c. 1997 Religion News Service
WASHINGTON _ Guatemalan rebels are scheduled to begin turning in their weapons Monday (March 24), bringing the unique peacemaking process that helped end the fighting in Central America’s last and longest civil war to a new phase officials and observers hope will bring a lasting peace.
As _ and if _ the peace takes hold, much of the credit will belong to the quiet, unheralded, behind-the-scenes actions of world churches. Their role, U.S. government and international officials say, not only made the Guatemala peace possible but could provide a model for other peacemaking efforts.
According to Jean Arnault, a United Nations negotiator for the peace process and current director of MINUGUA, the U.N. Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala, peace is likely to last because of the “ownership of the peace process by many sectors of the population.”
Robert Orr, director of the Office of Global and Multilateral Affairs of the White House National Security Council, said the process in Guatemala is a model for future U.N. missions because it integrates concerns from many sectors of society.
“Future missions will look very much like this,”he said.”Guatemala is a harbinger of the future.” That”look”is a result of the involvement of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches and their ability not only to bring the warring rebels and government together but also bring together other parts of society, such as the business and intellectual communities.
Arnault said the final peace accord, signed in Guatemala City on Dec. 29, 1996, is unique in its emphasis on social justice, which he attributes to the work of the churches.
“The accords don’t reflect a leftist versus rightist agenda,”he said in an interview with RNS.”They reflect the social directives embodied in what the churches have been doing _ promoting justice and reconciliation.”
He estimated that 40 percent of the text of the peace accords deals with social concerns about economic and political injustice.”The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) was essential in getting things on track,”Arnault added.”If it had not been for partial victories and successes earlier in the negotiation process (before United Nations involvement), peace would not have triumphed.” The Geneva-based LWF is an international Lutheran agency with more than 120 member churches, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
The Rev. Paul Wee, former assistant general secretary of the LWF, played a key role in the peace process from the beginning. He planned the initial talks between government and guerrilla leaders.
Wee, who is currently a senior pastor at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation in Washington, D.C., said in an interview with RNS he became involved in the effort to bring peace to Guatemala after visiting the country as part of a National Council of Churches delegation in 1981.
The visit was at the height of the government’s”scorched earth campaign,”and Wee said he was unprepared for the shock.
He pointed to a speech he made at the February 1993 Peace Prize forum at Concordia College in Moorehead, Minn., to demonstrate what he experienced in Guatemala.
“The words massacre and genocide had no real meaning until we found ourselves thrown in to the midst of a situation of pure terror. Entire villages disappeared. … The country was thrown back to the age of conquest, to a time of repression equal to that of the conquistadors,” Wee said.
The civil war in Guatemala was triggered by increasing inequality between rich landowners, making up just 2 percent of the population while owning 72 percent of the land, and masses of peasants. After a hardline military government _ aided by the CIA _ took power in 1954 and halted reform efforts, civil war erupted, eventually claiming 140,000 lives before last year’s accord was signed.
Teachings from the Second Vatican Council, especially its underlining of the idea that all people are equal and should be free, and that structures as well as individuals can be sinful _ struck a chord with the largely Catholic Mayan peasant population of Guatemala.
“People realized that the oppressive military and economic structures didn’t measure up to God’s will and therefore needed to be changed to be brought into harmony with God’s shalom, God’s justice,” Wee said in the interview.
After U.N. peace negotiations failed in 1987, Wee, by then with the LWF in Geneva, worked with colleagues to make strategic diplomatic contacts.
A first step was to visit the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, which secured the support of Pope John Paul II for a combined Roman Catholic-Lutheran delegation to Central America. The LWF was also joined by three other major ecumenical groups: the World Council of Churches, the Latin American Council of Churches and the U.S. National Council of Churches.
“These churches dedicated themselves to working together, sharing time and resources with no animosity. … It was one of the most remarkable ecumenical ventures I have ever been a part of,” Wee said.
In 1988, Wee met several times with guerrilla leaders in Geneva to discuss conditions preventing peace in Guatemalan society.
But the turning point came in March 1990, in Oslo, Norway, in a LWF-orchestrated meeting between government and guerrilla leaders.
Progress in the talks was uncertain and they appeared on the verge of breaking down until the last evening, when an after-dinner discussion became the catalyst for a peace agreement.
“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, hugs, and a determination to hammer out an agreement,” Wee said.
After the Oslo accord was signed, the LWF offered to withdraw from the mediation process and turn it over to the United Nations. The Guatemalans and the U.N., however, asked the church body to remain involved in the process, continuing to work behind the scenes, first with U.N. negotiator Francesc Vendrell, and later with Arnault.
As a result of the work of the LWF, a formal peace agreement was almost signed in 1992 at the LWF Ecumenical Center in Geneva but the effort collapsed at the last moment. In 1993, three of the four guerrilla leaders met in Washington, D.C., at the Lutheran Church of the Reformation to pray for peace. Finally, the accord was signed last December.
Wee is reluctant to take too much credit for the peace in Guatemala.”Christ calls us to serve and to help _ the motivation is not to get recognition or anything in return. Many different groups were involved in the peace process,”he said.
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Through his work, Wee became friends with leaders on both sides, including Jorge Rosal, one of four rebel leaders of the URNG, the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, a coalition of four separate guerrilla groups.
“The guerrillas are for the most part a mild mannered group of people,” Wee said. “They’re not wild-eyed Marxists but they were patriots, people committed to bringing justice to their country and an end to military rule.”
Wee compared the situation in Guatemala to the American Revolution, citing the Declaration of Independence, which declares that it is the right _ even the duty _ of the people to overthrow an abusive government.
Under the Dec. 29 agreement, the government promised to expand education and health services, overhaul agriculture and the economy, respect the rights of the indigenous Mayan majority, reform the judicial system and demilitarize the country.
“This is a day for forgiveness,” Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu said at the signing of the accord. “We cannot and should not forget, but we must forgive.”
The accord grants amnesty for crimes committed as part of the struggle and calls for 3,600 rebels nationwide to demobilize by early May, under the supervision of 155 military officers from other countries.
Although some are skeptical that guerrilla forces will give up all their weapons, Arnault believes guerrilla forces are committed to disarmament. “I think the URNG is very convinced that the time has come to switch from an armed struggle to politics,” he said.
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As the rebels begin to turn in their weapons, many are optimistic about Guatemala’s future. But the country’s problems are far from over. The Guatemalan government estimates it will cost more than $2.3 billion over the next three years to finance the demobilization and fulfill the peace accords.
Arnault calls establishing a justice system “one of the many challenges” Guatemala faces. Currently courts exist in just half the country, and the justice system is widely perceived as corrupt and inefficient.
In a country where 40 percent of the 10.2 million citizens are illiterate, schools are poorly equipped, health clinics are scarce, and deep-rooted prejudices still exist, Wee said the churches in Guatemala have “a major role to play” in the post-war period.
“The churches must work for reconciliation between two antagonistic forces. They must promote healing, and there must be confession, forgiveness, absolution, all the things the church can promote,” Wee said.”Based on Guatemalan history, there are few grounds for optimism,”he added.”Yet based on faith in God’s acts to liberate oppressed peoples, there are solid grounds for hope. … People on all sides, including the Guatemalan elite who live in fortress-suburbs, are simply tired of living in fear.”
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