THE GUATEMALAN CEH: Daring, Comprehensive Analysis of Root Causes
In the words of Christian Tomuschat, “The handing over of the report was a glorious moment
in the life of the Guatemalan nation.” 168 The CEH report, Memoria del Silencio (Memory of
Silence), is a profound, unequivocal clarification of Guatemala’s history. It explained the
historical progression of violence, provided statistics on the patterns, locations, and extent of
violence, and gave a few victims the chance to have their story finally recognized and included
in Guatemala’s national history. The CEH’s declaration of the commission of genocide meant
that it was”breakthrough human rights documentation.” The CEH may, however, be most
remarkable for its daring analysis of the structural and systemic causes of the war. This was
69daring because no official body had ever spoken publicly and openly condemning the “official
policy of racism and social exclusion.” 169
The report’s tremendous strength comes from its simple unity of premise: that
the origin of the conflict and the overwhelming majority of violent acts were the
responsibility of the Guatemalan state. 17°
The CEH report asserts startling, undeniable qualitative and quantitative statistical
conclusions of responsibility.
During the armed confrontation, the State’s idea of the “internal enemy,”
intrinsic to the National Security Doctrine, became increasingly inclusive. At
the same time, this doctrine became the raison d’être of Army and State policies
for several decades. Through its investigation, the CEH discovered one of the
most devastating effects of this policy: state forces and related paramilitary
groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the CEH,
including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced disappearances.
Victims included men, women, and children of all social strata: workers,
professionals, church members, politicians, peasants, students, and academics;
in ethnic terms, the vast majority were Mayans….
Among the cases registered by the CEH, insurgent actions produced 3% of
the human rights violations and acts of violence perpetuated against men,
women, and children, including 5% of the arbitrary executions and 2% of forced
disappearances. 171
The three-volume, 3000-page report contains four thematic parts. The first seventy-one
pages of the report cover the administration, legal mandate, and technical functioning. 172 The
historical context of the conflict is explained over the next one-hundred-fifty pages of volume
one.
173
Volume two covers the perpetrator analysis for the first half and analysis of specific
violations for the last half. Volume three continues on in its entirety to analyze specific
violations. 174 Eighty of the total 8,000 testimonies of violations heard by the CEH were included
in the report as illustrative cases.
The mandate explained that the CEH would investigate the years of the conflict from the
beginning of the armed conflict in the early 1960s. Since the government was one of the
negotiators of the terms of the CEH’s mandate, it is not surprising that the timing of the period of
inquiry was limited in order that it would do the government and military the least harm. By
70choosing the early 1960s as the beginning of the investigation period, the conservative
government and military intended to frame the guerilla insurgents as the instigators of the
conflict 175 — an ideological war between threatening leftist/communist guerillas and the
government authority. If the mandate had instead set the beginning of the period of inquiry at
the landmark military coup of 1954, the coup would have appropriately been seen as a cause of
the conflict. Including the 1950s would have portrayed the insurgent’s campaign as a legitimate
response to the military’s violent coup and the repossession of peasant land after implementation
of Arbenz’s critical land distribution reform. Beginning the investigation period in the 1970s or
later would have highlighted Mayan victimization and would have characterized it as a conflict
about poverty, marginalization, and racism. This would have incriminated the military and
weakened the military’s case of the conflict as a Cold War conflict. The military then justified
the launching of their counterinsurgency on the basis that they were protecting the population
from a threatening communist menace.
Despite this subtle and sly attempt by the government (backed by the military) to curb the
full truth arrived at by the CEH and tailor it to their interests, the Commission bravely declared
the military’s simplistic ideological explanation for the conflict was untrue and deceiving.
It is not possible to present simple explanations that situate the armed conflict as
a manifestation of the Cold War confrontation between the East and the
West….If the most visible actors of the conflict were the military and the
insurgency, the historical investigation realized by the CEH provides evidence
of the responsibility and participation, in different forms, of segments of the
economic elite, political parties, and diverse sectors of civil society…. In this
sense, any reduction to the logic of two actors is not only insufficient, but
misleading.’
76
The sources of the conflict lay much deeper: economic exploitation, racism, and political
marginalization. The reasoning for the military’s vicious counterinsurgency did not lie as
shallow as simply protecting the country from a communist, outside threat. The CEH exposed
the truth of agency: it was the military and the government protecting the Guatemalan economic
71elite who were culpable. The military was on a deadly campaign to defend the pillars of the
existing system — exploitation and discrimination — to guarantee that the elite could continue
benefiting from this way of life. The military went on a mission to eradicate those elements of
society that it presumed were “restless” from their position of disadvantage and would pose a
threat to the elite’s comfort. Identifying such internal causes and agents of the war was not only
stated specifically in the commission’s mandate as one of its purposes; revealing the
overwhelming responsibility and the cold logic of the military and government in attacking its
own civilians make lies, cover-ups, and denials no longer feasible or beneficial for an
individual’s or institution’s prestige. The hope is that the old lies would be de-legitimized, this
more truthful, complete perspective of responsibility would be accepted throughout as “the
truth,” and that this truth-uncovering process would be humiliating enough to give incentive to
the guilty parties to apologize. The CEH sought repudiation of the military and corrupt
governmental institutions.
Tags: government, Mayan, military