and training behind them, as well as the prevailing anti-communist sentiment of the time, the new political powers instituted a rapid crackdown on any political expression (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999). Hundreds of peasant and labour activists and intellectuals were detained, tortured, or killed. Many others simply left the country or abandoned their political roles to safeguard their lives (Kobrak, et al., 1999). Anti-communism became the raison d'être of the new regime and all opposition was vilified in this manner (Kobrak, et al., 1999). The reinstatement of conservative policies and the new prominent role of the military brought together the political, economic and military players in the country in a new ruling coalition (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999). This relationship was contrasted with deteriorating economic conditions for the majority that increasingly polarised society.19 The illegitimacy of the ruling coalition, and its refusal to consider even modest reforms, closed down all political space within the system and fostered the conditions for the growth of a guerrilla movement (Jonas, 2000). In 1960 when a coup d'état against the unpopular government failed, two of the instigating officers escaped and began a guerrilla movement in the predominantly ladino Eastern highlands. This was the start of 36 years of brutal conflict.

The war was not a continuous phenomenon, but rather was sporadic over periods and characterised by differing types of conflict through the 1960s-1980s. The guerrilla movement was in the beginning small and had no base amongst the indigenous population. Its support base was instead the urban areas and the predominantly ladino region of the Eastern highlands. In spite of the limited nature of the original insurgency, the state required substantial effort to contain it (Jonas, 2000). It did so only with the backing and technical assistance of the US military who during this time 'professionalised' the Guatemalan military into a 'modern, disciplined, brutal counterinsurgency army' (Jonas, 2000, p.21). So whilst the first few years of the war were fought through limited means and primarily between the urban middle classes (Kobrak, et al., 1999), the transformation of the military led to a brutal crackdown in the late 1960s resulting in the deaths of 8,000 civilians (Jonas, 2000) and the almost complete destruction of the guerrilla forces. The conflict then disappeared for some years, reviving again in an urban context in the late 1970s (Plant, 1999). Reeling from their earlier defeat, by the 1970s the guerrilla groups (of which there were now a number) concluded that their failings had originated from an overemphasis on military means and the absence of a mass support base, in particular the indigenous majority in the rural regions (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996; Jonas, 2000). To rectify this, the groups shifted focus to the rural areas; and in doing so initiated the most devastating period of the conflict.

As the guerrilla forces moved to the rural areas, the army followed; building military bases in every region of the country, occupying public buildings and churches to house troops and expanding their presence into every town and community (Kobrak, et al., 1999). In the 1980s, this presence allowed the army to transform the previously limited nature of the conflict into one that was massive in scale and combined 'methods of mass extermination with the selective terror already being applied in urban centres' (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996). State sponsored terrorism became indiscriminate and targeted indigenous communities and civilians with bombings and even the use of napalm (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996).

The shift in the theatre of conflict from an urban to a rural context changed the dynamics and scale of the war dramatically, launching it into a phase that was to become genocidal. As the guerrilla groups were Marxist in orientation their ideas appealed to the impoverished masses in Guatemala, much as they did globally at that time. However in Guatemala, for reasons noted above, the poor constituted a racially defined grouping. As such, when the military dictators of the 1980s sought to destroy the support base of the guerrillas, the conflation of race and class, exacerbated by historic institutional racism, resulted in a policy of genocide against the indigenous population.20 What had begun as a selective targeting of guerrillas, escalated into a massacring of entire villages perceived to be supporting the guerrillas and from there to the elimination of villages that could potentially become supporters (Kobrak, et al., 1999). This logic reached an apex under the rule of General Rios Montt who seized power in 1982 and proceeded to 'pacify' the countryside in just six months with calculated brutality.21 Montt's perception of the conflict and the need to target indigenous villages in order to root out guerrilla forces was summed up in his oft-quoted vow to 'dry up the human sea in which the guerrilla fish swim'.

In order to increase the strength and presence of the military throughout the country the army established a structure of forced military service through Civilian Patrols (PACs) – paramilitary structures which co-opted the civilian population into their own repression and control. The Patrols mobilized the services of all Mayan males between the ages of 15 and 60. Whilst some joined voluntarily, many others were forced to join by the threat of violence to themselves or their families. The advantages for the state of such a widespread paramilitary infrastructure was the ability to patrol and establish a visible presence in every corner of the country without the state resources that this would otherwise necessitate. During the worst years of the conflict some 900,000 male peasants – representing nearly 80 percent of the male population in indigenous rural areas - were employed by the army as a source of forced labour and a tool of repression (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). Through the PACs, civilians were implicated in the worst atrocities, including torture, rape and killings.

Coupled with this violence, Montt sought to restructure rural life fundamentally, establishing militarised 'model villages' that were portrayed as an alternative for rural community development in conflict zones and were instituted after periods of violence and 'cleansings' (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). It is estimated that one million people were displaced during this period of the conflict, and it was primarily this population that the army sought to relocate to its model villages, providing them with food aid under the frijoles y fusiles (beans and rifles) programme.22 Both 'model villages' as well as PACs were a deliberate attempt to involve the civilian population in the conflict and in their own policing. In response, some Mayan communities established their own villages, termed Communities of Popular Resistance (CPRs), in a bid to resist army relocation and control programmes (Jonas, 2000).

This time of massacres and displacement is referred to by the Mayans as la violencia (1978-1983); a period of history in which racial exploitation gave way to attempted racial extermination (Esparza, 2002). During this period the state issued decrees prohibiting the publication of news related to political violence and the armed conflict. Together with deliberate misinformation and propaganda, the tactic succeeded in cutting off the rural from the urban and isolating districts from each other, leading rural communities to believe that the violence was happening only to them (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996). The deliberate strategy of misinformation and propaganda was facilitated by historically racist attitudes. The isolation of rural communities culturally, geographically and politically from the rest of Guatemalan society meant that: 'even if news of massacres did reach wider society (which it didn't very often), it was greeted with disinterest or disbelief … or simply brushed aside as propaganda on the part of insurgent groups' (Brett, in personal communication). In essence, these attitudes allowed the military to effect their campaign 'without the fear of social upheaval and penal sanction' (Brett, in personal communication).

Through the employment of this brutal strategy, the state was able to contain and then crush the threat of insurgency. By the mid-1980s the guerrilla groupings (who had earlier united into the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG)), were defeated and the state had, in the words of observers, 'created a desolation and called it peace' (Kobrak, et al., 1999, p.28).

Causes of the conflict

The Guatemalan truth commission, brought into existence post-conflict, concluded that the roots of the 36-year conflict lay in racial and economic inequalities, the antidemocratic nature of the state, a corrupt judicial system, and the Cold War context of the time (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999).23 An important indicator of the depth of inequality that characterises the Guatemalan nation can be witnessed in its distribution of land. Although the majority of the Mayan population lives off subsistence agriculture, racist policies both before and after 'independence' have resulted in a situation where the majority of the population have had their land taken from them. What was permitted to them were small enclaves of the least fertile soil in areas further afield; in effect instituting 'de facto apartheid' (Jonas, 2000, p.19). The policies during the ten years of democracy (1944-1954) had attempted to address these inequalities through a conservative programme of redistribution, but following the overthrow of the Arbenz government these efforts were reversed and land that had been given to peasants was savagely returned to wealthy landowners. By the 1960s, 2 percent of the population in Guatemala owned 67 percent of all arable land - contributing to a system of land tenure that is still the most unequal in Latin America today (Jonas, 2000). This inequality was compounded during the conflict as army officials used their new status to expropriate peasant land for themselves.24

Graph 1: Distribution of land in Guatemala

(International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996)

Land theft was closely related to the system of racist oppression. In 1978 one hundred peasants were massacred in Alta Verapaz for protesting when their communal land was taken by army officers for their own use (Hunt, 2002). Land and access to land was a causal factor in the conflict due to the integral importance it held for the indigenous communities:

Land is the key to power in Guatemala. By not allowing the Mayan people the means to feed themselves or providing them with work, little by little you destroy their culture … In the long term, this constitutes ethnocide. (Juan Tiney, Co-ordinator of National Indigenous and Campesino Co-ordination (CONIC) quoted in Sieder, 1997)

Inequalities in land tenancy and wealth distribution fuelled opposition to the government in power. Prevailing authoritarian rule however provided no legitimate political avenue in which to voice dissent, and instead the state used every means in its power to crush it. The judicial system was corrupted to its own ends by laws that required it to disband with every new government in order to allow the entire bench to be reappointed by the incoming leader. Not only did this compromise the independence of the judiciary by tying them inextricably to the whims of those in political power, but it also ensured that they were indebted to the new President for their appointments (Pásara, 2001). In this way the institutions of the state no longer served the people, but were instead used by the state against the people: 'tolerating, and even facilitating, the violence' (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999, p.18).

The lack of a legitimate judiciary to mediate citizens' concerns coupled with the crackdown on political expression closed al1l peaceful avenues for voicing opposition. The result was a cycle of violence, where:

social injustice led to protest and subsequently political instability, to which there were always only two responses: repression or military coups. Faced with movements proposing economic, political, social or cultural change, the State increasingly resorted to violence in order to maintain social control. Political violence was thus a direct expression of structural violence. (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999, p.18)

Propelled by a desire to form a more equitable society, opposition groups turned to Marxism, an ideology that appealed in a climate of economic exploitation and exclusion. This ideological orientation did not however always reflect accurately the desires of those who aligned themselves against the state. Whilst many may have been Marxists seeking to create a socialist state, many more were simply looking for a vehicle through which to establish a more just society. Nevertheless, the ability to label the guerrilla groups as Marxist or Communist provided powerful ammunition to the state in the form of American support.

Occurring as it did at the height of the Cold War, the conflict in Guatemala became 'a Cold War civil war'; in that it took place ideologically, culturally and politically, against the backdrop of wider global divisions (Jonas, 2000). In Guatemala, the United States found a willing partner for its 'National Security Doctrine' and its theories of the 'internal enemy'. Domestic racist attitudes were fuelled by the imported security doctrine, and the threat of an internal enemy was expanded until it encompassed the majority of its population as a threat to the state.25

The CEH reflected upon this racially targeted nature of the conflict and concluded that:

… the structure and nature of economic, cultural and social relations in Guatemala are marked by profound exclusion, antagonism and conflict – a reflection of its colonial history. The proclamation of independence in 1821, an event prompted by the country's elite, saw the creation of an authoritarian State which excluded the majority of the population, was racist in its precepts and practices, and served to protect the economic interests of the privileged minority. The evidence for this, throughout Guatemala's history, but particularly so during the armed confrontation, lies in the fact that the violence was fundamentally directed by the State against the excluded, the poor and above all, the Mayan people, as well as against those who fought for justice and greater social equality. (emphasis added, Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999, p. 17)
The Nature of the Violence

The historical racism noted above was not merely a contributing factor to the violence in Guatemala. It was, more importantly, a determining factor in the nature and brutality of the violence during the conflict. Guatemala has been referred to as 'the Rwanda of the Western hemisphere' (Farer, 2000, p.14); an allusion to the genocidal consequences the conflict had on the Mayan people and their culture.

It is estimated that 200,000 people were killed during the three decades of civil war, a further 40,000 disappeared.26 The overwhelming majority of the victims – 83 percent - were Mayan. Of these, most were unarmed civilians (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999). In seeking to crush the insurgency, the Guatemalan military did not differentiate between the guerrilla fighters and the rural Mayan population that was sometimes used as their base. Instead; 'the identification of Mayan communities with the insurgency was intentionally exaggerated by the state, which, based on traditional racist prejudices, used this identification to eliminate any present or future possibilities of the people providing help for, or joining, an insurgent project' (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999, p.23). This logic led to the wholesale massacring of villages and the displacement of large sections of the population. The scorched earth policy pursued by the military in the early 1980s left up to eighty percent of the population in regions of the highlands displaced at times (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). By the end of the conflict, one million people were displaced, and a further 400,000 in exile in neighbouring countries and the United States (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998).

As noted above, the affiliation of the entire indigenous population with communism allowed the authoritarian government to place the conflict within the ambit of broader Cold War politics, and therefore earned successive military dictators the support and assistance of the United States.27 This justification often took a crude form, betraying the racist motivations that underpinned the violence. General Montt during his reign noted that: 'The Army does not kill the indigenous people, rather it massacres demons, because the Indians are possessed by evil spirits, they are communists' (International Center for Human Rights Research, 1996).

Within the military, internal competition amongst soldiers contributed to the brutality of the violence, as those who took initiative in massacres and exhibited 'particularly violent zeal' were given promotions (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). In this manner, women and children were specifically targeted for brutality (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). By an extension of the logic that all indigenous persons were Marxist guerrillas, all indigenous children were viewed as future or potential guerrillas, and their death was therefore necessary in order to 'kill the seed' of future insurgencies (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998).28 Of the bodies exhumed in the three years following the cessation of violence, one-third of the remains found were those of children (Amnesty International, 2002).

Women and girls of targeted communities were particularly victimised by the army as they were viewed by soldiers as 'the spoils of war' (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999). Rape, sexual assault and the torture of women were part of soldiers' orders (Jonas, 2000), and gang rape was 'the Guatemalan Army's routine reward for soldiers about to massacre women' (Robert McCormak quoted in Rich, 1996). Sexual violence during the conflict became so prevalent and officially sanctioned that one study conducted in 1982 amongst women refugees found that the overwhelming fear expressed was the fear of being raped.29 A town official commented at the time that with all the soldiers raping Mayan girls 'it would be difficult to find a girl of 11 to 15 [in the combat zones of the highlands], who has not been raped. Even seven-year-old girls have been raped' (Rich, 1996).

The brutal nature of this violence served the intention of the army to move beyond the mere elimination of the enemy to the targeted elimination of Mayan culture and community life. To this end, violence was employed in a psychologically and culturally devastating manner. Massacres often took place on days that held significance for the targeted community, whether they be market days, or days of religious significance (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). The social fabric of communities was militarised, their leaders were targeted for assassination and replaced by military leaders or those that allied themselves with the state. The primary importance of the relationship between the living and the dead in Mayan culture was deliberately destroyed through the desecration of burial rites. The dead were often left out in the open by state forces and attempted burial in these cases would be met by the punishment of more deaths. Only half of those who gave testimony to the NGO-led truth commission30 knew where their relatives were buried. Communities that were displaced during the fighting were forced to leave their loved ones without burying them, as well as leave behind sacred burial sites.

Fire was used to kill because of its symbolic nature in Mayan spiritualism, mutilations were conducted with cultural overtones (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998), and names and symbols with cultural significance were used to name the instruments of repression – military structures and groups (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999). This was evidenced in the naming of one of the most brutal counter insurgency forces, named Kaibiles (Esparza, in personal communication). The name was taken from Kaibil Balam, a Mam indigenous leader who evaded capture by the Spanish conquistadors (Reding, 2000) and therefore had value as a symbol of liberation to the indigenous communities. The Commission for Historical Clarification drew particular attention to the brutal nature of the Kaibiles both in terms of their training as well as the massacres they perpetrated:

This training included killing animals and then eating them raw and drinking their blood in order to demonstrate courage. The extreme cruelty of these training methods … was then put into practice in a range of operations carried out by these troops, confirming one point of their decalogue [sic]: "The Kaibil is a killing machine". (Reding, 2000)

Forced participation of community members in PACs and their atrocities ensured complicity and the entrenchment of guilt as a control mechanism. Violence became the norm and was internalised in these communities as their traditional community relationships fell away. The Commission for Historical Clarification described the deliberate psychological nature of the violence and its devastating impact by concluding:

That which was sacred was profaned. They took away the land, slashed and burned the crops, the hills, nature in general; they destroyed and burned down houses with the family alters inside, they poisoned the water, burned the church, killed love ones in places where ancestral rites were observed. They desecrated burial sites and trampled dignity … (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998, p.42).

The embroilment and targeting of the Mayan population in the civil war has raised questions regarding the nature of their relationship to the guerrilla groups. There has been some debate amongst historians as to the extent of the indigenous population's support for the guerrilla movement, with some concluding that the Mayan people were in large part subjects of the war in the same manner that they were subjects of the state – they were used as soldiers on both sides of the conflict, however were given little choice in their participation.31 Some have openly criticised the guerrillas for using the indigenous population as a support base and exposing them to massive violence when they lacked the resources to protect or defend them (Brett, in personal communication; Salveson, 2002).

Guerrilla responsibility for direct abuses however pales in comparison to the levels of violence the state unleashed on Mayan civilian populations; in some municipalities such as Nebaj, El Quiché, military actions took the lives of almost thirty percent of the population. In the course of its investigations, the CEH found insurgent actions accounted for 3 percent of the violations registered by the Commission. State actions accounted for 93 percent of the cases. The limitations of the military power of the guerrillas and their inability to pose a threat to the state were well known by military intelligence. The Commission found that the state, nevertheless, pursued policies that were disproportionate to the threat posed. The CEH concluded that the state intentionally exaggerated the extent of cooperation between the guerrilla groups and the Mayan population in a thinly veiled attempt to act out traditional prejudices, and to eliminate the possibility of any future cooperation:

The consequence of this manipulation, extensively documented by the CEH, was massive and indiscriminate aggression directed against communities independent of their actual involvement in the guerrilla movement and with a clear indifference to their status as a non-combatant civilian population. The massacres, scorched earth operations, forced disappearances and executions of Mayan authorities, leaders and spiritual guides, were not only an attempt to destroy the social base of the guerrillas, but above all, to destroy the cultural values that ensured cohesion and collective action in Mayan communities. (Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999, p. 23)

The conflict was fuelled and aggravated by those who used it to amass personal benefits. The military itself became a key economic player and used its political power to ensure continued benefits.32 During the 1980s, the military owned the national telecommunications system, a television channel, a major bank and huge quantities of valuable land in the north of the country (Wilson, 1997). It also had a very close relationship with the Coordinating Committee of Farming, Commercial and Financial Associations (CACIF) – the representative body of big business.33 The war became increasingly about the perpetuation of these privileges by the army (Padilla, in personal communication), and where the conflict was used to obscure other motives the number of killings was compounded. As with many other violent contexts, it appears that this conflict was ultimately less about 'winning' per se than creating and sustaining an atmosphere in which to profit.34

A key example of the conflict being used to hide personal gains is the building of the Chixoy Dam – a dam project pursued in the community of Rio Negro in the 1980s. Although the relationship between the dam and the violence in the area is unresolved, there is a wealth of evidence from NGOs and human rights groups that the community was subjected to violence because of their resistance to the construction of a dam that would flood 50kms of land and result in their own displacement. Military massacres in this area conveniently coincided with this resistance to the project and resulted in the deaths of between four and eight hundred residents. The US-based organisation Witness for Peace in their report 'A People Damned' concluded that the violence in this community was disproportionately horrific because of their resistance to the dam; and that, 'although the massacres were attributed to the counterinsurgency war, a careful analysis of the Rio Negro events leads to the conclusion that the local residents were killed because they blocked the progress of the Chixoy project' (cited in Goldman, et al., 2000, p.16).

The economic consequence of a war fought to protect the wealth of the few was the devastation of the lives of the many. Land was lost, the ability to farm for subsistence devastated, and much of the human infrastructure of the rural areas was wiped out. By the end of the 1980s the number of Guatemalans living in poverty had risen to 83 percent from 63 percent at the start of the decade (Wilson, 1997).35 Rebuilding the country would require a wholesale transformation of the structures and character of the state, massive redistribution, and a concerted effort to address the legacy of three decades of brutal and racist violence.

The Negotiated Settlement and the End of Conflict

The 'desolation called peace' enforced by the state in the 1980s was illusory, and the URNG, though fundamentally setback and weakened, still existed. By the 1990s, the lack of a complete military victory, a slight shift in the balance of domestic power, and social and economic crises at home coupled with regional and international pressures forced both sides to the negotiating table.

It has been noted that in Guatemala, peace came about by a process that ran contrary to the experiences of most nations. International experience of countries seeking peace has been that the process begins with a negotiated minimalist cease-fire which then paves the way for democratisation (Azpuru, 1999). In Guatemala, a minimal democratisation led the way to a comprehensive cease-fire and peace. Having taken complete power over the state, the military had established its hold over all aspects of civil and political life in a bid to militarise the country from the smallest town structures to the national government. The attempt to control both the political as well as military structures of the state spread the army thin however - an overextension that was more acute because of the ongoing war being waged with the guerrilla forces. By the mid-1980s the army began to face opposition from its traditional support base – the elite and middle class. The increase in corruption and mismanagement under the military authorities led to a decrease in services such as lights and water to all Guatemalans, including the minority elite (Farer, 2000). Poor economic management at home was exacerbated by the international isolation the country faced as a result of its human rights record. President Carter's human rights policies during the first half of the decade, and the wave of democratisation sweeping through Latin America in the latter half put vast pressure on the ruling powers (Azpuru, 1999). In 1985 the military conceded some of its power in the political arena and permitted the first civilian government since the start of the conflict. They did so however only under the belief that they could continue to exert considerable influence and de facto control over the levers of power. Jennifer Schirmer argues from her years of research on the military in Guatemala that the High Command perceived the democratic transition merely as a continuation of their politico-military project (Schirmer, in Esparza, 2002), and that for the army, the Peace Accords represented 'the final institutionalisation of their strategic project to win the war militarily and politically by "neutralising" and reinserting the guerrilla into political life' (Schirmer, quoted in Preti, 2002, p.111). The military retained a power of veto over any decisions of importance, and the civilian President during this period later noted that he exercised perhaps only 30 percent of actual political power (León, 2002).

Weak as this initial democratisation may have been, it did open up a small political space in which to initiate dialogue with the opposition. The initiation of talks between government and the URNG, and the concession by the army to permit such talks (although they refused to participate), was influenced by both internal as well as external events. Domestically the traditional beneficiaries of the old regimes were seeking a way to inculcate a culture of accountability in the state to counter widespread corruption, normalise national politics and reintegrate Guatemala into the international community – and more importantly the international economy. Regionally, neighbouring states in conflict were similarly seeking a path to peace. In 1987 Guatemala hosted a regional forum that concluded with the adoption of the Esquipulas II Accords (popularly known as the Arias Plan). The Plan called for dialogue between government and opposition groups, amnesty for political prisoners, cease-fires in ongoing insurgent conflicts, democratisation, and free elections in all five of the regional states. It also called for renewed negotiations in arms reductions and an end to outside aid to guerrilla forces (Library of Congress Country Studies, 2002).

Guatemala's Defence Minister at the time dismissed the applicability of the Plan to Guatemala, stating that it did not apply to the 'defeated' guerrilla forces and that the army saw absolutely no reason to negotiate (Jonas, 2000). The new government however saw differently, and convened the Commission of National Reconciliation (CNR) as an initial forum for dialogue between key stakeholders. The various parties met in Oslo in 1990 to establish the Oslo Process: a framework for a series of accords which would eventually culminate in the final Peace Accords in 1996. In Mexico a year later, the parties set the agenda for the rest of the peace talks and established a role for the United Nations as an international observer (and later, as both mediator and verifiers of the Accord) (Alvarez and Prado, 2002). During this period the parties also established the Grand National Dialogue (GND)36 – a forum of sectors of civil society that were to dialogue on the various aspects of a peace agreement.

The military boycotted these exploratory negotiations, and later agreed to participate only in the confident belief that the guerrillas had been so defeated that talks 'were really a matter of the guerrillas surrendering' (Wilson, 1997, p.15). Along with the military, business represented the staunchest peace resisters throughout the process, a role that was to have an impact on the process, the commitments agreed to as well as their later implementation. In particular, business actively opposed the discussions under the government of President Serrano in 1993 as they were fearful that any agreement would erode their long held privileges.37 As Serrano's power declined, he attempted to seize absolute power through a 'self-coup'; suspending the constitution and dissolving the Congress. The attempt was blocked however by a temporary coalition across all sectors; business, military and civil society who for the first time came together to defend 'a visible national consensus on the fundamental value of a democratic system of government' (Alvarez and Prado, 2002).

Despite this consensus and Serrano's overthrow, the peace talks were disrupted, resuming only a year later in 1994 when it was agreed that the UN would establish a verification mission in Guatemala by the end of the year.38 The United Nations Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA) lent international credibility to the peace process and provided security for those members of civil society participating in the negotiations.39

Impact of the Negotiations Process

The process of negotiating a peaceful transition in Guatemala contributed in itself to the deepening of democratisation. The very introduction of the concepts of citizen participation and consultation (embodied in the institutions of the GND and later the ASC) were themselves so contrary to the authoritarianism of the past that they opened political spaces that had previously not existed. Alvarez observes that the process of negotiating the Accords has itself:

laid the groundwork for potential change to a more inclusive society, both by providing an opportunity for those outside the established elite to voice their opinion in the policy arena for the first time and by raising expectations for a more participatory democratic state and society. (Alvarez and Prado, 2002)

This opening of spaces however occurred in an overall context of human rights violations and continued security threats. As civil society mobilised for an increase in still limited spaces for expression, they were met at each point by consistent state violence. In 1991 popular organisations protesting their exclusion from the talks were put down with violent repression. Despite this response new organisations representing previously marginalized populations, such as women and Mayan groups, began to lobby for a place at the negotiations table, and to voice a position ideologically independent of the traditional left (Alvarez, 2002).

The transformation of the political arena and the inclusion of previously unheard voices can be seen visibly as a progression through the negotiations process, particularly in the institutions for civil participation. When the Grand National Dialogue was convened there was no representation of the indigenous population, reflecting their historic exclusion from political participation. With the replacement of the GND with the Assembly for Civil Society, it was decided to include Mayan organisations, NGOs and women's groups.40 Civil society input was also prioritised with their inclusion at the negotiations table. Although the ASC had no vote and their recommendations were non-binding, it was recognised by all that any process that excluded this group would reach an agreement that lacked legitimacy.

The Assembly was a forum for dialogue and negotiation. As it represented a broad-spectrum of political views and positions (Alvarez, 2002), the ASC's recommendations reflected an already negotiated compromise. This mobilisation of a previously weakened and undeveloped civil society had lasting impacts particularly for Mayan groupings, for whom it led to a 'carving out [of] a political space for themselves which would last beyond the transition itself (Wilson, 1997, p.17). The Assembly itself was unable to sustain its own impact, and its role became diminished towards the end of the negotiations. Civil society's lack of foresight in ensuring that it transitioned from a negotiations role to an effective monitoring role weakened both their potential impact as well as the eventual implementation of the Accords.

Negotiated Citizens

In both Guatemala and South Africa, negotiated transitions were embarked upon in the early 1990s, precipitated by the end of the Cold War and a changing global situation, as well as through international pressure and a realisation in both contexts that neither side to the conflict could win militarily.

Both countries were perceived during these initial negotiations as being potential models not only for their respective regions but for transitional societies in general. Both were seen as reflecting a success story of peace processes where negotiations led to the conclusion of progressive agreements, and where neither side was defeated and had a peace imposed on them. As such, both countries received considerable support and interest from the international community.

In South Africa, which has a history of a vibrant and dynamic civil society sector, the involvement of civil society during the negotiations was strong. This was in large part due to the international support given to the struggle against apartheid which resulted in states and international institutions channelling money to civil society that would otherwise have been earmarked for assistance to the government.

Negotiations were neither easy nor smooth and South Africa is far from being the 'miracle' transition it is often heralded to be. From the start of negotiations and the unbanning of the ANC in 1990 to the first democratic elections in 1994, more people died as a result of political violence than in the worst years of apartheid. The state fomented violence by supplying arms to groups opposed to the ANC in a bid to destabilise the liberation movement. Massacres precipitated a breakdown in talks at some points and the country teetered at the point of civil war on more than one occasion. The Afrikaner right-wing vehemently opposed the negotiations and attempted to initiate a military takeover to reinstate apartheid. In spite of these pressures, key role players were able to carefully craft a path to a democratic transition.

Constitution making

With the return of the ANC from exile, South Africa began negotiations which were open to all political parties, no matter how small their representative constituency. Through these negotiations an interim Constitution was agreed upon. After the 1994 elections, a Constitutional Assembly, representing those parties that had received a share of the vote, was formed to draft a final Constitution.

The drafting process for the final Constitution took place after the first democratic elections and sought to follow three fundamental principles: inclusivity, accessibility, and transparency. As such meetings of all the structures were open to the public and all materials relating to the Assembly were available over the internet (Barnes, 2002). Submissions were invited widely but, acknowledging the low levels of literacy in the country, the Assembly also took their work to communities where they organised workshops and solicited input. The new Constitution was then drafted in plain language, translated into the 11 official languages, and distributed widely through a national education programme. At the end of the process a national survey found that efforts at inclusivity had been successful, and there was a strong sense of ownership of the new Constitution amongst citizens because of these initiatives (Barnes, 2002).

Defining the New South Africa – the impact of the negotiations process

Simpson (2002) notes that the 'most important aspect of the country's transformation from authoritarianism and racism into a constitutional democracy was that it happened not by revolution or force of arms, but through the compromises of dialogue and political negotiation.' (p.221) This resulted in a negotiated settlement in which there were no clear 'winners' or 'losers', a situation that impacted directly on the shape of South Africa's transition, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) itself (see section on TRC below):
'If post-war Germany represents one extreme of the justice policies pursued in transitional societies, namely prosecution, then Chile represents the other, namely, blanket amnesty for those who committed gross violations of human rights. South Africa, in establishing the TRC, took a position somewhere between these two extremes, in which amnesty was not unconditional, but was rather a quid pro quo for full disclosure. At the heart of this hybrid approach was the reliance on a notion of 'truth recovery' as a restorative alternative to punitive justice – through full disclosure by perpetrators (and their supposed shaming) in exchange for amnesty, as well as through voluntary testimony about apartheid's gross human rights violations given by victims (and their supposed healing). Thus, although amnesty for perpetrators was a precondition for the success of the negotiated settlement from the outset, the TRC nonetheless resulted from a last-minute compromise, struck so late in the negotiation process that it had to be tacked onto the end of the interim Constitution, under the heading 'National Unity and Reconciliation', almost as an afterthought' (Simpson, 2002, p.221).
The character of the negotiations process was thus to have a direct influence on the character of the 'new South Africa'.

Economic Citizens

While citizens expressed a sense of inclusion and ownership in relation to the Constitution process, South Africa's process of transition (much like Guatemala's), did not ensure inclusion within the socio-economic sphere. Instead, the economic character of the new democracy was the subject of closed door talks between a few select individuals on both sides and representatives of the business community (cf. Bond, 2000). Everingham (2002) argues that in a context of past racism and inequality, the goal of deepening democracy and promoting socio-economic justice requires that all citizens have access to the means necessary to live a decent quality of life. As such, 'property rights constitute an important institutional tool to eradicate the vestiges of discrimination' (Everingham, 2002, p.2). However, despite dispossession being a key feature of both conflicts, property rights were enshrined in both settlements. Everingham (2002) concludes that the role of the international community, the impact of current global trends, as well as the need to sacrifice socio-economic issues for the sake of securing a political transition meant that in both countries land redistribution has been largely forsaken.

The exclusion of the voices of the people from decisions affecting the socio-economic composition of the new dispensation in both countries has had harsh consequences. Both Guatemala and South Africa have been reintegrated into a globalised economy in the wake of their conflicts and have chosen to take on the economic prescriptions of the international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. The acceptance of a neo-liberal agenda as part of the respective peace agreements demanded that 'land restitution and redistribution [be treated] as technical problems and market distortions, rather than as the consequences of racism and inequality suffered by poor indigenous communities' (Everingham, 2002, p.6). In the South African context the character of the negotiations, and the resultant agreement, has been termed by some observers as a process of 'elitepacting' (see for example Bond, 2000; Saul, 2001) that traded the continual domination of whites over the economy (and a system that would assure them of such domination well into the future) in return for political rule by the majority (cf. Marais 1998; Bond 2000; Saul 2001; Terreblanche 2002). Far from engendering the redistribution needed to integrate a previously marginalised population, the neo-liberal economic policies of today represent a retreat from such principles, and as such generate further marginalisation rather than inclusion (Simpson, 2000).

The resultant increase in unemployment and poverty from an entrenchment of neo-liberal agendas poses a very real threat to the consolidation of the transition. In a context of already high levels of inequality, the continued deprivation of the majority of the population threatens to undermine whatever gains have been made. Torres Rivaz argues with reference to Guatemala that it is contradictory to seek to deepen democracy and citizenship within the context of neo-liberal economic policies. The logic of a free market demands a weak state; 'limiting political participation to the economic elite'. What is required to entrench democracy is precisely a strong state – 'one that is free to act independently of private military and economic interests' (in Marsh, 2002, p.448).

An Overview of the Peace Accords

In December 1996 the URNG and the government of President Arzú signed the last in a series of twelve Peace Accords; bringing into force all of the agreements and definitively ending the 36 year conflict. The agreement was not the minimalist cease-fire often negotiated in such circumstances, but rather a comprehensive blueprint for the transformation of state and society. Wide-ranging in their scope, the Accords covered both operative as well as substantive reforms (Salveson, 2002),41 seeking to address root-causes and structurally reform society and the nation as a whole. The wording of the agreements places an emphasis on national unity, reconciliation, representation, inclusion and human rights – both political as well as socio-economic. Because of their relevance to this report, the Agreements on the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), the rights of Indigenous peoples, socio-economic reform, and the role of the military are covered briefly below.

The Twelve Substantive Guatemalan Peace Accords
  • Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights (March 1994)
  • Agreement on the Resettlement of Population Groups Uprooted by the Armed Conflict (June 1994)
  • Agreement for the Establishment of the Commission to Clarify Past Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence that have Caused the Guatemalan Population to Suffer (June 1994)
  • Agreement on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (March 1995)
  • Agreement on Socio-Economic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation (May 1996)
  • Agreement on the Strengthening of Civilian Power and the Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society (September 1996)
  • Agreement on a Definitive Ceasefire (December 1996)
  • Agreement on Constitutional Reforms and the Electoral Regime (December 1996)
  • Agreement on the Basis for the Legal Integration of the URNG (December 1996)
  • Agreement on the Implementation, Compliance and Verification Timetable for the Peace Agreements (December 1996)
  • Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace (December 1996)42
Agreement for the Establishment of the Commission to Clarify Past Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence that have Caused the Guatemalan Population to Suffer (1994)

The Agreement on the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) established a UN-sponsored truth commission in Guatemala to investigate the gross human rights violations and overall context of the 36-year civil war. It was - similar to the Socio-Economic Accord which followed - one of the most contested and controversial Agreements.

A transitional justice institution was clearly necessitated in Guatemala given the history of entanglement between the judiciary and the past military governments and the silence and secrecy which surrounded state crimes. Comparable to the South African judicial sector during apartheid, Guatemala's courts were compromised by their close links with those in power, as well as the prevailing environment of impunity, corruption and racism. It was clearly recognised by all parties that a weak judiciary would never be able to deliver justice against former perpetrators. As such, justice through the courts was not an option in Guatemala and the need for a 'truth commission' - one that would distribute a measure of justice (in the form of truth and acknowledgement) and write an inclusive history of the nation - was pushed by both civil society as well as international mediators. Such a mechanism was deeply opposed by the Army and government for obvious reasons (it was later established by the Commission that the Army was responsible for over 90 percent of the gross human rights violations); rendering the negotiations over this Accord protracted and bitter.

The prevailing weakness of the URNG as well as domestic civil society meant that they could bring little pressure to bear on government to sign into force a strong and legally effective Commission.43 It is perhaps only as a result of direct and substantial international pressure that the CEH came about at all (Jonas, 2000).44 The consequence of a weak domestic lobby ensured that the Accord itself was a watered down version; one that some observers criticised at the time as 'feeble' (Wilson, 1998, p.188).45

According to its mandate, the CEH was to have no judicial effect – meaning that any findings could not be used to establish a criminal case. It was to have no powers of search, seizure or subpoena; its recommendations were to be non-binding; its working time was limited to a brief 6 months with a possible 6-month renewal; and perhaps most damning, it was forbidden from naming the names of perpetrators.46 Given such severe limitations, many disappointed human rights bodies and activists questioned the utility of such an exercise: '[g]iven that the Accord creates a truth commission with no legal powers to investigate, which cannot name names and which will produce recommendations which can be utterly ignored, then what is the point of having one at all?'' (Wilson, 1998, p.185).

There was also conflict over the time period that the Commission's investigations would cover. Human rights groups advocated for the mandate to cover the period of 1980 onwards; in effect limiting the focus of the investigations to the most violent years of the conflict and hopefully maximising the Commission's efficacy (Wilson, 1997). Government on the other hand, argued for the time frame to cover from 1960 onwards judging that a commission with a limited working time of under a year would be diluted in its investigative capacity if overwhelmed by a time span of 36 years of conflict. (Wilson, 1997). As with so much else in this Accord, government prevailed and the Commission was mandated to cover the entire 36 years of the armed conflict.

Civil society's deep opposition to such a weak Accord translated into a strained relationship with the URNG for agreeing to it; and the signing of this Accord marked a pivotal point in the deterioration of the relationship between these two groups (Vinegrad, 1998). Motivated by this outrage, the Church decided to circumvent the weaknesses of the official Commission by establishing its own Commission which would permit it to 'name names'. The Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) was undertaken before the CEH and both are covered briefly in the section on transitional justice.47

Agreement on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (1995)

The Indigenous Rights Accord was perhaps the most surprising, far reaching and progressive of the series of Accords. Through it, the issues of racism and exclusionary citizenship, with all their crippling consequences, are addressed. The final text took nine months to negotiate, and although there was little direct Mayan input, it was influenced by the growing number of indigenous- based organisations who were mobilising during the negotiations, as well as the recently declared 1989 ILO Indigenous and Tribal People's Convention (Plant, 1999). The Accord proposed that ethnic discrimination be declared a crime, set out required legislative reforms and a plan for the right of the indigenous population to be protected through the education system, mass media and legal aid. Emphasis was placed on indigenous women and their empowerment, noting that poverty in Guatemala reflects poverty trends internationally in that it is both ethnicised as well as feminised.

The Accord offers the following context to its content:

That the indigenous peoples have been particularly subject to de facto levels of discrimination, exploitation and injustice, on account of their origin, culture and language and that, like many other sectors of the national community, they have to endure unequal and unjust treatment and conditions on account of their economic and social status; That this historical reality has affected and continues to affect these peoples profoundly, denying them the full exercise of their rights and political participation … . That the indigenous peoples have been excluded from the decision-making process in the country's political life, so that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them freely and fully to express their demands and defend their rights

The Accord goes on to encourage all citizens to acknowledge this divisive past, and calls for 'a clear recognition by all Guatemalans of the reality of racial discrimination and of the compelling need to overcome it and achieve true peaceful coexistence'.48

With regards to the identity of the nation, it was agreed that Congress would pass a Constitutional reform in order to redefine the Guatemalan nation as 'being of national unity, multiethnic, multicultural, and multilingual'. With this simple addition, it was hoped that the character of the nation would be transformed and an inclusive nation-building process embarked upon; 'hence ending five hundred years of a monolithic ladino-based notion of the "Guatemalan nation" that had been imposed on the indigenous peoples' (Jonas, 2000, p.76).

The institutional racism of the past was to be addressed through an audit of all existing legislation and the repealing of any that were found to be discriminatory in intent or consequence. In the judicial sector, it was agreed to recognise and promote organisations based on customary law and to incorporate customary law into national legislation; to make available translators in the various districts; and to provide legal aid to those unable to afford legal services.

Provisions were made for cultural protection and promotion, in particular addressing language, sacred places, and the use of native dress. Constitutional recognition of indigenous languages was to be reflected in key areas such as government services, the media, and access to health and education. Commitments to educational reform were numerous, including the creation of a Mayan university; the reform of educational syllabuses to include 'programmes that strengthen national unity through respect for cultural diversity' and the promotion of multilingual and multicultural education.

On the issue of land reform, the Accord proposes its most far-reaching reforms, including a comprehensive process of redistribution. Acknowledging the cultural, spiritual, and life-sustaining importance of land to the indigenous community, the Accord agrees to recognise individual, communal and collective title to land; to compensate for lands seized; to require the state to acquire land for the development of indigenous communities; and to allow communities to distinguish their own development priorities on their land. Core issues of land access and distribution were approached with an emphasis on non-market mechanisms (Jonas, 2000) in order to speed up and facilitate reform. In direct contradiction, the later Socio-Economic Accord reversed this emphasis, focusing solely on market driven redistribution.

Implementation of the Indigenous Rights Agreement was to be overseen by five joint commissions comprised of representatives from both government as well as indigenous communities.49 This was perhaps the first attempt at creating a forum of dialogue between government and the indigenous population.

The Agreement on Social and Economic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation (1996)
A firm and lasting peace must be consolidated on the basis of social and economic development directed towards the common good, meeting the needs of the whole population,
This is necessary in order to overcome the poverty, extreme poverty, discrimination and social and political marginalization which have impeded and distorted the country's social, economic, cultural and political development and have represented a source of conflict and instability,
Socio-economic development requires social justice, as one of the building blocks of unity and national solidarity, together with sustainable economic growth as a condition for meeting the people's social needs.
Extract from the Agreement on Social and Economic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation

Given the nexus between race and poverty, the legacy of limited and uneven social spending and the role of land in Guatemala's conflict, any peace agreement signed needed to address this history of inequality in order to ensure a consolidated democracy. The Social and Economic Accord was meant to be just such an instrument.50

In reality however it has been cited as the weakest and most problematic of the Accords; an agreement where the 'statements of intention were stronger than the actual mechanisms laid out' (Jonas, 2000, p.78). Only minimal reforms are proposed and even these limited goals have no concrete mechanisms to ensure their implementation. There is no scheme for job creation in spite of levels of unemployment that are estimated at close to two-thirds of the population.

The weaknesses of this Agreement are rooted primarily in the strength of CACIF, international capital, and the prevailing neo-liberal standpoint of those in government. The resulting Agreement was satisfactory to CACIF and the large international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.51 Domestically however, widespread anger and dissatisfaction with limited economic reforms caused a backlash against the URNG for signing the Accord, and broke the already strained relationship between civil society and the former guerrillas.

The need to redress the historic dispossession of indigenous land, and the cycle of poverty and dependency this instituted is left without resolution in the Agreement. The Social and Economic Accord established a national land registry and spelled out the necessity of a full-scale survey that would determine all ownership of land as well as identify unused or underused land for targeted redistribution. However, given CACIF's opposition to any comprehensive reforms, the Agreement took the route of market-assisted land redistribution and failed to limit the absolute right of private property (Jonas, 2000), weakening any possibility of real land reform.

Strengthening of Civilian Power and the Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society (1996)

Democratisation of the Guatemalan state rested on the role and powers of the armed forces being drastically cut. Throughout the civil war, the military's authority had grown, as did the number of illegal institutions it employed to unleash terror on its own population. The Civil-Military Agreement was written with the intention of separating the functions of the military from those of civilian institutions (Salveson, 2002) and severely curtailing the army's role in governance.

The Accord establishes a new understanding of security, one which links the term 'security' to the individual citizen's exercise of political, economic, social, and cultural rights and duties (Jonas, 2000). In this vein, it required the passing of a Law of Public Order that would protect the rights of all citizens even in the pursuit of public order and security. The budget of the army as well as the number of its troops was to be slashed by a third, and their functions limited to the assurance of territorial integrity and the guarding of borders. Provision was made for the establishment of an autonomous and civilian-controlled national police force (PNC) whose members would reflect the makeup of the general population. All illegal security organisations were to be dismantled, and the civilian patrols demobilised. The Accord also addresses the need for constitutional reform of the judicial sector in order to combat impunity.

Whilst the reforms spelled out in the Accord exceeded expectations (Jonas, 2000), there was no mention of any mechanism to investigate and purge the armed forces of those officials primarily responsible for the worst excesses of the past (Farer, 2000). This weakness ensured that an untransformed army would continue to wield its powers to undermine the path of democratisation.

In all, the twelve Accords established almost two hundred substantive commitments (Alvarez, 2002), constituting a peace agreement that went far beyond the minimalist cease-fire that has characterised Latin American transitions to date and laying the framework for the restructuring of Guatemalan society as a whole. As one observer notes, 'the Accords would have been remarkable in many Latin American countries; in Guatemala they seemed almost to imply some behind-the scenes Divine Intervention' (Farer, 2000, p.21). The very fact that such an agreement was reached in Guatemala, given the history of the country and the outcome of the civil war, was beyond the expectations of even those participating in the negotiations (Pásara, 2001). The asymmetrical balance of power that existed when the negotiations were embarked upon made it unlikely that the government would concede more than was necessary. In fact, given the almost complete defeat of the URNG prior to the negotiations, the rebels found themselves bargaining from 'an unsalvageable political position' (Wilson, 1997, p.11), lacking the force and power to make demands credibly.

It is widely believed therefore that the Peace Accords were the result of pressure and intervention from the international community.52 Whilst this may have assisted in establishing theoretical commitments to wide ranging reform, it did little to inculcate a sense of domestic ownership over the Accords or to improve internal capacity for implementation and monitoring. Salveson (2002) notes that in an environment of consolidated power in the hands of one party, implementation rests almost entirely on political will. Some have even gone so far as to argue that it is possible that in agreeing to substantive accords, the state never had any intention of implementing them (argued by Edelberto Torres-Rívas at a conference in Guatemala in 2001, in Salveson, 2002). This perspective appeared prevalent amongst the Guatemalan population itself who remained sceptical about their government's commitment to the Accords even after their signing. In a public opinion poll shortly after the Agreements entered into force, only 38 percent believed that they would be respected (Reding, 1997).

It is possible that the state also gambled that any agreement it signed would fail to survive ratification by domestic processes.53 None of the provisions were binding on the state without first being approved by Congress, then by the nation in a referendum. Given prevailing patterns of voter exclusion, it was predictable what a national vote would determine. Farer (2000) locates the paradox of the Accords in that their primary intention was to incorporate the previously excluded masses into the state and meaningful citizenship. However, until the masses are incorporated, it is difficult to get the Accords implemented, as those currently wielding power are unlikely to voluntarily concede their long-held privileges (Farer, 2000).

Transitional Justice in Post-Conflict Guatemala

Knowing the truth of what happened will make it easier to achieve national reconciliation, so that in the future Guatemalans may live in an authentic democracy, without forgetting that the rule of justice as the means for creating a new State has been and remains the general objective of all.
Prologue from "Memory of Silence", Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification
Erasing Accountability for the Past – the Law of National Reconciliation

In 1996 the Law of National Reconciliation was adopted by the Guatemalan government, providing what amounted to a de facto blanket amnesty for political crimes of the past. The Law was agreed to by both sides of the conflict as the guerrillas required a vehicle for reintegrating their forces back into society and allowing their exiles to return without threat of prosecution. In order to achieve this they agreed to a deal that also allowed the military to seek amnesty for its own actions during the conflict. As a result, applications received under the Act were overwhelmingly from military officers seeking to evade responsibility for the atrocities committed during the conflict. Although the LNR was not technically a blanket amnesty as it did establish a legal mechanism, this mechanism was weak and ineffectual: applicants could choose compliant judges; there was no leave for appealing these judges' decisions; families could only oppose the amnesty if they could prove that the act was criminal in nature and not political; and the burden of proof for opposing the amnesty rested with the victim (or family) (cf. Wilson, 1997; Jonas, 2000). The Act did however allow for the prosecution of crimes of genocide, torture and forced disappearance – leaving a window of opportunity in an overall climate of impunity.

Guatemala's Truth Commissions: an overview of REMHI and the CEH

As mentioned above, Guatemala had not one but two truth commissions; the first agreed to by the state and the opposition and codified in the Peace Accords, the other a non-governmental initiative undertaken by the Catholic Church.54

Although the focus for the purposes of this report will remain on the UN-sponsored and state run Commission entitled the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH),55 it is worth noting broadly the contributions of the Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI) and their report Guatelama: Nunca Más (Never Again). Both Commissions were of particular importance in the context of a country where levels of denial, silence and isolation posed serious impediments to healing and reconciliation.

REMHI was undertaken before the official Commission began its own investigations. As stipulated, it was initiated in part by a concern over the weaknesses and limitations of the CEH, in particular the inability to name perpetrators during the course of its investigations. It became evident however during the course of REMHI's testimony gathering that the environment of human rights abuses and security threats that still existed meant that revealing identities could expose witnesses and survivors to further violence. In particular, many testified that the perpetrators to whom they referred still lived in the same community and still held positions of power.56 This security consideration was to impact on the CEH's work as well.

The abridged version of the REMHI report focused on three substantive issues: the suffering of the people; how repression functioned; and the consequences of repression and demands for the future (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998). The process as well as the final report it generated had a more qualitative focus than the database driven approach of most state-led truth commissions (Hayner, 1999). As such, it focused on telling the stories of the victims, and recording the testimony of over 55,000 accounts of human rights violations.57 The Foreword to the report describes it as 'a book of martyrs, a martyrology … of the preponderantly Mayan victims of nearly four decades of civil conflict in Guatemala' (Recovery of Historical Memory, 1998)

The Commission for Historical Clarification was at that time the second of two UN-sponsored truth commissions.58 The legal mandate for the CEH was agreed upon in 1994, but did not take effect until the last of the Peace Accords was signed at the end of 1996, and the Commission was only created in 1997. The three-person body was headed by a foreigner appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General. The other two commissioners were Guatemalans and were appointed one each from the ladino and Mayan commu