The Twenty First Century Armed Conflict in Guatemala

“You never had to go through that”. That was a phrase that got straight into my mind and made me thing what was it that I never had to live.

They were referring about the armed conflict that for 36 years affected the countryside and even the capital city of Guatemala. I could hear them refer about how was it that they had to go straight to their homes before 8 pm because of the “toque de queda” that the government implemented to avoid having “communist” meetings in the dark nights.

Also, they told me how was it that, many times, they heard the parlor stop the projection of the film and asked them to evacuate ASAP because there was a menace of a bomb in the theater.

I am sure I had never lived a status quo were I had to be afraid of guerrilla’s activity, or even from the activity of the armed forces of the government. But is it all true?

It is certainly not. Since December 29, 1996 Guatemala signed a “Peace Accord Agreement” with the belligerent forces of the guerrilla and the government in turn. It was a peace accord of holding down arms that was up to end with an “enduring peace” that was supposed to last for ever, and in the near future forgotten by the next generations that never had to live it.

Has it all finished? It does certainly not.

Guatemala has lived the beginning of a twenty first century type of war. It is called the war against the “maras”, gangs that have taken control of entire zones of the capital city, and entire zones of the inland towns; making security, under government’s obligation been totally disappear and a new force appear in our society. What a teacher once called a “parallel power” had appeared in the “never spoken about” society we, Guatemalans, live in.

What is the reason for all this chaos? The reasons are many, but the solutions are less obvious and less easy of implementing.

Guatemala decided that the armed conflict was up to an ending and the former President in government, Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen, decided that it was time for him to receive the “Príncipe de Asturias prize” for ending the so called war. Once the peace was signed, the conflict was up to end in a few months and demobilization of the belligerent forces was supposed to turn on their arms and return to their civilian life and work the land they possessed, or were going to receive.[1]

Once the peace was signed a backyard problem appeared in the landscape. It was the “armed gangs” in Guatemala that started to spread as a parallel power all over the capital, towns and little villages.

Supported by the drug dealers, that since the last decades had an almost divine immortality and lived as the “untouchables” of our society; these gangs reinforced their strategic “occupied areas” and started recruiting new forces to their regiments.

Where was the government in this moment? Why did not they act?

The reason and maybe a huge part of the guilt of the chaos that is soon to begin in Guatemala, I may even dare to predict a new and distinct “twenty first century way” of civil war, was that the weak government that by not reason appeared in Guatemala since the ending of the armed government in 1986.

But the reason is even deeper and obscure, it involved the incentives Guatemalans had to avoid to return to a strong type of government that was certainly never to be in the short time occupied by an army men. As well, it meant that people were tired of having a police government that would have told were to meet, eat and sleep, and at what time to do so.

And there is one more huge incentive. It included the Scandinavian countries and the rest of the European Community that had made an incredible pressure in our political image in front of the international community, which meant that, if we did not turn into a more “democratic” government the influx of cash was soon to stop and our morally depraved economy and society, was soon to be in a deficit that only was saved because of the aid we had received for decades from the international community.

The effect of this externalities turn the country into a very “calm society”, actually meaning an afraid of danger society, were a parallel force started to grow; without a strong government that would have procrastinated it to ever occur and without a government force strong enough to secure the citizens and protect them of danger.

Guatemala had just turn into a government were all the power rests in a weak President that has not the enough power to reinstate order, or at least to secure and protect the capital city nor the towns. Guatemala has gotten for itself a weak government that because of the lack of leaders, because of the massive killing of leaders since the 1960’s, which right now had made a whole in our society where no important example of leadership can be found.

Guatemala has been just turn with open arms into the wrath of this new parallel power that would institute a status quo of lack of a strong government directed by civilians that by the use of arms and power would exploit, abuse, rape and panic my fellow Guatemalans.

We have just begin a third millennium were we would have to fight against a weak government and a strong civilian-gang power that has been spreading like a plague around the community.

Shall we see a strong leader come in our help? Or shall we suffer a new century of fearful, unjust, corrupt, and wicked Guatemala?


[1] It also meant integrating the indigenous peoples that are part of our society, and these people were supposed to be “recognized” as an integrant and important sector of our society, as recognition of their suffering since the colony (something I have lot to say against, but that is not of an issue in this essay).