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Reatha Feldstein
ON 2 DECEMBER 1990, THE Guatemalan Army opened automatic weapons fire on an unarmed crowd of between 2,000 and 4,000 Tzutujil Mayas from the town of Santiago Atitl n in highland Guatemala, about 100 miles west of the capital. Fourteen people, ranging in age from 10 to 53, were killed; another 21 were wounded. Two weeks later, as a result of massive popular pressure and national and international outcry, the army was forced to vacate its garrison, and Atitl n became one of the few Guatemalan communities of more than 10,000 inhabitants to not have a military base.
What occurred last December 2nd could well have become just the latest incident in a chain of political violence that has claimed 50,000 to 100,000 Guatemalan lives since 1980. Instead, the massacre has had far deeper and wider repercussions than anyone could have predicted. It represents both a breakthrough in a decade of fear and intimidation in Atitl n and a catalyst for unprecedented criticism of the military both within Guatemala and around the world.
To understand the exceptional potency of these 14 deaths, as well as the nature of the interests working to contain their long-term impact, it is essential to consider Atitl n's recent history. The timing, location, and nature of the massacre are also critical for appreciating what elements converged to transform a local tragedy into an event with much broader implications. Moreover, subsequent events provide hints regarding the possibility that meaningful social changes can be effected in a country whose military has penetrated virtually all aspects of society.
Many Atitecos (as residents are called) claim that the legacy of local violence was prefigured in June 1980, when the recently formed guerrilla group ORPA (Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms) began open and successful recruitment of townspeople. The following month, strangers in civilian clothes began asking questions, and in early October, the Guatemalan Army commenced its occupation. Scarcely two weeks later, two Atitecos disappeared. By the beginning of December, the total number of disappeared had risen to 10. The number of victims soared in 1981, including 16 massacred in a nearby coffee plantation and the murder of the resident Catholic priest, American Stanley Rother. La Violencia had come to Atitl n.
Throughout much of the 1980s, guerrilla operations in the southern Lake Atitl n region were common. Their cause evoked at least some sympathy. As a result, consistent with their strategic targeting of Indians elsewhere (Carmack 1988), the Guatemalan Army began a crude but effective program of matching regional guerrilla activity with direct retribution on the Atitecos. Atitl n's visibility precluded establishing a Development Pole - the name given the army's resettled villages, within which all activities could be tightly controlled (Cultural Survival 1988) - but not the stationing of a garrison and harassment of towns-people. While this strategy worsened basic opinions about the army, it also led to wider resentment of the guerrilla presence. Due in part to continued guerrilla actions, hundreds of Atitecos were killed by the army; estimates range as high as 1,700 (Cockrell 1991:4).
As this brutal counterinsurgency progressed, the frequency of guerrilla actions diminished. By the time that Vinicio Cerezo became Guatemala's president in 1986, violence in Atitl n had subsided to perhaps one killing per month. Following a particularly brutal spasm of terror in 1987, it again subsided to the seemingly endemic levels characteristics of the region's low-intensity warfare. In early 1990, however, a new wave of violence began, setting the stage for the December 2nd massacre.
The overwhelming evidence indicates that most robberies, kidnappings, and killings were engineered by the army - creating terrorism to blame "terrorists" - as a way to justify its continued presence (Carlsen 1990). This strategy can be illustrated by the case of one Atiteca whose husband, a comisionado (military-commissioned civilian authority), had been killed several years earlier by ORPA. To support herself, the widow washed clothes for the army. Given this history, it seemed logical that her killing was the work of the guerrillas. But, in fact, shortly before her murder several soldiers approached a 19-year-old neighbor and instructed him to deliver a message to the woman, ordering her to appear in town. On her way to town, the woman was shot. Shortly thereafter, the unfortunate messenger was arrested for subversion, and soon joined the long list of Atitecos who have been disappeared.
In staging such acts, the Guatemalan Army was able to disseminate information bolstering its claim of continued rural "terrorism." These types of events are also used to derail legally mandated negotiations with the guerrillas. The burning of several highway department trucks on the road between Atitl n and Panajachel, for instance, very nearly undermined pending discussions between the representatives of Guatemala's major political parties and guerrilla leaders. Lost on journalists covering the story was the fact that the initials EGP that had been painted on the trucks belonged to a guerrilla organization (the Guerrilla Army of the Poor) that operates in a different part of the country.
The army violence created an atmosphere of utter terror in Atitl n, as is evidenced in the words of one Atiteco: "Upon stepping out onto the street, a smile comes to my face. If anyone asks me how I'm doing, I say `great.' And if they ask me what I think about some incident, my reply is, `I don't know anything about it.' I then tell them, `If you want to find out, you should talk to the family. I'm just on my way to pray at the church.'" The "see nothing" logic embedded in this confession is a sensible survival strategy. There is, however, a fine line between hopeless terror and courage born of desperation; for Atitecos, that line was crossed in the late evening of 1 December 1990.
On the face of it, there is no single reason why the incidents of that evening should have had the effects that they did. Considering how many times similar things had happened, the specifics seem almost incidental. Five soldiers from the local garrison, including its commander, had spent the afternoon drinking at a cantina. At around 7:00 P.M. the group moved on to another bar; there, three of the soldiers beat a few clients. For the next few hours, the by then inebriated soldiers roamed the streets, abusing passerby, firing their guns, and attempting to break into a cantina and a private home. One of the drunk soldiers wounded a 19-year-old Atiteco.
At this point, events took a significant turn. Rather than simply returning to their homes, aroused neighbors spread out through town, waking the mayor and the mayor-elect and ringing the church bells for more than an hour. Several thousand Atitecos gathered in the town plaza, where they were informed of the soldiers' night on the town. The years of abuse and frustrated anger triggered something in the gathering crowd, who decided to march to the base to protest, led by the mayor and the mayor-elect. Armed solely with white flags, the crowd approached the base, where a soldier addressed them: "What is happening, people? What is your problem? We can resolve it." As the mayor-elect, Salvador Ramirez, began to speak, one of the soldiers fired into the air, whereupon other soldiers started firing directly into the crowd.
Community response to the massacre was immediate and overwhelming. When Guatemala's human rights ombudsman arrived in Santiago Atitl n later on December 2, he was met by a outpouring of denunciations, as if a floodgate of emotions had been opened following a decade of deathly silence. Less than 24 hours after the killings, 15,000 thumbprints and signatures had been collected on a petition demanding that those responsible be investigated, tried, and punished, and that the army base be removed immediately.
Resulting investigations were as prompt and thorough as any ever conducted in Guatemala. The mass funeral of victims was attended by at least 50 reporters. The ombudsman's report, issued five days later, publicly censured the army as an institution, named the officers responsible, and called for removal of the garrison. The Catholic Archdiocese Human Rights Office concluded that the army was guilty of crimes of genocide, and recommended compensation to families of those killed or wounded as well as major changes in army policy. Even the usually timorous Guatemalan Congress unanimously passed a resolution calling for the military to leave. In the wake of such unprecedented outcry, the army pulled its 600 troops out of Atitl n on December 20.
Several factors figured prominently in this outcome. Guatemala was in the final days of a closely watched presidential election runoff between two civilian candidates, so electoral politics stimulated willingness to openly address the massacre. Furthermore, with 20,000 inhabitants, Santiago Atitl n is the largest community on Lake Atitl n and a highly visible tourist destination. It also lies directly across the lake from the busy tourist town of Panajachel. And in contrast to the difficulty of holding the military accountable in most cases of violence - attributable only to "unidentified armed men" - thousands had witnessed the Atitl n killings.
Where open expression hitherto would have brought reprisals or death, Atitl n residents now are vocal in denouncing both the massacre and the repeated atrocities that preceded it. They speak of their years of "slavery," when doors were closed at 6:00 and reopened in the morning to news of who was the latest victim. As people sensed the strength of their unified voices, the paralyzing fear that had gripped them for 10 years evaporated; in the same way, such fear gave way to collective outrage over death squad abuses in the neighboring Tzutujil town of San Pedro (Paul and Demarest 1988).
Evidence of community solidarity is everywhere in Atitl n. Black flags or ribbons drape most houses and shops. Catholics and Protestants now come together on the second day of every month for a unique blend of commemorative religious service and civic forum. Over-optimistically perhaps, the mayor declares that "here we have no religious divisions" - remarkable for a community previously rent by religious factionalism.
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