Murder, kidnapping, terror in Guatemala—eyewitness By ALISON ACKER - GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA — Saturday after- noon, June 21, 60 armed men in jeeps took over Ninth Avenue in Guatemala City, blocking off entry to Guatemala’s most valient union federation, the CNT or National Labor Central. Breaking and and firing machine guns, they kidnapped 27 union leaders and disappeared. None have been seen since. All this took place one block from the detectives’ head- quarters and two blocks from the Presidential Palace, where _ Several hundred soldiers are stationed. Some of the unionists’ cars were later discovered in the police garage. One of the few who escaped over the rooftop recognized the Guate- @ mala narcotics chief among the assailants. But, of course. nobody in the army of the police knew anything about thr raid. In fact, the police told reporters the official com- a and the weeping families of those who had dis- appeared. I had met some of them myself, people like Mario Cam- pos, a law student who had given up his studies to help workers fight restrictive labor legislation; people like Irma Perez, five-months pregnant, ~ and so y. = There were high school student union leaders among ‘those rounded up. There was a journa- list, whose newspaper, Prensa Libre, was too frightened to admit he had been kidnapped at the labor headquarters and reported he had been abducted on his way home. 5 Such is Guatemala, where 60,000 people have been killed by government repression since 1954 — a figure which towers above the number of victims of the 1976 earthquake, 23,000. Since January this year, roughly 1,000 people have been killed or kid- napped. I counted an average of nine murders and four disappear- ances in the city area every day, according to the right-wing news- papers, and there are repeated discoveries of unknown bodies in the countryside. But only now is international opinion starting to recognize Guatemala’s dictatorship for the army tyranny it is. Admittedly, it is hard for out- siders to realize what is really going on in Guatemala, since the army has been carrying out an ex- tensive propaganda campaign to show that the problem is merely ‘violence’, coming from right- and left-wing extremists, which the army and police are powerless tocontrol. That, of course, means they need more weapons, though plaints of kidnapping were merely an attempt to “cause problems for the authorities’. But I saw the blood on the stairs next day. I handled the machine gun shells. I saw the smashed desks and broken phone lines we know who the weapons are used against. Guatemala is a bitter joke. Archbishop Mario Casariego, prayed for a special blessing on the last consignment of police weapons sent from the United States, and called the 1976 earth- quake ‘‘the punishment of God for the sins of the Guatemalan people’’. Newspaper ads praise the army as ‘‘the defenders of the people” though napalm and gre- nades are used against innocent villages. Newspaper editorials de- nounce U.S. human rights ‘‘inter- ference’’ though everybody knows that the vigilante groups carrying out the murders and tor- ture were originally trained by U.S. Vietnam specialists and that the weapons they use are Miss Guatemala dresses in na- tive Indian costumes to lure more tourists, but the Indians them- selves have no land, no work, no education, no health facilities and no respect. Landless peasants are kept that way so they have to’ work as migrant labor on cotton, Sugar cane and coffee plantations six months of the year at $2 a day. So much pesticide is being used on these plantations that cattle are being moved to the north central area for safety, but the agricul- tural workers still work and die in the plantations as crop spraying planes buzz overhead. Touted as a tourist paradise — cheap, because of low wage — Guatemala is now being recog- nized for what it is: a military - dictatorship that is growing more desperate following the revolu- ~ tion in Nicaragua and the civil war in El Salvador. President Lucas Garcia is a mere figurehead. The* army owns the country and runs it. There is an army TV station, an army bank. The army controls thousands of acres and has in- vested heavily in mineral re- sources. There is one soldier for every 25 people, and the soldiers carry machetes, rope and the in- evitable machine gun. But it is the armed ‘‘civilians”’ who are the most frightening — the Secret Anti-Communist Army, the Eye for an Eye, the White Hand, etc. They are known to be organized by the army and police, and to include off-duty of- ficers in their raids. They shoot students within university grounds; they gun down union leaders at mid-day in crowded streets. They raid offices, lie in wait in parking jots, threaten the relatives of victims, operate open- ly, everywhere. _The day I visited CNT head- quarters, after the June 21 raid, a - Toyota jeep was at the curb when I came out and two thugs inside } shouted at me. The nearest one took my photograph. I moved fast into the crowd and was glad to be leaving Guatemala City two days later. I Had seen five men, two with machine guns and three with rifles, waiting at the street corner early one afternoon. The traffic cop called and greeted them, casually, for assassins are part of the scene and very useful. This way, Guatemala has no political prisoners and no murderers need ever be prosecuted. ~ a boycott of Guatemala tourism called for by the International Union of Food and Allied Work- ers, who are particularly con- cered because of labor repres- sion against the local bottling plant of Coca-Cola, where, suc- cessive union leaders have been murdered and where guerrillas at last killed the army major acting as personnel manager, during my month long stay in June. Tourism is certainly down, though from fear as much as from the boycott. I checked the number of guests in the palatial Hotel Sheraton, which has 185 rooms, and discovered two North Americans, that’s all. Markets.are complaining bitterly about the non-arrival of tourists, and so are the large hotels which sprouted in the post-earthquake construction boom that led to vast, empty gov- ernment buildings and little help for the poor who suffered most. For example, the city market has not been rebuilt, but the women trying to sell fruit on the Street are being moved off this month be- Cause they present ‘‘a bad image”. ~ The future for the people of Guatemala does not look bright. »y £8 , *y ee rreve ee os go pe NS 0 SS extinguish the democratic gov- Pas ye, t ii eer ALA »& Se a + PI UNDP Guatemala’s army is already help- ing its friends in El Salvador, and is determined its own country will | not follow the example of Nicar- gua. Horrors, like the burning to death of the peasants who took over the Spanish Embassy last January, have not yet sufficiently | enraged world sympathy. The | University of San Lucus will probably be closed. down next fall, and unions are battling in- creasing waves of murders. All this takes place in a land with enough and to spare: cotton, coffee, bananas, sugar cane, chewing gum, spices, nickel, oil, copper, cattle. While only one per cent of the population owns 80% | of the land, most of Guatemala starves. With a revolution, it could feed its neighbors, too. De- sire for a revolution is strong, but so are the memories of 1954, when American marines helped ernment of Jacobo Arbenz.. Their hopes and fears rest largely on what part North America might play in their destiny this time. Will Central America be another Viet- nam? This next year we will find out. The blood in Guatemala is already there, in the streets. “ Murder and torture have led to PACIFIC TRIBUNE—JULY 18, 1980—Page 6 / eo | am enclosing: 1 year $10) 2 years $18 1 Old= Newt Donation $ J PostaliCoder sae 58s a, _ Published weekly at Suite 101 — 1416 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, B.C. V5L 3X9. Phone 251-1186 Read the paper that fights for labor FEIN NON AN NS 6 months $6 ~ Foreign 1 year $12 [. SIN AT NEA SRE RGR ATR GRRE AGA ONE