A WORKABLE PEACE
Guatemala: From Truce to Peace
Confidential Instructions for the Director of the Mayan Federation
You grew up in a small farming village in the Central Highlands of Guatemala. Most of your neighbors were Mayans. Your parents were poor and they had no school education, but they taught you to respect the land and other people. You were able to complete primary school, but then you had to work on the farm and on the coffee harvest for the large coffee plantation near your village.
As you grew older, you began to see how the Ladinos who owned the coffee plantation, looked down on Mayan people. You also learned from your parents and the old Mayan people in your village that when the Spanish arrived they destroyed your communities and enslaved the Maya.
In your early 20s, you met some Mayans from villages nearby who were trying to organize the coffee plantation workers to demand better pay. Your parents warned you against making trouble--the plantation owners could take away your jobs, or send their men to beat you up, or worse. At that time, in the early 1980s, the army and the URNG were fighting, and anyone who challenged the landowners or the government was suspected of being part of the URNG. You knew it was a big risk, but you decided to help them anyway. After about a year of talking in secret with the Mayan plantation workers, you and the other organizers asked for a meeting with the plantation owners to demand better pay and working conditions. They agreed to talk with you, and they were even polite. But the night after the meeting, a friend came running to your house to tell you that the plantation owners were sending their men to kill you. In a few minutes, you packed a small bag and left the village.
You went all the way to Mexico, and you lived in a refugee camp there for the next ten years, making secret trips back into Guatemala. You met many other Mayans who were trying to improve the lives of your people. You decided that violence could not solve the problems of your people, so you stayed out of the URNG.
When the URNG and the government started to negotiate in 1991, you decided it was safe for you to return to Guatemala. Since then, you continued your work to organize Mayan plantation workers and farmers and have become a leader of the national movement for recognition of Mayan culture, Mayan rights and Mayan land claims. Today you are the Director of the Mayan Federation, an alliance of 20 Mayan peoples. The groups in the Mayan Federation represent more than half of Guatemala's population. That means that the Federation speaks not only for the Maya, but for the majority of the Guatemalan people. Even though you represent the majority, you do not claim the right to govern the country. You do claim the right to negotiate with the government.
To prepare for these negotiations, you have discussed the key issues with the other leaders of the Federation. Together, you have agreed on a set of goals and specific proposals. Most important is to get the government to agree to give the Mayan people greater cultural and political rights. You also want the government to recognize Mayan land rights and help the Maya recover some of the land that was taken from them. You are also concerned about protecting human rights by reducing the power of the army, but this issue is less important to you than the other two.
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Human Rights: How can we protect human |
You strongly agree with the government's proposal to stop the army from arresting any Guatemalan citizens, and to give this power to the police.
There have been fewer abuses since the army and the URNG agreed on a truce, but you have heard many reports from Mayan villages that the local army commanders are still terrorizing the people. Some of these commanders don't even care about fighting the Communists. They are just using force to get money or land from the local people.
You also agree with the proposal that the police, not the army, should investigate soldiers who are accused of human rights violations.
For a long time, the Guatemalan army has been above the law. Soldiers have been allowed to torture and kill people who they suspected were Communists without any trial, and sometimes without any evidence. The army generals never punished their soldiers for doing these terrible things--they just looked the other way.
You want the government to create a national council to supervise the police force.
On the other hand, you are concerned that the police may start abusing people the same way that the army did unless there is someone supervising them. This council should include at least one Mayan representative. It should also have the power to investigate police officers accused of human rights violations. Only in this way can you be sure that the police will not repeat the army's mistakes.
Your minimum requirement on this issue is that the government must take away the army's power to arrest Guatemalan citizens.
The army has proven that it cannot be trusted to respect citizens' rights or to punish soldiers who violate those rights. You cannot accept any agreement on this issue that allows the army to continue arresting citizens. This power must be transferred to the police.
Mayan Cultural and Political Rights: How can we appropriately recognize and guarantee Mayan cultural and political rights?
Four measures will help the Maya regain the basic civil rights that they deserve as citizens of Guatemala:
1) Build schools and hire teachers to teach Mayans in their own languages, and teach all Guatemalans about Mayan history and culture (including the injustice of the Spanish Conquest).
2) Make all government agencies translate laws and regulations that affect Mayans into Mayan languages, and hire interpreters to help the Mayans deal with them.
3) Make discrimination against Mayans a crime, educate all Mayans about their rights, and create a special organization to investigate and punish people who discriminate against Mayans.
4) Give top priority to Mayan villages and communities when deciding where to put health, education, road-building, electrification, job training and other community development projects.
You want the right to govern yourselves, now.
In addition to rights as individual citizens, the Federation has a fifth proposal:
5) Mayans should be allowed to create local, regional and national councils to decide matters according to Mayan law and custom. These councils will not have power over non-Mayans, but they will have the power to stop any government action that would harm Mayans.
The Maya respect the government and want to be full citizens of Guatemala. At the same time, you want the right to govern your own affairs according to your traditional law. This law applies to questions of land and property ownership, marriage, inheritance, making and breaking agreements, crimes committed by one Mayan against another, and the use of Mayan elders and village meetings to resolve conflicts among Mayans.
The government has said that there can only be one set of laws and one government for all Guatemalans, and that Mayans can govern themselves by voting and electing Mayans to government office. It is true that some Mayans have been elected as mayors and representatives to Congress. But there are still many barriers to Mayans who want to participate in politics: money, communications, and election rules are all in the hands of the Ladinos.
The minimum acceptable agreement is one that includes the first four measures you proposed and at least some form of Mayan self-government
If the government refuses to accept this proposal, you may have to compromise. You would prefer that the councils have the power to block any government action that would harm Mayans, but you would be willing to agree that the government would not be required to accept the councils' advice.
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Land Claims in the Petén and Sustainability
of the Maya Biosphere Reserve: How can |
Although not the majority, there are many Mayan people living in the Petén region, and they have been treated badly by the military and the government. You want all Mayans in the Petén, whether they live inside or outside the Maya Biosphere Reserve, to have legal control of land and economic opportunities to improve their lives.
Control and Management of the Maya Biosphere Reserve: You feel it is essential that Mayan people have a strong voice in the management of the Reserve. Right now, international NGO's (non-governmental organizations) and the Guatemalan government are making all the decisions, which affect many Mayans living in the Petén. You want the government to make the local Mayan population official partners in setting guidelines for the management of the Reserve.
Land Access and Land Use: You know that during the colonization of the Petén region from the 1950s to the 1980s, the military unfairly distributed land and gave large areas to soldiers, ranchers and plantation owners. You want the government to investigate anyone who got their land unfairly and to redistribute some of this land among landless Mayans. You want the government to ensure that Mayan farmers in the Petén are given legal title to their land, if they do not already have it. You also want to make sure that the larger problem of unfair and unequal land distribution are addressed. Mayans have been moving into the Biosphere because they have had no other options. The government should also stop evicting squatters from the Biosphere and elsewhere in the Petén, until it can provide some land or some other job.
Poor farmers have also taken much blame for unsustainable farming practices, which are destroying the soil in the Petén region. In fact, many of the Mayan farmers living in the Petén now have developed ways of keeping their land fertile. Instead, you want the government to place tighter restrictions on the amount of land cattle ranchers, loggers and oil explorers are allowed to use. You also want the government to stop portraying the Mayans as environmentally and agriculturally ignorant and inept. After all, the ancient Mayan civilization farmed the land in the Petén for nearly two thousand years.
