Here they come again
Patrick Marnham
This week's military coup in Guatemala made front-page news in all three ex- pensive daily papers. The Times, in a report compiled partly from news agencies and partly from Mexico City, decided that the departure of Brigadier-General Efrain Rios Montt did not 'represent an ideological change'. It quoted the new president, General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, as saying that his predecessor had been over- thrown 'because he seemed to be staying in power indefinitely'. And it hinted that the Catholic Church may have been involved in the coup because it had been angered by Rios Montt's Christian evangelism, which some had called 'fanatical'.
Since Rios Montt had only been in power for 16 months, and since he had announced elections for the end of 1985, the idea that he was there 'indefinitely' is clearly im- plausible. And the suggestion that the Catholic Church in Guatemala is consulted about army coups is also imaginative. The growth of evangelism in that country is cer- tainly a worry for the Catholic Church, but it owes far more to the shortage of Catholic priests, and to the serious divisions which now riddle the Catholic Church throughout, Latin America, than to the religious en- thusiasm of one Rios Montt.
The Daily Telegraph, in a report written in New York, described Brigadier-General Rios Montt as 'increasingly eccentric' without going into details. Mrs Thatcher has recently been showing increasing signs of eccentricity, but if there was to be a military coup in Whitehall, or even a major revolt on the 1922 Committee, most, newspaper readers might look for some fur- ther explanation than the Prime Minister's decision to read government documents while lying in hospital blind in one eye. Beyond laying repeated emphasis on the Brigadier's Christianity, a 'fervent, pater- nalistic evangelism', the Daily Telegraph was unable to illustrate Rios Montt's lack of ordinariness.
The Guardian, in a report written from London, also appeared to be groping around for an explanation. Once again the connection was made between 'eccentricity and fundamentalist Christianity'. A part- icularly strange aspect, according to the Guardian, was that Rios Montt belonged to a sect founded by ageing Californian hip- pies. Had he signed up with youthful Californian Jesus-freaks the Guardian would apparently have found that more or- thodox behaviour in a middle-aged Guatemalan army officer. On the whole it cannot be said that the combined resources of the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Guardian were of great assistance to those people in this country who study Guatemalan affairs.
Briefly to set the scene, Central America is the long thin bit between North America and South America. Guatemala is that part of Central America south of Mexico and north of El Salvador. Mexico is the one south of Texas and California. El Salvador is the one on television. To put it another way, Guatemala is the one that wants Belize. Belize is the one formerly called British Honduras. The United Kingdom is committed to the defence of Belize and British troops are stationed there. Generally speaking, Belize has nothing to do with it.
Although the Spectator's article on the military coup in Guatemala is being written from as far away as the Guardian's, it is possible even in London to suggest a perfectly clear explanation for this week's events. As I wrote from Guatemala in this paper on 7 May this year: 'For the time be- ing there are only two feasible ruling groups in Guatemala. There are the more pro- gressive army officers, who support Rios Montt, and there are the less progressive ar- my officers, who represent the interests of the National Liberation Movement,' (the extreme right-wing MLN, the traditional rulers of the country), 'who have underpinned the succession of brutal regimes which ruled Guatemala, with few interruptions, from 1954 to March 1982.' Therefore, the simplest explanation for the latest coup is that the MLN have reinstalled one of their supporters.
When Brigadier-General Rios Montt came to power in March 1982 he succeeded an extremely corrupt, brutal and, above all, inefficient military regime. But he too had originally enjoyed the backing of the MLN. It was Rios Montt's fundamentalist Chris- tian principles which baffled the extreme
right-wing in Guatemala, just as much as they baffled observers in Washington, New York and Fleet Street. But though un- fashionable they appear to have been sincerely held. Rios Montt disbanded the right-wing death squads which worked from an office behind the presidential palace and which had terrorised Guatemala City for years. He also transformed the murder of Indians in the Highlands from a campaign of enthusiastic atrocity into a considered act of policy. Last year, after all army offensive lasting nine months during which thousands of innocent people were killed, the guerrilla movement was largely if temporarily destroyed and the army offen- sive was replaced by an effective army cam- paign to win popular support. It is not possible to justify the murder of innocent people, but at least under Rios Montt many fewer Indians were killed, and his intention appears to have been to reach a point where the peaceful rule of law could be restored.
Time and again in Guatemala, if one ask- ed people how long they thought Rios Montt should stay in power, they replied, 'As long as he needs,' and this included people whose friends or family had died in the army offensive of 1982. They said that not out of any particular affection for the President but because they believed hint when he said that he intended to return the country to civilian rule, and because they thought that a man with his ruthless background, who had won an important military success over the guerrillas, was the only person who might be able to deliver them from the rule of the extreme Right.
The MLN certainly shared that assess- ment of Rios Montt. During my visit I spoke to a civilian member of the advisory Council of State, a humane man who believed that Rios Montt's strategy of building strong political and trade union opposition to the extreme Right gave Guatemala its best chance of civilian rule. He was convinced that the MLN were behind the several attempts to assassinate the President. He was anxious that American public opinion should realise that Rios Montt was 'an improvable president and that the United States should finance a programme of social assistance which would undermine the political appeal of the guerrillas and so allow the army to relin- quish power at the earliest opportunity.
It is hard to see that moment coming any closer as a consequence of the latest army coup. It could be that General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores will turn out to be the model democratic president, along lines approved by the State Department. It could even be, glorious notion, that he will
turn out to be a card-carrying agnostic with all the right attitudes towards fundamen- talist Christianity. Or he could turn out to be another loyal representative of the ex- treme Right, with all the renewed misery that will entail for the Indian people.
Certainly it would be odd for two suc- cessive military coups to be staged n Guatemala and for neither of them to ad- vance the interests of the MLN.
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