Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in Guatemala

Jim Handy

From 1944 to 1954 the Guatemalan "revolution" followed a course

of political, economic, and social reform. The popular organizations
that blossomed under the sunny skies of the "ten years of spring"
withered when confronted by the chilling blasts of government
repression in the following decades. Any attempt at rejuvenating
popular organizations was met with violence.
However, by the mid-1970s, the voices demanding fundamental
change in Guatemalan society and economy were too incessant to
be easily quieted. During the 1970s and early 1980s these voices
became increasingly powerful. A number of organizations developed
to help to strengthen them: Catholic Action, cooperatives, new
popular organizations, and finally revolutionary armies with substan-
tial Indian and peasant support.
The government and the military responded with increasing levels
of repression. Violence was first directed at the leaders of local
autonomous organizations in the countryside. This limited and
almost sporadic terror in most instances only served to heighten
peasant and Indian opposition to the government. Finally, following
a military coup which overthrew one group of ruling officers and
replaced them with another, the government counter-insurgency
became more systematic, more brutal, and more effective.
Through much of 1982 and early 1983, the military attempted to
reform highland village society. By forcing the peasantry into
military-controlled towns, enforcing a military monopoly over all
services in the highland region, and establishing a rural militia
closely monitored by the army, the military sought to ensure its
dominance in the region and to prevent peasants from supporting
the guerrilla forces. It was, in most respects, a successful campaign.
Only after the short-term success of this operation had been
proven, after the military had effective control of most of highland
Guatemala and had seriously weakened the guerrilla forces fighting
it, did it begin to pay serious attention to the process of democracy
and elections on a national level. It allowed relatively non-violent
elections for a constituent assembly to be held in 1984 and an elected
civilian president to come to power early in 1986. The transfer of

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© Macmillan Publishers Limited 1989
 Jim Handy 113

"power" from a military to civilian head of government was

accompanied by clear warnings that the highlands were the military's
special preserve. They remain so.
This chapter traces the rise of popular organizations in highland
Guatemala and their increasing support for the revolutionary
organizations operating there. It details the attempts by the military,
first, to incapacitate and then to destroy these organizations since
the mid-l970s. There follows a short assessment of current
civilian/military political dynamics in Guatemala and the continuing
importance which protest in highland Guatemala holds in that
dynamic.

Catholic Action

The roots of the popular organizations that developed in rural

Guatemala in the 1970s stretch far back in Guatemalan history.
During the colonial period, a shortage of priests ensured that Indian
communities, while adopting Christian teachings, infused their
religion with pre-Christian native practices. This resulted in a
peculiar blend of native/Catholic syncretism and a native religious
hierarchy that dominated village politics and mediated between the
village and localladinos (non-Indians).
During the "ten years of spring", the church hierarchy searched
for a means of consolidating its position in these villages in the face
of government-supported peasant leagues and popular political
parties. The process chosen by Archbishop Mariano Rossell Arellano
was a form of religious purification known as Catholic Action.
Started in 1946, Catholic Action was meant to augment the
position of priests in the villages with a concerted attack on local
native religious "impurities". However, it was designed primarily
as a means of combating government reforms which the church saw
as communist. As Rossell expressed it, "Our small Catholic Action
was one of the greatest comforts in those hours of enormous distress
in the presence of Marxist advance that invaded everything." 1
Rossell proposed to forestall Indian protest by encouraging the
feeling of "Christian resignation" among the poor. The church, and
more specifically Catholic Action, were important in heightening
unrest in village communities and strengthening opposition to the
Arbenz government in the years leading to its overthrow in 1954. 2
After the coup, the church hierarchy no longer felt compelled to
combat the strength of government-inspired reform. However, in