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Precarious Peace Precarious Peace: God and Guatemala Vision Video, 2003 $24.99

Fireworks. Parades. Three days of celebration in Guatemala City followed the signing of peace accords on December 29, 1996. Peace had come to Guatemala at last after 36 years of civil war. Or had it?

Church historian Martin E. Marty introduces the documentary Precarious Peace with two questions: What does it take to end a war? What does it take to ensure a peace?

The secular media have largely overlooked the church's influence during Guatemala's troubled past. Precarious Peace fills in some of the gaps. In this two-part documentary, producers Rudy and Shirley Nelson challenge Christians to consider how to address social ills in Guatemala, where civil war, corruption, genocide, ethnic discrimination, and injustice have led to a culture of fear and violence. They see Guatemala as a case study that parallels other conflicts.

The Nelsons, along with co-director Dennis Smith (a Presbyterian missionary in Guatemala) and executive producer Bill Jersey, look at how Christian groups and individuals have responded (or not) to years of what Guatemalans call la violencia. They involved Guatemalan filmmakers, advisers, and spokespeople. They culled war footage from the extensive archives of Guatemalan filmmaker José Vasquez, and two other in-country photographers filmed interviews and local color.

"We didn't want to make a documentary produced mainly by gringos," the Nelsons write.

As the video explains, Guatemala's civil war can be traced to 1960, when military officers rebelled against a dictatorship. Earlier, in 1954, the CIA had helped overthrow a democratically elected government seen as a communist threat. Military rule soon followed. Later, revolutionary forces moved their base of operations to the mountains, where poor, mostly illiterate Mayas lived.

The government viewed the Mayas—more than 50 percent of the population—as a threat. It began counter-insurgency measures and wiped out villages suspected of guerrilla support. During the civil war, some 200,000 people, mostly indigenous Mayas, caught between government forces and insurgents, were massacred or "disappeared" and were never found. These included not only rural Mayas, but also teachers and church and civic leaders.

While most evangelical groups tended to favor the government, they tried to be quietly apolitical. Some denounced Roman Catholic and Mayan leaders suspected of aiding the guerrillas; a few spied on them and reported their actions to the army. Their rationale was Romans 13: obey the government. Juan and Grace Par, Methodist directors of the 1,200-student Colegio Utatlán in the highlands, openly declared themselves neutral. They forbade any discussion of politics in the school and were not disturbed by either government or guerrilla forces.

But neutrality did not guarantee safety. A Methodist teacher was killed for teaching his students the Guatemalan constitution and the Bible—both safe subjects, he thought. The video does not directly speculate on who committed the murder, but it indirectly implicates the army. Anything that might empower the people to improve their lives was construed as communist.

For the same reason, more than 500 Roman Catholic lay leaders died during la violencia, especially during the 1980s. Mayan catechist Alejandro Atz managed to survive, but his wife was brutally tortured and killed. One of his daughters disappeared, and many extended family members died. The Atz family represents those who suffered during the civil war, usually at the hands of the Guatemalan army. Their story is woven throughout the film.

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July 2004, Vol. 48, No. 7