model that is successful in benefiting the
few and preserving low cost and extensive manpower. Unlike its north neighbor Mexico and other countries, Guatemala could never achieve an agrarian
reform that could dismantle the basis of
this historic economic model.
The history from 1839 to 1945 is a history of military dictatorships and great
influence of the catholic church and an
oligarchy formed by European descendants (Spaniards, German and North
Americans), which established its power
in the capital of Guatemala thanks to
their domain and big property on natural resources, and the process of colonization of the southern lands of the pacific rim (1950), where they established the
crops of cotton, sugar and nowadays
palm and bananas.
The strategy of colonization of the
southern region was also based on the
formula: land domain and migration of
the indigenous and ladino population,
mainly coming from the western highlands: that’s is the explanation of why
the resources and main assets are concentrated, producing an extreme
persiting inequality.
The absence of democracy and the extreme social injustice, paved the road for
a democratic spring between the decade
of 1944 and 1945. During this period,
progressive citizens supported by a
democratic social oriented faction of the
Guatemalan Army, gain power through
clean elections after a long era of dictatorships and frauds. They were inspired
by social changes throughout the continent and mainly by the Rerum Novarum
Papal Encyclical that called for
7
a fairer distribution of the land and the
need to grant labour rights. During this
era, Guatemala created important reforms as adopting a Labour Code, establishing a basic non-universal social security system, and other social reforms.
Caught within the whirls of the Cold War
era, the anticommunist fever and fear
headed by the United States it was obvious, that when the democratic government aimed to generate land reforms
that affected the interests of the elite
and the transnational companies, a coup
would end this era. And so it did, throwing Guatemala into a 36 year long period
of internal armed conflict, that shattered
the lives of more than 250,000 people
most of them civilians and non-fighters.
The low intense armed conflict was
characterized by grave human rights
violations, the installation of forced disappearance and genocide acts against
the indigenous communities. Truth
Commissions have evidenced that at
least 80% of the victims where non combatant ones.
The internal armed conflict was contrary
to popular believe, not generated by a
group of rebel communist peasant or
indigenous movements financed by the
late USSR. It originated within the own
Guatemalan Army where a group of social oriented high-ranking officers opposed North American interventions,
absence of democracy and an end to
social injustice. Later, trade unions,
peasants, university students and teachers and people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds embraced the
movement. The armed conflict ended
with the signature of the Peace Agreements in 1996.