The year in review-Guatemala

GUATEMALA

TOWARDS PEACE AND RECONCILIATION
By John Pauly, Officer-in-Charge, Huehuetenango office,
United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA)

On a typically beautiful October morning, as distant volcanoes peeked through white clouds in a blue sky, we anxiously awaited the negotiators. The meeting was to begin in just a few minutes, and waiting with us were members of the departmental Conflict Resolution Commission and representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS) PROPAZ programme. The negotiators, all indigenous Mayan-Chuj men, represented two sides of a decades-old dispute. They had left their villages during the night to travel, largely by foot, to the capital of Huehuetenango.

Recently, residents of a rural area of San Mateo Ixtatan - a Mayan-Chuj community on Huehuetenango's northern border - had threatened to declare independence from the urban centre. They claimed that the municipal government had failed to meet their needs, like building roads or water projects. Seven months ago, a negotiation meeting called by the departmental governor had ended disastrously. Partisans battled with sticks, stones and rifles. Urban representatives attacked the rural peasant leader, a demobilized guerrilla commander, and accused him of an array of "crimes".

As we waited, we remembered the palpable hatred and intolerance of the earlier meeting, both legacies of the country's armed internal conflict. In the early 1980s, the government's counter-insurgency campaign had ruptured the social fabric of traditional Mayan communities such as San Mateo Ixtatan, pitting neighbours and even families against one another. The effects of this division were still being felt.

Thinking back on our good offices during the last few years of the conflict, I was encouraged by memories of the electoral campaigns of 1999, when we, together with the local election supervisor's office, successfully brokered a "Gentlemen's Agreement" obliging the three political parties in the municipality to publicly reject the use of violence and negative campaigning, thereby contributing to peaceful elections.

I hoped that our work over the past several months would yield results today. Commission members, all regional representatives of governmental institutions, had met numerous times with rural and urban leaders, accompanied by our office and OAS-PROPAZ. During this process, hostility and even threats against us had slowly yielded to acceptance of the Commission's role as mediator. Later, in conflict-transformation workshops, we had tried to sensitize leaders about the importance of tolerance, recognizing the root causes of conflicts and identifying common interests in negotiations.

In the midst of my thoughts, I noticed the arrival of the two groups' representatives. They entered the meeting hall and took their places at opposing tables, separated by only ten metres but years of mutual distrust and violence. Their faces revealed their realization that they were finally sitting down to begin to put the conflict to rest.

Our concern about possible trouble quickly melted to relief, as the two sides greeted one another. The negotiators, including the former guerrilla leader, exchanged smiles and jokes, in stark contrast to the insults, threats, and physical assaults they had traded just months before.

The day's objectives, including mutual acceptance of the representatives as well as agreements to reject violence and to respect the opinions of others during the negotiation process, were achieved without a hitch. The date of the next meeting was set, the group photo was taken and the negotiators set off for home.

As the sun began to set over the Cuchumatan mountains, we evaluated the day's events. Despite our satisfaction, we reminded ourselves that the points to be negotiated were substantial: cessation of hostility, mutual respect, participation of the rural communities in planning municipal development, establishing an auxiliary civil registry, and, perhaps most importantly, developing a shared vision of the municipality.

We remembered that the resolution of this conflict, like the Guatemalan peace process, is a long-term venture that requires the transformation of relations among citizens as well as between those citizens and their State. Along the way, neighbours learn tolerance for one another, organized civil society grows to influence State action, and the State evolves from oppressor to champion of the people's interests. Such a transformation will permit Guatemalans, just like the Mayan-Chuj residents of San Mateo Ixtatan, to develop a positive vision of their republic, in which they are builders of a lasting peace.

The opening of negotiations in Huehuetenango represented an important step forward in the process of peace and reconciliation in San Mateo Ixtatan. As one elder exclaimed, "We are brothers from the same root. If we want peace, we must learn to get along and resolve our problems without resorting to violence."