(Pro-Negroponte-Pal-Dictator) Violence Cripples Guatemalan Capital

[DUreader]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-2950032,00.html



GUATEMALA CITY (AP) - Protesters demanding
that Guatemala's former dictator be allowed to
run for president touched off a wave of violence
that paralyzed the capital and shut down the U.S.
Embassy.

Police refused to respond as club-wielding rioters
smashed windows, burned parked cars and
blocked traffic Thursday, apparently believing that
would only provoke more violence. President
Alfonso Portillo pleaded for order and vowed to
``defend democracy and the rule of law in
Guatemala with my own life.''

A 65-year-old television reporter, Hector Ramirez,
died of a heart attack while running from
protesters who attacked journalists. There were
no reported arrests and no reliable estimates on
the number of people injured.

Demonstrators demanded former dictator Efrain
Rios Montt be allowed to run in Nov. 9 elections.
The country's highest tribunal, the Court of
Constitutionality, has already approved his
candidacy, but a ruling by the lower Supreme
Court has delayed Rios Montt's registration as a
candidate.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Rios Montt was definitely one of the bad guys

If you want a fictionalized account of how Guatemala is still recovering from his era, there's a mystery that just came out in paperback called Grave Secrets, by Kathy Reichs.

I knew about Rios Montt long before the book came out, and yes, he was definitely one of Negroponte's pet dictators. The "demonstrators" are probably as genuine as the Miami-Dade County "demonstrators" in 2000, who all just happened to be Republican Congressional staffers.

I'm not 100% sure of this, and I don't have time to look it up, but I believe that Rios Montt is connected with one of the many fundamentalist churches that have been making inroads in Central America. (Like all the Central American dictators of the era, he excused his brutal policies by saying that they were necessary to fight "Communism," "Communism" being any suggestion that poor people were human beings.)

If, indeed, Rios Montt is connected to the funamentalists, I suppose that it was easy to get a few of the "faithful" to demonstrate for the chance to vote for "a good Christian man."

Yeah, right.

[starroute]

2. There's a lot of information available on Rios Montt

It was in March of 1982 when General Efrain Rios Montt took power. While he only held the office of president until the August of 1983, his crusade against the guerillas took on genocidal proportions. Even thorughout this period he remained a preacher of the Iglésia Evangelica El Verbo, the Guatemalan mission of the evangelical network Gospel Outreach in California.

http://users.rcn.com/akreye/guatee.html

After the 1976 earthquake, 28 Gospel Outreach evangelicals from California arrived in Guatemala to help rebuild the country and establish El Verbo church. Since its arrival in Guatemala El Verbo has been involved in rebuilding earthquake-damaged infrastructure, building housing, establishing "Christian" schools and establishing Casa Barnabe, an orphanage. In March 1991 Verbo doctor, Mario Bolanos, opened the first Christian hospital in Guatemala.

An early convert was General Efrain Rios Montt, who became president after a military coup in March 1982. Hap Brooks, a preacher from Florida, hailed the coup as "the greatest miracle of the twentieth century, formed in heaven before it was formed on earth." Efrain Rios Montt and his supporters expected to turn Verbo Churches into a new political movement. Rios Montt announced that his movement would "moralize national life from the top down." According to Deborah Huntington, a researcher on the Religious Right, during the Rios Montt counterinsurgency campaign "Gospel Outreach and the Verbo Ministries were valuable allies of the military. Verbo members became the preferred liaison between the army and the local community, leading civil defense patrols and weeding out guerrilla sympathizers." "The experience of a born-again Christian shepherding an entire nation reinforced the notion that they could seize their vision of the Kingdom of God on earth."

For details on how Rios Montt actually conducted himself while in power, see:
Reagan & Guatemala’s Death Files By Robert Parry
http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a1.html

And here's an analysis of more recent developments from a few years ago:
PORTILLO CASTS A SHADOW OVER ACTIVISM
The New Government Activists Unite The Challenge to Rios Montt
http://advocacynet.autoupdate.com/news_view/news_17.html

[DUreader]

3. Good stuff Starroute, lydia was right on

[Gingersnap]

4. this is so sad

I think the protesters were probably special military and paid street gangs in civvie clothes. How convenient for them that the cops didn't do anything to break it up...

I've lived in Guatemala and have followed things there closely, and there just aren't that many people in Guatemala City ignorant enough to support Rios Montt (except, perhaps big business people who think he'll be "tough on crime" but they would never openly support him in this way). Unfortunately, if his name gets on the ballot, he's the next president, since Guatemalan elections are even more blatantly corrupt than ours our. His FRG party has been bankrupting Guatemala for the last several years. Friends of mine who are teachers have gone a year without pay.

Sadly, Guatemala and the US are on similar tracks, with Guatemala being more carnivalesque and outre in its political disasters.

[geomon]

6. have you seen the poll data

I can't remember where I heard it but the numbers who said they would vote for E.R. Montt are low like single digits..

( on edit can't read)

[David__77]

5. Fascist coupster.

That's what he is. Too many dead Indians from his genocidal war against a popular insurgency, which he executed with "evangelical" zeal.