On Guatemala's place in global history
There are few things you might take as intrinsically unchangeable on this world, one of those is human stupidity and the other one can be “change” or a least the concept related to such word.
I’m from a little country named Guatemala a piece of land south to Mexico, about 2 hours flight from Texas, this little country has been for most of its history nothing but a pseudo-democracy resembling more a modern feudal state than a republic, however the last century big changes (there’s the word again!) have transformed Guatemala into what some people called “a young democracy”.
Well as with manny ideas it is imperative to understand the social and historical context that gave birth to such labels, so in order to understand Guatemala and more importantly, why we matter more than ever before, we have dive into Guatemala’s history and it's now very close and bound relationship with the United States of America.
A bit of global history...
It all begins back in 1944, second war world has just finished, Hitler has been defeated and Europe is looking ahead to a feature of prosperity and unity, up until now the USA has been in the same side with Russia, however the end of the war leaves the world with two massive super powers.
The USA on the west with capitalism as the economic model, judeo-christian beliefs as moral templates and their own version of Greek political machinery called republic as its structure of power. The USSR on the east with communism, a one-party nation and socialism wrapping it all up, ideas that people somehow believe were totally opposite to western values.
This landscape of power lead to a “cold war” named like that because it wasn’t a war of direct military conflicts between the USSR and the USA but instead it was a war based on ideology, with both side creating propaganda to make their people believe those who did not live like them were the enemy and needed to be eradicated before they eradicate you!
This idea was aggravated by the fact that now both nations have the destruction power of the nuclear bomb, a new weapon of mass destruction capable of erasing human life from this earth, as you might expect the stakes were high, they were threats made, missile placed in close location to the enemy like Cuba or Ukraine, none of the parties was willing to lose and used every allie they could get to gain power and push the enemy further away from their motherland.
On this side of the globe, the USA declared war against communism and started programs of all kind to make sure there were no communist influence inside the motherland or anywhere close to it, so, guess where Guatemala landed on that plan? Yep, we weren’t really there, I mean, Guatemala was a bit more than a farm for the USA you might even say we were not consider humans back then, it is inevitable to say that we were just another “banana nation” for the white upper class of the big super countries.
About Guatemala on the 1940’s
Guatemala on the the 20th century was a nation owned by a big company that took the place of the Spanish crown, our communications system, train roads and the majority of the land, belong to the United Fruit Company (UFCO), they bought land at a really low price so they didn’t have to pay much taxes, they did not pay workers for the labor instead the “rent” a pieces of land as part of a “deal” where they could use the land to survive by also “paying” a part to the company, however the land was still under UFCO’s possession.
The precarious work situations under companies like the UFCO are depicted on the famous novel 1000 years of solitude by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, in a very dramatic and extreme representation, in the book after a strike by the workers demanding better conditions, the government reacts by inviting over 3000 of them to a meeting with the leadership to resolve their difference, however it was a tramp! The workers found themselves surrounded by machine guns and get methodically killed, the bodies were then thrown on a train and dropped off in the sea, after the event the government keeps exterminating any surviving union leader and denying the reports of the massacre.
Well, conditions were not that much better in Guatemala and I’m sorry to say that as in many good books, usually fiction is nothing by a reflection of reality, after years of being used for free labor, Guatemalans decided they needed a change they cannot longer live in a land that is not theirs, so in 1944 after numerous public demonstration and the killing of the teacher María Chinchilla in a protest, over 100,000 people gather to protest and stop the country for a week until the then president Jorge Ubico resigned en July 1, 1944, this initiated what some people called the first real “democratic period” in Guatemala, this new set of changes and reforms landed to a fresh-type president in 1951, it was a democratically elected president from the highlands of the country Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán .
The thing with power is that is a human invention, so is fair to say that power is limited to what humans believe to be more important, as a mention before back in 40’s and 50’s we were not seen as humans by the USA or any of the companies coming from that side of the border, therefore we were not intitle of having an opinion nor to have a decent life or to be part of a country, we were only workers, just a step above from a horse or any other beast.
When a president of Guatemala decides that we can’t be a country if we don’t have land or infrastructure of our own, it is only inevitable he will have to make some changes that will not vibe with UFCO or some of its allies, and that is exactly what happened. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán started using government power to buy the land from the UFCO and give it to the poor people that were actually leaving on it and using it, buying land from the UFCO at the same low prices the claimed the bought it, he decided that train roads should be of public use and created a plan that aim to put Guatemala on the track to development.
The UFCO did not like what was happening in the country, their lands were being taken, they now have to come out with payment for their workers and a series of restriction help create the environment for workers unions and better working conditions that were impacting profits, this went on for about 3 years and the UFCO was doing everything they could to create propaganda and manipulate Guatemalans and Americas in order to take Arbenz from power.
One thing we need to understand is the people that were in Guatemala at that time and how their connection made a coup possible, one of the lawyers working for the UFCO was John Foster Dulles a republican from Washington D.C. that would eventually become the United States Secretary of State, Dulles’s brother Allen was the director of the CIA, in order to stop the “attacks” against the company, the Dulls brother worked together to convicend the President of the United States that Guatemala was a possible location for a soviet embassy in the western hemisphere. To achieve their goal they created a PR campaign to create fear among politician and the American people.
A CIA operation was created under the code name PBSUCCESS , the goal was to take way Guatemala’s president from power and to make sure general Carlos Castillo Armas was in the presidency so the UFCO would be able to continue business as usual, the operation was a success, however as with many thing in history “success” not necessarily means “the beginning of a peaceful and great period”, so now we need to dive a bit deeper on “What happen when you interfere with a democratic elected government and place a puppet president instead?” type of question..
Castillo Armas and most of the head of states that came after him were nothing but puppets to the UFCO and the United States, they did not put Guatemalans interest and needs on the agendas, instead they were working for the top sphere of the country therefore leading to a very unhappy population that were being oppressed by their own army and their own government, this is something we need to discuss, because again it shows how bound the United States’s and Guatemala’s faith are.
Because of the fact the the USA put the general in charge people did not like him, so we did not really pay for the army nor we wanted our taxes to go to a dictator, so the USA feeling bad or wanting to keep control of the country founded Guatemala’s army and let the generals do whatever they please, this lead to an army that was not found by taxes, nor it had to respond to the people of Guatemala, the army was the tool dictators have to keep people down, either disappearing anyone who did not agree with the government or rightout killing them.
As you might expect once you start killing and disappearing people, they will start fighting back, so the paramilitary forces were born and a 36 year war started, a conflict that took some 70,000 lives and countless more were disappeared, the army sustained with US money were going to villages and killing every men, raping women, some stories from my own family even mention babies being smashed against rocks, there was some pretty bad human right violations going on and you can’t deny how Guatemala and US government officials were involved in all of this.
About the USA and its gang problems in all of this...
Well, once you take a country to its knees is just a matter of time before people that are unable or don’t want to fight get themselves out, just as we are seeing happening today with Syrians refugees, there were a lot of Guatemala and Central America refugees that ended up in the US, they created communities in places like LA and New York, however racism and violence towards latino communities made them organize to protect themselves, back in the 1980’s as their countries of origin were consumed by civil war (some of the initiated by the USA itself) they created some of the first latino gangs in the US, MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha.
So, you might ask, what did the US did after creating a problem in Guatemala that ended up as gangs members in their backyard? Well they did what the US had been doing since its first contact with Guatemala, they ship out whatever bad shit they could to us, however we have to give them some credit, they did not think of that right away, it actually started back in the 1990’s so it is fair to say that the US had to deal with gangs for about a decade before deciding that it would be easier to ship them back to where they came from.
Even though I would not have any problem with a country kicking illegal immigrants that committed a felony to their original country, it is imperative to say that the US did not stop to think how can this change (the word again!) Guatemala and how it will affect the USA? Because if they would’ve stopped to think on that for a moment, there is a chance the would’ve realized they were making the same mistake all over again, they were creating a problem in Guatemala hopping it won't reach back to them, however we all know that is not how life works.
By 1996 “peace” was signed in Guatemala, there was even a speech by then president of the USA - Bill Clinton, promessing the Guatemalan people that human right will not be violated again and that the horrible civil-war we went through should never be repeated and the USA will not commit to the same wrong practices they did in the past, It was all good a least on a diplomatic level, however the US was on its high of deportation of gang members to our country.
There is this question I feel is worth asking at this moment… What would happen if you send a bouch of highly educated criminals (highly educated in contrast to the rest of Guatemala). that used to leave in big cities, they were resourceful, smart and on top of that we had never had to deal with a gang member or “marero” before?, in other words, the USA send criminals to a country with not infrastructure of any kind to contain them, nor it had a police force capable of facing this gang members.
Guatemala came out of the 36 years of civil war just to end up with a war with gangs that still last until today, something about 30 years dealing with a problem created by Guatemala and Central American refugees in the streets of LA, refugees that were there because a national army founded with US money were killing their families back home, this “war on gangs” lead Guatemala to a level of violence that reminded us of the war all over again, it stop the few progress we wanted to have, instead our youth was being recruited or killed by MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha, yet again people were forced to leave the country and find land were they would not be killed or robbed or extorted.
So, yep….We are talking about another exodus to the USA!
About “Mojados” or illegal immigrants to the USA after the 1990’s
There something we have to admit about the 1990’s - today problem with gangs, it is not all fault of the USA as is never “just on person’s” fault, when you put a country in a situation like we are, people don’t usually get access to education, information, food and health care, you know, the things that once cover might lead somebody to care about what their politicians are doing or where to money goes, but as Marx used to say, seas the means of production and you will have control of the system!.. Or something like that, because, that is what the top businessman and wealthy families of the country did, they took control over the country and made money out of the always unstable status of our nation.
So by the 1990’s after 30 years of military regimes, guatemala democracy was finally flourishing, like a baby that gets into age, it started to be aware of itself and every more and more people started to understand how this democracy thing is supposed to work ( a least more people in the capital city) and what can we do to make sure it is use in benefit of the people, however our leaders still coming from the upper class, mostly spanish descendant with old money and with little interest or connection with the population of their own country., they were used to do whatever they want with our country, they took advantage of our national institutions to control the country and steer it on the direction they saw better for them and their business, our all times lover impunity was still with us and as time passes she would reveal itself more and more clearly.
So after the war we found ourselves in a country with MS-13 and Mara Salvatrucha, with no police, with a government handle by the rich class that only cares about their business and how they can get out of Guatemala, a government dedicated to use the country to make themself richer, even if that means stealing money from heath, education and security programs that were supposed to be in place to take our country to a better future after the war ended.
We did not have (and would argue we still not have) a national identity, Mayan people made up to 65% of the population however they were being discriminated, no jobs, no services and a country that up until today is very divided. On the other had the USA in a effort to stop gangs and immigration say something like “We’re sorry for taking your president out of power and starting a civil war” but now we will reinforced our borders, American visas would be expensive and rare for you and we start ICE to send all illegal Guatemalans in the USA back as we have been doing with gang members.
So as you might know by now this also had and effect that wasn’t what they expected. Instead of Guatemalans saying, “well I guess we can’t get to the USA anymore”, people from all over the country started to hire human traffickers, people that knew how to move between borders and that could charge up to 5000 USD for trip, this “coyotes” as they called them are part of a organized net of crime that also includes drug traffickers, illegal gun sales, force prostitution and others, however when you come from a country where the government does not care about you and the gangs want to kill you, dealing with a coyote might be the best of your options.
