More than one wall in Guatemala

by Andrés Alsina

Rome. In Guatemala, savage capitalism is not just an expression, but also, and above all, exactly what the words themselves express. Company owners do not want to hear about taxes, and although they signed a social pact a short while ago, agreeing to pay a 12% value-added tax, they were expecting the tax exemption and the maintenance of a differential electricity rate that on other occasions all governments have always ended up granting. The IMF and the embassy of the United States of America had threatened companies and landowners with taking Guatemala off the list of preferential countries, thereby ruining their exports, if they resisted these changes, and the IDB added to the pressure, but President Alfonso Portillo has just given in to their demands, hoping for a second term of office in the year 2004.

A recent talk given by a Swiss businessman to his Guatemalan colleagues on the market economy and the need for modernization was met with opposition from the audience, which claimed that paying taxes discourages production. The Swiss businessman replied, “I would invite you to do business in my country. What you ask for does not exist in my country. Under the conditions that you are demanding, running a business is the easiest thing in the world.”

On the other side of management relations, that is labor relations, any hint of trade union organization leads the maquiladoras to dismantle their plants and move to El Salvador, leaving the government, drained of resources – or no-one - to deal with the social problem.

The sociologist Elfidio Cano del Cid insists on criteria of social justice and does not abandon his hopes of persuasion. “I told a Guatemalan businessman ´Forget the fear that the poor will assault you; they don’t want to live like you. We know from our surveys that they don’t want first class planes and hotels, they just want to live with more dignity. You must give up this policy of all or nothing.´”

It is easy to see that Elfidio Cano’s words fall on deaf ears in the midst of the struggle between very primitive forces, with business people who are “amongst the most archaic, and where the figures of concentration of land ownership are frightening, really frightening.”

In spite of this, Cano continues with the work of his Institute for Political Research and Self-training, providing political training for citizen participation through non-traditional methods, with one week to three month courses on economic and sociopolitical analysis and the basics of the legal aspects of collective negotiation. These courses are followed up with workshops and lectures, and an introduction to a subject that is very dear to them: globalization and its specific implications for trade unions. “We carried out a survey to find out what globalization is.” The conclusions are in very straightforward language. “Later we prepared a brochure on the subject for trade unions and workshops that really satisfied the participants. So today, globalization is not rejected for exclusively ideological reasons, but with a full knowledge of its implications.”

Not everything is that easy. “We prepared the first part with trade union leaders, but we were not satisfied with the results. We wanted to generate the possibility of a new kind of leadership, feeding in to the middle and grassroots levels, but knowledge remained at the top. One of the major complaints we had was that trade union leadership is always the same. The truth is that the top level is almost unmovable.”

But they do not stop trying. The dream is to have leaders who not only emphasize salary claims, but also take into account other forms of compensation, thus making negotiations more flexible and taking them out of the all or nothing field, which in the end is the same as the position of management. They want to have medical protection, child day-care centers, housing cooperatives and many other needs incorporated in their negotiations. “And first and foremost, the possibility of negotiation itself. So that if we do not achieve 100% we may get 80% and other benefits.”

These issues are now on the agenda of organizations of civil society in a country where the guerrillas and the government signed a peace agreement after 36 years of war. Today there is democracy in Guatemala, but the situation can also be perceived as having a tendency toward coups d’état and a lack of democratic strength, implied by the dominance of savage capitalism and the impossibility of changing structures. Social indicators monitored by Social Watch show that 79% of the population is in a situation of poverty, and of this percentage, 59.3% are in extreme poverty. The labor force comprises 3.4 million people, of whom 2.9% are trade-union members. The other 8 million are unemployed or in casual employment. Illiteracy is 18% in the cities and 82% in rural areas. The level of illiteracy is 50% higher amongst women than amongst men.

These are the figures that Cano submitted at the Social Watch assembly at the end of November in Rome, three years after the peace agreement of 29 December 1996 after 36 years of guerrilla warfare fought over social concerns. From the standpoint of civil society, the outlook on the process is slightly different, since it continues to act, finding chinks in the wall and trying to wear down the resistance it encounters on both sides of the path.

Cano points out that the democratic process that began in 1985 was strengthened by the signature of the 1996 agreement “because with it all excuses have come to an end.” The Institute for Political Research and Self-training, of which he is the executive director, has existed since 1990 and was a part of the multisectoral Assembly of civil society. Eleven religious groups, political institutions, NGOs, research institutes, universities, indigenous peoples, human rights organizations, women’s organizations, etc., discussed, under the leadership of monsignor Rodolfo Quesada Toruño, the same peace agenda as the government and the guerrillas. The resolutions were sent to the parties but, “unfortunately, they were not fully implemented. It is true they were given some attention and some elements were incorporated. But our resolutions were more daring in the social and economic fields and in respect of the identity of indigenous peoples, redefinition of the role of the army and the major issue of the historical clarification of violations to human rights by various sectors of the URNG and the army.”

It was, as Cano reflects today, “the possible and the desirable, that is what they say now to justify the situation. It is true that the URNG came out with gains, as it was able to place on the national agenda issues it had been fighting about for over 36 years, including support from the international community; finally, even the United States supported them.” But by the end of the negotiations, “the guerrillas ended up in an unfavorable position”. The army claimed that those who had been overthrown on the military front should not be winners on the political front, and this is still heard in political discussion in the country. If you look at the political situation, you will see that they were processed by the media and absorbed by the system.”