"The Real Power Will Not Be Lost"

Newly elected President Marco Vinicio Cerezo promises to change Guatamala within 126 days of his inauguration. There are at least 94 deaths and 35 disappearances in the weeks following his inauguration.
According to Amnesty Intemational, "arbitrary arrest, torture, 'disappearance' and political killings were everyday realities" for Guatemalans during decades of U.S. financed military dictatorship. In January 1986, Christian Democrat leader Vinicio Cerezo was elected President and said he had "the political will to respect the rights of man," but it didn't take long to find out that his political will was irrelevant in the face of Guatemala's well-oiled military machine. Hopes for change were dashed when Cerezo announced he would not nullify the "self-amnesty law" declared on the eve of his election by General Oscar Mejia Victores, establishing amnesty for all past military offenses committed from General Efrain Rios Montt's coup in 1982 through the 1986 elections. Although Ronald Reagan's State Department asserted "there has not been a single clear-cut case of political killing," within months of Cerezo's inauguration opposition leaders attributed 56 murders to security forces and death squads, while Americas Watch claimed that "throughout 1986, violent killings were reported in the Guatemalan press at the rate of 100 per month." Altogether, Americas Watch says, tens of thousands were killed and 400 rural villages were destroyed by government death squads during Reagan's term in office.
Colonel D'Jalma Dominguez, former army spokesman, explains: "For convenience sake, a civilian government is preferable, such as the one we have now. If anything goes wrong, only the Christian Democrats will get the blame. Its better to remain outsde: The real power will not be lost."

But the U.S. State Department was not oblivious to the violence. "Guatemala is a violent society," wrote the U.S. State Department in a 1986 retrospective survey of two decades of state terror: "The conscious acceptance and use of violence as an instrument of politics contributes to the extraordinary levels of murder, kidnapping and disappearances.
First used systematically by the security forces against the Communist Party and members of the moderate left beginning in 1966, the practices of kidnappings became institutionalized over time. . . . Guatemala's high violence levels cannot be accounted for by economic or political variables. Equally poor nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have lower violence levels. The explanation for Guatemala's high level of violence probably is rooted in cultural and sociological factors unique to Guatemala. Guatemala is distinguished from other Central American nations by the duality of its culture where a wealthy ladino minority lives side by side with an impoverished Indian majority largely marginalized from national political and economic life. . . . The use of violence to settle disputes of almost any nature is accepted in Guatemala's indigenous culture. The plantation system which historically generated Guatemala's exports and wealth has relied on Indian labor to function. . . .
Fear of revolution stems from the Arbenz period when the first political efforts to involve peasants and Indians in national life began in earnest. . . . Following Arbenz' ouster in 1954, saving the country from communism and personal self interest thus blended to form a psychology conducive to supporting physical repression of workers and peasants in the name of anti-communism." (Quoted From The Last Colonial Massacre by Greg Grandin)