TRUTH AND DEMOCRACY

March 10, 1999
		On day three of President Clinton's visit to Central America, a look at the state of democracy in the region. Two veteran Latin America analysts discuss current political trends and recent accusations that U.S. security agencies were involved in human rights abuses in Guatemala.

March 4, 1999: President Clinton examines damage from Hurricane Mitch. Dec. 30, 1996: Guatemala ends 36 years of civil war. NewsHour coverage of Latin America.     The CIA Factbook on Guatemala. US Embassy of Guatemala	PHIL PONCE: President Clinton wound up his four-day, four-nation tour with a stop in Guatemala City this afternoon. The trip had been long planned, but it comes just two weeks after an explosive report from an International Truth Commission that implicated American security agencies in thousands of killings in Guatemala's long civil war. The Commission, headed by a German jurist, said as many as 200,000 Guatemalans, most of them Maya Indians, may have died in the country's 30-year conflict. The Commission blamed the Guatemalan Government and army for 93 percent of 42,000 human rights violations it investigated. It blamed Marxist guerrillas for another 3 percent. Most of the blame was placed on the top levels of the Guatemalan Government and army and not on lower-ranking officers or officials, but the Commission said: "The Government of the United States, through various agencies, including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some state operations." The report also criticized the US Government and some corporations for supporting what it called "Guatemala's archaic and unjust economic structure." Guatemala's President, Alvaro Arzu, whose government commissioned the report, had no immediate comment -- nor did the defense minister. The US Government, which unclassified thousands of secret documents for the Commission, said, through its ambassador to Guatemala: "The report's focus is appropriate, that these were abuses committed by Guatemalans against other Guatemalans, the result of an internal conflict." The International Commission was the second in a year to investigate the controversies of Guatemala's past. A similar investigation also took place in El Salvador. These efforts at investigation and reconciliation are part of the move to democratization that President Clinton saw in all four countries he visited in Central America. Both El Salvador and Nicaragua emerged from civil wars in the 1980's and are now governed by competitively elected presidents and parliaments. Both have had peaceful transitions of political power. Honduras also has a democratic government after years of military rule, but even as they experiment with democratic reform, the four nations are trying to revitalize their impoverished economies, and at the same time, all are fighting a common natural disaster: the aftereffects of Hurricane Mitch. President Clinton was scheduled to address some of these issues at a town meeting this afternoon in Guatemala City. Tomorrow, the President holds a joint meeting with Central American leaders and then returns to Washington.
	Accessing the Truth Commission Report.
	PHIL PONCE: For more, we're joined by two veteran Latin America analysts. Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based research organization. And George Vickers is executive director of the Washington Office on Latin America, which promotes democracy and human rights in the region. Gentlemen, welcome. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Vickers, let's begin with Guatemala and the Truth Commission report. As you read the report, how would you characterize the extent of US involvement in the abuses that took place in Guatemala? GEORGE VICKERS, Washington Office on Latin America: Well, I think the report says that the United States had an important role in establishing the doctrine of national stability and security that the Guatemalan Army used in the 1960's and 1970's which didn't distinguish between sort of formal Communists and others who were non-Communists who were opposed to the system, or who created turmoil in Guatemala, made them all internal enemies and subjects to elimination. Secondly, the United States played an important role in establishing intelligence agencies and some other agencies that were themselves important instruments of the repression. However, I think it's important to note as well that the report said that more than 90 percent of the actual abuses that it talks about in the report took place between 1978 and 1984, which are the periods when the United States was least directly involved with Guatemala. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Falcoff, is that a fair and accurate summary of US involvement? MARK FALCOFF, American Enterprise Institute: I think it's reasonably fair. The only -- probably the only difference that I would have is that really the doctrine of national security and the whole concept of anti-Communism which was introduced into Guatemala in the 50's or 40's simply put an ideological patina on a war that had been going on in Guatemala for a lot longer than that. Guatemala's civil wars have a deep root in the nation's past. It's a country that's been deeply divided ethnically and by class. So, that's the only difference -- the only additional point that I would make to what Mr. Vickers said. PHIL PONCE: So, you would agree with the general proposition that the United States was involved in creating, what, a structure that the government then used as part of its -- as part of the system by which abuses took place? Is that a fair characterization? MARK FALCOFF: No, I think that greatly overstates the case. First of all, structures of military repression have existed in Guatemala long before the coup of 1954, which is usually the date that the United States has always identified as having played an active role, which we did. We helped overthrow an elected government which was of the left and -- but the structures of repression did not require a doctrine and were there long before. What happened was the United States got involved in an ongoing civil war and from the United States, some elements of that civil war derived doctrines, derived weaponry, derived advice but did not always, of course, listen to our advice. It's a very complicated story and I don't think the newspapers, at least in summarizing the finding of the truth commission, have given it the nuanced treatment it deserves. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Vickers a fair assessment of the connection between what the US might have done and what happened in Guatemala? GEORGE VICKERS: Well, I think the report itself said very clearly that there was a long history before the United States played any role in Guatemala of creating inequities that themselves generated social conflicts in Guatemala. But I do think that the report noted, and correctly on the basis of declassified United States documents, that in creating key intelligence agencies that were the principal instruments of identifying who was going to be killed and turning those names over to units to be killed in the 1960's and 1970's, that these were consequences of and part of a process of assistance provided by the United States to the Guatemalan army and to the - Ejército de Presidentiale - which is an intelligence unit connected to the presidency there.
	Guatemala's future.
	PHIL PONCE: Mr. Falcoff, do you see a useful purpose for a Truth Commission? Will a Truth Commission, say, help promote democracy now in Guatemala? MARK FALCOFF: Well, I'm not so sure. Truth Commissions are substitutes for judicial review and judicial sanction for human rights violations committed by military and other authoritarian regimes and we've had them in Argentina, we've had them in El Salvador, we've had them in Chile. They exist because there is no recourse to judicial review and judicial sanction. So the question of clarifying the truth is like the minimum that can be accomplished. And many - PHIL PONCE: What do they accomplish, though? MARK FALCOFF: Well, presumably, they at least identify the names of victims, the nature of their sufferings, whether it's death, disappearance, torture, whatever. Sometimes presumably they identify at least agencies, if not individuals, that are responsible. But, again, they're a prophylactic, of sorts, because they are a substitute for the Nuremberg-type proceedings that some people would like. PHIL PONCE: So you're saying they're of limited use? MARK FALCOFF: I think they're of limited use. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Vickers, of limited use? GEORGE VICKERS: I think they're a beginning; they're not an end to the process. And I think, again, the Commission's report said very clearly that reconciliation is a long-term process and made a series of recommendations, in fact, about education and other sorts of things that need to happen over the next decade if a culture of mutual respect among Guatemalans is going to be developed and there's going to be real reconciliation. But I think that -- and I agree, really, with Mark here. I think that by establishing the facts, the truth, if you will, of the situation, it provides a basis. Much depends on what happens to those facts and whether they're agreed upon by the key actors. If you take a look at the Salvadoran Truth Commission, for example, the Commission named a number of people, made a number of judgments about the war in that country and both sides essentially rejected the report, passed an amnesty within a week and the report was stuck in a drawer and forgotten forever after that. It did not have any long-term impact. I think what happens in Guatemala will depend very much on what President Arzu ultimately says about it, on whether the Government and the parties to the conflict take responsibility, accept the findings of the Commission, and decide to use that as a base for beginning to build reconciliation in the country.
	Democracy throughout Central America.
	PHIL PONCE: Mr. Falcoff, let's pull back for a moment away from Guatemala and look at the status of democracy, the state of democracy throughout Central America. How would you assess it? How is democracy doing in those four countries? MARK FALCOFF: I think that you have to look at the history of the region and by historical standards, I think all the countries are doing very well. Maybe it's a modest advance by our standards of what we think democracy is, but when you consider that most of these countries had almost no experience with civilian government, elected civilian government, in the 20th century, to see not only governments installed once but have alternates in power, successive elections, multiparty participation, including the participation of former guerrillas as we just have seen in El Salvador, I think this is an enormous advance. It's obviously not enough, but it's a start and I don't believe frankly, that the victory of the guerrillas, for example, in El Salvador, would have gotten us there any faster than we are today, which is the implicit critique that many people make of American policy in the 80's. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Vickers, your assessment on how democracy is doing in Central America. GEORGE VICKERS: Well, I think Mark's right. There's been real progress and it's important progress. I think what we have is elected democracies in Central America. We don't yet have democratic societies in Central America. The question is whether the key institutions that you have to have to make a democracy work in the long term really become consolidated. By that I mean effective civilian control of the military, whether you get civilian police forces that are really capable of combating crime and at the same time respecting the rights of citizens; whether you get judicial systems that can become effective. We're a long way from seeing that consolidated. PHIL PONCE: So you're saying that there have been fairly competitive elections but the test now is how well the supporting institutions of democracy - GEORGE VICKERS: That's -- one test is building up the supporting institutions. The other test is that I think the -- my fear is here is that there's a window of opportunity. People have to decide. The citizens of the Central American countries have to feel that democracy makes a difference in their lives. And I don't think that that's happening yet. It's not the fault of the -- of what's been tried in establishing and building democratic institutions in these countries; the problem is that for most people, life has gotten worse not better since the civil wars ended. There are more people out of work, inequality is worse, they haven't seen the benefits of democracy. And if they don't see that soon, they're going to lose faith that democracy is an answer to their problems. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Falcoff, do you agree there's a limited window of opportunity and if democracy doesn't take hold now that, what, the countries could revert to dictatorships, military juntas, that sort of thing? MARK FALCOFF: I think the window is a bit bigger than George suggested. I think that many people in Central America really appreciate what might be called the growing civility of political discourse, the growing civility of individual rights. And I think that the texture of public life in Central America is so much better today than it was 15, 20 years ago. I think that has to be a positive benefit. Some of the economic problems are related to Hurricane Mitch, some of them to the legacy of the civil war. One benefit that these societies have received economically from the civil war has been the flight of refugees to the United States and the remittances that those refugees send back. PHIL PONCE: How big of a benefit is that? MARK FALCOFF: About a billion a year for El Salvador. I'm not sure about Nicaragua. But Salvador makes more from the remittances than they ever made in US aid at the height of the war. PHIL PONCE: In other words, people from El Salvador come to the United States, they send back money to relatives, El Salvador gets hard currency. MARK FALCOFF: And some of them are also helping relatives set up micro enterprises, small businesses. The small business sector in Salvador is really feeding off of those remittances. So the picture is certainly not wonderful, but it is so much better than what we could have expected in 1979 or '80; I can't help but be optimistic.
	The role of the U.S.
	PHIL PONCE: Mr. Vickers, what does it do to the region to have the President visit at this time, during this window, as you call it? GEORGE VICKERS: Well, I think it's important for two reasons. I mean, I think, given the U.S.'s history in Central America, it's an important statement that we're really trying to do something different, that we're really trying to see -- not impose our will on the countries but really be of help in providing and helping to organize reconstruction assistance. It's also just a sign of support for people who -- the devastation of Hurricane Mitch is beyond anything we can imagine in Honduras and to a somewhat lesser extent in Nicaragua. It's a very important statement that we care, we're paying attention to them and we're going to do what we can to help. PHIL PONCE: Mr. Falcoff, what specific kinds of things can the United States do to help, besides the symbolism implicit in a presidential visit? MARK FALCOFF: Well, Congress could, for one thing, vote the President's proposals for aid to victims of the hurricane. The second thing that they could do is to think seriously about factoring in these countries, the Central American Five, into NAFTA. There are probably some immigration issues the United States could sit down and think about again. The stability of these countries depends, as I told you earlier, on remittances. There's a rather complicated balance between the need to have a population in the United States and the need to maintain stability in these countries. It's very complicated, so that it's not just a black-and-white issue of immigration, it's an issue of immigration balancing against stability. And the more instability you have, the lack of economic opportunity, the more you get the uncontrolled flows of immigration. So it's a nice full list of items if the President and Congress wanted to deal with it. PHIL PONCE: I'm afraid that's all the time we have. I thank you for being with us. GEORGE VICKERS: Thank you.

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