Guatemala’s First Need: Structure : Consensus for Pluralism Comes Hard to a Stratified Society

Peace has broken out. Colored lights, magnificent parades. Hundreds of tons of ticker-tape drift onto the procession of the heroes who have signed the peace--but then what? What to do with this peace, how to preserve it, how to contribute as a nation to strengthen it, what support should be offered, and to whom? Many will have no answers to these questions, others just an excuse for having no answers: It took us by surprise. The usual thing is to prepare for war . . . .

Getting ready for peace, not peace as a concept but as a starting point for the recovery of a right essential to human dignity, requires understanding the causes that led us to the crisis and still face us in the historical challenge of building peace.

We are confronted by the failure of an economic development model that has produced a polarized society of wealth and poverty and inequality and social injustice, protected by authoritarian and autocratic regimes. The result is an unsatisfied majority. Our crisis is, then, a structural crisis, which presents great challenges--both economically and politically--to our incipient democracy.

We are faced with the enormous task of building a new social structure on which to construct a new model of democratic society. This is a matter of changing values and behavior patterns. Economically it means doing away with Guatemala’s capitalist mentality, expressed in the theory of the three Ms--minimum risk, minimum effort and maximum benefit--which is responsible for a short-term, speculative business attitude. Politically it means replacing a culture of violence and repression with one of conciliation. We need room for making agreements and settlements, for alliances and wide areas of sharing, for dialogue, for the right to dissent without exposing oneself to a beating or a dagger in the back ordered with impunity. In short, we need to make way for the creation of a democratic culture.

For this it is necessary to establish a dialogue on a national level, to seek a consensus of national purpose and national identity, a collective expression of the will of all forces of society. This will depend on the leaders of all sectors assuming responsibility for directing the transition. To achieve a social compact, there must be commitment from every social force--business and banking, the government, the army, political parties, the churches, universities, professional organizations, the media, the working class--each contributing its own part of the basic components of the new set of ethical, moral, civic, political, economic and cultural values that will be the makeup of tomorrow’s society.

Our national economic and political goals should be oriented toward the reduction of structural poverty and toward the opening up of political space to encourage the emergence of grass-roots organizations as new players in the democratic process.

This will not be easy, given the current power structure and conditions of economic dependency. Within the production apparatus, an externally oriented market must co-exist with the simple forms of commerce that provide mere subsistence to the great majority, the peasant Indians.

The ruling elites have traditionally feared as destabilizing any attempts to reorganize or to stimulate economic activity. What will happen when these new groups try to gain access to decision-making power? The traditional values and patterns of behavior that have governed Guatemalan society, like the distrust of organization, are powerful barriers that will have to be overcome in the day-to-day process of building democracy and achieving national reconciliation.

We must understand that violence and repression have unleashed social forces that make peace absolutely necessary. If this moment of peace passes, we shall have only a short time before external as well as internal actors will intensify the present structural problem at ever higher levels of violence.

We can be the focal point, the biotype, in which Guatemalan and Central American man begins the necessary transformation of political behavior for the unpostponable transformation of the social order, in which the economic area is characterized by equality and social justice, and in which freedom and participation in decision-making characterize the political arena.

We must not and cannot fail in this experience of transition to democracy in Guatemala, because its effect goes beyond our borders. The people of Central America have before them now two large mirrors that represent the ideological and geopolitical bipolarization of the world: Guatemala. Nicaragua. Each country represents a different experience in solving its crisis: Nicaragua for its revolution, Guatemala for its return to a state of law and civilian rule after 32 years of military authoritarianism. And each awaits in suspense the success or failure of the other.

Therefore the Guatemalan democratic process faces two great challenges: internally, to respond to the mountain of unmet economic, social and political demands of society, and to provide an example to the outside world of a model representative democracy.

Given these facts, it is right and proper to call for international solidarity and for cooperation from friendly countries to help deepen and expand the democratic process and to condemn any attempt to reverse it. One cannot expect more from this process than the relations between the forces of power will permit. Yet one must not lose sight of the fact that the highest priority is the growth of new democratic actors and the elimination of the politics of personalism and strongmen.

The United States, without renouncing its special role, can offer aid and vital cooperation principally through an understanding that takes into account the special social and political processes of countries that are still unknown to many U.S. citizens. This requires a subtlety in the use of language that might have a positive meaning in the U.S. context but that acquires another connotation in Guatemalan society. In Guatemala, democracy is for my neighbor, but in my house I’m in charge. Free competition is great, too, as long as it applies to my competitor but not to me. And liberty is also fine, but don’t expect me to restrain my behavior to ensure another’s freedom.

The challenge facing the United States requires something else: to counteract the three Ms referred to earlier with a new set of principles designed for the moment in which Central America finds itself: maximum bipartisan cooperation, maximum effort at understanding and providing support that is sustainable over the long run, and minimum economic and political conditions attached to U.S. support.

Preparing today for a coming peace and using all legitimate means to preserve it is the best investment in Central America’s future that can be made.