Human Rights in Guatemala
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| Human
rights in Guatemala has been and continues to be complex and
challenging issue. From its pre-Columbian past up to the present day,
Guatemala has witnessed ongoing discrimination and the abuse of human rights, primarily directed toward its
indigenous Mayan population. This section of our website includes a brief history of human rights abuses in Guatemala plus links to articles and reports about the current human rights situation in the country. We also address the link between education and human rights, both from the perspective of how a human rights approach helps to establish a context for educational reform, and also how education is a positive and powerful way to increase awareness and respect for the rights of all people.
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From Conquistadors to Cuadillos
Shortly after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century, the
Spanish Crown allowed the Spanish settlers to claim land equivalent to
one day's horse ride for each side of their claimed property. This
claimed ownership not only included the land, but also any people living
on the land, thus effectively establishing a system of slavery of the
indigenous people.
With independence from Spain in the early
19th century, the new republic of Guatemala continued its exploitation
and oppression of the indigenous population by forcing them off the most
agriculturally productive land and into the less productive mountain
highlands. This internal migration was combined with enforced labor systems similar to serfdom in
medieval Europe. Added to these abuses, was the expropriation of large
areas of communally owned Mayan land in the mountainous regions during
the rapid expansion of the coffee industry in the latter half of the
19th century and the continued exclusion of indigenous peoples from
access to education or political processes. (For further detail on these
issues, please see our articles on Poverty in Guatemala
and Coffee in Guatemala.)
Throughout
the early 20th century, Guatemala was ruled by a series of cuadillos,
dictators with strong ties to the military and and economic elite,
which enacted and enforced a variety of labor laws that again drove
indigenous peoples into forced labor for the large landowners and the
government, and continued to systematically strip the Mayan population
of its communally owned lands.
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A Decade of Hope Leading to Bitter Disappointment
In 1944, Guatemala finally achieved its first democratic election and
during the next ten years saw a series of legal and land reforms
designed to improve the rights of workers, campesinos (farmers),
and labor unions. Also passed was agrarian reform legislation which
called for the purchase of land from large landowners to be distributed
back to the indigenous farmers. This agrarian reform was vehemently
opposed by the many of the economic elite as well as foreign (U.S.)
corporations such as United Fruit, and ultimately led to a CIA backed
coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo
Arbenz in 1954. (An excellent summary of this period in Guatemala
history can be found in the book, Bitter Fruit, by
Schlesinger, Kinzer and Coatsworth.)
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| The Guatemalan Holocaust
The
1954 coup was seen by many as a setback in furthering human rights for
the majority of people in Guatemala and eventually led to a prolonged
civil war beginning in the early 1960's and continuing until the signing
of Peace Accords in 1996. At the peak of the conflict in the early
1980's, counter-insurgency tactics employed by the Guatemalan military,
with training and backing from the U.S. military, led to the massacre of
over 600 indigenous villages, an estimated 200-250,000 people murdered
or disappeared, and over 1.5 million people forced into exile.
Guatemalans referred to this scorched earth counter-insurgency campaign
as la escoba (the broom), because the army swept the country in a wave of terror. (Punishment
for these crimes had yet to be fully addressed. In 2006, the United
Nations established a joint commission with the Guatemalan government
for the investigation and bringing to justice those individuals
responsible for the massacres, but to date, only a handful of those
involved have been accused and brought to trial.)
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During
this period, international sentiment began to turn against the
Guatemalan government. This combined with declining tourist revenues and
decreasing investment of foreign capital and foreign aid led the
controlling elite to consider transitioning from a military-controlled
government to one with greater civilian participation. In addition, the
vastly outnumbered and out-gunned leftist guerrilla forces realized that
there was no realistic chance for a military victory. These realities
laid the groundwork for peace negotiations which eventually led to the
development and signing of the Peace Accords in December of 1996, which
called for the establishment of a number of human rights for women,
children and indigenous peoples.
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Guatemala Today
Since 1996, Guatemala has had national and local democratic elections every four years. Alvaro Colom, a moderate, left-of-center candidate of the National Unity of Hope (UNE) party won the
2007 presidential election with major support coming from the rural areas of Guatemala. International observers generally
considered the elections free and fair, but there were a number of politically motivated assassinations (27) at the local level.
The
current government
generally respects the human rights of its citizens, and as a result of
the Peace Accords a number of laws exist to promote and protect human
rights. However, even though civilian authorities have generally
maintained control of the country's security forces (army and police), there have been instances in which
members of the security forces have committed illegal acts, including a
number of human rights abuses.
Also, many consider the government to be hampered by a deeply embedded
culture of political corruption, ineffectiveness caused by a high
turnover of leadership at the ministerial level, a lack of taxing
resources to adequately fund social programs (education, health and
police training) and credible suspicions of connections between the
police, army, narco-trafficking syndicates, and other criminal elements
within the country.
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| Concerns noted in the 2009 Human Rights Report for Guatemala published by the U.S. State Department include:
"the (Guatemalan) government's failure to
investigate and punish unlawful killings committed by members of the
security forces; widespread societal violence, including numerous
killings; corruption and substantial inadequacies in the police and
judicial sectors; police involvement in serious crimes; impunity for
criminal activity; harsh and dangerous prison conditions; arbitrary
arrest and detention; failure of the judicial system to ensure full and
timely investigations and fair trials; failure to protect judicial
sector officials, witnesses, and civil society representatives from
intimidation; threats and intimidation against, and killings of,
journalists and trade unionists; discrimination and violence against
women; trafficking in persons; discrimination against indigenous
communities; discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and
gender identity; and ineffective enforcement of labor laws and child
labor provisions."
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Violence Against Women and Immigration
Human rights issues in Guatemala are also connected to immigration issues in the U.S. Recently, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals remanded a decision made by the
Board of Immigration Appeals that could set a new precedent in the way
immigration judges consider asylum requests.
The July 12th ruling recognized that Lesly Yajayra Perdomo, a Medicaid
account executive living in Reno, should have her case reviewed to
determine whether her status as a woman in Guatemala classifies her as a
member of a persecuted social group because of the long-running and increasing violence against women in Guatemala. (For more information about this case please see the article "Guatemalan Women Fleeing Endemic Violence Have Statistics on Their Side."
Another recent article on the Woman's Philanthropy website noted that "The United Nations has listed Guatemala as the
most dangerous place for women in the Western Hemisphere and one of the
worst in the world. In 2009, when it established an international
program to fight violence against women, the U.N. placed the program
headquarters in Guatemala."
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| Human Rights and Education
Education
and human rights can be examined from two different points of view: One,
education being evaluated within a
human rights context, and two, what effect does education have on the
promotion and protection of human rights within a society. This section looks at education in Guatemala from both perspectives and argues that education is one of the most powerful and effective ways to promote and protect human rights.
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In the Analysis
of the Guatemalan Education Sector from a Human Rights-Based
Perspective, the German researcher Nina Otto found that "Guatemala
has ratified all key international and regional human rights
conventions, a large number of which include provisions on the
progressive fulfilment of the right to education. It is also a signatory
of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which
recognizes the right to education but which, as a declaration, is not
legally binding. The right to education is also enshrined in the
Guatemalan constitution as well as other national laws."
However,
when analyzing Guatemala's actual effectiveness in carrying out those
human rights provisions in regards to education, she found that only
14.5% of all public schools in Guatemala (and virtually none in the
rural areas) meet the minimum standards for the following four core
elements of an adequate education:
- Availability (i.e., functioning schools with adequate
classrooms, sanitation facilities, potable water, adequately trained
teachers and adequate teaching materials)
- Accessibility (i.e., within reasonable reach,
non-discriminatory, and affordable)
- Acceptability (i.e., Form and substance of education,
including curricula and teaching methods are relevant, culturally
appropriate and of good quality.)
- Adaptability (i.e., Education that is flexible so that it can
adapt to the needs of changing societies and communities and respond to
the needs within their diverse social and cultural settings.)
Another report, the Guatemala
Human Rights Fact Sheet published by the Center for Economic and
Social Rights, compares Guatemala's performance in the implementation and
promotion of human rights to other Latin American and Caribbean
nations. This report expresses grave concerns about Guatemala's human
rights record and goes on to state:
"Programs put in place by various Guatemalan governments
since the 1996 Peace Accords to increase health and education access
have been constantly undermined by the inadequacy of resources.
Guatemala has among the lowest levels of health and education spending
relative to GDP in Latin America and the Caribbean, despite steps taken
since the 1996 Peace Accords to increase social spending. The Accords
also included commitments to expand the tax base so as to generate the
additional resources required for increased social spending. Yet
Guatemala still has one of the lowest tax bases in the region and among
the most generous tax exemptions and fiscal incentives for business.
Guatemala’s tax base of 12 percent was below the Central American
average of 16 percent in 2006. Also, Guatemala’s main source of income
into the public budget — indirect taxation (VAT ) — falls
disproportionately on the poor."
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...Safety and security don't just happen: they are the result of
collective consensus and public investment. We owe our children, the
most vulnerable citizens in any society - a life free from violence and
fear.
Nelson Mandela
Education is seen as a key instrument for
promoting social cohesion by endowing people with the necessary
knowledge and attitudes to cope with change and adapt to new conditions.
The better educated people are, the lower is the risk of losing their
job or their attachment to the labor market, their income, their access
to basic social rights such as social protection, health, housing,
further education, their social networks, and developing a
passive –or even negative- attitude to life.
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| Extensive
research in a range of disciplines has been conducted over the past
forty years on how better education affects development outcomes and
what factors are influential in improving quality. The evidence is
clear-cut on the links between good education and a wide range of
economic and social development benefits. Better school outcomes – as
represented by pupils’ achievement test scores – are closely related to
higher income in later life. Empirical work has also demonstrated that
high quality schooling improves national economic potential. Strong
social benefits are equally significant. It is well known that the
acquisition of literacy and numeracy, especially by women, has an impact
upon fertility rates, as well as maternal and infant mortality rates. More recently, it has become clear that the cognitive
skills required to make informed choices about HIV/AIDS risk and
behavior are strongly related to levels of education and literacy.
(2005
UNESCO Education For All Global Monitoring Report - The Quality
Imperative)
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Other research indicates that
educational reforms can play an important role in preventing violence
against women by increasing school safety, by empowering women through
education, and by promoting better attitudes and practices among
students with regard to women’s human rights. International studies have
reliably shown that women with higher levels of education have a lower
risk of being physically or sexually abused. (World
Bank Report: Addressing Violence Against Women Within the Education
Sector)
On a very personal note, Gustavo Valle,
Avivara's Director of Programs, believes strongly and wholeheartedly that education
is an essential problem-solving tool for the people of Guatemala. He has seen how it can
provide individuals and communities the skills and
attitudes needed to address conflicts rationally, without resorting
to violence.
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| Despair or Hope?
Historically, Guatemala has clearly not met the educational needs of all its peoples. In addition, the recent global economic downturn combined with a series of natural disasters have drained the government's resources, thus hampering further efforts to improve education for the most marginalized segments of its population. (2010 UNESCO Report on Education For All: Reaching the Marginalized)
While Avivara's programs are still relatively small in scope, they are effectively focused on improving educational quality where it is most needed. There is the potential for us to expand our programs, but only if we have help. If you would like to support the work we are doing to improve the human rights situation in Guatemala through the power of education, please visit our Donate to Avivara page to learn how you can make a tax-deductible donation.
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Recommendations for Further Reading
Green, L., Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala, Columbia University Press, New York, 1999. This anthropological study of the life of widows in indigenous Mayan communities in Guatemala traces the intricate links between the political violence and repression of the recent civil war with the long-term systemic (and ongoing) violence against women connected with class, ethnic and gender inequalities.
Godoy, A.S., Popular Injustice: Violence, Community and Law in Latin America, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2006. This book examines the root causes of vigilante justice in Guatemala and other Latin American countries. It describes the breakdown in the national justice systems (corruption, intimidation, lack of training, etc.) as well the conflict between traditional indigenous methods of punishing criminal behaviors and more universally accepted concepts of individual human rights within an established criminal justice system.
Goldman, F., The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop, Grove Press, New York, 2007. Peter Canby of The Nation says of this book, "...his (Goldman's) novelist's eye and deep understanding of Guatemalan society takes you inside the death squads, inside the world of political assassination, inside the gangs and prisons; and out among the legion of psychotic, traumatized, unbalanced, underemployed veterans who are the perpetrators of so much of Guatemala's criminal violence."
Menchu, R., I, Rigoberta Menchú, an Indian Woman in Guatemala, Verso, London, 1983. This book describes the life of a young indigenous woman in Guatemala, and outlines the hardships, death and suffering experienced by her family as they struggled to survive on subsistence farming and migrant farm work during the period of the Guatemalan Civil War.
Perera, V., Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993. In its review of this book, the New Yorker states, "Perera finds that military terrorism has outlasted the Communist threat; murder and massacre have become the reflexive response to any disagreement, public or private."
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