LETTER 3

12th June 1993

It is over two months since I wrote to you last, and I'm afraid this letter may be rather more heavy going than the last one.

I should be surprised if you have heard much about Guatemala on the news, because I know very little gets reported in England. But that doesn't mean that nothing has been happening. In the last few weeks there have been some big changes. There is now a new president, who used to be the person officially in charge of making sure that human rights were observed in the country. He was also involved with helping refugees negotiate their way back to their lands and homes. It sounds good. It sounds as if Guatemala might be changing for the better. But things aren't always what they seem to be.

People often start off saying something with: "It's a well known fact... You can't argue with the fact that..." But facts are tricky things. You have to get the right slant on them. Say two people you know get into a fight. Steve thumps Trevor. This, I guess, is a fact. Trevor has the broken nose. If you like Trevor, then you think Steve is in the wrong. But if you like Steve, and if there's no doubt that he thumped Trevor, then you think he must have had some reason for doing it: there must have been provocation. It gets more complicated. You need more information. You need to get the "slant".

I gave you an idea in my last letter of how Guatemala has been run for a long time now, and why it was that so many people escaped to Mexico ten or more years ago. Until really quite recently nobody in the outside world much minded what was going on. The country was exporting a lot of fruit and coffee on to the international market, and as long as it was selling them cheap, nobody asked too many questions about whether the local farmers were getting good wages or had a reasonable life-style or not. In fact as far as the outside world was concerned, it was better for Guatemala to have a strong-arm president in charge, to make sure that there were no rebellious farmers to mess up the system.

The United States, which got a lot of goods cheap from Guatemala, kept close contacts with the landowners, and helped them build up a strong army to keep control over the country, and it's the army which still runs the country now, and makes sure it gets the "democratically elected" president it wants.

Human rights are talked about a lot these days, and they are taken much more seriously than they used to be for a mixture of reasons. There have been changes in people's attitudes in many countries. Partly this is because so many people know so much more, through television and newspapers; partly because it's now part of our education in school; partly too because employers know that people work better when they're living peacefully than when they're unhappy, and in a twisted sort of way human rights means you get more profit.

I explained to you last time that democracy in Guatemala is a sham, and it's being pressured on all sides (from the United States, the European Community, Japan...) to put this right. But there is a much deeper problem as well: its economy is in tatters, or, in simple terms, the country is deeply in the red.

Its main export is coffee, and the price of coffee has dropped so much that there's hardly any profit in it any more. There isn't enough money to pay proper wages, and 80% of the population is now on the poverty line. People are striking and protesting. The government is still putting 40% of the money it has got into paying for the army, but it daren't just kill off the organisers of protests as it used to do. Other countries are now watching. In a nearby country, El Salvador, the army was accused not long ago of "crimes against humanity" by the United Nations. These were the same crimes that Guatemala seems to be guilty of, perhaps even more so, and it is scared of being accused in the same way.

These two things are the key to it all. First: the country is in real financial trouble, and second: no-one will help until its human rights situation is sorted out. Part of the answer will have to be getting the refugees back, because no country wants the world to see that 100,000 of its people have been driven out by violence and repression and are living in camps in a nearby state. Another part is what they call the "peace process" which is the discussions they have been having for two years with the guerrilla to try to bring about a cease-fire and a stop to the civil war. And another part is the reshuffle of government personnel, and the pretence of putting a more "acceptable" person in charge (though meanwhile the new man in control of the army is the same person who ordered the killing of thousands of country people just over ten years ago).

So what are the choices for the government? One is to try to solve the real problems, which are poverty, the human rights situation, and the brutal control of the army. This is the difficult, long-term choice, in which the people who have money and keep a hold of their power by force would have to give some of this up and be prepared to share the resources of the country. This is the choice that the guerrilla have been fighting for for a long time. And the other is to make no changes in the real situation, but to get the refugees back somehow, to negotiate a cease-fire with the guerrilla, and appoint as president the man who used to be the Human Rights Ombudsman, so pretending to countries who might help them out that Guatemala's on the mend.

The government is now in a very weak position. It's not much use being a government of a country that's falling apart, that hasn't got any money, that's being accused by the world of being criminal, and whose people are getting better and better organised to protest and resist. All it has now is a government (which can't do much) and an army (which unfortunately still can). The refugees say that they'll come back strictly on their own terms, and the guerrilla refuses to accept any cease-fire agreements until the human rights questions are also sorted out.

The government and the army together are not going to give in. They have gone for the second choice. If the guerrilla won't give in, the hard-liners in the army will go back to guns and bombs. If the refugees won't come back on the government's terms, then every kind of dirty trick will be used to stop them coming back in the way they want to, which they have the right to do. The big BUT for the government is that they are risking everything on the hope that the international community will fall for their pretence. If it doesn't, they're ditched.

So this is the slant, as I said at the beginning. Don't always believe what they tell you. See if you can tell the difference between "cosmetic" actions (which is a bit like putting lots of lipstick on an old face to make it look young, dyeing white hair black, all that sort of thing) and actions which will really make a difference.

I came back from Guatemala about three weeks ago. I had spent five weeks with a group of fourteen refugee representatives who were looking for suitable land in the north of the country on which to settle a large group of "returnees", as they're called, a group which might be as big as 2500 people.

The northern part of Guatemala is sparsely populated. It has at the moment an average of 9 people to every square kilometre, and since many of those live in the few towns that there are, vast areas are quite empty, just jungle and mountains and rivers. It's incredibly beautiful. I'd only really seen jungle on television before. You have to see it to believe it. We travelled by boat up the river which separates Guatemala from Mexico, with thick jungle on both sides, and just a few tiny human settlements from time to time.

It was odd to think that on my right and on my left were two such completely different countries. In Europe, in 1992, we have just been taking down the boundaries between countries. Here, across this river, not so long ago, people fled for their lives leaving the corpses of their relatives and the burnt-out shells of their houses behind, and not too far away, in north-west Guatemala, army helicopters are still pounding peasant communities, whom they accuse of supporting the guerrilla fighters. Somehow or other, boundaries are always the scene of human rights abuses, no problem for tourists and business people with money, but a terrible barrier for people in need.

So the question now for the refugees, who crossed that barrier to save their lives in 1981 and 1982, is how to get back again, where they have the right to be, but without a repetition of what happened before.

I've explained to you why the government is weak, and why it needs, urgently, to get its refugees back. You also understand why it wants them back as a group of obedient people, who won't cause further problems or rock the boat.

Last October the refugees managed to persuade the government to sign an agreement allowing them to come back on their own terms. Negotiating to get this agreement had taken them five years. It is a public agreement, signed under the supervision of many other independent countries and organisations. It also states that the Guatemalan government will provide land for them, and all the structures (like roads and schools and hospitals) that they need to lead a normal, productive life. It's now law, and what the refugees are doing they have the right to do.

But laws don't prevent crimes, even amongst those who make the laws. We had plenty of experience of dirty tricks during our journey. Guatemala is not a country where normal, peace-time rules apply. The Guatemalan government and army are at war with their own people: the country is at war within itself, so that to be there is to be in a place where people are suspicious of each other; people are under stress; they don't go out in the streets of the capital at night; there is a lot of violence which is the result of the war, without being directly to do with the war. It's an unhappy country where you don't expect anything to run quite smoothly.

I've tried to give you some background this time, because I don't think the story of our journey will make sense without it. I'll write to you all again soon.

LETTER 4

12th July 1993

Things are moving fast. The refugees are now planning another visit to Guatemala. Again I shall be going with them. And the moment of actually deciding to return is getting closer.

Think what a difficult decision it must be to fix on a piece of land to return to, hopefully for the rest of your life, and to have to rely on a tiny group of trusted people to go and do the fixing for you. I can't imagine that you or your family would want to buy or rent a house without going and looking at it first. But thousands of people here are having to do just that, and you can imagine that there's a great deal of discussion and disagreement going on.

For instance there's been a rumour that a large chunk of one of the bits of land they have in mind floods during the rainy season. Well, our last visit happened in the dry season. No farmer wants to settle on land which floods for several months of the year. Is it true or isn't it? We've got to go back and see.

Then there are all sorts of other reasons for disagreement. About 60% of the population of Guatemala is indigenous (native, American Indian), and amongst the indigenous people there are lots of smaller groups who speak different languages, have different histories, and now are keen to return with their own people to particular places of their choice. And those who are not indigenous have their own ideas as well. Remember that the choices they are making now are for all time. They are looking for lands where they and their children hope to live "for ever more", and if you've been a refugee and away from your homeland for ten years, that's important.

The group I am working with now consists of about 500 families, and on the last visit they were being represented by 14 people, trying to take all these differences into consideration.

You might ask why they don't all just dribble back in ones and twos and find the bits of land that they want. They have the right to do this, and quite a lot of people have actually done just that. But if you read my last letter you will remember what the situation is in Guatemala, that things haven't changed much in ten years, and that all the rights which the refugees have negotiated with the government have depended on their working in an organised team.

There's nothing the government would like better than for them to dribble back, as I put it. It's much easier to keep them under control that way, whereas a large group, all agreeing with each other, all travelling together, all determined to get their rights, with the support of international organisations and governments, are in a position of much greater strength. But to get a large group to agree (imagine trying to get everyone in your village or your part of town to agree on something!) is a hard task.

One thing that they all want urgently at the moment is education and training. Apart from all the different skills they need to organise the return itself, they need to be everything else as well. There just aren't the lawyers, doctors, teachers, agricultural researchers, environmentalists, town planners - you name it - around. And many of the refugees have barely completed what to us would be primary education. Imagine again your village or your street or your part of town and try to imagine taking away the education that everyone has had. People would still be just as intelligent, just as brainy, just as good with their hands and just as good at remembering things, but, to name just one obvious thing, hardly able to read and write or do maths.

During their ten or more years in Mexico, the refugees have had many opportunities they never had before in Guatemala, especially the children and young people, who have had the chance to go to primary and some to secondary school. But a lot of the adults, even the leaders of the communities, have missed out.

The church and a number of other (often international) organisations have helped, but there is more urgency than ever at the moment, now that the return is getting nearer, and they will have to build and organise and govern their own villages or towns, with probably nothing but hostility from the government. - If you think about it, it's an amazing, almost a science fiction-type situation.

I also think, when I am in touch with people who need and value and demand education as much as the Guatemalan refugees do, what a very different sort of situation there is in England, where lots of people - lots of you, in fact - think that education is a pain and something to escape from or sabotage if you can. It's probably obvious why things here are so different, but it would be interesting to hear your explanation of why you think education means such different things to different people.

By now you can probably piece together some of the important points about the return of the Guatemalan refugees. I'll try to sum a few of them up.

Guatemala is still a country at war with itself, and the situation for the refugees when they return won't be much better than it was when they left.

After managing to persuade the government to sign the agreements in 1992, the majority of the refugees are determined to return to their homeland as a large organised block of people, who will continue to be in a position of strength when it comes to insisting on their rights as citizens of the country. Their ability to organise themselves is their main protection.

Many, many other Guatemalans never left their country, and have been suffering the effects of a violent government for years. These too are people ready to fight back, but they need to get together with the refugees and form an even larger block of people, ready to demand those basic rights which to most of us in England just seem normal.

Perhaps you can see now that the return is not quite as simple as moving house. It's seen by the Guatemalan government as something directly against them, even though it's also something which they've been forced to agree to. So this is where the dirty tricks come in. They can't stop it legally, but they can try to interfere with it in other ways.

In April this year, three refugees and I set off for Guatemala City. I was the international accompanier, and they were going there to prepare the way for the 11 remaining members of the group who would be joining them a week later. A week later the second group got as far as the Guatemalan border and were not allowed in.

The hold-up was quite unnecessary, but it lasted for three days. When you think what an enormously important event it was for the group to be returning to their homeland after over ten years, and to be looking for land for about two-and-a-half thousand other people, you can imagine that a three day hold-up was a disaster, especially since they didn't know if they would be allowed in at all, they only had permission to enter for a limited time, and had a tight programme of events and meetings worked out for them during their time there.

They had to cope. These people have always had to cope. When obstacles are put in their way, they calmly talk their way through them. This, I am sure, is why they have slowly but surely won so many battles and thought and fought their way through so many difficulties. Their patience and skill at politely but firmly insisting on their rights have been gained through years of violence and hardship. It's one of the things we have to learn from them: they don't lose their cool. They know the law, and right is on their side.

We had a demanding few weeks together, always on the move. For a few nights we stayed on a rich man's farm, which the owner wanted to sell to the refugees. We slept in a house on the estate and had our meals in his house. He slaughtered a bullock and barbecued steak for his guests. He very much wanted to sell his farm. If you read my last letter, you might be able to guess why.

We went on up to the rain forests of the north. We travelled by boat on the river Usumacinta to places where there were no roads, to remote lands where ten years ago there had been many people living, before the army bombed and destroyed them. A few people had returned to settle. A few had never left, maybe persuaded by the army to do as they were told in exchange for staying alive. Some places had to be reached on horseback or on foot through the jungle.

You might have started to guess that one of the problems the returnees will face is getting on with the people who are already there. We had news that the army had been there before us, telling people that the refugees were going to "invade" the land and take it away from settlers by force. A common rumour is that the refugees are linked to the guerrilla and will bring trouble and violence to the area.

In all sorts of little ways we found that traps had been placed in our path, and we learned the very important lesson that talking to the people who are there is one of the most important steps the refugees have to take. They are not just looking for land: they are also looking for allies and friends, so that the campaign for a better way of life can be fought by as many people as possible.

Wherever I go I find that the old, well-known trick of keeping people ignorant, feeding them false rumours and if possible stirring up disagreement amongst them is still a favourite way to prevent them from getting their act together and fighting back. The refugee leaders know this, and their answer is to try to keep the information flowing, make sure people have the means (like being able to read and write) to find things out, to check what they think they know, and above all make sure that they understand what is happening to them. It's easy to cheat people who are ignorant, and a great deal harder to cheat them if they have knowledge and understanding of the world they live in.

There is a group of young people that I am working with at the moment who are planning to publish a refugee magazine for the people in the camps. It's quite a task when such a lot of people can't read and write very well, but it's a challenge to produce something which is bright and attractive and fun, but which also gives people the sort of knowledge and information which they want. One idea is that it should be translated into other languages as well, such as English, so that people in other countries can see what the challenges are.

There's no doubt that knowledge is power, and to get this sort of power people need education. For the refugees it is one of their strongest weapons. As I mentioned before, I'd be really interested to know what you think about the fact that education is so much demanded by some people, and so much rejected by others.