GUATEMALA WILL ELECT A CIVILIAN, BUT WILL HE CONTROL THE MILITARY?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560009-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 26, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: October 30, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560009-8
WALL STREET JOURNAL
ARTICLE APPEARED 30 October 1985
ON PAGE 1
Turning Point
Guatemala Will Elect
A Civilian, but Will He
Control the Military?
Col. Lima, for One, Says No
As He Runs His Province
In a Huey Long Manner
Always Take a TV Film Crew
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
off Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
SANTA CRUZ DEL QUICHE, Guate-
mala-On the wall is a painting of the Last
Supper with the Apostles dressed as Indi-
ans. Beneath it, Col. Byron Disrael Lima
and his staff are eating steaks and tortillas
and discussing guerrilla warfare. A radio
blares campaign jingles for the coming
presidential election, which will end 15
years of military rule in Guatemala.
A liberal contender's spot commercial
promises a better life for peasants. "He's a
demagogue," Col. Lima snorts. "All politi-
cians are liars."
Then a conservative candidate pledges
to spur economic growth. The stocky
colonel bursts out of his chair, strides
across the officer's mess hall and turns
down the radio. "There's a civilian wave in
Latin America now," he exclaims, his
mustache twitching, "but that doesn't
mean military men will lose their ultimate
power." He adds: "Latins take commands
from men in uniform."
Up and down the table, his junior offi-
cers nod in agreement.
Throughout much
of Latin America,
people do take com-
mands from men in
uniform, even in
countries where ci-
vilians supposedly
rule. And one reason
that's unlikely to
change anytime
soon is the influence
of men like Col.
Lima, the 44-year-
old army com-
mander for Quiche
(pronounced key-
CHAY) province and one of this country's
key military officers.
"You know what the biggest concern of
a civilian president will be his first day in
office?" asks Claudio Riedel Telge, a top
adviser to Jorge Carpio Nicolle, a center-
right candidate in the elections. "A coup
d'etat." The first-round election is this
coming Sunday and a December runoff is
probable, with the winner taking office in
January, but Mr. Riedel Telge says it
could take generations of civilian govern-
ments before the army retires to the bar-
racks completely.
`I Respect Conquerors'
Col. Lima probably wouldn't dispute
that view. The son of an ultraconservative
colonel-whom guerrillas machine-gunned
to death in Guatemala City in 1970-and
the grandson of a peasant, he is devoted to
the military. His father called him "mi ca-
dete" as a child, and one of his own sons
now attends the military academy. The
colonel's heroes in history are Napoleon
and Hitler-"I respect conquerors," he
says. He also greatly admires the Israelis
as "warriors," and hopes his own country-
men will become more like them. He looks
less kindly on civilian politicians.
"If a cabinet doesn't work," says Col.
Lima, talking of government in general, "I
prefer a coup."
Even if the new government does work,
he and his fellow officers will play a politi-
cal role. During one of his daily personal
patrols of Santa Cruz del Quiche, Col.
Lima spots a civilian congressional candi-
date retching and stumbling in a drunken
stupor. He turns his van around, stops and
snaps a photograph of the politician. "I'll
have him by the tail," he says, openly
amused.
In the Mainstream
Such attitudes put Col. Lima, and Gua-
temala, squarely in the mainstream of
Latin American history. The military long
has been one of the region's most powerful
institutions, rivaled perhaps only by the
church. Even in countries such as Argen-
tina, where the military has been forced
back to the barracks, it remains a force
that few people would count out.
"The civilians don't work until we tell
them to work," boasts Col. Lima, a simple
man and a workaholic officer, who spends
much of his rare free time washing his
dogs or playing dominoes. "They need our
protection, control and direction."
Like most top military men, though,
Col. Lima is supporting Guatemala's re-
turn to civilian government-for the sake
of appearance. He thinks an election will
improve the country's international image
sufficiently to attract badly needed capital
from international lending agencies. He
hopes a civilian leader can win the kind of
U.S. aid that has transformed the armies
of neighboring El Salvador and Honduras
into modern fighting machines. And he is
tired of the army taking all the political
heat for the country's high inflation and
rising unemployment.
Guatemala generally is considered the
most strategically important country in
Central America. Some people see it as the
final buffer against the region's revolution-
ary fever's spreading into Mexico, which
Guatemala borders. Guatemala also tradi-
tionally has been the economic heavy-
weight of Central America, with the most-
developed industrial base and the largest
population (8.3 million).
But Guatemala has been an interna-
tional outcast since the late 1970s, because
of the brutal tactics the army used in
pressing its war against leftist guerrillas.
Human-rights groups charge that the army
murdered thousands of civilians during the
war, which was at its height from 1979 to
1983. Such allegations resulted in a cutoff
of U.S. military aid in 1977.
Since 1980, the Reagan administration
has tried to resume military aid but has
faced strong opposition from Congress. It
has managed, however, to grant Guate-
mala $300,000 for military training and au-
thorize American companies to sell the
country trucks, jeeps and helicopters. Con-
gress last year rejected a Reagan adminis-
tration request to allot Guatemala $10 mil-
lion in credits for military sales and has
conditioned military aid in fiscal 1986 on a
civilian president's taking power and on an
improvement of Guatemala's human-rights
record.
Province's History
Some of the strongest human-rights
charges over the years have involved
Quiche province, in the remote highlands,
where Col. Lima served as commander for
most of 1982 and has been commander
again since early this year. "The army
committed horrendous abuses in Quiche"
between late 1981 and early 1983, says
Aryeh Neier, vice chairman of America's
Watch, an independent New York-based
human rights organization. He notes there
is "clearly much less killing today," but
says that this only means the army was
"very successful."
Col. Lima denies charges of abuses. He
blames many of the killings on guerrillas
who, he claims, dressed as soldiers and
murdered their own supporters to discredit
the army. Like other officers, he is proud
the army beat back the rebels without the
large-scale outside help that El Salvador's
army has needed.
With the election nearing, top officers
already have told the candidates that their
power will be limited. Among other things,
no officer is to be tried for human-rights
violations. The civilians aren't likely to
buck such edicts. As Gen. Oscar Humberto
Mejia Victores, chief of state since a 1983
coup ousted another military government,
says, army support for the next president
will be "crucial and vital."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560009-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560009-8
4:;;1?-
A Candidate's View
The civilians are putting the best face
on things. "My goal is to build a civilian
government," says Vinicio Cerezo, the
Christian Democratic candidate and a
leading presidential contender. "If I fail, it
will be because of a coup or because they
kill me in the Presidential Palace." He
opens his denim jacket to reveal a Brow-
ning revolver. "And I'll keep packing the
pistol, even as president," he says.
Since a Central Intelligence Agency-
sponsored coup toppled a civilian govern-
ment in 1954, the army has been the onl
Guatemalan institution capable of govern-
in this polarized societ. Political parties
have either been discredit by corruption
or decimated by death souads. Repeated
guerrilla uprisings have made national se-
curity a preeminent issue, one that only
the army can deal with.
Col. Lima graduated first in his class
(of '62) at the national military academy
and has spent nearly his entire career
fighting guerrillas in the rural highlands,
where he has become convinced that pov-
erty breeds insurgents. "We've seen the
needs of the people," he says.
A Huey Long Image
These days he labors to cultivate an im-
age as a sort of Huey Long in fatigues for
Quiche province, a backward region of 380,-
000 people, many of them Mayan Indian
descendants who don't speak Spanish. The
colonel opens roads and schools, awards
trophies to marimba bands and poets and
crowns Senorita Quiche. After a speech in
Chuguexa, he stands gamely as village el-
ders take turns dancing in circles before
him, carrying a 40-pound statue of Santi-
ago, a mythological hybrid of Christian
saint and Mayan god.
"Gen. MacArthur understood." he says
of such public-relations efforts. "He al-
ways traveled with a film crew."
The colonel recently was furious when,
after an earthquake shook a town in his
province, the nightly news didn't show sol-
diers working at the disaster site. Told by
one of his captains that army doctors on
the scene weren't wearing uniforms-and
that there weren't any casualties, any-
way-he thundered back: "I don't care if
there weren't casualties. I want the people
to see our doctors."
But he also is a man of action. Last
summer, with the nation's inflation rate
soaring past 60% a year, Col. Lima or-
dered farmers to stop shipping their beans
out of Quiche-and he had his soldiers and
police enforce the edict. The result: a rise
in local supplies which brought bean prices
in the province down by 33%.
At about the same time, he summarily
slapped price controls on meat. Butchers
in Santa Cruz del Quiche screamed. So Col.
Lima cut their city taxes-without consult-
ing the mayor.
Role of Committees
He could do that because, like all pro-
vincial commanders, he is president of the
provincial "inter-institutional coordinator"
committee, a way for the army to decen-
tralize government and mesh the functions
of various public agencies and ministries.
After the election, civilians are to preside
over the committees, but Col. Lima notes,
"We'll still supply the expertise, the ma-
chinery and the manpower."
At one recent committee meeting, a for-
estry official complains that a local judge
won't force eight men, who illegally cut
down 749 trees, to plant new shrubs. "We
won't leave it to the judges," Col. Lima
says. "Justice will be done."
The civilian governor hands the colonel
a list of schools that need desks; Col. Lima
promises his troops will build .the desks
and transport them to the schools. When
the colonel promises to do a favor for an
agricultural official, the man offers him
one of his best fighting cocks, an offer that
is politely refused.
Since early 1982, the army has super-
vised an extensive social program in
Quiche, part of an effort to win the hearts
and minds of peasants traumatized by
massacres. Ten model villages, with pota-
ble water and government-financed cot-
tage industries, were built for 19,000 for-
mer guerrilla sympathizers and refugees.
More than 50,000 civilians were organized
into civilian patrols to back up the army
and work on public projects. Hospitals and
clinics, schools and roads also were
built.
Controversial Program
However, the program is controversial.
In the model villages, residents' travel and
other aspects of life are closely monitored
by the army, and critics say the purpose of
the program is political control. Piero Glie-
jeses, a Johns Hopkins University foreign-
affairs professor, sees the new setup as
simply an extension of the military's ear-
lier activities.
"You have this pendulum of terror, de-
pending on the challenge from below," he
says. "The hatred the army has sown
among the Indians necessitates a military
occupation. Otherwise, when the shock of
terror fades, what remains is hatred."
Col. Lima doesn't see things that way.
On one recent afternoon, he has his pilot
tly him over the Ixil Triangle, once the
toughest war zone and now an area where
the army's social programs are much in
evidence. With his nose nearly touching
the window, he stares out of the helicopter
through the valleys and over the moun-
tains.
"Those houses, those roads-the army
built them," he says, pointing down and
squinting as the glare of sunlight reflects
off the metal roofs of army-built housing.
Moments later, he pounds his chest with a
fist and adds: "I get satisfaction seeing
how we won the people over."
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/26: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403560009-8