LETTER 7

28th October 1993

This letter is following hard on the heels of the last one, because things are happening fast. At certain times there are long periods when I stay at home in Campeche and work at my desk. At other times I get whipped away by events as they happen.

I am now in Guatemala City. I have been here for over a week, and came here originally with a small group of refugee leaders whose purpose was to take the next vital step towards buying the land which we were tramping through not so long ago. In fact the up-to-date news is that they have agreed a price, there has been a formal offer of sale, and, barring accidents, all seems well. They have now gone back to Mexico, and, really, I should have gone back with them, but things didn't work out that way.

In my last letter you may remember that I mentioned some groups of people who, at the time of the massacres, decided not to flee to Mexico but to stay in hiding in the mountains. There are three main groups of these people, and they have called themselves Communities of the Population in Resistance or CPRs. One group has been living in the forests and mountains of the north-west, in an area called Ixcán (pronounced eesh-cann) near the Mexican border, where we were when I wrote the last letter. Another group has survived in the mountains, further away from the border. (These call themselves the CPRs of the Sierra.) The third has existed in hiding in Petén, not too far away from where I was in my last letter but one.

All these groups have managed somehow not only to keep themselves alive and healthy, literally in the depths of the jungle, for twelve or thirteen years, but they've also had to be on the run almost constantly from the army which has always accused them of supporting the guerrilla, has hounded them on foot, searched for them by helicopter, and bombed and shelled them with their air and land forces.

The CPRs from Ixcán and the Sierra decided over the last two years to take the highly dangerous step of sending delegations of people to the capital city, to declare their existence openly, to demand their rights as human beings and as peaceful communities, in no way involved with the guerrilla war, and to ask for help from national and international organisations. Suddenly everybody knew about the CPRs, and people all over the world responded with shock at the way they had been treated.

The delegation from the CPR of Petén came to the capital city for the first time this week and made their public declaration on October 21st. They are sitting by my side now at the very moment of writing.

How did all this come about?

My part in it is easy to explain. Three-quarters of the way through the job which I thought I had come to Guatemala City to do, I heard that the group had arrived and needed an international observer or accompanier to be with them, and I was in the right place at the right moment.

If the Guatemalan army sees fit to bomb and shell the CPRs, you can imagine that for these representatives to come out into the open is a risky business. A hundred thousand or so of their fellow country-people after all fled to Mexico in justifiable fear for their lives, and to date only a small proportion have returned.

It is very important that no-one should find out exactly where they live. Leaving the CPRs and returning has to be done in great secrecy and with great care so as to escape the eye of army intelligence. So they came to the capital city, escorted by friends. Then they wrote to press, radio and television and held an open meeting with journalists saying who they were and why they had come out of hiding. And now, every day, they are travelling around, in a vehicle provided by the catholic church, from one organisation to another, looking for allies and making a load of public contacts.

We are living in a well protected place, and I have been travelling around with them, talking, learning, and sometimes giving a hand on questions like how to talk to the press and how to prepare for some of the problems and challenges which might arise.

They have lived in hiding in the jungle for thirteen years, and you can imagine that a massive, polluted city, full of noise and people and cars and shops, must be a shock, and apart from that they have to be constantly on guard for the army and the police, now that news of their appearance has been made public.

I should explain that one of the differences between these people and the refugees is that the refugees, as I have mentioned to you before, are protected by legal agreements and have embassies and agencies such as the United Nations looking after them, whereas in Guatemala the CPRs have had no official rights, and indeed are viewed by the government and the army as criminal communities.

So what's it really all about? Why did they decide not to be refugees but to stay in the jungle? And what is the meaning of them deciding to come out at this stage, not at all to give themselves up, but to make an open challenge to the government of their country?

Back in the time of the massacres in the early 1980s, the people affected on the whole took one of three decisions. A great mass that you know about took refuge in Mexico. Large numbers fled to other parts of Guatemala, where there was not so much danger of being affected by army offensives against the guerrilla, and a smaller number, but some thousands of people even so, took the decision not to leave their country and take a chance in Mexico, but to go into hiding in Guatemala. After all, they thought, we are Guatemalan citizens, we have done no wrong, and we want to stay and resist the army and the government in our own way.

This was not a sudden decision which they took during the horrors of the massacres. Many of them in the places where they had lived before had worked out, often with the help of priests from other countries, what they considered was just and unjust, what they thought was a dignified and honest and fair way of life. There had been a lot of discussion about this, and in many of the co-operatives, as these communities were called, people were living their lives together, sharing what they had, and making sure that what there was was equally available to all.

The government was highly suspicious of any groups which seemed to be opposed to it and to the army. For most of its history, Guatemala had not been a country in which a fair system of voting had allowed people to express their opinion. Democracy, as we understand the word, had hardly existed. If you were in opposition to the government you were an enemy and were hunted and punished for it. In more democratic countries at least you have some freedom to express your views in public and to vote out a government if you don't like it.

The cooperatives were seen to be enemies of the government. They were accused of being linked to the guerrilla, and as one thing led to another the community leaders were kidnapped, tortured and killed, villages were surrounded and whole populations slaughtered. The last and most extreme action of the army was what is called a "scorched earth" policy. They select an area and bomb, destroy and burn everything, crops, vegetation, animals and people, leaving nothing behind except literally scorched earth.

The people who fled were not just ignorant peasant folk, however. Many of them already had ideas about how to go on resisting without having to give themselves up to the control of another government and another army in Mexico, where the things they believed in would be just as hard to achieve. So they stayed and hid, and bit by bit formed these extraordinary communities, never able to stay in one place for long, still harassed by the army, but even so managed to grow crops, run schools for their children, use plants as medicines, educate themselves by listening to the radio and learning from each other.

There in their "communities of resistance" they have continued to exist for about thirteen years. Many children have been born, and well over half the people now living in the CPRs are in fact children. They believe strongly in their way of life, their independence, their ability to fend for themselves and the way in which everything is shared, the work, the duties, the responsibilities, but also the benefits, the food, the tools and for instance the educational opportunities.

They don't want to leave their communities. They don't want to become part of town or country society as we know it, to be swamped with advertisements and useless goods for sale. And the CPRs of Petén are not coming out of their hidden places because they've had enough or because they want to give themselves up. It's a lot more complicated - and a lot more positive - than that. So why? And why now?

Perhaps what I said a moment ago was too simple. It wasn't as if they all escaped from burning villages and suddenly started to live in organised groups in the jungle. When they first escaped with their lives they were alone, or in small family groups, or groups of a few families, and tried as best they could to survive. Many people, especially the children, died along the way. They were wet and tired and hungry and frightened and always on the run. Settling down and finding a more comfortable way to survive took years. They had to learn how to be watchful all the time, how to escape with no noise when they had to, how to keep their children (and their chickens) quiet when the army was nearby. They had to learn how to find lots of little patches of land to grow food, so that if the army destroyed one, they could always use the others. They learned how to hide food, and learned the advantage of growing root crops, so that even if the army destroyed the plants, the root could still be dug up and eaten.

They also discovered that if you live like this you can use the jungle in such a way as not to damage it. So they live in harmony with their natural surroundings, and often know more about conservation than the so-called experts.

They have no doctors or nurses living with them, but the way they live and eat is very healthy. They have had very little serious illness in recent years. A few people knew a bit about medicines, and a few of them have some experience in delivering babies. But in spite of the lack of experts, children have been born and there have as yet been no problems.

Here too an interesting thing has happened. Normally in this part of the world families are much larger than those in the Petén CPRs. Imagine that there is an alert, that the army is somewhere near. You have to pick up your belongings and escape, sometimes over great distances. Imagine that you also have small children to cope with, perhaps a baby and two toddlers. It becomes almost impossible. So, for survival, people have decided to limit the size of their families. Where we live, access to contraception is easy and cheap - or free, but imagine having to make this decision where there are no contraceptives at all.

The most important aspect of their life to them is that they do everything collectively. This means that they do things together, so that no-one is left out. They work and produce the food together. Even children, from the age of six onwards, are organised into doing jobs like carrying water or picking fruit. Their teachers have to do their teaching work in the mornings, so they are excused agricultural work for this time, but they also have to do their bit in the afternoons and at weekends. Other people like the health workers also have time off to do their special tasks.

Food is given out in such a a way that everyone gets their fair share. If something is scarce, or if someone manages to kill a wild turkey, which won't be enough for everyone, the first shares are given to children, old people and pregnant women. Groups of families then cook for each other. Each day a different person takes the responsibility, and in this way no-one is left out, and those with special needs get a bit more.

As another example, old people may want to go on working, but not perhaps as much as younger people, so special tasks are given to them not too far away from the settlements. Women with tiny babies are excused all work for a while, and other people help them by doing their washing and looking after older children.

This way of living has two sides to it. Partly it has grown up out of the situation they live in. If they don't help each other, they don't survive. They are "communities in resistance" and everything depends on their intelligence and skill as a group. But partly too they live this way because they believe in it. They believe it is fair for everyone to be treated with the same consideration, for people to support each other, and for the weak to get special care.

This is one of the main reasons why they decided not to flee to Mexico and not to look for refuge in other parts of Guatemala. They knew that wherever they went they would be under the control of rich and powerful people, with armies and authorities to back them. They would be poor, without resources and without dignity. In the mountains they were poor and harassed by the army, but at least with a feeling of independence and pride. So why are they coming out?

Times are changing. They know that Guatemala is under pressure from other countries, especially the United States, to improve its human rights situation, to get its refugees back again and to behave better towards its own citizens. They feel that now might be a safer moment than before to come out. They also now feel confident enough in themselves to tell the country and the world that they exist, that they have resisted, that they have gone on living in a way that they believe in, and that they have survived.

They want the army to stop their persecution and leave them to live in peace. They want the support of people all over the world in their wish and intention to continue this way of life, as a challenge to the government and the army: "Touch us now if you dare!" Most of all they want Guatemala itself to change and they believe they have a part to play in helping to make that change. When people do brave things it helps other people to be brave. When people set an example of how to live the kind of life which is fair to everyone, it helps other people to do the same. They are very strong and very courageous people.

This is our last evening in Guatemala together. Tomorrow I have to go back to Mexico, and very soon after that back to England, where I hope that maybe I shall meet some of you who have read these letters.

LETTER 8

20th February 1994

There's been a long gap since my last letter at the end of October. This is because I was back in England from the middle of November to the middle of January. Two months was a long time to be away from events which are happening so fast, but back here it's been interesting, and also quite understandable, to find out that some people think that nothing's happening at all.

I've heard people describing wars as long periods of inactivity and boredom, when nothing seems to be going on at all, followed by short bursts of the most intense and violent activity anyone could imagine, the experience of "active combat".

It's a little bit like that. One day, some time during the next three months - people say April - about 2000 refugees at present in Mexico will get on to buses, with all their belongings, their animals, their chickens, their pet birds, everything they own; they'll go to that place in the Guatemalan rain forest called El Quetzal (pronounced kett-sal), which I have described to you before, and start building their new homes, their streets, schools, shops, clinics and churches, and there, with luck, they will settle and live, some for the rest of their lives.

Before that, working teams will have to go on ahead, between thirty and fifty people at a time, and start clearing the land, digging the drains, installing a clean water system, drawing out the streets and pegging out the plots where people will live. Some houses will have to be built in advance, places where the new arrivals can spend the first few days until their own accommodation is sorted out, where old people and disabled people can shelter from the sun or the rain, places where little kids can be looked after and play.

I've just heard that a medical team from Spain has turned up and is ready to start planning out some kind of basic health service when people arrive. Teachers who have been working in the refugee camps over the last twelve years are planning how they will keep working with the children during the difficult period of the actual return, so that they don't miss too much schooling on the way, and how they will get new schools started when they get to El Quetzal.

The only problem is that so far there is no definite departure date, and, what is worse, so far the contract, the legal document to buy El Quetzal, has not been finally sorted out. In simple terms: they are planning to return, some time very soon, to land which they don't yet own. This is the biggest headache of all at the moment, and while negotiations are still going on, and teams are travelling backwards and forwards to Guatemala City to get things straight, time is slipping by, and in the camps people are getting very restless indeed, wondering whether to start dismantling their households, whether to try to sell their houses to someone else, and, most important of all, whether to sow their crops for the end of the year.

Remember that the refugees have very little or no money. Their source of food is what they grow for themselves. Growing food takes a great deal of work and effort, and costs them the price of seeds and tools and fertilisers and so forth. So: do they go in April? If they sow their crops and do go, they will have wasted money and a lot of time and effort. If they don't sow their crops and don't go, they have no food for their families and themselves for the winter. If they don't sow their crops and do go, this will be the best and most profitable situation of all. When they arrive in El Quetzal, they then at once get down to sowing the new crops, and, with some emergency aid in between, they are all right for the winter.

No wonder the long wait for some definite result is getting on people's nerves. Some people are getting angry and saying it's all a con. Some people are thinking about not going on this return but taking a chance with another group which may be planning a return to another part of Guatemala or even going on their own. Other people are falling into an attitude which says: we are poor people; these things have been happening to us all our lives; we have no power and no say in things; what's the point of going on trying?

No wonder many people think that nothing's happening, that their leaders aren't trying hard enough. Isn't this the way people talk about politicians in our country and probably everywhere else as well?

So what are some of the reasons behind the hold-up?

First of all you have to understand that there are often two or more sets of reasons behind why people do things. The first reason is the one that people give, openly and in public, and then there are other sets of perhaps more secret reasons which people don't want to discuss: these are the ones you have to try to find out about. One thing is for sure, and that is that no-one is keen to admit to the hidden reasons. In the tense atmosphere of the negotiating table, if you find out what they are, and your opponents find that they can't outwit you after all but are still determined not to let you win, then probably they'll find other ways of keeping you quiet.

Yes, it sounds melodramatic, but we in Britain live in a country where people in general are far more conscious of their own human rights, and indeed have many more rights than people in other countries. In Guatemala in recent weeks more than forty people have been kidnapped mysteriously. Some of them were murdered and their bodies were found abandoned some time afterwards. Many areas of the country - like Petén - are extremely "undeveloped", which means there are few roads, few hospitals, few schools, few communities with electricity and pure water, many people living in great poverty with no chances of work or education.

In these same "undeveloped" areas, and, as you already know, a lot of Petén is rain forest as well, rich people take advantage of the fact that there's no proper system of law and order to send in their tractors and steal the precious hardwoods and sell them. These are called the illegal loggers. And others use the forests of Petén as a place to grow marijuana, and also as an untouched area of land where drug-traffickers from the south can slip through into Mexico.

Do you think these people want thousands of refugees to come and settle in the forest? The refugees already know what's going on and will undoubtedly try to put a stop to it. Drug-trafficking and logging are an enormous source of money and power. It is not too much of a leap of the imagination to guess that there might be links between these illegal trades and members of the Guatemalan government and army. They don't want a well-organised group of refugees, with international support from other governments and human rights organisations, to come and kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But no-one would admit that this was one of their reasons for not wanting them to settle there. So they have to find others which look and sound a bit better.

It's almost a joke that the main official obstacle to the return to Petén at the moment is "conservation". The forests of Petén are a major conservation area, which I'll explain in a moment, and while the Mexican petroleum company (PEMEX) tears the forest apart on the Mexican side of the border to extract oil, and the illegal loggers and drug-traffickers tear it apart on both sides of the border without any real effort being made to stop them, the refugees, most of them Mayan Indians, are refused access in case they damage the environment. This is especially unfair, because for many centuries more than the Spanish have been in the Americas, the Maya have lived in great harmony with the forest, deeply respecting the land which they believe to be the mother of them all.

A few years ago, the forest areas of Petén were declared by the United Nations to be what was called a protected "biosphere". In other parts of the world, some of the remaining areas of rain forest were also described in the same way, and because the governments of the countries concerned were asked to pay special attention to these areas and make sure they weren't damaged, they were called "conservation" areas.

Inside these areas it was decided that there should be three kinds of "zones". Some zones would be called "nuclear zones" - because they were the nucleus, the most valuable part, of the rain forest - and these would have to be left entirely to themselves, without any human settlement or, it seems, activity. Around them would be the "buffer zones" where limited human activity would be allowed. Finally there would be the zones where a greater variety of human settlement and activity would be permitted.

The main part of what is being discussed at the moment between the refugees and the government is which zone is which and what exactly is allowed in each zone. Every time an important meeting takes place it seems as if the rules have changed slightly, sometimes one way, and sometimes another, depending on who was the cleverest negotiator at the time. The main question, of course, is which zone El Quetzal is in, and what kind of activity is allowed there. On this depends whether the refugees will be allowed to buy it and to return there.

Why does nobody seem to know the answers? Well, ask yourselves the same question. What comes out is another question: Who makes the rules, and what do they base the rules on? Don't imagine that laws come from heaven or somewhere. Laws are made by people. Sometimes they're made by concerned people who consult with and represent their own local population. Sometimes they're made by corrupt politicians who have only the interests of a minority at heart. Put quite simply, sometimes they're bad laws. And sometimes they're made purposely unclear so that people can twist them for to their own purposes. What you then need is clever lawyers who can spot the places where the laws don't make sense and try to fill the gap in a more sensible way.

Then there are two different opinions amongst people as to how "protected areas" should be used. Some conservationists, as they are called, usually people who don't actually live there, think that no-one at all should be allowed to live in the rain forests. They say they are too valuable for the survival of human life on Planet Earth for any risks to be taken with them - and human settlement is always a risk.

Other people say that it is and always has been possible for human beings to live in the rain forest without destroying it. They say that the main damage has always been done by the logging companies and, for instance, large organisations which clear the forests for cattle ranching. They say that while there are millions of poor people without land in the world, they should be allowed to settle and cultivate the land in places like Petén, and, as I said, the Maya have thousands of years of experience of this.

There has been some comedy in the negotiations. At one important meeting in which the government was going to give an answer to the question as to whether El Quetzal was in the nuclear zone or not, the experts, proud of their highly accurate satellite measurements, came in and said that the satellite had broken down and the meeting could not take place. But should we believe that satellites have all the answers? And if they did, then should they break down? In fact it was just another trick, another way of playing for time and putting off decisions for another week, and the Mayan people laughed at these 'clever' people who needed satellites to measure their little patch of land.

Another trick was to say that the refugees could not buy the land because it didn't belong to anybody. The existing owner had apparently not paid his debts on the land, and had therefore had to give it up to the government. There had been a deadline of a particular day on which to pay the debt. The owner said he had turned up at the office on that date, with the money to pay the debt, but the office was shut, because it was a Sunday. He had turned up again on the Monday and was told it was too late.

Meanwhile, while all this effort is being spent on long-winded negotiation, people in the refugee camps in Mexico are getting tired of their people coming back over and over again from Guatemala saying: "No decision yet. We need a bit more time."

I've mentioned to you before in another letter how much training and planning is still needed before this return can take place, and of course it isn't as if there's nothing to do here in Mexico. There's so much to do that some people hardly get any sleep and rush continuously from meeting to meeting trying to iron out all the creases. But what most people now want, the 2000 or so people I keep on talking about, is action, and real action seems to be the most difficult thing to achieve at present.

This is the first letter I've sent you which is about what happens when nothing happens. I too hope there will be some action soon.