Massive protests rock Guatemala

By Daoud Brown Guatemala City

Oct. 13—In massive national protests, tens of thousands of campesinos, union workers, students and Indigenous people blocked roads and bridges on Oct. 12—El Día de la Raza—effectively paralyzing many parts of the country including this capital city of 3 million.

The mainly Indigenous protestors, holding oversized red flags, hit the streets in Huahuatenango, Quiché, San Marcos and at least 10 other cities in the countryside—some reportedly carrying machetes, sticks, paving stones and slingshots—and halted traffic on the main roads to the Caribbean and Pacific coasts and the Inter-American Highway. Blockades snarled traffic on most routes into the capital.

They are demanding that certain mining concessions, a cement factory and a hydroelectric plant that they believe will destroy their environment with toxic waste be shut down; that land reform including access to scarce arable land be enacted; that pure water springs be protected from contamination; that the jailing, persecution and violence directed against farm worker leaders be halted; that four campesino political prisoners be released; and that the use of private security guards and armed paramilitaries to assassinate and persecute Indigenous and campesino leaders be investigated.

Daniel Pascual, leader of the National Indigenous & Campesino Coordinadora (CONIC), told the newspaper Diario de Centro América that the protests “were called to exert pressure on the government to live up to their commitments” earlier agreed to but ignored. (Oct. 13)

The Oct. 12 actions were exactly 90 days after a march of 10,000 Indigenous and campesinos from San Juan Sacatepéquez to the capital on July 14, when President Álvaro Colom met with protest leaders.  “In this country, if we were not doing this, no one would listen to us,” said Pascual. “There is no justice. The judges are corrupt. Campesinos are murdered.  People are dying of hunger and no one says anything. Only by taking this road can we get a hearing.”

The marches and blockades got under way before dawn at 4 a.m. Oct. 12 and lasted long into the night, when thousands gathered in the capital around the Casa Presidencial. Fifteen protesters held a six-hour sit-in and hunger strike there and vowed to continue until President Colom agreed to meet with them on their demands—which he did, just before midnight.  After hours of intense negotiations, the government also agreed there would be no reprisals against protesters.

One 19-year-old marcher was killed by gunfire during the tumultuous day, in what campesino leaders described as an assassination aimed at organizations of the rural poor. Two others were wounded in the attack. Business leaders said the protests had resulted in big financial losses to industry and commerce.

Students from San Carlos National University commandeered five buses to block traffic in the south of the capital for six hours. In Chimaltenango, farm workers demanded cancellation of the debt owed by 70 rural communities to the Fondo Nacional de Tierras (Land Fund).  In Quiché, campesinos from the Farm Workers Unity Committee (CUC) threatened to put down their tools if the government did not act quickly on their demands.  The huge plaza around the National Palace was jammed with buses that had ferried thousands from the countryside.  Colorful hand-lettered banners told local stories of the daily struggle of workers and farmers against the bosses and landowners.

Facing the plaza was a giant portrait of Jacobo Arbenz, elected Guatemala’s president by a landslide in 1950. The popular Arbenz presided over real land reform, expanded democratic and labor rights, and the expropriation of land from the powerful United Fruit Company—until he was overthrown in a 1954 coup with the help of the United Fruit Company and the CIA.  Graffiti covered the walls in the crowded working-class quarter called Zona 1: “No more militarism,” “For the disappeared—

Memory, Truth, Justice,” “No to capitalism,” “Urban resistance” and “Guatemala desperate—For work, for land, for food.” Venezuela chose the day to announce emergency donations of yucca products to alleviate the food crisis in Guatemala.  The Day of Dignity and Resistance of the Indigenous Peoples, or El Día de la Raza, was also celebrated on Oct. 12 in Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile, as well as in Guatemala where Indigenous people are more than 60 percent of the population.