Ex-PAC, part 2

Well, it happened… Congress ceded to the demands of the ex-PAC, and passed the law approving the payments. As with all things Guatemalan, there’s a lot more to this story than meets the eye. In the next few journal entries, I’ll try to explain some of the “shades of gray” in this decidedly un-black & white issue. This weekend I’ll also post the photos from last week’s protest.

What tomorrow may hold is an interesting question. Is there any group, political or otherwise, that is willing to challenge the constitutionality of this law in the courts, and face the wrath of the ex-PAC?

Guatemalan ex-paramilitaries win compensation
By Frank Jack Daniel

GUATEMALA CITY, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Guatemala on Thursday agreed to pay former paramilitaries hundreds of millions of dollars for wartime activity that rights activists say included massacres, rapes and torture.

The ex-paramilitaries had threatened to block roads and airports if Congress failed to give them $600 each for helping the army crush a rebel uprising in the 1980s.

"We are satisfied that we have overcome this crisis," said Felipe Yaxon, leader of the paramilitary groups organized by the army into civil patrols across much of the countryside.

The paramilitaries say 1.3 million people are due the money. Congress says the number is closer to 700,000.

The $600 offer, first made by former President Alfonso Portillo in 2002, was widely criticized as a strategy to help former dictator Efrain Rios Montt's bid to win the presidency in last year's elections.

President Oscar Berger, who took office in January, promised to honor the deal during his election campaign.

Rios Montt mobilized the paramilitaries in the 1980s to combat insurgents. Men in almost every village were given arms and told to guard their communities from guerrilla activity.

Human rights groups blame them for some of Guatemala's worst war crimes.

In 1999, a U.N-backed report said more than 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during the 36-year civil war that ended eight years ago. Most were Mayan Indian civilians killed by the army or civil patrols, it said.

The paramilitaries were unpaid and supposedly volunteers, though many say the army forced them into service.

"We had no choice, either we patrolled for up to 24 hours at a time or the army killed us," said Erasmo Ramirez, 46, from coastal region of Santa Rosa.

The civil patrols were officially disbanded a year before peace agreements signed by the government and leftist guerrillas in 1996.

Posted by elcanche at August 19, 2004 07:31 PM