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Latin American Perspectives

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X9902600205 1999; 26; 92 Latin American Perspectives

Jennifer Schirmer Peace?

The Guatemalan Politico-Military Project: Legacies for a Violent

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92

The Guatemalan Politico-Military Project

Legacies for a Violent Peace?by

Jennifer Schirmer

Jennifer Schirmer is a lecturer on social studies and a program associate at the Weatherhead Cen-

ter for International Affairs at Harvard University. Her numerous publications on the Guatema-lan military include her book The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) and "The Looting of Democratic Dis-course by the Guatemalan Military: Implications for Human Rights," in E. Jelin and E.Hershberg (eds.), Constructing Democracy: Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society in LatinAmerica. Early research for this article was funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthurFoundation. Support for the more recent interviews and research in 1997 and 1998 was gener-ously provided by the United States Institute of Peace. This article was originally written for theconference "Coercion, Violence, and Rights in the Americas," held at the New School for SocialResearch on April 16-17, 1998, and organized by the New School’s Janey Program for LatinAmerican Studies and the Sawyer Seminar on the Military, Politics, and Society, funded by theAndrew W. Mellon Foundation. Other contributions to the conference will appear in a specialissue of Latin American Perspectives later this year.

Our strategic goal has been to reverse Clausewitz’s philosophy of war to statethat in Guatemala, politics must be the continuation of war. But that does notmean that we are abandoning war; we are fighting it from a much broader hori-zon within a democratic framework. We may be renovating our methods ofwarfare, but we are not abandoning them.... We are continuing our [counterin-surgency] operations [against] international subversion because the Constitu-tion demands it.

—General Hector Alejandro Gramajo (1987)

Human rights, peace processes, and truth commissions have become stan-dard elements in the international community’s discourse of accountabilityfor societies in transition from war to peace. However, the prevention offuture human rights violations and potential nationwide conflict requires thereformation of the state’s repressive apparatuses-a task not easily achievedwith the international instruments at hand. Despite advances in internationaloversight of state violence, most notably by United Nations-directed peaceprocesses in Central America, there is reason to be wary of the influence that

long-entrenched state apparatuses and the concepts of security that guidethem have on the conditions for peace and democracy. Challenged by peaceprocesses and human rights accounting, many of the militaries of Latin



93

America, intravenously fed on counterinsurgency doctrine since the 1960s,have been compelled to revise the internal defense rationale for their doctrineand actions.

After decades of naked military rule and with the 1982 coup, the Guate-malan military set in motion a politico-military project that has learned toloot the vocabulary of human rights and democracy for the purpose of craft-ing a unique state of civil-military cogovernance (see Schirmer, 1998). Withthe UN-directed peace process and the Commission for Historical Clarifica-tion under way in the late 1990s, hopes for the military’s compliance with theaccords and collaboration with the commission have been high. Today themilitary utilizes a vocabulary of &dquo;strategic peace&dquo; by insisting on its intentionto comply with the peace accords while relying on the civilian government’spanic over public order and security to justify its continued control over inter-nal defense and intelligence matters.

The Guatemalan politico-military project thus forces us to rethink the tra-ditional questions about a military’s accommodation to civilian rule andinternational pressures for truth and justice. To what extent is demilitariza-tion accomplished when a military &dquo;prepares the environment&dquo; for electionsby way of massacre and &dquo;pacification&dquo; and embeds state security in both theconstitution and the presidency, with few protections for human rights? It isnot a question, as we shall see, of when the military can be made to return tothe barracks, retreat from power, or even be made accountable to civilian rulebut rather one of the extent to which it has been able to merge civil and mili-

tary relations and to adopt the vocabulary of human rights and democracywith the full collaboration of civilian presidents. In addition, it raises thelarger question for many of these fragile democracies of which institution, inthe end, is being strengthened by democratic processes. Concomitantly, weneed to ask whether peace processes and truth commissions have changedattitudes and practices (or at least inspired debate) within Latin Americanmilitaries to the point that the moral politics of nunca mas demanded by thehuman rights community (Garreton, 1996) is viewed as necessary to stave offfuture political violence or whether they have further marginalized and alien-ated military institutions from democratizing efforts. Moreover, we need toconsider whether to read internal &dquo;technical coups&dquo; within the armed forcesonce the peace process is under way as a sign of the unstable identity of themilitary under the new circumstances or of an ideological split among offi-cers with regard to compliance with the accords, or both. Focusing on Guate-mala, this article attempts to answer some of these questions.

I will first describe the looting that occurred during the establishment ofthis peculiarly collaborationist politico-military project in the 1980s on thebasis of &dquo;humanitarian repression.&dquo; I will then turn to the military’s use of the



94

vocabulary of law and constitutional mandate that serves as the underpinningfor internal defense, including the redeployment of forces for public orderpurposes throughout the peace talks in the 1990s. Finally, I will discuss thepossible implications of the Noack case of July 1998 for potential attitudinalshifts or lack thereof within the army after the technical coup of the high com-mand in July 1997.

THE POLITICO-MILITARY PROJECT 1982-1993

With the March 1982 military coup, the army initiated a politico-militaryproject that began with massacres and ended, by 1985, with civilian presiden-tial elections. The initial campaigns focused on the violent destruction of thesocial fabric at the local level; in 18 months, 446 villages were razed, an esti-mated 50,000 to 75,000 people were massacred, and more than a quarter ofthe rural indigenous population was displaced. Permanent counterinsur-gency structures were established during this period (see Black, 1984; Agui-lera Peralta, 1988; Torres-Rivas, 1989; Jonas, 1991; Schirmer, 1998). Thecoup established a unique form of constitutionalist state, one that consoli-dated the existing military structure institutionally while utilizing thevocabulary of democracy and human rights. Having generated an alternativeway to conduct a war to gain the hearts, minds, and stomachs of the indige-nous population through the creation of &dquo;civil patrols&dquo; and &dquo;poles of develop-ment,&dquo; the army by the late 1980s was postulating a post-cold war substitutefor the doctrine of low-intensity conflict pursued throughout much of the pre-vious decade. As outlined in General Hector Alejandro Gramajo’s 1989 The-sis of National Stability, this strategy acknowledges the 1985 Constitution(which accompanied the return to nominally civilian government) whiledelegating the role of guardian of national interests to the army; the missionof the latter is to preserve equilibrium when the state is endangered by &dquo;oppo-nents of the state&dquo; or by a power vacuum (referred to as &dquo;vulnerabilities&dquo;) cre-ated by inept civilian politicians.

This new strategy was a shift away from the static, U.S.-imposed Vietnam-style model of occupation and the implementation of a more integrated,&dquo;more humanitarian,&dquo; approach known as the 30/70 program. As GeneralGramajo, one of the key architects of the policy, explained (Schirmer,1991 ),

Rather than killing 100 percent, we provided food for 70 percent [of war refu-gees] while killing 30 percent. Before, the doctrine was [to kill] 100 percent....We aren’t going to return to the killing zones [matazonas], we aren’t going toreturn to that.



95

This 30/70 formula is metaphorical: it is the army’s calculation of theeffort needed for a &dquo;more humanitarian&dquo; campaign and one that continues tooperate during the &dquo;democratic transition&dquo; of what many officers calculate tobe the next 20 to 25 years. Within this schema, the beans are to be providedonly in relation to the bullets in the establishment of a democracy premisedon security concerns. In its apparent attempt to erase the contradictionbetween two competing worldviews-one based on counterinsurgency andthe other on democracy and human rights-the project constitutes, as onecolonel pointed out, a &dquo;mixed solution.&dquo; It is a division of labor between asecurity apparatus kept intact to preserve military prerogatives and a civilianadministration set up to handle foreign affairs and &dquo;the human rights prob-lem.&dquo; &dquo;War&dquo; is extended beyond the strictly military realm in a reversal ofClausewitz in which politics is the continuation of war. In addition to thisexpansive and politicized counterinsurgency to provide justification for serv-ing as guarantors of the state is the military’s constitutional mandate. Gra-majo told an army forum on counterinsurgency in 1987, &dquo;We are continuingour [counterinsurgency] operations [against] international subversionbecause the Constitution demands it.&dquo;

THE MILITARY’S VIEW OF LAW

Shaped by a series of mutual concessions between the army and the domi-nant class, the 1985 Constitution includes provisions approving all decree-laws issued by the military government between 1982 and 1986 to establishcounterinsurgency structures, and just four days before the inauguration ofthe new civilian president, Vinicio Cerezo, an amnesty was decreed for thearmy’s past crimes. This use of traditional constitutional and legislativestructures to confront dangers to public order led one Guatemalan lawyer tolabel the military project &dquo;counterinsurgent constitutionalism.&dquo; As ColonelManuel de Jesus Gir6n Tanchez, the author of the decree-laws, stated in a1986 interview,

Transitory Article 16 puts into force all those decree-laws as emitted by theChief of State [Mejia Victores] because one could not place Congress in fullcharge [of the State]. It was well understood that... [the 16 decree-laws] wereto be left in force. For that reason, [the National Plan] says to restructure [thejuridical order] because it tries to give a different form to the constitutionalnorm.... [Security] is immersed within the new Constitution.... It is anattempt to create an alignment of a state of law with security.



96

When asked why the decree-laws were passed so quickly, Gir6n Tanchezresponded,

It’s very simple. The legislative houses are often very slow in emitting laws....What would have happened if we had gone through Congress? The cumber-some, boring process of having to discuss [these issues]. For this reason, wedidn’t use the legislative faculties to pass the laws.

Within this hurried and self-referential universe of law-sans-public, onlyhalf of the juridical norms of human rights within a nineteenth-century imageof law are fulfilled, while the twentieth-century principle of consent (i.e., thesocially approved use of force as the distinguishing element of law) on whichthe philosophy of human rights is based is blatantly ignored. Rather, rightsare defined as socially and legally bounded norms of conformity for securitypurposes. They become &dquo;securitized,&dquo; constantly subject to qualification anddenial whenever they are deemed to be in conflict with the security interestsof the state. Securitized law represents not only state power but state mission(Damaska, 1986: 52): forcing obedience, compliance, and sanctions againstthose the state deems must not escape from its boundaries.

The notion of boundaries is very important to this view of rights. WhenGir6n Tanchez was asked about his oft-used phrase &dquo;within a legal bound-ary,&dquo; he replied,

One uses this phrase both in a juridical and a literal sense. A legal standard is aconjunction of norms of the greatest hierarchy-in this case, the Constitution.It is the marco legal within which all juridical and political activities occur.Within this boundary one cannot escape; one cannot move outside of it pre-cisely because it is a boundary, isn’t that so? It is a boundary.

Q: For that reason, one speaks of both legality and security, with securitymeaning one may not transgress those boundaries?

Clearly, one may not go outside it and that is juridical security; it is one ofthose essential pacts. You can be certain that no one will escape from theboundaries the Constitution establishes. Perhaps one leaves the boundaries.There lies the sanction, the sanction of penal order, the penal sanction for civildisorder. Well, [in that case] you’re finished.

Thus, within this mental universe, the perception of the rule of law is basedon a Hobbesian vision of the world in which law is important only when it isactually or potentially disobeyed. Emphasis is on the law as sanction ratherthan as a system of rules. Rights are perceived not as inherent but as grantedonly conditionally by the state. Determined to force compliance with thenorms that &dquo;the public&dquo; has institutionalized, the military considers it notenough to will the governed to obey; they must face the prospect of sanctions



97

being imposed through legalized force. Obedience is demanded of the gov-erned in the guise of obligations and duties, while the governors stand at oncewithin, above, and (occasionally) outside the law in order to preserve it.

The military sees itself as the only institution capable of &dquo;harmonizing&dquo;the legal system to meet security needs, as Giron-Tanchez points out:

Somebody had to emit the laws, somebody had to establish a regime of legalityin the country. [He laughs.] Because who else could have created it but us?Who else in the structure? They had to depend upon us. If we had not created it,nobody could have. [He laughs again.] Clearly, I feel the civilians are not quali-fied. [They] lack the feel for organization and order and discipline. Do youbelieve that in a modem state the army in some form does not participate inpolitics? It is inevitable. The essence of the politics of the army revolves aroundthe fact that the army doesn’t vote. But within the general politics of the state,as regards the entity of the state itself, the army is obviously actively participat-ing in politics. It is impossible for us not to participate.

Thus, the military views itself as simultaneously above and within the law. Tooperate &dquo;within the law&dquo; accomplishes a separation, at least rhetorically,between the legal coercion of the state-as-sovereign and the space outside thelaw occupied by opponents of the state, who &dquo;will try to participate in thelegal arena with attitudes and proposals that favor illegality&dquo; (Gramajo, 1989:51-52). This interpretation reinforces the idea that unjustifiable violenceoccurs only outside state structures and conversely that violence by the stateto defend itself is mandated and thus justifiable. Defensive, preventive mea-sures are collapsed into offensive, strategic ones, and the more effective thesecurity apparatus is in defining the boundaries of legal action, the more rea-sonable it will appear in defining and isolating those unwilling to conform asoutside the law while the military, by definition, is within it.

For the military, then, law is not defined in terms of measurable juridicalprocedures and boundaries but placed squarely in the world of uncontem-plated, imputed criminality of the remote future in which individuals areguilty of what they have not yet done and must be punished for what theymight yet do (Shklar, 1964: 214). Such a preemptive strategy not only makeseveryone suspect but also provides officers with a basis for justifying theiractions. Ultimately, this theory of punishment has more to do with provisionof a legal facade for elimination tactics than with concern for establishingjuridical boundaries and protecting human rights (Schirmer, 1996a).

Gramajo has stated repeatedly that the capacity of the army-the institu-tion that planned and executed the apertura-to dedicate itself to maintain-ing peace is mandated in the 1985 constitution. In his 1987 army forum lec-ture he said,



98

The army of Guatemala is participating actively in strengthening the demo-cratic system [and] is pledged to maintain all military action as a basis fornational stability. And we are pledged to maintain the constitutional order as aprincipal factor by which to achieve that national stability.

Here, Gramajo is referring to the Constitutive Law of the Army, repeated inArticle 244 of the 1985 Constitution. (Gir6n Tanchez confessed in an inter-view that the reason this law was repeated was to keep it from being repealedby Congress.) What precisely does this &dquo;constitutional mandate&dquo; amount to ifthe constitution itself is seen, as one civil-affairs colonel put it, as &dquo;the reposi-tory of the coercive force of the state&dquo; and as allowing any counterinsurgencymaneuver deemed necessary? How does the military think of law in relationto military operations? &dquo;We [the army] are what give laws their force,&dquo; hesaid. Law in this instance is operative, providing the military legal entitle-ment to force compliance even to the point of physical injury or death, mak-ing law part and parcel of the operations that provide security. The salience oflaw here is what one can do with it, how it can be used to carry out operationsagainst opponents, and how power can be consolidated in its name.

Implementation of this strategy has enabled the Guatemalan army to acton the basis of a constitutional and democratic calculus. From this brief over-view of the army’s view of law, we can begin to understand how it is that thefinal battle of the peace accords lies in constitutional reform of the army’sconstitutive law of internal defense. Without such constitutional reform, theinstitutionalization of the army’s hegemony prevails.

THE PEACE ACCORDS

The September 1996 Accord on the Strengthening of Civilian Power andthe Role of the Army in a Democratic Society, part of the peace accords latersigned on December 29, 1996, requires the army to agree to the followingconstitutional reforms (Ej6rcito de Guatemala, 1996c):

Article 244, Constitution, organization, and functions of the arrrced forces.The last sentence in italics will serve as a replacement: &dquo;The Guatemalanarmed forces are a permanent institution in the service of the nation. They areunique and indivisible, essentially professional, apolitical, loyal and non-deliberative. Their functaon is to protect the sovereignty of the state and itsterritorial integrity.&dquo;

Article 246, Duties and powers of the president over the armed forces. Thefirst paragraph will be replaced with the following: &dquo;The president of therepublic is the commander in chief of the armed forces and shall issue his



99

orders through the minister of defense, whether he is a civilian or a member ofthe military.&dquo;

Article 219, Military courts. &dquo;The military courts shall take cognizance ofthe crimes and misdemeanors specified in the military code and in the corre-sponding regulations. Ordinary crimes and misdemeanors committed bymilitary personnel shall be tried and judged by the ordinary courts. No civil-ian may be judged by military courts.&dquo;

Article 183, Functions of the President of the Republic. The following willbe added:

When the ordinary means for the maintenance of public order and domesticpeace are exhausted, the President of the Republic may make exceptional useof the armed forces for this purpose. The deployment of the armed forces shallalways be temporary, shall be conducted under civilian authority and shall notinvolve any limitation on the exercise of the constitutional rights of citizens. Inorder to take these exceptional measures, the President of the Republic shallissue an agreement to that end. The operations of the armed forces shall be lim-ited to the time and modalities which are strictly necessary, and shall end assoon as the purpose has been achieved. The President of the Republic shallkeep Congress informed about the operations of the armed forces, and Con-gress may at any time decide that such operations should cease. At all events,within 15 days of the end of such operations, the President of the Republic shallsubmit to Congress a detailed report on the operations of the armed forces.

Unfortunately, the constitutional reforms have become enmeshed in politicalparty battles in connection with the 1999 presidential elections. The party offormer coup leader General Efrain Rios Montt, the Frente Republicano Gua-temalteco (Guatemalan Republican Front-FRG), which holds a majority ofseats in the Congress, for example, has refused to cooperate on passing any ofthese reforms without the revision of Article 186,1 which prohibits coup lead-ers or any of their relatives to the &dquo;fourth degree of consanguinity and seconddegree of affinity&dquo; from running for president. To make things more compli-cated, Article 183 cannot be revised until Article 281 (among those articlesthat cannot be modified under any circumstances) is itself revised.

Of all of these constitutional reforms, the most significant for the army,clearly, is the change in the function of the armed forces. According to oneofficer in the Defense Ministry (interview, April 1998),

The Army is divided now not on political matters but on the elemental crisis ofidentity. In this transition from war to peace, obviously after having fought anenemy, we are now spread out everywhere [as policemen in the fight againstcrime] and we figure here as well in the political scene, and suddenly, there arepeople who say, &dquo;Look, you guys are doing your job very well.&dquo; All of these



100

kinds of pressures.... But above all, the fact that the Army will have nothing todo with internal security which the Accords are obligating us [to drop], just likeany other armed forces, implies a reformulation of everything [the Army hasstood for]. It is now a concept that has been abandoned. That presents a prob-lem of identity, and has become an internal crisis.

The other changes within the military demanded by the peace accordsinclude the incremental reduction of the military’s budget 11 percent, 22 per-cent, and 33 percent in relation to the gross domestic product by 1999. Theaccords also call for the armed forces to reduce and reorganize its forces by33 percent to a final force of 33,607 and to close at least six bases by the end of1997. The army’s compliance has been uneven, at best, especially since theJuly 1997 changes in the high command . Only 2 out of 23 military zoneshave been closed, 8 new detachments have reopened, and 6 new ones havebeen established. This lack of compliance is justified by the military in termsof necessary measures for public security against a &dquo;peacetime crime wave.&dquo;Indeed, the decision to order the armed forces to take part in operations tocombat organized crime involved, according to the Misi6n de las NacionesUnidas en Guatemala (MINUGUA’s) February 1998 report on the army’scompliance, the deployment of military squads to facilities in military zonesthat had been closed down in conformity with the peace accords ( 1998: 12).

The peace accords clearly reiterate, by way of the reform of Article 244,that the army be limited to defending the constitution and providing externaldefense. This means dismantling such counterinsurgent security forces as (1)the network of 33,000 military commissioners first established in the 1960sand decreed dismantled by President de Le6n Carpio in September 1995(there is no mention of disarming the commissioners), (2) the civil self-defensepatrols, and (3) the mobile military police forces (both the elite-trained PMAordinaria and the untrained PMA extraordinaria) stationed throughout thecountry (as with the commissioners, there is no mention of their disarma-ment). However, 1996 and 1997 army documents contradict these agree-ments. One March 1996 document, for example, calls for &dquo;maintaining rela-tions with the personnel of the demobilized military commissioners with theobjective of organizing some type of group to be allied with the army in orderto develop all kinds of activities that promote the integration of this personneland its unrestricted support of the armed institution&dquo; (Ejercito de Guatemala,1996a: Anexo B, 7-8). The lack of mention of disarmament of the commis-sioners in the September 1996 agreement is therefore very significant.Moreover, as noted in the 1995 and 1996 MINUGUA reports, civil patrols arebeing converted into other kinds of groups, with the intelligence web appar-ently shifting from officially recognized groupings to unofficial ones.



101

This maintenance of military and social intelligence networks in the coun-tryside is especially worrisome in the rural areas, where civil affairs unitsmaintain &dquo;a close relationship with the rural population,&dquo; as officers proudlypoint out, apparently oblivious of the way in which this presence contradictsthe &dquo; strictly external defense&dquo; clause of the agreement. The longer the armyremains in these areas, the greater the potential for repressive action.

In addition, army documents continue to reflect the military’s threat men-tality. The National Defense Staff’s National Strategic Analysis for 1996, forexample, speaks of &dquo;eliminating and/or neutralizing adverse factors for theGuatemalan state,&dquo; including &dquo;the repatriated,&dquo; whose poor living conditionsallow them to &dquo;maintain their connection to terrorist groups, providinghuman resources and materials for their survival, and from there the logic isto continue organizing groups to reestablish themselves in the areas of armedskirmishes.&dquo; Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are seen, moreover, as&dquo;supporting the cause of the armed opponent in the areas of armed skir-mishes&dquo; and &dquo;supporting the absence of governmental authorities in areas ofresettlement&dquo; (Ej6rcito de Guatemala, 1996a: 79, 99). Other adverse factorsfrom the army’s perspective include the emergence of a Pan-Mayan move-ment that &dquo;for the next five to six years will be run only by Mayan intellectu-als and academics.&dquo; One officer in the Defense Ministry told me in 1996 thatif this movement were to &dquo;succeed in resolving the differences within theMayan community and creating the conditions for leadership, it could formthe basis for a new political party in the twenty-first century.&dquo; Other officersvoiced concerns that the Pan-Mayan movement could easily be taken over byformer guerrilleros being reincorporated into political life with the peaceaccords: &dquo;Now, everyone’s Mayan, or ethnic, or whatever they call them-selves,&dquo; an officer in the public affairs office stated. Apparently, the assump-tions underlying these categories continue to form part of the military’s newarsenal of subjugation for the 1990s and beyond.

What are the prospects for reducing military power and establishing civil-ian oversight? To what extent is the notorious military intelligence beingbrought under civilian control and held accountable for its operations? Arestructuring of intelligence has indeed begun to take place, but it, too, needsto be understood in the context of public security concerns.

The accords seek to establish greater civilian input into and oversight ofintelligence activities through three civilian bodies (a presidential secretariat,a ministerial department, and a congressional commission). The civilian gov-ernment also &dquo;assumes the right to prevent the rise of networks or groups thatare not part of the above intelligence and analysis units.&dquo; The civilian intelli-gence and information analysis unit that was slated to be created within theInterior Ministry &dquo;to combat organized crime and common delinquency&dquo; by



102

means of a civilian national police force has, as of this writing, yet to be estab-lished. Moreover, the degree of independence of the police from the army hasbeen seriously weakened in the subsequent legislation on the military’s rolein a democracy. In addition, a Secretariat of Strategic Affairs, with three mili-tary advisers, serves to &dquo;inform and advise the president regarding the antici-pation, prevention and resolution of situations of risk or threats of a distinctnature for the democratic state.&dquo; All three organisms-military intelligence,civilian intelligence, and the Secretariat-&dquo;will strictly respect the separationof functions of intelligence and operations.&dquo;

Nonetheless, when &dquo;the ordinary means of maintaining internal peace&dquo;are inadequate, Presidential Accord 90-96 of March 1996-which, as wehave seen, is reflected in the constitutional reform of Article 183-officiallyestablished a direct link between the Secretariat, the Interior Ministry (withits Anti-Kidnapping Commando, now operating directly from the chief ofstaff’s office), and military intelligence &dquo;in order to combat organized crimeand common delinquency.&dquo; &dquo;In the future,&dquo; one intelligence colonelremarked, &dquo;we will be regularly lent out to the civilian intelligence service asadvisers, just as FBI and CIA agents are lent out to the U.S. Army and Ger-man army intelligence officers to the German government.&dquo; Here we see thelegacy of the politico-military project of cogovernance, in this instance in theform of a presidential accord that allows for &dquo;integrated security&dquo; measuresof &dquo;logistical&dquo; and &dquo;operational&dquo; support. This integrated support is mani-fested daily on the streets of Guatemala City in the form of &dquo;combinedforces&dquo; and joint patrols, completely under the logistical and operational con-trol of the army chief of staff’s office. These special police forces are two-thirds soldiers and have a sergeant-major, 24 drivers, and jeeps, and each ofthe three military garrisons is assigned a sector of the city to patrol. Moreover,military patrols in the rural areas &dquo;have been requested by the population forprotection in their communities,&dquo; while special forces &dquo;are supporting thecivilian national police in the Pet6n,&dquo; Defense Minister Hector Barrios toldme in October 1997.

The presidential chief of staff has been charged by MINUGUA with &dquo;ille-gal participation in anti-kidnapping operations,&dquo; contravening the agreementthat there be no illegal security units. In response, the Arzu government(elected in 1995) has sought to articulate a legal basis for this group’s partici-pation in internal security matters. Reforms to Presidential Accord 90-96were prepared, according to the foreign minister,

so that there is no doubt about the legitimacy of the army’s participation inanti-kidnapping operations and so there will be no misunderstandings withMINUGUA. There exists a juridical space that allows for the participation of



103

the army in the control of delinquency if the Executive so requests. But [withthe legalization of the army’s participation], we believe it is necessary that it bemade more explicit and transparent.

With no time limit or specific delineation as to how or whether civilian over-sight is to function, it seems appropriate to ask what precisely is being madeexplicit and transparent here. Are we witnessing the legalization of com-mando activity with not only the acquiescence but the legal authorization andrecognition of the Executive? And what does such acquiescence indicate to amilitary high command in the throes of complying-or not complying-with the peace accords?

There may be a number of reasons for this overlap between the offices ofthe president and the chief of staff for national defense: (1) necessity: thecivilian government is ill-equipped to deal with the public security problem(a serious problem faced by many civilian regimes during transitional peri-ods), (2) choice: they prefer to keep their hands clean but need to appear to be&dquo;tough on crime&dquo; and let the military do the dirty work, (3) a desire on the partof the military to move back to being in the front line in the control of delin-quency and intelligence matters overall, and/or (4) the coincidence of the per-sonal and professional agendas of the president and the chief of staff fornational defense. Whatever the case, it means that direct violations of the

accords are occurring with the legal authority and blessing of the civilianpresident.3 3A commission established on July 31, 1997, to clarify past human rights

violations and acts of violence against the Guatemalan people has been inves-tigating a number of representative cases of human rights violations betweenthe 1960s and 1990s, requesting information and documents from the UnidadRevolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteco (Guatemalan National Revolution-ary Union-URNG), the Arzu government, and the armed forces. While theURNG has provided materials apparently without much delay (URNG,1998: 18), the army high command’s replies have been slow and incomplete,access has been restricted, and the documents provided have been marginal tomilitary operations. As MINUGUA’s February 1998 report states, &dquo;It is in thearmed forces’ own interest to help shed light on the years of the ’dirty war’and show just how it operated ... in order to avoid a recurrence of such events.State bodies or entities must give the commission whatever assistance itrequires to that end&dquo; (1998: 4).4 The commission’s final report was releasedin January 1999.

The response of the majority of army officers to the commission’s workhas, as far as can be determined, been extremely negative. One officer angrilydescribed it along with the Catholic church’s Truth Commission report as



104

&dquo;public punishment and revenge against the armed forces during the war. Ibelieve that the army has always had fears with regard to everything about theprocess [of peace, of transition]. But if there is something the army reallyfears, it is [these truth commissions].&dquo; Several officers admitted that theywould not provide testimony to either commission because they

are not investigating legitimate armed actions. They are investigating theexcesses, the aberrations, and the damage to the noncombatant civilian popula-tion. Thus, it isn’t against the struggle that the URNG evoked, because whowould have been able to avoid it? It’s a lie, a sordid game. At times, there arepeople who fall into extreme pacifism, an unrealistic pacifism.

THE NOACK CASE

Dissenters from the checkered compliance of the high command withinthe military have begun to emerge. On July 16, 1998, Colonel Otto NoackSierra, the army’s spokesperson for the Departamento de Informacion yDivulgacion del Ejercito from mid-1996 to July 1997, issued a series of state-ments to Radio Nederlands to the effect that the army should recognize theexcesses it committed during the armed confrontation and ask the popula-tion’s forgiveness. For this, he was first suspended and then charged withbreach of military discipline, arrested, and jailed for 30 days.

Does his action indicate the beginnings of a change of attitude in the offi-cer corps-a recognition of the need for the army to confront its institutionalmemory of the armed confrontation of the early 1980s in order to be able toaccommodate itself to the democratic transition?We need to ask, in this connection, why, if the high command in 1996-

1997 was serious about compliance, its 1996 strategy called for demobilizingcivil patrols and then regrouping them, demobilizing military commissionersbut retaining them as informants, and maintaining a threat mentality withregard to nongovernmental organizations, returning refugees, and the Pan-Mayan movement. Similarly, we must ask why the current high commandhas failed to cooperate with the Commission for Historical Clarification andto comply with the accords, and why it has jailed Colonel Noack andannounced that it would admit any &dquo;errors&dquo; only after the commission hadissued its report. Given the very negative reaction by the army to ColonelNoack’s statements (at a meeting of military zone commanders he was calleda &dquo;traitor&dquo;), the internal dissent seems to reveal that the glacial belief systemof the army, based on decades of threat mentality and contempt for civilianoversight, has melted only a few centimeters with the global warming of



105

human rights advocacy, demanding some substance to the semantics andsophistries of the army’s disinformation campaigns of the past decade. Inbrief, perhaps we are witnessing an initial &dquo;penetration of the target&dquo; (to usethe language of psychological warfare) by the very NGO community that lessthan a decade ago the army despised.

Whatever the answer, it is ironic that even as the military co-opts the lan-guage of human rights and democracy, that very language comes to influenceits internal debates. In the end, perhaps, these debates are about how the insti-tution can maintain its integrity and adapt to a democratic civilian regime. Fornow, the majority of officers still retain a visceral reaction to the process.

In a 1991 interview, President Cerezo said that he believed the armyhad to pass through three stages in the &dquo;historical process of democraticconsolidation&dquo;:

The first stage is that in which the army ceases to be an instrument of the eco-nomic oligarchs who want to maintain the status quo and who oppose [any kindof] change. The second stage is that in which the army considers itself part ofthe institutionality and not the only institution-as the soul of the nation, andnot as the most important institution of the nation-around which everythingmust revolve, and they have advanced to this stage. And the third stage is whenthe army converts itself into an instrument of the institutionality, it is at theorders of the institutionality.We are currently at the second stage. This is precisely where the discussion

is at the moment between civilians and the military: either the national objec-tive [of stability for security’s sake] above all else or stability and economicdevelopment, with security as only one element. The Thesis ofNational Stabil-ity is in fact about institutional stability for economic development: it assumesthat without economic development there is no security, and without security,there is no economic development. If we consolidate that [stage], the next stageis only a matter of years, if the politicians maintain a clear perspective duringthis process and do not want to make the army an instrument at the service oftheir own interests.

TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the Guatemalan military continued tolearn to reconstitute itself for a variety of political contingencies, displayingwhat one defense minister called &dquo;versatility&dquo; in utilizing the vocabulary ofhuman rights to create a &dquo;repressive humanitarianism&dquo; during the massacrecampaign. Today, it employs a vocabulary of a &dquo;strategic peace,&dquo; insisting onits intention to comply with the peace accords while defying these accords bymaintaining its control over internal defense and intelligence matters. This



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brief overview of the military’s project reveals an ominous lack of effectivesubordination of military power to civilian authority. There is a strong possi-bility that the military, once entrenched in crime prevention, will not entirelywithdraw from it once the civilian police are in place. Will giving presidentiallegitimacy to the military coordination of internal defense activities under-mine the potential for democratic governance in the name of the public good?

The negative reaction within the army to Colonel Noack’s declarationindicates that this high command is not moving to accommodate itself tohuman rights and democratic forces but instead utilizing the political battleover the constitutional reforms to resist international forces and maintain its

hegemony over security issues-entirely undercutting the peace process andweakening any prospects for democratizing the heart of the state. Thus, thequestion remains whether the peace accords can make military intelligenceaccountable and subject to civilian control. This is the major challenge for theattainment of sustainable democracy in Guatemala.

NOTES

1. Article 186 was written by Girón Tanchez after the 1983 internal coup against Ríos Montt(known as el relevo) (interview, 1986).

2. Major changes in the army high command were made in early July 1997. Defense MinisterGeneral Julio Balconi Turcios, National Defense Chief of Staff General Sergio CamargoMuralles, National Defense Deputy Chief of Staff General Victor Manuel Ventura Arellano, andInspector General General Otto Pérez Molina, all of whom had been central figures in negotiat-ing and signing the peace accords, were suddenly retired, made disponible (whereby an officerremains unassigned to any task but still receives pay and benefits), or assigned abroad. PresidentArzú designated General Héctor Barrios Celada defense minister and assigned his principalmilitary adviser, General Marco Tulio Espinosa, to the position of chief of staff for nationaldefense. In a number of interviews with the officers who were replaced, there was no clear under-standing of why the president agreed to these changes, although many believe that it was primar-ily because of his close relationship with General Espinosa. Many of these officers also raised thepossibility that the signing of the accords was one thing but complying with them would havebeen quite another both for a sector within the army and for an influential civilian sector in gov-ernment and within the business community. Whatever the case, these officers all expressedcomplete surprise and dismay over the July 1997 changes in the high command.

3. It should be noted that pressure from the U.S. intelligence and military community is a sig-nificant factor in maintaining this culture that breeds contempt for accountability. The tremen-dous pressure by the Drug Enforcement Administration to combat drug trafficking continues topull army and naval intelligence and operations and the treasury police dangerously back into thequagmire from which the peace accords are trying to extract them.

4. Article 10 of the National Reconciliation Act (Decree-Law 145-96) instructs the Commis-sion for Historical Clarification to devise means whereby the historical truth about the period ofinternal armed conflict may be uncovered and acknowledged (MINUGUA, 1998: 4).



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REFERENCES

Aguilera Peralta, Gabriel1988 "The hidden war: Guatemala’s counterinsurgency campaign," pp. 153-172, in NoraHamilton et al. (eds.), Crisis in Central America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Black, George1984 Garrison Guatemala. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Ejército de Guatemala1996a Plan de campana integracion ’96. O60800MAR96.1996c Proceso de paz en Guatemala: Fortalecimiento del poder civil y función del ejércitoen una sociedad democrktica—Lograr la paz es tarea de todos. Guatemala City: Departa-mento de Información y Divulgación.

Gramajo Morales, Hector Alejandro1989 La tesis de estabilidad nacional. Guatemala City: Editorial del Ejército.

Jonas, Susanne1991 The Battle for Guatemala. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

MINUGUA (Misión de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala)1998 The Situation in Central America: Procedures for the Establishment of a Firm andLasting Peace and Progress in Fashioning a Region of Peace, Freedom, Democracy andDevelopment. Report of the Secretary-General to the General Assembly Fifty-second Ses-sion, Agenda Item 45. 4 February A/52/757. New York.

Schirmer, Jennifer1991 "The Guatemalan military project: an interview with Gen. Hector Gramajo." HarvardInternational Review 13(3): 10-13.1996a "The looting of democratic discourse by the Guatemalan military: implications forhuman rights," pp. 84-96 in Elizabeth Jelin and Eric Hershberg (eds.), Constructing Democ-racy : Human Rights, Citizenship, and Society. Boulder, CO: Westview.1996b "Universal and sustainable human rights? Special tribunals in Guatemala," pp. 215-246 in Richard. A. Wilson. (ed.), Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Per-spectives. London: Pluto Press.1998 The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. Philadelphia: Uni-versity of Pennsylvania Press.

Shklar, Judith N.1964 Law, Morals, and Political Trials. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Torres-Rivas, Edelberto1989 Repression and Resistance. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

URNG (Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca)1998 III informe sobre el cumplimiento de los acuerdos de paz. Guatemala City.


Latin American Perspectives - state crimestatecrime.org/data/2011/10/schirmer1999a.pdf · 2011. 11. 25. · 93 America, intravenously fed on counterinsurgency doctrine since the 1960s,

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