| Guatemala: The new conquistadors |
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Underneath its natural beauty and peaceful ambiance resembling paradise, there have been underground rumblings, both natural and manmade, as volcanoes, land grabbers, hacendados and capitalists have marred Guatemala’s soil. In the 1500’s, Don Pedro de Alvarado, one of Spain’s Conquistadors, left his indelible mark on Guatemala’s history. He is akin to Columbus and Hernando Cortes who invaded other parts of Las Americas as they practiced manifest destiny.
In its recent history, Guatemala has been invaded by what some refer to as The New Conquistadors. The lands bear witness to massacre, killings, lynching and brutal conquest that causes queasy feelings in the pit of your stomach. History tellers would rather hide the truth under the rubric of man’s need to remain adventurous than look into man’s uncontrollable impulses to be greedy.
As we traveled into the mountains by bus, as far as the eye could see, dark green forests, with mountainsides growing fruit and vegetables could be seen.
Campesinos tilling the soil, wearing cultural attire, performing stoop labor were taking care of Mother Earth like they have for centuries.
The forests have now become a haven for protection from the helter-skelter in urban society with its many predators.
Our Instant Kodak cameras and the camera’s ability to produce a picture in an instant fascinated children, whose future is to inherit the struggle for freedom. They stood in line for their picture to be taken, with amusement at the final product. Wiry small stature women also joined the young children as fascinated by this technological device as their children. The pictures are now a reminder of visitors from gringolandia.
Had anachronism taken place or are Westerners so far fetched from Mother Nature that it was their fascination at simplicity that was at play?
The community had been informed that visitors were coming to the mountains of Guatemala, outside the historical city of Antigua, to engage in “una platica.” Before the trilingual conversations began, one could already see the stories imprinted on the faces of the weary women as they shared stories of death and human destruction.
One can certainly leave with the impression that it was brown people destroying brown people. However, as one digs deeper into the rubbish, lying at the bottom of the dump are images of dead children killed during an exigent time in Guatemalan history. A chapter filled with political intrigue and the building of hefty pocketbooks can be added to its history as the real culprits are exposed.
The United Fruit Company had historically extended its imperialistic octopus arm into Guatemala, purchasing fertile land to grow its’ crops, with the unintended consequences of depriving indigenous Mayans from growing food to eat. Jacobo Arbenz pushed for the Agrarian Reform Act of 1954 that parceled out land to the poor. As Victor Perera, in “Unfinished Conquest, the Guatemalan Tragedy,” states, “In exchange for long-term bonds large landowners were expropriated by the government and redistributed to landless peasants on a tenancy basis.”
Stories of Guatemala becoming communists became pervasive as United Fruit Company capitalists stormed into Washington D.C. demanding governmental intervention. The hub of Arbenz’s Program, based on true agrarian reform, set into motion the overthrow of his government by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas and “a ragtag army of three hundred irregulars armed and equipped by Allen Dulles’s C.I.A.” The communist boogey man rose out of the grave to insure that the price of greed would once more be hidden in the costs of balance statements impervious to the naked eye.
More than just intervention transpired. The malevolent dictators inculcated a contagious psychological malady known as fatalism into the minds and hearts of the Guatemaltecos that has become omnipresent, a guardian angel for the oppressors. Troops and security guards trained by the infamous School of the Americas, referred to as the School of the Assassins, came in to fend off another sweltering contagion, “communism.”
A facsimile psychopathology developed as assassins were given statutory permission to annihilate innocent people. Black clouds of hate, deception, and brutality hovered over defenseless communities while innocent people took refuge in caves. The angel of death with its raunchy stench odor slithered into the mountain communities as voices were silenced by a fear of death unknown to a culture that celebrates Dia de los Muertos.
Provocation, masked as a vendetta, can be used as a tool to justify mass annihilation. The well oiled machine, lubricated by the blood of the Mayans served as a cruel form of domination. The final mass has lacked the necessary cultural rites to lay weary souls to sleep. There are no graves, just spirits roaming the countryside looking for termination rituals.
Ramón Del Castillo, Ph.D. is an Independent Journalist.
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