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Strategic HamletsAuthor(s): Ellen WeaverSource: Fortnight, No. 293 (Mar., 1991), p. 19Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25552775 .

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liberal left strives to find a modern expression of its enlightenment values. Within Slovakia,

meanwhile, the raw emotion of the SNP's na

tionalism and hostility to other nationalities

continues to provide a pole of attraction. In

Czechoslovakia, as elsewhere, questions of

nation and race, the rights of minorities and

tolerance of difference will be major issues of

this decade.

On the question of economic reform, the

initiative is held by the new right. With their

eclipse in Britain and the United States the true

ideologues of neo-liberalism are to be found

east of the Elbe. Right-wing radicalism, with

wholesale privatisation and removal of the

state from all public affairs, is the fashion. The

future is defined as the opposite of the past. Civic Forum's weekly newspaper has pub lished articles on the economy not just dismis

sive of the Swedish model but particularly of

the West German one. It is described as 'alien'

to the individualist mentality of Czechs and

Slovaks, said to correspond much more to the

American way of life.

A number of measures have already been

undertaken. There were price rises last summer

and many more were sanctioned in the new

year. The privatisation of thousands of small

enterprises, such as restaurants and shops, is

under way. The privatisation of large enter

prises?with every citizen able to purchase some shares via a coupon system?is in hand,

while a handful of major enterprises have at

tracted the interest of foreign companies. Most

importantly, the Skoda car plant has signed a

co-operative arrangement with Volkswagen. Yet the neo-liberal right, and its supporters

in the press and among the impatient Prague middle class, sidestep or ignore the hard ques

tions about reform: about bankruptcies, unem

ployment and retraining; the catastrophic de

cline of regions where the old smokestack

industries are concentrated; the promotion of

newindustries and controls on incoming multi

nationals. When I asked Mr Klaus to estimate

future unemployment arising from his eco

nomic programme, he replied: "That is a bad

question." Mr Klaus is the key political figure. Ensconced as head of Civic Forum, as well as

being finance minister, he sought to transform

it into a right-wing party?now he is set to head

the rightist party which emerges from the split. It remains uncertain how effective a counter

point can be created by the centre-left in Civic

Forum. There is no doubt that such forces exist:

they formed the backbone of the Charter '77

movement, after all. President Havel remains

their most effective spokesman, not interven

ing directly but clearly at odds with the philoso

phy and hard edge of the new right?his new

year message was one of several notes of dis

sent from Mr Klaus' all-embracing market

philosophy. But Mr Havel, like most dissi

dents, lacks conviction and expertise in the

economic arena?which leaves them vulner

able to the new believers on the right. This reflects a wider dilemma for the broader

European left. Can it generate new models of

economic and social development for the con

tinent? If not, the hopes of 1989 may well turn

sour: the wholesale introduction of classical

free-market remedies in eastern Europe will

generate social and national tensions, and

strong-state solutions, that will make Thatcher

ism look soft.

Military power-dressing in Guatemala

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Strategic hamlets

Distracted by the Gulf, few of the world's media noticed recent killings in Guatemala?which wre, in

any event, much like the ones before. ELLEN WEAVER reports on freedom in the Backyard.

IT MAY NOT have seemed for the past month or two that the world beyond the range of Scud

missiles was going round at all. But while we

were becoming experts in laser-guided bomb

ing, another Triumph for Democracy had taken

place, in Guatemala. Never mind the turn-out

being only 50 per cent of the registered elec

torate?or that that is itself less than half of the

adult population?or the hundreds of murders

during the campaign. The thing is that a Nice

Guy?Jorge Serrano Elias of the Solidarity Action Movement?got elected.

Guatemala doesn't grab the headlines at

the best (or, for that matter, the worst) of

times. So the massacre of a couple of dozen

peasants by the army in December didn't

warrant a mention. And the change of occu

pant at the Palacio Nacional in Guatemala

City wasn't covered live by CNN. Like his

predecessor, in any case, he wears a White

House seal of approval. It wasn't always so. In 1954, the people

having elected a president who suggested giv

ing them land which was being exploited by the US United Fruit Company, the CIA de cided that such naked aggression against multi

national companies could not be tolerated. It

organised a coup. There's been a lot of water under Guate

malan bridges since 1954?and blood, mostly

indigenous. Sixty-five per cent of the land in

Guatemala is owned by 2 per cent of the popu

lation, and the ruling, whiter, 'ladino' (Span

ish-descent) classes only get killed if they step out of line?such as a journalist being unpatri otic about the army. Trades unionists take

more risks: Byron Barrera, vice-president of

the Guatemalan Journalists Association, was

seriously injured in an assassination attempt last October in which his wife was killed. And

being a left-wing politician is a kamikaze act:

ten days before the attack on Mr Barrera, Humberto Gonzalez Gammera, who had

sought recognition for his Democratic Revo

lutionary Union as a political party, was killed

in a machine-gun ambush.

Universities, too, can be dangerous places.

Myrna Mack was a social anthropologist

working in the highlands of Guatemala, re

searching the effects on indigenous people of

forcible removals to army-controlled camps. Ms Mack's report had exposed the govern ment's policy on 'displaced populations' as a

counter-insurgency strategem utterly detri

mental to reintegration and development. But the mutilated bodies on road sides and

rubbish dumps in Guatemala are not by any means always of those who undertook the ex

treme danger of joining trades unions or wid

ows committees: the past decade has seen

more than 80,000 killings and more than 40,000 disappearances, mainly of indigenous people not members of any political organisation. Their fatal trait was their race.

The pre-Columban languages and culture

of indigenous people, who comprise 60 per cent of Guatemalans, are under extreme threat.

But their deprivations are material too: their

infant mortality is one in seven, their life

expectancy 49 years, and the minimum wage

(it's ?1 a day) often ignored by hacienda owners. So perhaps it's not surprising that a

Guatemalan army officer once said, pointing to a three-year old girl: "All Indians are sub

versive, even her."

It is safer for people to succumb to the

pressure?to convert to US-backed evangeli cal Christianity, to abandon traditional dress

in favour of second-hand western clothes, to

volunteer to join the civil patrols, to accept their villages being razed and 'relocation' into

camps where the only means of subsistence is

army-run food-for-work programmes. But not much safer: people in camps have

been hacked to death for the crime of posses sion of half a dozen tortillas. Well, they could

have been supplying the guerrillas, couldn't

they?

FORTNIGHT MARCH 19

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