Unarmed Bodyguards: International Accompaniment for the Protection of Human Rights / Edition 1

by Liam Mahony, Luis Enrique Eguren

Overview

* Couples vivid stories of accompaniment with interviews of volunteers, activists, and political officials
* Draws on examples from locations such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Columbia, and Haiti

Accompaniment refers to the presence of unarmed foreign volunteers at the side of civilian activists, helping to deter violent, politically-motivated attacks and encourage democratic activities to proceed. Mahony and Eguren show the success of this concept through the story of Peace Brigade International’s accompaniment of activists throughout the world. They stress that such protection saves lives and catalyzes new organizations, thus enabling their growth and adding to their stability.

Alongside detailed political analyses, the authors also provide a humanist perspective, generating hope at the idea of non-violent resistance. These courageous acts of accompaniment will interest those involved in conflict resolution, peace processes, and students of national and international politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565490680
Publisher:	Kumarian Press, Inc.
Publication date:	04/28/1997
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.54(w) x 9.31(h) x 0.68(d)

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

Descent into Terror

The Guatemala that Peace Brigades International entered in 1983 was a land of great beauty and great suffering—lush rain forests and towering volcanoes, scattered with the bodies of 100,000 victims of state violence. It is a land of rich Mayan culture, ancient ruins, and an export-based plantation economy that has long kept the majority of the population on the verge of starvation.

For Guatemalan Mayans, the violence of the 1980s continued a long history of attacks and humiliations begun by the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century. Enslaved and Christianized, the majority Mayan population was impoverished and steadily robbed of its land. Even after Spain lost colonial control in 1821, Spanish descendants and mixed-blood ladinos retained all political and economic power. By the 1980s, Guatemala had the most skewed land distribution in Latin America. Three percent of the population owned 70 percent of the arable land, some of the most productive land in Central America. This powerful minority controlled both political and economic power and is still referred to in Guatemala as the oligarchy.

Nearly all Guatemalans are of mixed Mayan and European origin, and the distinctions between Mayan and ladino are largely cultural and linguistic. Over the centuries, many Mayans have migrated to the cities, intermarried, and accepted the dominant ladino culture. But in the rural areas, the diverse Mayan culture varies from region to region and includes more than twenty distinct languages. Spanish, for the rural Mayans, is the language of interregional commerce andgovernment, and many never learn it. The Mayan culture stresses the importance of the community, and land and corn are invested with powerful spiritual significance.

Despite pressures toward assimilation and a gradual loss of many Mayans to the dominant ladino society, the Mayan culture and community remain distinct. With rare exceptions, ladinos do not speak Mayan languages, nor do they understand Mayan culture. It is not uncommon to hear present-day wealthy Guatemalans referring to Mayans as "children," "savages" or "animals." That these "savages" are the majority threatens the elite, who have consistently relied on the military to quash periodic revolts. This polarization and lack of communication have given Mayan communities a greater cohesion and resistance to cultural and political manipulation or infiltration than most other poor communities in Latin America.

Guatemala was run by repressive military dictatorships for most of its postcolonial history. But in 1944, a general strike forced dictator Jorge Ubico to abdicate and ushered in ten years of democracy. When the ambitious social reforms of Presidents Arevalo and Arbenz decreased the profits of the oligarchy and U.S. corporations, however, this "democratic spring" was ended. In 1954, a CIA-supported coup, prompted by pressure from the United Fruit Company, placed military dictator Castillo Armas in power. Guatemala's short-lived democracy, and its untimely demise, had a profound impact on all future political developments.

Attempts to organize opposition were vigorously suppressed. In the first week after the coup, 250 activists were executed, 17,000 were imprisoned, and thousands went into exile. Eight thousand campesinos were killed. Their land was returned to the oligarchy, from whom it had been bought in President Arbenz's 1952 agrarian reform.

After the Cuban revolution in 1958 and the birth of a Marxist armed revolutionary movement in the early 1960s (hereafter referred to as the guerrilla movement), the United States and its allies increased economic and military assistance. The CIA and U.S. military advisers became a fixture in the planning and implementing of Guatemalan counterinsurgency campaigns. Repression came in cycles: rising drastically whenever civilian movements or guerrilla resistance gained strength, then dropping off once the army considered the situation under control.

In the late 1960s, under General Arana Osorio, the army annihilated a rural guerrilla movement a few hundred strong and, in the process, murdered between 8,000 and 10,000 noncombatant campesinos. With the assistance of the first self-labeled "death squads," the labor and student movements and opposition parties were decapitated. In the early 1970s, the repression relented somewhat. Union and peasant organizing increased. The guerrilla movement regrouped and set its sights on organizing Mayans in the highlands.

The Catholic Church had been labeled subversive by the military ever since the 1960s, when priests and catechists (lay religious workers) began working to apply the Bible's teaching directly to alleviate the suffering of the poor, empowering them to take responsibility for social change. This movement, globally known as "liberation theology," was represented in Guatemala by a new organization called Catholic Action, which became a major force among the Mayan population.

The 1976 earthquake, which killed tens of thousands in a few minutes, further polarized the situation. International disaster relief flowed into Guatemala, only to be siphoned off by corrupt officials. The government failed to respond to immediate medical needs and was not up to the challenge of reconstruction. The Mayan communities organized self-help efforts, and Catholic Action and other NGOs came to people's aid. Disillusionment with the government increased.

By the time General Lucas Garcia came to power in 1978, the guerrillas were a significant force in the highlands. Strong peasant and labor movements were insisting on political change. Guatemala's elite were further alarmed by the successful revolution in 1979 in neighboring Nicaragua. The Guatemalan army escalated the repression. On June 21, 1980, after a series of massive and disruptive strikes, twenty-seven labor leaders were abducted from a single meeting and were never seen again. On January 31, 1981, the major Mayan peasant league, known as the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC), held a sit-in at the Spanish embassy to publicize the repression. Police stormed and firebombed the embassy, killing thirty-nine people, including government and embassy personnel. The only Guatemalan survivor was abducted from his hospital bed the next day. Spain severed diplomatic relations with Guatemala.

From 1981 to 1983, the military relentlessly swept the highlands in a scorched-earth strategy, massacring unarmed civilians and burning hundreds of villages. In Guatemala City, the army used exhaustive intelligence gathering and analysis to locate every urban guerrilla safe house and then wiped them out in a single sweep. High-profile moderate opposition politicians were machine-gunned on busy streets. Catholic bishops were forced into exile. Priests, catechists, union activists, student leaders, and their professors were killed by the hundreds; Mayan campesinos by the thousands. By the mid-1980s, out of a population of 9 million, an estimated 40,000 were disappeared, 100,000 assassinated, and 1.5 million forced to flee their homes.

The military restored control and then maintained consistently high levels of repression, initiating surveillance and reindoctrination campaigns in the rural highlands, while at the same time launching a political strategy to reverse Guatemala's notorious international reputation as a human rights pariah. After the coup of March 1982, President Rios Montt announced a "democratic opening," promising that in March 1983 the state of siege would be lifted. The plan was that an elected constituent assembly would write a new constitution, after which elections would be held. Rios Montt invited political parties to operate publicly and urged international organizations that had fled to return.

Peace Brigades International took advantage of Rios Montt's public declaration to deploy a team of nonpartisan observers for the democratic opening. Between January and March 1983, PBI's international secretary, Dan Clark, a Quaker lawyer from Walla Walla, Washington, and Hazel Tulecke, a fifty-eight-year-old Quaker and retired French teacher from Yellow Springs, Ohio (U.S.), traveled through Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, and Costa Rica, making contact with Guatemalans in exile. In Guatemala, they met various activists working clandestinely. Meanwhile, PBI began looking for the right volunteers and enough money to get a team in place by March 23, the day the state of siege was to be lifted.

Hazel Tulecke arrived in Guatemala on March 21, 1983, to meet her two teammates. She didn't know that one of them had changed his mind at the last minute and the other had been denied a visa. For a brief interval, Hazel was the first PBI team. As she swept out the empty house that hadbeen rented from an exiled Guatemalan professor, she wondered what she had gotten herself into:

I had doubts ... and some fears. Would the government lift the state of siege? Would any parties come forth to challenge the government? What could we really do as such a small group anyway? How would "international presence" be important as so many people said it might? Could we be effective in any way without seriously risking getting kidnapped or killed, or endangering the very lives of those we hoped to help?

With two team members no longer available, Dan Clark, back in the United States, scrambled to keep the project alive. He called Alain Richard, a French Franciscan priest whom he had met in January. Alain, a worker priest who had survived the Nazi occupation, was in Panama doing a fast for peace. He made a quick decision and went to Guatemala.

Next Dan called Pablo Stanfield, a nonviolence activist from Seattle (U.S.), and convinced him to leave for Guatemala inside of a week. A three-person team was in place, almost on schedule. But this sort of ad hoc, last-minute scramble for volunteers was a weakness that PBI would not overcome for several years.

The team of three set to work. The meetings and impressions of that first month were a preview of things to come. Rodil Peralta, head of the Bar Association, urged them to do everything possible to document the human rights situation. (Years later, as interior minister, Rodil would threaten to expel PBI and block its request for legal status.) Religious workers in CONFREGUA, the Conference of Religious of Guatemala, introduced PBI to many contacts. CONFREGUA would be an encouraging ally throughout PBI's tenure in Guatemala. A high official in the Rios Montt government, Jorge Serrano, spoke of the need to educate the army, defended the sincerity of the "political opening," and urged PBI not to be like Amnesty International, "spreading bad stories about Guatemala." (Eight years later, President Serrano would expel half the PBI team after police fired on a group of campesinos that PBI was accompanying.)

By the end of that first month, Alain, Pablo, and Hazel hashed out a plan that would define PBI's presence in the coming years: PBI would not do political organizing or form groups, would not initiate activities that Guatemalans themselves could initiate, would not attempt to cover the entire national territory, and would at all costs avoid any indiscretion or disclosure of information that might put others in jeopardy. What PBI would do was a little more vague. The team's plan included such phrases as "serving continually as an international presence ... giving moral support to those who really want a democratic opening"; "witnessing"; "[providing] technical support in nonviolent methods, ... [establishing an] organizing skills clearinghouse"; and above all, "taking the lead from local groups." More ambitiously, they also proposed "direct action with regard to disappearances" and "creative nonviolent action in a crisis period." Their prognosis, though, was cautious:

It is clear that the government puts obstacles in the way of those who threaten in any way the status quo. One experienced person even said very clearly that he thought the project was unlikely to succeed at this time; in his judgment it is "not the time to speak truth to power."

During their first year, PBI team members traveled throughout the highlands, visiting rural farmers, clandestine contacts, and government and military officials, introducing themselves and feeling things out. When necessary, they helped people flee the country. In one case, PBI learned of a man who was about to be sentenced to death by Rios Montt's Special Tribunals. PBI and other groups outside the country put together an overnight campaign, using confidential diplomatic channels of pressure, and got a stay of sentencing and execution. PBI later helped hustle the man out of the country.

By the end of the first year, the team had made many contacts and testedseveral program ideas, but none of them had developed into a clear mission.The terror continued; popular organizing was still stifled. PBI was stillwaiting for an opening.

Smoke and Mirrors
Violence, Television, and Other American Cultures

---

By John Leonard

THE NEW PRESS

Copyright © 1997 John Leonard.All rights reserved.
TAILER

Table of Contents

Introduction: Breaking New Ground; Part I; 1) Decent into Terror; 2) Out the Ashes: The Mutual Support Group; 3) Honor and Duty; 4) The Comeback; 5) The Accompaniment Relationship; 6) Fear in the Highlands; 7) The “Democratic” Strategists; 8) Deterrence, Encouragement, and Political Space; 9) Closing the Space; 10) The Refugee Return: The Institutionalization of Accompaniment; Part II; 11) A Tenacious Grip: Accompaniment in El Salvador, 1987-91; 12) Bitter Tea, with Sweetener; 13) The Clout Factor: The United Nations, the International Red Cross, and the NGOs; 14) Steadfast in Haiti; 15) Deterrence Up Front in Colombia; Part III; 16) Principles in Action; 17) Looking Ahead; Appendix 1 Field Interviews; Appendix 2 Accompaniment

What People are Saying About This

Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

There are many lessons here of great significance, if we choose to learn them.

Editorial Reviews

"Generates profound hope and inspiration at the idea of non-violent, popular resistance, and sheer awe at the courage of those activists and accompaniment volunteers who put it into practice."

"There are many lessons here of great significance, if we choose to learn them."

From the Publisher