The
Guatemalan Civil War was a long and complex conflict that took place between
the government of Guatemala and leftist rebels between 1960 and 1996. While it
is generally classified as a Civil War, the conflict contains elements of a
number of other types of political violence.
To
understand the complexities of the prolonged violence in Guatemala, we must
first know the historical context of the conflict. In the 1940’s, the “October
Revolutionaries” seized control of the Guatemalan government from the
dictatorship of General Jorge Ubico[1].
The new government instituted a number of liberal economic policies. The U.S.
State Department and the United Fruit Company (an American corporation and
major landowner in Guatemala) felt threatened by what they believed was a
communist revolt, and responded by using the CIA to launch Operation PBSUCCESS[2].
With the support of the CIA, Guatemalan Army Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas
initiated a successful coup d'état in 1954.
The
new government banned left-wing political parties and labor unions, and
dissolved many of the liberal economic policies and democratic reforms. This
disenfranchised and radicalized many of the leftist and poor Guatemalans. The
foundation for decades of violence was established. The political conflicts
were catalyzed by rampant racism against the indigenous peoples, foreign
support and weaponry from governments like the United States and Cuba, and
socio-economic unrest among the poverty-stricken peasants.
The
textbook defines civil war as an “armed combat within the boundaries of a
sovereign state between parties that are subject to common authority at the
state of hostilities.”[3]
This definition does apply to the political violence that occurred in
Guatemala, however this simplification does not adequately describe the
complexities of the conflict.
The Guatemalan
Civil War took place in the unfortunate international context of the Cold War.
Although Guatemala is often not considered to be a major player in this war,
the international battle over communism turned Guatemala into a battlefield for
a proxy war between states like the United States and Cuba. With arms and
training from the CIA, the new right-wing government in Guatemala was able to
successfully stave off a number of attempted coups from leftist revolutionaries
while also initiating an atrocious campaign of human rights violations. The
United States used its opposition to communism as an excuse to continue their
support of the right-wing dictatorship throughout the war, while remaining
willfully ignorant of the violence towards civilians[4].
This in addition to Cuban support for leftist Guerillas establishes elements of
indirect interstate warfare, due to the competing foreign interests in
Guatemala’s governance.
The Guatemalan
army leadership used the ongoing political conflicts as an excuse to act on
their racial hatred towards the indigenous Mayan peoples. Further enabled by
CIA weaponry and training, 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. Much of this
destruction was “directed systematically against groups of the Mayan
population, within which can be mentioned the elimination of leaders and
criminal acts against minors who could not possibly have been military targets”[5]
and has thus been rightly classified as genocide.
The
complexities of the Guatemalan Civil War make it fascinating to study, but very
difficult to classify. What began as a revolutionary coup d'état became a
springboard for a prolonged civil war, during which international actors sought
to establish their own political leverage, and the domestic government used the
conflict as a cover for initiating racially motivated genocide. Simply
classifying the conflict as a civil war does not account for the diverse
motives of the belligerents: local revolutionaries seeking power, the US and
Cuba attempting to establish geopolitical leverage, peasants trying to overcome
poverty, the United Fruit Company pursuing economic interests, and the
Guatemalan government acting on racial hatred and prejudice. Clearly the types
of political violence that occurred within this “civil war” are numerous.
[1] “Timeline:
Guatema.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1215811.stm July
3, 2012
[2] Images
and Intervention: U.S. Policies in Latin America. Page 44. Martha L. Cottam. 1994.
[3] Comparative Politics. Page 259. David J
Samuels.
[4] "Papers
Expand on U.S. Role in Guatemala" The Washington Post, 12 March 1999
[5] "Acts
of Genocide" Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, 1999
Good job talking about the civil war and the US involvement
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