GUATEMALA: Guatemala looks set to elect a former dictator as its president, writes Michael McCaughan
A large fleet of old buses and cattle trucks lined the pathways outside the military barracks in Huehuetenango this week as hundreds of ragged-looking peasant farmers converged on a small office in the hope of receiving a cash payment.
The farmers once belonged to the Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PACs), the civil defence patrols forcibly recruited by the army to combat guerrillas in the 1980s.
"I used to walk all night in the cold and the rain, without food or even a weapon," said Armando Perez, aged 62. The impoverished farmers were hailed as true patriots, abandoning their crops to save the country in her hour of need.
"We didn't want to be with the guerrillas or the army but we had no choice and if you didn't turn up for your shift you would be shot dead, I saw it happen."
Guatemala is a country of astonishing natural beauty where rainforest and highlands shelter a native population which has suffered centuries of apartheid and genocide. The Spanish conquest wiped out 90 per cent of the indigenous Maya in the 16th century and the repression continued after independence.
The US-owned United Fruit Company built railways and seized large tracts of land for banana production, hiring and firing governments at will.
The end of the Jorge Ubico dictatorship (1930-44) led to a brief democratic opening during which land was distributed to farmers and US companies forced to pay taxes. The experiment ended in 1954 when a CIA-backed coup forced President Jacobo Arbenz out of office and installed a series of military dictators and puppet civilian presidents. A guerrilla war lasted almost four decades until a peace accord was signed in 1996.
The pale-skinned Ladino minority controls business, the media, the legal system and the political parties, ruling over eight million indigenous people who comprise 65 per cent of the population.
Last year the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), battered by a series of corruption scandals, offered all former civil patrol members an indemnity payment of $2,500, a substantial pre-election handout to 490,000 potential voters. The number of beneficiaries came to more than half the number of voters who bothered to turn up on election day in previous presidential contests.
It wasn't deemed worthy of comment that the payoff rewarded a nationwide witch hunt which left 200,000 dead and forced 1.5 million more to flee to the mountains or neighbouring Mexico.
Amnesty International described the killings: "People of all ages were not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disembowelled, drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks or bayoneted to death."
The survivors and relatives of the dead are still uncovering the bones of their loved ones, even as they watch the killers compete for the highest office in the land and their foot-soldiers queue up to claim their bounty for the dirty work.
The planned payoff plan didn't work out as smoothly as hoped as the government announced earlier this year that the amount due to the former civil patrol members had been cut in half.
The offer now came with a catch; if you joined the ruling FRG party, your name jumped to the top of the waiting list. As election day approached, the FRG still lagged in the polls, prompting party officials to announce that the money would be released in three phases; the first payment came this week, just before tomorrow's elections, while the remaining sum would be paid afterwards.
"They think we're totally stupid," said José Reyes, camped outside the Huehuetenango barracks. "I will vote for anyone but the FRG," he said.
Efrain Rios Montt, a Bible-thumping anti-communist strong- man who seized power in 1982 is now head of parliament and running for the ruling FRG party in tomorrow's presidential race.
In the old days Rios Montt was hailed as a friend of democracy by US president Ronald Reagan, who called the Guatemalan dictator "a man of great personal integrity" who is "getting a bum rap on human rights".
Rios Montt, known simply as the General, promises a tough line on crime but is hamstrung by his own party's dismal record in office.
Guatemala remains a place of fear. Priests, lawyers, journalists and trade unionists are still murdered by death squads linked to the army. The post-war promises of political and social reform and an overhaul of the armed forces has yet to happen. Guatemalans appear utterly indifferent to the democratic process.
A poll published this week shows that just 11 per cent say they will vote for Rios Montt, yet some 25 per cent believe he will be the next president. One in five voters believe the government can tell whom they vote for despite private individual booths.
The favourite Grand National Alliance (Gana), a right-wing business alliance, has an unlimited publicity budget and bright central party offices, where snazzy well-dressed Ladinos whisper into mobile phones, not an indigenous person in sight. When asked how the new government will rebuild the country, the usual buzz words apply: transparency, jobs, equality, justice.
The genocide era saw the "clean-up" of an entire generation of activists, leaving only the occasional "mopping up" to be done to maintain the status quo. UN and EU funds and personnel have failed to undermine the repressive apparatus, led by armed forces which dictated the terms of the peace accord and have since dictated budgets and priorities.
The first soldier to publicly break ranks on the dirty war was Col Otto Noack, who admitted in 1998 that "excesses" may have been committed by the army, hardly an earth-shattering statement. Noack was rewarded with a month in prison.
In 2001, three soldiers were found guilty of the murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi, who was beaten to death in April 1998, just two days after he presented an investigation into human rights abuses committed during the civil war. Gerardi's report found that 90 per cent of all massacres were committed by the army and its civil patrol allies.
In the absence of memory and justice, Guatemala's political parties offer T-shirts, beer and roofing materials to win over the electorate as the popular vote becomes another commodity, haggled and traded like the indigenous crafts in the marketplace.