Religious leaders in Guatemala are divided on the wisdom of including full amnesty as one of the conditions within the peace agreement that has brought an official end to 36 years of guerrilla warfare.
On December 29, representatives of the Guatemalan government’s Peace Commission and the commandants of the four Marxist rebel groups signed the final agreement for a “firm and lasting peace.” International pressures and the loss of their ideological and economic bases with the breakup of the Soviet Union forced the urng (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity), the guerrilla umbrella organization, to the bargaining table, where they agreed to exchange their weapons for a political voice. The government also promised to reduce drastically their armed forces and implement social reforms.
The longest armed conflict in Latin America has left deep scars: an estimated 140,000 dead, 100,000 widows, 50,000 orphans, hundreds of thousands of displaced people, and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to the infrastructure and economy. Poor subsistence farmers and agricultural laborers suffered the most from the violence.
“This is a day for forgiveness,” Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu said at the signing of the accord. “We cannot and should not forget, but we must forgive.”
CONTROVERSIAL AMNESTY: The most controversial point in the agreement concerns an amnesty for crimes committed as part of the struggle. Both the army and the guerrillas committed torture and carried out bloody massacres.
Guatemala City Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio has condemned the amnesty provision, saying it will unjustly allow guilty parties to go unpunished.
However, Marco Antonio Rodriguez, president of the Evangelical Alliance of Guatemala, which represents a large majority of the churches, thinks otherwise. “We have to leave the past and move on,” he says. Manuel Conde, an evangelical lawyer who headed the peace negotiations for the government, says the amnesty “is a legal necessity,” but he is troubled by its vagueness. “It only takes into account the combatants, and not the victims,” he says. Although the law does not protect those who committed crimes against humanity, the mechanisms for punishing those found guilty are not clearly spelled out.
Vitalino Similox, executive secretary of the Confraternity of Evangelical Churches of Guatemala, a small but vocal splinter group allied with the Latin American Council of Churches, says, “We can’t just sweep things under the rug. Healing can only come when the perpetrators recognize their guilt and ask forgiveness.”
INFLUENTIAL EVANGELICALS: One of the key contributions to the ongoing peace process may come from evangelicals, according to Mario Ovalle, president of the Central American Evangelical Churches, one of the country’s largest denominations. “The churches have worked quietly but effectively to instill a capacity for forgiveness to change attitudes,” Ovalle says.
Nevertheless, the Roman Catholic church retains a dominant influence on Guatemalan society. Bishop Rodolfo Quesada Toruo, an establishment figure, played an active role in negotiations. Yet advocates of liberation theology, a leftist ideology with a following among Catholic priests and lay workers, remain a stronghold within Latin America.
In the meantime, evangelicals are moving to secure their standing in the Guatemalan mainstream without compromising their evangelistic outreach. “Evangelicals are part of the nation of Guatemala and are not removed from the society in general,” says Marco Tulio Cajas, a Christian economist and political analyst. He says it is a mistake “to say that evangelicals were in favor of or against one side or the other, and especially to claim they supported the counter-insurgency campaign.”
Evangelicals actively participated in efforts such as the National Reconciliation Commission, which sought to bring diverse sectors together in a broad dialogue. Despite the risks, “We considered it a privilege and opportunity to have a presence in the peace process,” Cajas says. “We were able to meet privately with the urng leaders, ask them to stop characterizing evangelicals as foreign agents working to break a supposed ‘national unity,’ and above all, invite them to seek salvation in Christ Jesus.”
THE CHALLENGES AHEAD: Now that the treaty has been signed, few harbor illusions that the underlying problems of poverty and injustice will disappear magically.
In reality, poverty is likely to increase in the short run as thousands of unskilled soldiers and guerrillas move into the civilian economy. “I don’t see any concrete programs for the ex-combatants,” Conde says.
Cajas says evangelicals, who now represent one-quarter of Guatemala’s 10 million people, must carry “great responsibility” to bring about change. “If there is not solidarity and social justice, we deserve at least 25 percent of the blame.”
The evangelical church must take a more active role, says Ovalle. “There needs to be more grassroots participation by Christians in civic matters,” he says. “By this sort of good works we can let our light shine.”
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February 3, 1997 Vol. 41, No. 2, Page 76
