Guatemala Revolts

The government and leftist rebels announced Friday that they will meet next week in Spain in the first peace talks ever held in 25 years of political violence here. Julio Santos, a spokesman for President Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo, told reporters, "On Tuesday, a delegation from the government of Guatemala will be in Madrid for the conversations." Leftist rebels announced their position in a communique published in the newspaper El Grafico.

Signing an accord next month to end 35 years of civil war in Guatemala may well prove easier than keeping the peace after Latin America's longest rebellion ends, analysts warned Tuesday. The day after the government and guerrillas announced in Chile and Mexico, respectively, that the peace agreement will be signed Dec. 29, experts who have been following negotiations closely took a hard look at whether the accords will bring the "lasting peace" that both sides have promised.

Ending more than a decade of exile, almost 2,500 Guatemalan refugees crossed into their native land Wednesday and prepared to rebuild their lives, despite continuing civil war and uncertain futures. Their return from refugee camps in southern Mexico clears the way for the repatriation of tens of thousands of Guatemalans who fled violence and military repression in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Guatemala's warring parties have agreed to sign a final cease-fire agreement in Oslo, formally concluding Central America's last and longest war. Rebels and government leaders agreed to a signing ceremony in Oslo sometime in October, Norwegian Deputy Foreign Minister Jan Egeland said by telephone from Guatemala. Two weeks ago, both sides declared their intention to end the decades-long war by the end of the year.

For decades, Guatemalans were afraid to vote: Guerrillas threatened to blow up polling booths, and soldiers often intimidated prospective voters. It was simpler--and safer--to just stay home on election day, especially for Indians in rural highland villages like this one. That was supposed to change for the elections coming up Nov. 12.

This tiny hamlet in the remote mountains of Guatemala is to be a model city, government officials say, a place where people displaced by civil war can renew their lives with all the services and security the government can provide. But to many of the people who live here, Xexucap is a kind of prison.

The business executive in the Ralph Lauren shirt and Rolex watch stood before a collection of flowcharts, graphs and an overhead projector. Steel pointer in hand, like Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf explaining the Gulf War, the executive outlined the battle plan to rescue this country from a dizzying succession of coups and countercoups and to restore it to civilian, constitutional rule. He described the secret meetings of business leaders, gathered to decide the country's future.

President Jorge Serrano on Monday became the first democratically elected Guatemalan civilian to succeed another, and he promised to fight the country's economic crisis and to end its long guerrilla war. "We are seeking total peace and not a simple truce or cease-fire, conscious that the simple absence of conflict does not guarantee peace if the causes that motivated it remain," Serrano said in his inaugural speech.

As Guatemalans prepare to formally end 35 years of civil war by signing a peace pact Sunday, they strongly disagree about whether the accords negotiated over five years and two administrations will correct the injustice and poverty that originally caused Latin America's oldest guerrilla conflict. Negotiated in six parts--one of them, agricultural policy, was discussed for more than a year--the agreement was designed to provide peaceful solutions to a war that has cost more than 100,000 lives.