The Worldview of the Oligarchy in Guatemalan Politics
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
1 THE WORLDVIEW OF THE OLIGARCHY IN GUATEMALAN POLITICS Roman Krznaric A thesis submitted for the degree of Ph.D. in Government Department of Government University of Essex Colchester, UK 2003 2 SUMMARY OF THESIS This is a study of the worldview and political actions of the Guatemalan oligarchy (or economic elite). It primarily uses an ethnographic method based on interviews with members of the oligarchy to answer a single question: How did the oligarchy’s worldview shape their political practices that limited the development of liberal democracy in Guatemala in the final decade of the twentieth century? Scholars frequently treat economic elites as a faceless class or as self-interested rational actors. In contrast, I take a humanistic approach recognising the oligarchs as complex, often contradictory individual human beings with diverse motivations. I access their worldview by analysing their narratives contained in interview testimony and business association documents. The thesis focuses on two aspects of the oligarchy’s worldview: (1) their shared narratives on private property, especially their thinking on expropriative and redistributive agrarian reform and (2) their shared narratives on personal security, particularly their views on crime and punishment. I then undertake detailed descriptions from the oligarchs’ perspective of two political contexts illustrating how the oligarchy’s worldview shaped their actions: (1) the oligarchy’s prevention of agrarian reform in the UN-mediated peace process of the mid 1990s to protect their property rights and (2) their response to kidnapping and violent crime in the late 1990s to ensure their personal security. I draw two main conclusions. First, the oligarchy’s worldview shaped their political practices that helped them retain their traditional privileges and ensure continuity in the face of pressures for change: they maintained the highly unequal land distribution in a country of enormous poverty and landlessness; and they protected their personal security while other social groups continued to suffer social violence. Second, these practices limited democratisation in Guatemala: to preserve their privileges they used informal patrimonial influence in government, supported the use of violence and violated the rule of law; and the consequences of their actions damaged the civil rights and minority rights of those outside the oligarchy’s community, and weakened state accountability to citizens. These conclusions challenge two claims in the political science literature: that Guatemala has a ‘reformist’ business sector that is more ‘democratic’ than in the past; and that economic elites tend to play a positive role in democratisation processes. 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many Guatemalan oligarchs believe that they are personally responsible for the success of their plantations or factories, and barely acknowledge the efforts of their many labourers. I view this study differently. Despite the single author on the title page, my thesis is the product of a thousand conversations, books and experiences. During my research I have been especially inspired and encouraged by Kate Raworth and Revan Schendler. Their presence, near and distant, has been central to my life. At Essex University, my supervisor Joe Foweraker provided wise advice, excellent critique and clarity of vision. I also want to thank David Howarth, Michael Freeman and John Scott for their incisive comments. James Dunkerley and Rachel Sieder at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London, have been generous with their thoughts. I received great support from many people while a visiting scholar at the Centre for Latin American Studies, Cambridge University, and the Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Julie Coimbra and Clare Hariri helped me far more than I deserved. My students at Essex and Cambridge have played their part, as has a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council. In Guatemala, my research could not have occurred without my interviewees, who gave their time and experiences to a stranger. Samantha Sams has been an extraordinary friend whose political commitment and caring have given me hope at dark moments. Conversations with Rachel Garst shaped much of this thesis. Many other people in Guatemala were willing to talk with me, and share their ideas, information, contacts and daily lives. Amongst them are: Claudia Acevedo, Tani Adams, Matthew Creelman, David Dubón, Betty Hannstein Adams, Paul Kobrak, Frank La Rue, Marcie Mersky, Liz Oglesby, Hugo Ordóñez Porta, Ximena Ordóñez Orellana, Héctor Rosada-Granados, Maya Luna Sams, Luis Solano, and Edmundo Urrutia. Some people I want to thank just don’t seem to fit the above categories. They include: Geoff Baker, Marci Lopez-Levy, Andy Wroe, Nicky Short, John Petrovato, Sylvan Schendler, Harriet Ward, Colin Ward, and Nurit Stadler. My family, in Sydney, have been closer to this project than they may realise. I used to walk along the River Colne to Essex University, and have always wanted to thank, for their inspiration, the geese, the swans, the wind in the reeds, the rising and falling tide. 4 CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2 HISTORY AND HISTORIOGRAPHY IN GUATEMALA 49 CHAPTER 3 A PORTRAIT OF THE GUATEMALAN OLIGARCHY 81 CHAPTER 4 THE OLIGARCHIC WORLDVIEW ON PRIVATE PROPERTY 100 CHAPTER 5 PROTECTING PROPERTY IN THE PEACE PROCESS 134 CHAPTER 6 THE OLIGARCHIC WORLDVIEW ON PERSONAL SECURITY 175 CHAPTER 7 RESPONSES TO VIOLENT CRIME IN POST-CONFLICT GUATEMALA 197 CHAPTER 8 CONCLUSIONS 224 BIBLIOGRAPHY 233 APPENDIX A LIST OF INTERVIEWEES 259 APPENDIX B TIMELINE OF THE GUATEMALAN PEACE PROCESS (1985-2000) 262 APPENDIX C OLIGARCHIC FAMILIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 265 APPENDIX D OLIGARCHIC FAMILIES IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 267 ACRONYMS 269 1 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Parallel histories Sicily, 1860. Garibaldi’s Red Shirts are approaching. ‘Unless we ourselves take a hand now, they’ll foist a republic on us. If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.’ So says Tancredi, nephew of the landowning prince in Guiseppe de Lampedusa’s novel, The Leopard. Tancredi, like his uncle, wants to maintain the traditional privileges of the oligarchy, of which they are both part. But with their property and lives at risk, with the feudal order under threat, the young man realises something must be done. The inertia of the old system, the loyalty of the servants, will not be sufficient to preserve the status quo. Tancredi believes that his generation can shape history. Safeguarding their position will require a semblance of change: they must appear to embrace the republic. * * * By the 1990s Guatemala’s oligarchs had experienced three decades of threat to their own traditional order and privilege: a world of extreme wealth inequality, of ‘Whites’ served by ‘Indians’, of pervasive political influence. The guerrilla uprisings of the 1960s had been crushed, only to have reemerged in the 1970s with a stronger base amongst indigenous Mayans, who comprised around 60% of the population. The oligarchs became increasingly reliant on the military, which controlled government through electoral fraud, to act on their behalf to defeat the insurgents. In the army massacres of the late 1970s and early 1980s around 150,000 people were killed, 440 indigenous villages destroyed and more than one million people displaced. Despite a shift to elected civilian rule in the mid-1980s - tightly managed by the military - the civil war and political violence did not cease. Trade unionists, human rights workers, lawyers, priests, journalists and others continued to be tortured, disappeared and killed. During these dark years of armed conflict members of the oligarchy supported the army and paramilitary groups, such as by financing death squads, flying their own planes into combat areas to help transport soldiers, permitting army bases to be built on their fincas (large plantations or farms), and giving tacit approval to violence through not publicly voicing opposition. Their hostile reaction is not surprising. For the oligarchs the 1980s was a period of Cold War turmoil in Central America. The Sandinistas controlled Nicaragua, El Salvador was on the verge of falling to the guerrillas, and the Guatemalan army was unable to eradicate the subversives. Moreover, the Guatemalan conflict directly 2 affected the oligarchs. The destruction of fincas and crops, and the imposition of war taxes by guerrillas, threatened and violated their security of private property. Throughout the war kidnapping and assassination of businessmen and their families endangered and limited their personal security. The threat to the Guatemalan oligarchy had receded by the late 1990s. The Sandinistas had been defeated in the 1990 election and the Salvadoran peace process was complete in 1992. After initial opposition and reluctance, Guatemala’s oligarchs supported the peace negotiations, along with the army. In 1996, after six years of talks, the government/military and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) guerrillas signed an agreement ending the armed conflict. None of the peace accords that emerged from the negotiations challenged the oligarchy’s privileged position; in particular, their domination of private property remained intact. Signing of the final accord, and the first years of official peace from 1996 to 2000, occurred during the government of Alvaro Arzú Irigoyen, a modern businessman and member of an old wealthy family.