wfn.org | Lutherans Boost Peace in Guatemala

[ELCANEWS@ELCASCO.ELCA.ORG]

ELCA NEWS SERVICE

January 17, 1997

BEHIND THE SCENES, LUTHERANS BOOST PEACE IN GUATEMALA
FE-97-01-ET*

     GUATEMALA CITY (ELCA) -- Now it can be told.  When pens
scratched the final signatures on peace papers Dec. 29 in Guatemala
City, ending 36 years of civil war that claimed 140,000 lives, Lutherans
were seen but not heard.
     No one mentioned the church or the Lutheran World Federation during
the ceremony in the National Palace, but those connected with the peace
process knew it probably would not have happened without Lutheran
behind-the-scenes efforts since 1988.
     "Without you, we wouldn't be here," Jorge Rosal, one of four guerrilla
leaders, told the Rev. Paul A. Wee, former LWF assistant to the general
secretary for human rights and now pastor of Reformation Lutheran
Church, Washington, D.C.  A general amnesty the day before allowed
Rosal to enter the country for the first time in 16 years.
     United Nations negotiator Francesc Vendrell of Spain told Wee the
combatants should have mentioned the LWF from the platform: "Nothing
would have happened in the peace process without you."
     But the Lutherans' low profile suits Wee, who maintains that "once
you have a need to take credit for doing something like this, you're dead
in the water."
     How were Lutherans instrumental in brokering peace for a Roman
Catholic country where Lutherans are virtually unknown?  The unfolding
story reveals much about the worldwide Lutheran enterprise, which
includes the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.  Its international
relief efforts get press, but its peacemaking must be quiet.   In 1981 Wee
visited Guatemala as part of a National Council of Churches of Christ in
the U.S.A. delegation and heard eyewitness accounts of murders and
atrocities between government and guerrilla groups that hit him "like a ton
of bricks."
     The country's wealthy elite owned 72 percent of the land and, aided
by military dictatorships, kept the Mayan Indian and mixed-blood peasant
farmers practically enslaved.  The U.S.-based United Fruit Co. controlled
huge land tracts and benefited from no taxation, duty-free import of
materials and a low-wage labor force.  After President Arbenz attempted
to return United Fruit land to farmers, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
presided over a 1954 coup that forced Arbenz to flee, returning the
country to military rule and the land to United Fruit.
     For most of the next 40 years, a scorched-earth policy ensued.
Groups that questioned the government were branded subversive;
100,000 died, 40,000 disappeared.  President Gen.  Efraim Rios Montt, a
born-again Christian, self-righteously justified burning villages suspected
of harboring guerrillas.  Four guerrilla groups formed, headed by unlikely
people such as Rosal, a pathologist and professor, and coalesced into
the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG).  The United
States supported the government against "communist" guerrillas, and
Israel and Taiwan supplied arms to the military and the death squads.
     Wee promised himself and those who told him their stories that he
would do something to help them.  After failed 1987 United Nations peace
negotiations, Wee, by then with the LWF in Geneva, worked with
colleagues to make strategic diplomatic contacts.
     He met in Geneva with Rosal and other guerrilla leaders.  In 1988 the
LWF Executive Committee set up a special peacemaking fund; most of its
$80,000 came from church-related aid societies in Scandinavia.  A
Vatican visit secured its willingness to be part of a pastoral delegation to
Guatemala and encouraged its bishops to host it.
     The group that visited in 1989 included the Rev. Reginald Holle, then
bishop of the ELCA's North/West Lower Michigan Synod.  The group
"didn't know the full agenda," Wee admits.  The critical moment came
when a private meeting with the Guatemalan minister of defense was
arranged for Wee and the Rev. Philip G. Anderson, an ELCA pastor with
extensive experience in Central America.  That contact closed the circle,
and Wee secured promises from the government and the guerrillas that
they would attend a top-secret summit in Oslo, Norway.  The LWF sent
round-trip tickets to each participant from the special fund.
     Wee vividly remembers waiting at the Oslo airport in March 1990,
hoping everyone would show up.  They did, and they spent five days at
a government-owned chalet, secured partly because the Rev. Gunnar
Staalsett, then-LWF general secretary, is Norwegian.
     The talks were uncertain until an after-dinner discussion on the final
evening (motivated by the Holy Spirit and Johnny Walker, the story goes).
 "The adversaries began telling stories about their childhoods, how they
grew up in the same neighborhoods, went to school together and shared
the same vision for a future Guatemala.  Suddenly there were tears,
abrazos (hugs) and a determination to hammer out an agreement," Wee
says.
     "Paul and I didn't touch a drop of scotch because we knew we would
be working on the document," Rosal says.  They finished it at 4:30 a.m.,
and the Norwegian Foreign Minister witnessed its signing at 9 a.m.
     The LWF then offered to withdraw from the peace process and let
the United Nations mediate.  "But both sides begged us to continue," Wee
says.  So the LWF began arranging meetings of strategic leaders:
Guatemalan politicians from all 32 political parties met in Spain,
landowners and industrialists in Canada, religious groups in Ecuador,
and small business owners, journalists and academics in Mexico.  Each
group built support for peace as it dialogued with major participants.
     Between the 1990 Oslo Accord and last December's signing,
reconciliation came in fits and starts.  The demise of the Soviet Union
helped, as did Pope John Paul II's visit to Guatemala.  Jorge Serrano Elias,
an Oslo participant, was elected president of Guatemala, running on the
"Oslo" platform.
     A formal peace agreement was almost signed in 1992 at the
Ecumenical Center (home of the LWF) in Geneva.  Wee says, "We had all
kinds of security there.  The guerrilla leaders were all present.  But
Serrano (then president) backed out at the last minute, possibly because
of military pressure."
     But finally, all the pieces were in place.  A definitive cease-fire was
signed Dec. 4 in Norway, constitutional and electoral reforms were
signed Dec. 7 in Sweden, and the final signatures came Dec. 29 at 6:18
p.m.
     "I felt the shivers go through me," Wee says.  "It was as if I had
suddenly been released from detention and saw the light of day for the
first time.  Even at the Oslo signing, I remember thinking that if nothing
else happened in my ministry, I would be content."
     Wee says that although a military coup could easily destroy the
hard-won peace, all sectors intensely desire the war's end.  "The people
are simply tired of so much killing.  Even military leaders have economic
interests which are not benefited by a prolonged conflict," he says.
     Jorge Rosal, remembering death threats to him and his wife, said "the
difficult thing will be to incorporate people back into regular Guatemalan
life."   The URNG will become a political party.
     Rosal said he trusted the Lutherans because they "had insight into the
structural issues that created injustice."  Mario Permuth, a Jewish lawyer
and a member of the National Commission for Reconciliation, said simply
that "you Lutherans were real.  We sensed that we could trust you.  It's
as simple as that."

[The Rev. Edgar R. Trexler is editor of "The Lutheran" magazine.]

For information contact:

Ann Hafften, Dir.,  (773) 380-2958 or AHAFFTEN@ELCA.ORG;
Frank Imhoff, Assoc. Dir., (773) 380-2955 or FRANKI@ELCA.ORG;
Melissa Ramirez, Assist. Dir., (773) 380-2956 or MRAMIREZ@ELCA.ORG