Canada

-Nineth de Garcia (I) and Blanca Rosa Quiroa de Hernandez lost a husband and a son

death squads. Their search for the relatives resulted in the human rights organization,

respectively to Guatemala’s military-linked
GAM.

Guatemalan disappeared dramatize
worsening abuse of human rights

The two Guatemalan women acknow-
ledge that the path they’ve chosen is fraught
with danger.

‘Dangerous? Yes, but it’s necessary,”

says Blanca Rosa Quiroa de Hernandez of
the Guatemala’s Grupu de Apoyo Mutuo
(GAM), or Mutual Support Group for Fam-
ilies of the Disappeared.
_. She, and GAM president and co-founder
Nineth de Garcia see no other way in fight-
ing for human rights in the Central American
nation where a U.S.-backed military calls
the shots. Both women have suffered the
disappearance of loved ones, a lamentably
common occurrence in a country where mil-
itary-linked death squads roam at will.

“Women were going to morgues looking
anywhere they could to find the bodies of
their relatives, and from their individual pain
they put together a collective,” Garcia re-
lates.

“So (after that) they weren’t just looking
for their own relatives, but for anybody who
had disappeared.”

_ Hernandez and Garcia have been touring
“Canada, meeting with External Affairs Min-
*ister Joe Clark, other MPs and human rights
tgroups. The tour is sponsored locally by the
Inter-Agency Committee on Central Amer-
‘ica, comprising several human rights and
‘international solidarity organizations.

The two women founded their group
-after the disappearance of Garcia’s husband
in 1984.

Fernando Garcia was 25 when he failed
to come home from work one day in 1984.
A student and trade unionist with CAVISA,
the glass workers union, he has not been
seen since.

Nineth began the search for Fernando
accompanied by Hernandez, a friend whose
‘son had been abducted earlier. The support
made things easier, and the idea of an or-
ganized group for relatives of the disap-
peared — along the lines of groups in other
Latin American countries — seemed a
natural follow-up.

And, of course, dangerous. Last year,
someone tossed a grenade into GAM’s of-
fices. Garcia has received several death
threats, against her and her daughter, and her
mother’s house was shot up last June.

“We were scared, but no one was hurt.
Then, of course, you’re left to deal with the
anguish (of such attacks),” Hernandez re-
lates.

On Oct. 6, GAM member Sebastian

‘The waves of
violence intensify
whenever the
popular movement
gets itself together.’
—Nineth de Garcia

EE eS TS

Velasquez Mejia was kidnapped. The family
has since taken refuge in the group’s office,
says Garcia.

Guatemala lost its democratically elected
government when the CIA staged a coup in
1954, largely on behalf of transnational cor-
porations like the United Fruit Company
whose monopolies were threatened by the
reform minded government of the day.

Today, “two per cent of the population
owns 70 per cent of the fertile land,” Garcia
relates.

The other 30 per cent is worked by the
rest of the people, mainly in the mountain-
ous country’s highlands. The highlands are
also where Guatemala’s united opposition
forces wage their liberation war against the
army.

Perhaps for that reason, “the greatest rep-
resentation of the disappeared are peasants,”
Hernandez says. “Which isn’t to say that
intellectuals, students and trade unionists
aren’t also disappearing — they are.”

Garcia’s husband disappeared during the
rule of Mejia Victores, one in a seemingly
endless line of military rulers (although
Guatemala now has a nominally civilian
government). “Popular movements were in
dire straits at the time,” she relates.

The year marked the last in a pattern of
escalating human rights abuses. The
“waves” of violence intensify “whenever
the popular movement gets itself together,”
Garcia says.

Lately the united opposition has grown
in ‘strength, and human rights violations
have increased since 1989. Monitoring or-
ganizations report 40,000 disappearances in
the last decade, with 100,000 deaths and 440

villages totally destroyed between 1979 and
1984.

When someone disappears, GAM mem-
bers follow “all the legal processes,” says
Hemandez. They report the incident to the
public prosecutor, and follow some disap-
pearances with public demonstrations, press
conferences and messages to international
support organizations.

But the legal route seldom leads any-
where. When GAM reported the shooting up
of Garcia’s mother’s house, the minister of
information — a position akin to secretary
of state, or internal affairs — responded that
the incident was the result of a family fight.

Garcia acknowledges that a country in
which the military still rules has a long way
to go before human rights violations end and
democracy triumphs.

“The ideal solution would be for the mili-
tary to stop being a political and economic
power, and just be another military.” And
that the countryside, patrolled by military
controlled “civilian patrols,” be demilitar-
ized.

“There is a little glimmer of hope from
the national dialogues,” says Garcia, refer-
ring to the ongoing talks between the gov-
emment and leaders of the united opposi-
tion. “But unfortunately, the military has
shown complete lack of interest.”

The dialogue shows splits in Guat-
emala’s ruling circles, with some elements
more reform-minded than others, Garcia
says. But in the current climate, GAM and
the popular movements see little salvation in
upcoming national elections, in which none
of the contesting parties has a human rights
platform.

U.S. influence is not as straightforward
as it was during the coup days. But undoub-
tedly Washington will make its influence felt
in the elections, she notes.

“We're inscribed in the U.S. plan to in-
stall ‘democratic’ governments in all Central
and Latin America,” Garcia remarks ironi-
cally.

The Canadian tour is part of an effort to
build solidarity and help people in dev-
eloped countries understand “the agony of
having a family member disappear,” she
relates.

“People shouldn’t think of the disap-
peared as just a number. They are human
beings.”

Ul changes
shift funds,
cut benefits

Continued from page 1
the federal clawback on family allowances
and federal old age pensions as well as the
bill authorizing development of the Hibermia
oil project.

Behind the deal was an effort by the
Liberal senators to limit the bills held up by
the Senate so as not to give the appearance
that there was an impasse between Parlia-
ment and the Senate. Mulroney had claimed
there was such an impasse in invoking a
never-before used provision of the 1867
British North America Act to appoint the
additional Tory senators.

With Bill C-21 now passed, the govern-
ment will proceed to shift $800 million in UI
funds to re-training programs and increase
entrance requirements for UI benefits for
thousands of workers. The changes will fun-
damentally alter one of Canada’s key social
programs, forcing many workers who once
could qualify for benefits on to provincial
welfare programs and taking UI premiums
paid by workers and using them to subsidize
the private sector for re-training.

That re-structuring, seen as “harmoniz-
ing” under free trade with inferior UI
schemes in the U.S., prompted widespread
opposition to the bill from groups ranging
from the Canadian Labour Congress to the
Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Dyer to speak
on Mid-East

The warning by Extemal Affairs Minister
Joe Clark that Canada would be prepared to
use military force against Iraq even without
UN sanction has given to new urgency toa
special public meeting on the Gulf crisis
called by End the Arms Race for Nov. 2.

The meeting, featuring well-known mili-
tary analyst Gwynne Dyer and Bernard
Wood, chief executive officer of the Can-
adian Institute for International Peace and
Security, was prompted by fears among

Ay peace activists that -

Canada could be
drawn into an open
confrontation in the
Middle East. Dyer is
among a number of
military experts who
have warned that war
could break out with-
in weeks unless initia-
ARKIN tives are taken to-
wards a negotiated solution — a warning
that was given substance with Clark’s com-
ments last week.

Set for Friday, Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m. in the
Robson Square Media Centre, the meeting
will also kick off EAR’s conference on
peace and disarmament issues, set for Nov.
3 and 4.

Other leading figures, including William
Arkin, Greenpeace U.S.A. director for nuc-
lear information, and David Jackman, re-
searcher for Project Ploughshares are also
expected to touch on the Mid-East crisis
during the two-day conference, the fifth an-
nual meeting sponsored by EAR.

Admission to Friday’s public meeting is
$7 and $5 for students and seniors.

Pacific Tribune, October 29, 1990 «3