"Unending
poverty, repression in Guatemala"
by Grahame Russell
GUATEMALA CITY -- Repression
and impoverishment in Guatemala are again in the news, for a day or two.
In the June 7 Financial
Times, Andrew Bounds writes of the ''return of
the death squads'' in
Guatemala. Apart from the fact that death squads
never went away, Bounds reported on the recent
assassination of
Guillermo Ovalle, who worked
for the foundation set up by Nobel Peace
Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú. Bounds put this
killing correctly in the
context of the on-going
impunity that marks the judicial and political
systems here.
Amnesty International released an urgent action on
June 11, expressing
concern about a death threat
faxed to human-rights activists by the
clandestine Guatemaltecos de Verdad (True
Guatemalans) organization. It
read, among other things:
'La lista de los enemigos de la patria es grande y si
las mentiras que
contaron a la vieja jilani
tienen un efecto en el pais los pajaros
deberan pagarlo con su sangre.'' (The list of the
country's enemies is
long, and if the lies they
told to that old lady Jilani [in reference to
the United Nations Special Representative on Human
Rights Defenders,
Hina Jilani] have an effect
on the country, the wankers will pay for it
with their blood). The activists named in the death
threat would be
``los primeros en sentir el
sabor del acero de nuestras balas'' (the
first to experience the
taste of our bullets' steel).
The United Nations, based on the recent visit of
Jilani, denounced the
general climate of fear, the
attacking of human-rights defenders by
public officials, the on-going impunity, the
increased militarization, and the Guatemalan Congresss lack of commitment to
ensure the safety of
human-rights defenders.
Unfortunately, the article and reports present
Guatemalas critical situation in a global vacuum. The reader is left simply
thinking ``Oh,
what a terrible place.' Repression and impoverishment are not
''national'' problems; they are endemic violations of
peoples most
important human rights,
caused by local, national and global policies
and actions.
A wide range of international actors contribute
directly and indirectly
to impunity and other social
ills. The U.S. government and military,
other governments, the World Bank, the Inter-American
Development Bank,
US-AID and global
corporations and investment institutions, all have
long had and continue to have beneficial dealings
with the Guatemalan
government, military and economic elites.
As long as repression and impoverishment in Guatemala
are treated as
''national'' problems,
systematic violations of the majority's
political, economic, social,
civil and cultural rights will continue.
Power here does not reside in the democratic power of
the people but in
the military and economic relations that the elites
maintain worldwide.
As long as these international players continue with
their
business-as-usual attitude in Guatemala, little will
change.
Accountability for injustices and demands for deep
changes must be
fought not only inside
Guatemala -- where courageous people are leading
the way -- but also at the
global level
***
Grahame Russell works with Rights Action, that raises
funds for and
supports
community-development and human-rights projects in Mexico,
Central America and Peru.
Email:
info@rightsaction.org.
Website: www.rightsaction.org
FINIS
