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Guatemala's Civil War
Central American countries, including Guatemala have a long history of disappeared people. In recent years, there have been a number of cases of migrants that have gone missing throughout Central America, Mexico, and the U.S.-Mexico border, but many of the people who disappeared in Guatemala in the past were enemies of the unstable government during the Guatemalan Civil War. Tracing the roots of the Guatemalan Civil War, which lasted from 1960-1996, helps illuminate the current situation that has caused so many Central Americans to migrate north and caused a new wave of people to disappear.
U.S. Involvement
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The Guatemalan Civil War has a dark past connected to the United States’ foreign intervention. When the revolutionary group led by Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán gained control of the government in 1944 following the dictatorship of Ubico, it became focused on addressing the needs of the working class and peasants. When Arévalo came to power in 1945 as president of Guatemala, his main priorities for his term were: “agrarian reform, protection of labor, a better educational system and consolidation of political democracy,” with democracy being the most important of these goals (Schlesinger 1982). Arévalo was succeeded as president by the democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz, who intended to continue working towards many of the same goals. Part of Arbenz’s plan to meet the needs of the large population of peasants involved distributing uncultivated lands to these landless peasants. To do so, the Guatemalan government under Arbenz paid corporations like the American-owned United Fruit Company in government bonds according to their own declared taxable worth. “United Fruit, like other large landowners, had historically undervalued its property in official declarations in order to reduce its already insignificant tax liability” (Schlesinger 1982). However, now that these declarations were being used to determine the amount they were paid for their lands, the UFC protested. Fearful both for their connection with the United Fruit Company and that this new democratically elected president would bring communism to the Americas, the United States helped overthrow Arbenz in 1954.
The CIA initiative behind the United States’ intervention, Operation Success, appointed Carlos Castillo Armas to lead the coup against Guzman’s government. Once the coup was successful, Armas began to reverse the social changes that the previous revolutionary groups had made. Military officers began to fill the civil government offices, focusing on the interests of the rich and creating racist policies towards the indigenous population. In 1960, civil war erupted in Guatemala between peasant insurgents and the Guatemalan government. According to Amnesty International, “in the decade and a half following 1966, more than 30,000 people were ‘abducted tortured and assassinated in the country” as they were added to the number of desaparecidos during the Civil War (Schlesinger 1982). The United States backed the interests of the Guatemalan army, giving them financial aid and training to defeat the guerilla warriors, essentially implicating themselves in a myriad of human rights abuses performed at the hands of the Guatemalan government and its “death squads” that killed thousands of people.
The CIA initiative behind the United States’ intervention, Operation Success, appointed Carlos Castillo Armas to lead the coup against Guzman’s government. Once the coup was successful, Armas began to reverse the social changes that the previous revolutionary groups had made. Military officers began to fill the civil government offices, focusing on the interests of the rich and creating racist policies towards the indigenous population. In 1960, civil war erupted in Guatemala between peasant insurgents and the Guatemalan government. According to Amnesty International, “in the decade and a half following 1966, more than 30,000 people were ‘abducted tortured and assassinated in the country” as they were added to the number of desaparecidos during the Civil War (Schlesinger 1982). The United States backed the interests of the Guatemalan army, giving them financial aid and training to defeat the guerilla warriors, essentially implicating themselves in a myriad of human rights abuses performed at the hands of the Guatemalan government and its “death squads” that killed thousands of people.
Government's Human Rights Violations
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The human rights abuses that occurred in Guatemala during this time were devastating. According to James Welsh in “Guatemalan Government Acknowledges Human Rights Abuses,” “The UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH)--established under the terms of the Peace Accord, documented more than 600 large-scale massacres that occurred during the years of conflict, and that some 200,000 people had either ‘disappeared’ or been extrajudicially executed. Mass rape was widespread. More than 90% of abuses were committed by the army,” with 83% of victims being indigenous Guatemalans (Welsh 2000). Given this abuse of both insurgents and innocent peasants alike at the hands of the government, many were inclined to seek refuge in other countries. In “The Reconstruction of Community and Identity among Guatemalan Returnees, Kristi Anne Stolen discusses the terror that initially caused many peasants to flee their country. She says, “caught in the middle of gunfire between guerrilla forces and the army,” many peasants initially fled to other parts of the country like the jungle, but “when this internal refugee situation became unbearable, they crossed the border to Mexico” (Stolen 2004). Guatemalans that fled further north to the United States to escape the conflict in their country were nearly all refused refugee status. Unlike Cubans and Nicaraguans that fled at the same time claiming refugee status to escape communist regimes, the Salvadorans and Guatemalans were refused this status because the United States was supporting their government. According to McBride’s “Migrants and Asylum Seekers: Policy Responses in the United States to Immigrants and Refugees from Central America and the Carribbean,” “from 1984-1990, the US granted 26 per cent of 48,000 requests from Nicaraguans compared with only 2.6 per cent of 45,000 requests from Salvadorans and only 1.8 per cent of 9,500 claims from Guatemalans (McBride 1999).
Effects on Migration
So then, what importance does the history of Guatemala’s Civil War mean in terms of current migration patterns? The United States’ backing of the 1954 coup as a means of protecting its own interests in the United Fruit Company and deepening its commitment to stifle governments that had any aims resembling communism prevented the poor of Guatemala from receiving the government assistance that they needed. Although democratic elections returned to the country in 1985, it took another ten years for the violence to cease and it is taking even longer for the country’s economy to stabilize. The country still feels the trauma of the Civil War. In addition to the thousands of people who disappeared or fled during the war, generations of Guatemalans have now grown up with the disillusion that stems from a corrupt, violent government and an enormous gap between social classes that leaves the rich very rich and the poor incredibly poor.
Guatemala has a long road ahead to build itself up and in the meantime, the impoverished people are without jobs. In attempts to find labor, many of these people illegally migrate north to Mexico and the United States. Along the way, many encounter corrupt authorities, disillusioned and violent maras or physical challenges crossing the land that are too difficult to survive. Some of them disappear. During my time at Casa del Migrante, I heard of several cases of migrants that had passed through the shelter and either were never heard from again or found dead in the nearby river. When interviewed at the shelter as to why they were migrating, the vast majority of migrants that passed through Tecun Uman claimed that they were doing so for financial purposes, as they could not find work at home. Thus, though the violence from the civil war has ceased and democratic elections returned, the economic situation of the country has left people in shambles, again with no hope of finding refuge in the United States.
Guatemala has a long road ahead to build itself up and in the meantime, the impoverished people are without jobs. In attempts to find labor, many of these people illegally migrate north to Mexico and the United States. Along the way, many encounter corrupt authorities, disillusioned and violent maras or physical challenges crossing the land that are too difficult to survive. Some of them disappear. During my time at Casa del Migrante, I heard of several cases of migrants that had passed through the shelter and either were never heard from again or found dead in the nearby river. When interviewed at the shelter as to why they were migrating, the vast majority of migrants that passed through Tecun Uman claimed that they were doing so for financial purposes, as they could not find work at home. Thus, though the violence from the civil war has ceased and democratic elections returned, the economic situation of the country has left people in shambles, again with no hope of finding refuge in the United States.