Who is this guy writing about Central American politics?

Lake Atitlan

In yesterday's comments, a reader asked about my background. I thought I'd use her question as an opportunity to tell you more about myself. It builds off what I wrote in November 2009, shortly after I began writing the blog. You can read what I've written by clicking on the Research and Editorials links above since I won't repeat that here.

On November 16, 1989, I was a sophomore at the Jesuit-run Regis High School in New York City. I was in my guidance counselor's office when we first found out about the massacre of the six Jesuits priests at the UCA in San Salvador. Over the next several months, we learned more about their work through an alumnus who had been working with Salvadoran refugees across the border in Honduras.

Oddly enough, I was already familiar with El Salvador when I first heard of the Jesuits' murders. Sr. Maura Clarke, one of the American churchwomen killed in December 1980, was from my neighborhood. We went to the same grammar school in Rockaway Beach, NY. While I have no recollection of her death (I was six at the time), I do remember seeing her plaque in the school hallway. When I arrived at the Jesuit-run Fairfield University for my undergraduate studies, I made friends with the dean of students. It turned out that she had known Jean Donovan very well, a missionary killed alongside Sr. Clarke. One of the other Churchwomen killed in El Salvador, Sr. Dorothy Kazel, was an Ursuline nun as is my aunt and godmother.

The murders of the churchwomen and those of the Jesuits heavily influenced my decision to apply for a Fulbright to study in El Salvador following graduation from Fairfield University (major in political science with minors in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Peace and Justice Studies). I spent 1997 in El Salvador studying the development of the political party system in the postwar period. I took sociology and political science classes with Rafael Guido Bejar and Joaquin Aquilar at the University of Central America and a history course at the University of El Salvador. I taught an ESL course to a few former guerrillas and other terrific people at the Centro de Intercambio y Solidaridad. I also volunteered as an election observer in Apopa (Berlin in 2004). I carried out several interviews of journalists, politicians, and academics that year as well.

After returning from Central America in mid-1998, I applied for graduate school in political science and ended up at Florida State University in Tallahassee. In graduate school, I hoped to study the transition of former rebel movements to political parties in El Salvador and Guatemala. Unfortunately, very few faculty thought it was a good idea. No one was really studying such transitions in 1999 when I started school. It took awhile, but I eventually convinced enough of them (I only needed four + one outside member) that I was on to something. It turned out to be a good experience as I dabbled in political parties and institutions, political violence, and Latin America-based courses.

I didn't go to a school known for producing Latin Americanists and I didn't study under Latin Americanists who were well known so I am somewhat of an enigma in certain circles. There aren't too many political scientists who study Central American politics.

For the last seven years, I have been teaching Latin American politics at the University of Scranton in Northeast Pennsylvania. Scranton, of course, is another Jesuit institution. Given that I am from New York and my wife is from Boston, we lucked out with location. The weather's not great but there's not much we can do about that.

I have been in Guatemala since December on a faculty Fulbright. On this trip, I have two papers under review - one on the URNG and another comparing the splinter groups of the FMLN, FSLN, and URNG. I am still working on a book about the URNG but have been sidetracked a bit with another book on United States - Central American relations in the post-Cold War period. This book is based on a series of lectures that I am giving at the Rafael Landivar University. The second one is this Wednesday. I probably have two-thirds of a book on the FMLN complete, but I'm not sure when I am going to get around to it.

As you can tell from my research and my blog writing, I am interested in Central America, especially El Salvador and Guatemala where I have spent the most time. I spent February to December 1997 in El Salvador and a few weeks in 1998. I also made trips there in 2004, 2008, and 2012. For Guatemala, I spent one month backpacking in 1998 and then research trips in 2004, 2007, and 2010. I arrived again on December 29th of last year and will be here into mid-August, so another eight month trip. I am here with my wife and two young children.

In terms of some of my other experiences in Latin America, I took a two week trip to Mexico in 1991. I studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1995. I then spent a about two months traveling through parts of Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, Peru, and Chile. While in college, I also did one- to two-week volunteers trips in Kingston, Jamaica (twice) and Oaxaca (as well as Robins, Tennessee and Morehead, Kentucky).

After my 1997 Fulbright, I spent the first four months of 1998 backpacking through Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Belize, and the Yucatan of Mexico. I then spent three months backpacking through Venezuela in September. In 2001, I taught comparative government to US college students in San Jose, Costa Rica. I spent about ten days in Cuba that summer too.

Most of my travel and research is on El Salvador and Guatemala but teaching-wise, I offer the intro Latin American politics (mostly Mexico and South America) course every fall and then rotate Central America and US-Latin American Relations each spring.

I hope to bring students down to Central America next year and then in 2015 or 2016, I am planning to hit Panama and Nicaragua with a stopover in Costa Rica where my wife was a Peace Corps Volunteer.

So my writing is based on my experiences having lived, traveled, and studied in Central and South America, research, reading of academic and non-academic materials, and just some good conversations with really smart people about the region. If I weren't an academic, I'd like to think that I would be working with the State Department, the Agency for International Development or a similar organization. Now, I might look into opportunities there when I retire. I don't want to spent my last breath teaching in the classroom.

I hope that answers some questions. Please feel free to ask more. If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find someone who does.

More conflicting accounts of US complicity in Guatemalan genocide

Someone pointed this out on Twitter yesterday in order to indict the United States in the genocide in Guatemala (sorry, can't remember who). I actually thought that it painted a little more complicated picture (recurring theme, no?) and might even have been useful to Rios Montt's defense.

There's the people who chose to put Rios Montt into office following the March coup. Then there's the far right who seem to limit what Rios Montt can and cannot do. There are fears of a coup from the right (Mario Sandoval Alarcon) which would mesh well with US declassified documents that I mentioned yesterday.The defense might have been able to use the video to attack back against his famous quote that "If I don't control the Army, then what am I doing here?"

State Department records show the US was not involved in the March 1982 coup. However, civilian and military intelligence informants tell Jennifer Shirmer that the CIA was deeply involved in organizing and sponsoring the coup (The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy). It's possible that State didn't know but the CIA knew and was actually involved. There are conflicting accounts and we really just need more information to determine which one is right.

Just as in the video above, Rios Montt looks somewhat like a puppet (Captain Munoz is in charge). Shirmer hears different stories that Rios Montt was asked to take control of the junta during/immediately after the March coup. Hector Gramajo, on the other hand, says that the far right paid Rios Montt to participate and that he was involved in early negotiations leading up to the coup. Then there were the "mini rebellions" in 1982 and 1983 leading up to Rios Montt ouster. Gramajo gives the impression that Rios Montt would only be in office as long as the "young officers" below him would allow. When he deviated from the Pacification campaign, he was, in fact, removed via coup. (I don't have the books with me so if someone has more information, pass it along.)

The US doesn't look good wanting to reinstate military aid to the Guatemalan military during the height of the repression. Some of the discussion refers to whether reinstating the military aid to Guatemala would give the US more leverage over the Guatemalan military. WOLA's analyst things that's a bad idea. And while we don't know how many funds were sent covertly to Guatemala, Reagan didn't get his wish to resume military aid until a few years into civilian rule (1987).

The US also believed that military violence was decreasing based on nothing other than wishful thinking. Embassy officials didn't go outside the capital and just received information from the Guatemalan military. That reminds me of the US Embassy's approach to the massacre in El Mozote. They filed their story without actually having been to the massacre site. Now the cynical version would be that the US knew who was committing all the massacres and they wanted to avoid official confirmation. That's possible but remember the ambassador's cables change, to a certain extent, in October 1982 when he hears from what we considers a reliable source that the military was indeed responsible for the massacres.

I'm all for releasing more information about what the US knew and was doing. It's actually necessary to get a more complete picture.

US involvement in the Guatemalan genocide

Elisabeth Malkin with the New York Times takes up the role of the United States in Guatemala's civil war / genocide of the early 1980s in Trial on Guatemalan Civil War Carnage Leaves Out U.S. Role. While some people wanted the trial to pay more attention to the role of the US, I don't think that would have been as good idea. As others said in the article,

“This was a trial about Guatemala, about the structure of the country, about racism,” said Kate Doyle, a Guatemala expert at the National Security Archive in Washington, an independent research organization that seeks the release of classified government documents.

Adrián Zapata, a former guerrilla who is now a professor of social sciences at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala, said that to prove a genocide charge, “it was not pertinent to point out the international context or the external actors.”

It wasn't smart to bring up Otto Perez Molina (which from what I understand the prosecutor's office wasn't happy about) and it wouldn't have been smart to bring in the US. The trial was about two people who were accused of having committed genocide and crimes against humanity. Now, of course, that doesn't mean OPM and the US shouldn't be investigated and, if necessary, have their days in court. This trial just wasn't the appropriate time.

Here is some of what Elisabeth took from our 45-minute conversation though others might have said similar.

But an emphasis on human rights by President Jimmy Carter’s administration led to the cutoff of military aid in 1977. Even though after 1981 the Reagan administration became intensely involved in supporting El Salvador’s government against leftist guerrillas, and contra rebels against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Guatemalan government was so brutal that Washington kept it at arm’s length for a time.

When General Ríos Montt was installed in a coup in March 1982, Reagan administration officials were eager to embrace him as an ally. Embassy officials trekked up to the scene of massacres and reported back the army’s line that the guerrillas were doing the killing, according to documents uncovered by Ms. Doyle.

Over the next two years, about $15 million in spare parts and vehicles from the United States reached the Guatemalan military, said Prof. Michael E. Allison, a political scientist at the University of Scranton who studies Central America. More aid came from American allies like Israel, Taiwan, Argentina and Chile. In the 1990s, the American government revealed that the C.I.A. had been paying top military officers throughout the period.

“It was like a monster that we created over which we had little leverage,” Professor Allison said.

The Carter administration cut off direct military aid to Guatemala in 1977 because of their government's failure to respect human rights. From what I understand, the Guatemalan government said no to US aid (who were they to take advice from a military who just lost wars in Korea and Vietnam) even before the US officially cut off aid.

Virginia Garrard-Burnett has some really interesting research on the role of the US in Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala Under General Efrain Rios Montt 1982-1982. Rios Montt came to power in March 1982. However, declassified cables show that the US was not involved in the coup and they had no knowledge that it would happen. Were US and Reagan administration officials were eager to embrace him as an ally? Yes, but that doesn't even tell the entire story. The US hoped that Rios Montt would be the solution to getting Congress to resume direct military aid to the country. He was an evangelical, thought to be a leftist in the 1970s, and had a presidential election stolen from him.

However, a few weeks after Rios Montt came to power, the US government lost faith the Rios Montt was the answer.

By early April, however, the Embassy's hopes that Rios Montt would be a pliable leader began to fade, as intelligence reports began to cast doubts on the General's motives, character, and even his mental state. A cable from April 6, 1982, sent directly to the U.S. secretary of state, expressed concern about Rios Montt's "psychological state,"...

By May, the embassy's concerns had escalated dramatically: the General, intelligence reports cautioned, was a religious zealot whose personal beliefs and his "continued attempts to impose his religious convictions on others" posed a threat both to the regime's relationship with the military (thus threatening a second coup) and to the potential restoration of foreign aid from the United States.

In May, the US grew more concerned about Rios Montt, a man who came to power via a coup that we did not participate in or even know about, might actually be overthrown in a coup himself. US ambassador Chapin characterized him as an erratic religious fanatic and an unreliable ally at best. 

According to the ambassador, Rios Montt dismissed US efforts to resume military and economic assistance to Guatemala because he thought he could get $1 billion from US Protestant churches for reconstruction.

Much of the declassified material show the US unappreciative of the carnage that the military was carrying out. They thought that both sides were responsible for the violence. Why wouldn't that be the case as the US got most of its intelligence from the Guatemalan military! Reports that showed otherwise were propaganda. 

Embassy understanding of the violence only began to change in October 1982 when the embassy heard reports that the military was responsible for nearly all the massacres from a source that they trusted. However, not everyone in the embassy or in DC seem to have believed the new reports. The new understanding came weeks before Reagan would travel to Central America. A November investigation launched from DC concluded that the Embassy in Guatemala didn't know who was responsible for the killings in the countryside primarily because they never went out to look. They were holed up in Guatemala City and received intelligence reports from the military.

Then there's Reagan's support for Rios Montt through kind words - bum rap, good man, committed to democracy, etc. He said those words in Honduras in December 1982. He did not say those words in Guatemala City as some reporting has indicated. While despicable, they appear to have been said off the cuff and are not consistent with what the US government was saying internally at the time. Yes, what the US says is not the same as what it does. Reagan's decision not to go to Guatemala City to meet with Rios Montt was actually seen as a slight by Guatemala. It looks like some of Reagan's advisers wanted to keep him away from Rios Montt (as much as possible) just as they preventing him from meeting with Pinochet in Chile.

Reagan also wanted to have direct military aid restored to Guatemala. He failed until 1987, midway through civilian Christian Democrat Vinicio Cerezo's term in office. It doesn't look like a lot of military and economic assistance made its way to Guatemala in the early 1980s. Given what the government there was doing, some might have even been too much. We're talking tens of millions not the billions that were going to El Salvador. However, we don't know how much was covertly sent.

In the 1980s and 1990s, while still young, I was a strong critic of US policy in Central America. I still am. However, in the fifteen years since, I have learned that the US role was a lot more complicated than I understood at the time. What we said publicly was not the same as what we said privately. What Reagan wanted to do is not the same as he actually did. Thank you congress, human rights activists, and Catholic Church.

The US role was still terrible but it was much more complicated than I realized.

US Partnership for Growth with El Salvador

Friend of the blog, Christine Wade of Washington College in Maryland recently answered several questions for the Inter-American Advisor on the US-El Salvador Partnership for Growth.

In addition to Christine, the advisor solicited responses from El Salvador's ambassador to the United States Rubén Zamora, senior associate at the CSIS Americas Program and president of IBI Consultants Douglas Farah, president of Clearview Strategy Group AKirk Sherr, and founding chief executive officer of the Global Adaptation Institute Jaun José Daboub. Here's the set-up:

U.S. President Barack Obama's May 2-4 visit to Mexico and Costa Rica included a meeting with several Central American heads of state. The trip marked Obama's first to Central America since March 2011 when he visited El Salvador. During that trip, Obama and Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes announced the Partnership for Growth, a joint program between the two governments to help foster economic development in El Salvador.

How much progress have the countries experienced in carrying out the initiative? What factors are holding the countries back from increased levels of cooperation? Which industries can derive the  most benefit from closer U.S.-Salvadoran economic relations?

They always pose tough questions to answer in 250 words and these are no different. I imagine that it's pretty difficult to disentangle the benefits/costs of DR-CAFTA, the Millennium Challenge Compact, dollarization, the Partnership for Growth, hundreds of other programs, and globalization in general.

Fortunately, the good people at the advisor allowed me to share this issue. I'll give you a tease of Christine's response and then you can click through to read the rest of them.

Engagement with the private sector is a hallmark of the initiative, but the Salvadoran business sector has directed economic policy for more than 20 years, with less than spectacular results The potential influx of foreign investment will likely generate low-wage jobs that will be insufficient to raise Salvadorans out of poverty due to the country's relatively high cost of living. Finally, there are concerns that the accompanying legal reforms and legislation on public-private partnerships will benefit transnationals rather than Salvadorans. The potential privatization of public services is also worrying."

You can read their answers in “The Inter-American Dialogue’s daily Latin America Advisor" here.

After Rios Montt Conviction, Guatemala’s Judicial Sector Still Needs Support

I spoke with Catherine Cheney of the World Politics Review via email earlier this week about some possible implications of the Rios Montt trial for the rule of law in Guatemala. She zeroed in on my comments surrounding CICIG.

“The rule of law remains weak in Guatemala,” he said, despite improvements in the country’s judicial institutions. One positive example he highlighted was the creation of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), the body that assisted Rios Montt’s prosecution. 

“There are more independent justices today than there were a few years ago,” he said. “And the system should continue to improve if the 18 accused by CICIG of supporting organized crime are removed from office, punished and replaced by more honorable figures.”

CICIG helped with the creation of the High Risk Court that heard the Rios Montt trial and it forced out Paz y Paz's organized crime-linked predecessor but I'm not sure "assisted Rios Montt's prosecution" is the best way to frame their support. CICIG has provided the tools and the space for the MP's office to operate, but the trial was all the MP's doing.

Allison said it also remains to be seen whether the guilty verdict against Rios Montt in particular would lead to a further strengthening of Guatemala’s judicial system.

It still remains to be seen whether the guilty verdict will stand and I am worried that it won't. (Who else is worried about Thursday's rulings by the Constitutional Court?)

Whether it does so depends in part on the degree of elite support for the genocide conviction, Allison said. “Unfortunately, influential political, economic and media elites have not supported the work of CICIG” nor the trial up to this point, he said.

I also said elites haven't supported Paz y Paz either but that was dropped. None of the unusual suspects have come out in favor of the guilty verdict, as far I as know. Instead, they look ready to overturn the ruling any way possible. 

Hopefully, we are not sitting around on Friday wondering how much a reversal by the Constitutional Court will have set back the cause of justice in Guatemala.

Guatemala: Rios Montt genocide trial ends with historic verdict

Here's my newest post on the historic Rios Montt verdict in Guatemala. It's up at Al Jazeera now.

In speaking for the three-judge panel, Judge Yasmin Barrios said, "We are completely convinced of the intent to destroy the Ixil ethic group." The guilty verdict was historic for the people of Guatemala, and all those who struggle against gross human rights violators, as Rios Montt becomes the first head of state tried and convicted of genocide in a domestic court.

Approximately 250,000 Guatemalans were killed during a conflict that pitted several different guerrilla groups against the Guatemalan state. However, the vast majority of those killed were civilians from amongst the country's indigenous population. They were killed, in often horrific ways, by the state's official and unofficial security forces. Several victims spoke of the trauma perpetrated by soldiers, including rape and other forms of torture.

Now, a court has finally brought the man most responsible for the genocide of the early 1980s to justice. However, while there is praise for the verdict, more work remains both to secure the verdict and to ensure that its findings are disseminated and accepted.

Not surprisingly, I had a hard time getting the op-ed under my 2,000-word limit. However, I was able to tackle three broad issues.

First, the prosecution needs to secure the verdict. From how I read the trial, Judge Barrios was not going to let the defense succeed in slowing down or annulling the verdict. As a result, she pushed the trial through to a verdict while several challenges were left outstanding. Had the court waited for all of the challenges to be resolved, they might never have come to a verdict. But now the other courts have to resolve those issues. Some of them are expected to be known today.

Second, Guatemala and the international community have to work to get people to understand the verdict and to accept it. A number of people don't accept the ruling of genocide and it's not just the reactionary right. While I think that the Arzu group deserved to be criticized for the timing and framing (betraying the peace, seriously?) of their paid advertisement, they are generally seen as serious people. There are some who accept that the military committed mass killing and politicide, but they disagree that the intent was to single out any particular ethnic group. The educational campaigns, monuments, and museums that are part of the victims' compensation should go towards better explaining the judges' verdict.

Finally, there's the role of the US. As most of you are aware, I think that the US role in Guatemala during the war and the postwar is much more complicated than people presume. I tackle some of it in the article. Just don't walk away from the article thinking that I am justifying what the Reagan administration did in the early 1980s.

Not again - Rigoberta Menchu for President?

It's never too early to start talking presidential elections and El Periodico's speculation about the 2015 presidential candidates in Guatemala means its a good time to start. 

Manuel Baldizon will be LIDER's presidential candidate and, given Guatemala's tendency to elect the previous runner-up, is the favorite. LIDER's been doing its best to obstruct legislation in this year's congress.

Sandra Torres is back. She was elected Secretary General of UNE last weekend and is all set to actually make a run at the presidency this time around. Remember, the Constitutional Court ruled in 2011 that she couldn't run that year since she was a close relative of the sitting president even after their divorce. Orlando Blanco is a potential vice presidential candidate.

Former member of UNE and former president of the congress (that should be held against you, no?) Roberto Alejos looks set to lead the PU-PAN-Gana-TODOS coalition with a close relative of Álvaro Arzú as vice presidential candidate (Arzu's wife?)

The Partido Republicano Institucional (PRI), formerly known as Efrain Rios Montt's FRG, might go with daughter Zury Ríos. The editorial compares her situation to Keiko Fujimori of Peru. Would Zury Rios give her father a presidential pardon? Given her poor polling in 2011, Rios decided to drop out. Is it possible that she would get a bounce at the polls because of her dad's conviction?

URNG-Winaq–ANN-MAIZ could support Rigoberta Menchú once again. I thought she would be a poor candidate in 2011 and that's what she turned out to be but she gives the coalition name recognition and ensures that the media will cover them. As I said the other day, though, the URNG-Winaq-ANN, MAIZ need someone younger and more urban. The left is pretty strong in the west and the less populated areas of the country. They need someone who can get some votes in the city in order to help them pick up a seat on the district list for Guatemala and/or the national list. Keeping the seat in Huehuetenango, winning back the San Marcos seat, and maybe one more in Quiche or Quetzaltenango, in addition to a national seat would be an improved showing for the party. I'm just not convinced Menchú helps.

The UCN might go with Mario Estrada. The Gathering for Guatemala (EG) will most likely go with Nineth Montenegro unless it enters into a coalition like 2011.

The Patriotic Party could go with the present minister of Communications, Alejandro Sinibaldi. Sinbaldi ran for mayor of the capital in the last election. Foreign Minister Fernando Carrera and Interior Minister Mauricio López are vice presidential candidates. Finally, VP Roxana Baldetti who for some reason can't run for president (I know, the constitution), could be the party's candidate for mayor of Guatemala City. The PP's got money and an organization but I'm not sure how many people are going to want to give the PP another opportunity in the presidency. Two years is a long time.

There's also Harold Caballeros who ran last time and then served as foreign minister during Perez's first year. I'm not sure that he did any thing to stand out during his stay in the cabinet except for some terrible comments which probably are not a plus for his candidacy. He resigned to go spend more time with his family building his party so I imagine that he'll be running or putting his resources into helping someone else get elected.

Feels like only yesterday that Perez defeated Baldizon in a runoff election, no?