NY Times: Desperate Guatemalans Embrace an ‘Iron Fist’

[cristoforo]

COBÁN, Guatemala — They burned villages, killed children and, just a winding road away from here in 1982, the Guatemalan military also massacred hundreds of Mayan peasants, after torturing old men and raping young women.

But now, all across these highlands once ravaged by a 36-year civil war, the region’s bloodiest anti-Communist conflict, Guatemalans are demanding the unthinkable — a strong military, back in their communities.

That is how desperate this country has become as gangs and Mexican drug cartels run fever-wild, capturing territory and corrupting institutions so that Guatemala will remain a safe haven for cocaine, guns, money laundering and new recruits.

“It’s even scarier now than during the war,” said Josefina Molina, 52, making tamales a few steps from where a neighbor was killed two days earlier. “The danger used to be in the mountains — now it’s everywhere.”

Guatemala’s presidential election on Sunday could represent a turning point. The three top contenders have all called for a stronger, crime-fighting military, borrowing heavily from the Mexican model of attacking the drug cartels head-on, even though that strategy has claimed more than 40,000 lives without yielding peace.

The front-runner is considered to be Otto Pérez Molina, a former general whose campaign symbol is an iron fist. Reserved and intellectual, he both commanded troops during the worst atrocities of the war and negotiated the 1996 peace accords that ended it.

“He knows the strategies for fighting,” said Fábio Dagoberto Miza, a campaign leader.

But the question playing on repeat is whether the next government will get tough without violating human rights.

“For many, there is a sense that the military is going to put things in order,” said Raquel Zelaya, executive director of Así Es, a research group. And yet, she and others added, what if that faith is misplaced?

“The notion that the military is the ‘deus ex machina’ that’s going to resolve everything” does not recognize that the military “may also be part of the problem,” said Cynthia Arnson, an expert at Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Here in Cobán, a coffee town in the country’s lush, mountainous middle, the concern can be heard, but mainly among older indigenous leaders who still shudder at armed Guatemalans in fatigues. It is harder to find on the streets, where there is a rise in murders, or among those, like Mrs. Molina’s children — Cindy, Ericka and Enrique — who have no personal experience with the civil war.

As frustrated 20-somethings, they now represent the majority of the electorate. More than 60 percent of Guatemala’s roughly 7.3 million registered voters are between 18 and 30 years old.

In their eyes, the war that killed an estimated 200,000 Guatemalan civilians is a vague shadow. The old ideological fight over whether leftist insurgents — angered by an American-backed coup in 1954 — would lead the country to Communism means nothing to them.

The army itself is a different institution now, far smaller, often responsible for passing out government aid and considered less corrupt than the police or the courts.

“Older people think that with soldiers we’ll go back to the past, back to war,” said Cindy Molina, 29. But the military and Mr. Pérez Molina, she said, “have the knowledge we need.”

Some experts believe the former general, who is also championing programs to fight poverty, is benefiting from Guatemala’s failure to fully confront its past. The country’s poorly financed schools do not include lessons on the war. Mr. Pérez Molina’s role has never been fully investigated (he has denied links to massacres) and despite efforts to unearth both memories and victims, most young Guatemalans are unaware of their country’s history.

Edgar Gutiérrez Girón, a former foreign minister, says that when he asks students about the war, “they think I’m talking about Iraq.”

Their experience — their war — is against criminals. And across classes and ages, the consensus is clear: Guatemala is losing. Towns near the Mexican border and on routes from the coasts, where Andean cocaine typically arrives, are now openly controlled by drug cartels.

Planes used to carry drugs are visible in the Petén, a northern border region where cartel lieutenants have bought huge properties they claim to use for cattle ranching, a business perfect for laundering money — which also explains, experts say, the sudden boom in high-rise apartment buildings across Guatemala City.

Drug money has also poisoned politics. Several senior members of the national police, including the chief and deputy chief, were purged in 2009 for their involvement in drug trafficking, while illicit financing is expected to make this year’s campaign the most expensive on record. It is expected to cost $50 million to $70 million for each of the three main presidential candidates, according to Acción Ciudadana, the Guatemalan chapter of Transparency International, which tracks political spending.

Per capita, despite backbreaking poverty, that makes Guatemala’s elections among the priciest in the world. “Private businesses, the ones that usually fund campaigns — they don’t have that kind of money,” said Manfredo Marroquín, Acción Ciudadana’s director.

Drug money, he argued, flows to nearly every party and candidate, so whoever wins will owe a debt to the criminals: “It’s a perverse circle.”

Violence attributed to Mexican cartels, especially the Zetas, also keeps spreading: a decapitated head dumped in front of Congress last year; a massacre of 27 farm workers near the Mexican border in May, in which a severed arm was used to write a message in blood; and then the murder and dismemberment of the case’s prosecutor two months later.

The favored solutions can be as bad as the problem. Hot lines in Guatemala City now allow people to order up punishment from private enforcers, who kill extortionists after they pick up a final payment and then pin messages on the bodies explaining why the murder was justified.

There are obvious long-term solutions, proposed repeatedly by experts: police reform, a stronger justice system with judges appointed for life and a security tax on the rich, similar to what Colombia enacted a few years ago. Already, there has been some progress on the judicial front.

But patience is waning. Mr. Pérez Molina’s main challenger, Manuel Baldizón, a wealthy businessman running as a populist, has vowed to apply the death penalty more often, possibly in public.

The main challenge for whoever wins may be building confidence in a state described by Guatemalans as a caricature, a failure, a shame or nonexistent. In Cobán, many residents said that any attempted solution from the government, including a stronger military, would either never happen, or be blunted by the rich or criminals.

Indeed, just steps away from Josefina Molina’s home, at the funeral for her neighbor, distrust mingled with tears. Freddy Colonal de Osorio, 25, said that after finding his father dead last week, he no longer cared what the government did — as long as it did something.

“They’re always promising, promising, promising,” he said. “They never follow through.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/10/wo...pagewanted=all

[EL_DUKE_MAYOR]

interesante pero mucho pa leer de lo mismo,

solo esto vi que si es cierto ;sdklfj;adlskf

“They’re always promising, promising, promising,” he said. “They never follow through.”

[MonX_x]

Iniciado por cristoforo

“Older people think that with soldiers we’ll go back to the past, back to war,” said Cindy Molina, 29. But the military and Mr. Pérez Molina, she said, “have the knowledge we need.”

Edgar Gutiérrez Girón, a former foreign minister, says that when he asks students about the war, “they think I’m talking about Iraq.”

Esto es muy cierto, hay muchos jóvenes que desconocen que hubo guerra en Guatemala, y por lo tanto desconocen el genocidio del que fue partícipe Pérez Molina....

[Driverxx]

Se que soy una mierda pero me dio hueva leerlo.

[Alenth]

Edgar Gutiérrez Girón, a former foreign minister, says that when he asks students about the war, “they think I’m talking about Iraq.”

Esto es lo que personalmente me molesta muchísimo.

Es una generación con una falta total de memoria histórica, no investigan, no leen, por eso quedan en ridículo después y no desarrollan ni una pizca de conciencia social, para más los jóvenes de otros países como Chile que sin distinción de clase o nivel salen a protestar por mejores servicios públicos, tanto sindicalistas, estudiantes de universidades privadas y publicas he intelectuales, aquí mi huevo si vas a ver algún día jóvenes peleando por una mejor educación en las escuelas, salud publica o por corrupción, solo salen a protestar cuando esta el abogaducho corruptazo de Rosemberg o algún tipo que lo usan de chivo expiatorio de agentes de desinformación, sin tan solo esa mentalidad cambiara el rumbo seria diferente.

Simplemente Patetico.

[lu24is]

Lo que yo creo es de que con Pérez Molina no habrá tal cosa como represión y mano dura.... Puras pajas. Va a ser igual que berger o arzu. Lo que pasa es que como la mayoría demanda seguridad y quieren ver muertos y colgados a los cacos, creen que Pérez Molina, por haber sido militar, va a agarrar a matacoche a todos... Pero eso jamás pasara. No nos engañemos, nos están vendiendo algo que no pueden dar por falta de recursos y porque la comunidad internacional se los come vivos. Lo que no se como hicieron fue convencer a la gente de quiché y esas áreas a seguir a otto Pérez

[Alenth]

Lo que muchos no saben es que cuando fue Comisionado de Seguridad en el Gobierno de Berger le dieron disposición de TODO y que paso? renuncio a los 4 meses!!

Muchos grupos le tiraron acusaciones de todo tipo

[Jarrilla]

Y cuando van a incluir en los libros de texto la historia del conflicto armado en Guatemala ?
Para que las nuevas generaciones se enteren lo que paso

Creo que el pensum de educacion no ha cambiado en las últimas ... 10 décadas

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Alenth]

Creo que el pensum de educacion no ha cambiado en las últimas ... 10 décadas

Eso es lo peor, aun incluye lo de Tecun Uman, que Doña Dolores fue a quemar Cuetes, que la independencia para ser un estado soberano y libre de opresion, no dicen nada de los conflictos de la anexión, el exterminio del campesinado, el dominio liberal, la cagada de regalar de Belice, etc.

Estaba claro que el interés fue, es y sigue siendo mantener a las futuras generaciones en la ignorancia.

[ZhEg23]

Comunismo va, el nytimes también está en la mierda

[Makelo]

Iniciado por MonX_x

Esto es muy cierto, hay muchos jóvenes que desconocen que hubo guerra en Guatemala, y por lo tanto desconocen el genocidio del que fue partícipe Pérez Molina....

x10

[Ignition]

No hacen ver a los chapines tan atrasados, pero cierto

[Blackspeed]

Tener jovenes en procesos electorales es bueno y malo
Bueno porque se interesan en participar en las elecciones

Lo malo que no saben la historia del país, no investigan acerca de los presidenciables y muchas veces solo van con la corriente ...