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CMI Guatemala ~ Chiapas
Indymedia Chiapas in collabortation with Indymedia Mexico, HIJOS Guatemala, ComunicarTe, Derechos en Accion and other independent media outlets and human rights organizations in Guatemala are covering the highly contested and conflictual 2003 Presidential Elections as the people of guatemala struggle to preserve collective memory. We are dedicating Sunday November 9th to a live radio stream of RADIO "TZ'INIL NA 'TAB'AL" / "MEMORY OF SILENCE" RADIO. Transmitting from Guatemala City
This morning November 9th the polls have opened throughout Guatemala for Guatemalan Presidential elections. The international Vox Latina polls and Guatemalan press give a solid lead to the conservative GANA candidate Oscar Berger, placing Alvaro Colom of the National Unity for Hope party a staunch sixteen points ahead of the disputed third place contender General Efrain Rios Montt who managed to forcibly overturn a constitutional law and Supreme Court decision to uphold the law that prohibits ex-dictators from running for president. Indymedia Chiapas, Mexico and a collaboration of organizations from on the ground bring us this report from Guatemala City on how the mainstream polls may not indicate the realities of voter manipulation, psychological repression and the complexities associated with today’s first of two rounds to decide Guatemala’s next president.
Four kid-napped journalists, disgruntled unpaid paramilitaries blocking highways, street vendors clashing with police ending in a barrage of tear gas with 26 arrests, seven thousand farmers marching on Guatemala City and forty eight thousand police and military in the streets marked the final days for 11 Guatemalan Presidential candidates to close their campaigns. Nobel Peace Prize Nominee for 2004 Frank La Rue, the executive director of the Center for Human Rights Legal Action paints the overall picture in Guatemala today describing the candidates and lack of choice that Guatemalans are faced with for today’s elections.
“There have been basically three contenders, Oscar Berger who represents the business sector and the business community who is not too entirely bright or impressive, Alvaro Colom who is a very strange character because in the past elections was a candidate for the left and for the URNG and he has moved to the right and is with military sectors, and finally we have Rios Montt. Now the crime of Genocide is the most horrendous crime you can imagine and Rios Montt is the symbol of genocide in this country. We have always said that Rios Montt has three issues as to why he should not become president: he has a legal problem because there is a constitutional prohibition, article 169 clearly establishes that no one who participated in a coup could become president, he has a moral obstacle which is the fact that he is responsible for the crime of genocide and a criminal of that nature can never represent a country and the people of that country, and thirdly he has a political problem because he is trying to impose his presidency his election by force, he’s trying to ram it through the throat of the Guatemalan people with violence.”
National and international observers are going to great lengths to assure transparency in the elections today. More than three thousand observers will be monitoring the elections today with hopes of limiting visible irregularities. Antonio Catalán, from the Guatemala and Washington DC based human rights organization, Rights in Action, one of 25 independent organizations including the Organization of American States, the UN Mission in Guatemala (MINUGA), and the Carter Center that will be observing the elections and monitoring the quick counts from voting polls around the country explains the importance of the participation of these observers
“The international observation is important in that in some ways it can guarantee that some people can vote, in the case of those that are most vulnerable because of the electoral violence that has been unleashed against them has been a whole process and we consider that it has been totally planned and has not been just at the last moment. As for the national level I think that this is the most important thing because we have to involve ourselves as a civil society, the organizations, and the participation of the youth is very good, their response to the electoral watch has been massive. Equally, the presence of the indigenous population to institute itself as an organization that we will be watching, not only as far as the count goes but also in the treatment of the indigenous population itself in the voting tables, is very important.”
Despite the high numbers of observers that have arrived to Guatemala, the real fraud is well under way to having an impact on today’s elections. A phenomenon has developed that guarantees a substantial participation of dead voters. Due to the high numbers of disappeared and massacred Guatemalans during the civil war that took the lives of more than 200,000 mainly indigenous and campesinos, political parties are benefiting from the lack of death certificates for these people. Hence the emergence and appearance of the dead that vote, people supporting in particular the FRG, Rios Montt’s Guatemalan Republican Front, that are using birth certificates of the dead to register and practice their vote, upping the total electorate in the country and having a substantial impact in rural and disputed areas.
Mrs. Pedrina Alvarado an Achi indigenous woman from the conflictive Rabinal community in Baja Verapaz, one of 27 hotspots sited for today, explains how Presidential candidate Rios Montt’s has unleashed electoral violence and the cooptation of votes to secure passing into the December 28th second round.
“They are giving away machetes, hoes, quilimbos and pioches but they don’t just give away presents without commitments, nor do they give them away just because the people are affiliated with the FRG, they are telling them that they have to pay with their vote, and they can’t vote for another party, that they have to vote for him. For example, they are giving grants to the children with parents that are affiliated with the party and they are threatening the rest of us, saying that they know who is against them and that little by little they will kill us.”
It would seem that much of Guatemala has lost its collective and historical memory, permitting Rios Montt, the brutal military dictator, responsible for the scorched earth policy in 1982, to become a serious contender in today’s elections. Raúl Eduardo Nájera, member of sons and daughters for the identity and justice against the forgotten and silence, HIJOS Guatemala, describes the significance of their work around the upcoming presidential elections.
“Our work as families and children of the disappeared, detained, tortured and assassinated at the hands of the military during the armed conflict is focused on sensitizing people about the participation of these personalities in the actual electoral process and also about the necessity to stop the multiplication of silence and fear. Our work focuses on the recuperation of the historical memory and our work is based in the struggle to prevent what happened in the past to repeat itself, and so, not converting ourselves into the assassins of the future generations.”
With two police officers and two soldiers on virtually every street corner of Guatemala City and more than 2000 unpaid ex-PAC, Civil Defense Patrol, members representing more than 500,000 ex-PAC throughout the country that have been promised checks of up to $800 usd in three installments, one prior to the elections and two post elections, the country maintains a tense calm. Frank La Rue explains the significance of the re-emergence of the civil defense patrols and what can be expected for the Guatemalan elections.
“The latest incidents were the civil defense patrols. We have denounced the patrols as an electoral maneuver. It is very important to mention that the international community has not wanted to recognize the seriousness of the threat to democracy that the patrols present or the seriousness of the threat to the elections. The patrols were officially disbanded in 1996 even before the peace was signed and they have now been recreated with the excuse of being paid an indemnization. We find that just the concept is absurd. These people were responsible for massacres for harassment for splitting the social fiber of the Mayan communities. They were basically repressive instruments of the military. The FRG wants to impose their candidate by force, not by a typical fraud, as I was saying not in the ballot count. What we should expect from today until the elections are acts of intimidation throughout the country. What they want to do is scare away the voters that are critical of their positions.”
General Efrain Rios Montt cast his ballot at 8:18am this morning, with slight difficulty in effectively placing the ballots in their correct boxes with the confusion of the press attention surrounding his vote. After voting, he plainly stated that should he not succeed in passing the first round, “I’ll have to vote for the party that follows me,” alluding to the UNE as there have been increasing accusations of collusion between UNE and the FRG.
Perhaps the most revealing example about the public perception of today’s elections is the add that the national Guatemalan paper Siglo Vientiuno, placed in this morning’s edition, portraying a ballot with just one word at the top in bold print “JUSTICE” two boxes below it, one reading “IN FAVOR OF” and the other reading “AGAINST.”