SHOVELIC. support.
sets up defended Starved mainly The The supplying regime very revolutuna But build a very the teachers are being for the region gets deeper the Unemployment has solidarity whole region The external debt is per The only American ap- £4.50 Bookshop Guatemala is the most important country in the region, both in terms of size of the population. In March last year the guerrilla movement was growing con siderably in strength and it looked a if it would lead to an offensive. But it Why not?
Since Rios Montt came to power last year the US has been trying to persuade world public opinion that he is a democrat. When Reagan met Rios Montt last year, Reagan said Montt had got a 'bum rap' from the world's press and that in fact he was a very true democrat'! This at a time when the Guatemalan armed forces have been engaged in slaughter and torture on an unprecedented scale The point is that the Rios Montt dictatorship has the most coherent anti-insurgency strategy in the whole what they call the strategy of 'guns and beans'. Put simply, as I heard it from an army officer, if you support the government we'll feed you - otherwise we'll kill you.
The Guatemalan army designates certain villages where it knows that the guerrillas have a certain base of They go in and massacre people. If villagers flee into the hills, they are eventually forced to give up because of lack of food. The army strategic villages, which are against guerrillas.
Sometimes to make an example the army just lets the villagers starve.
I met an international aid officer who told me of a camp of 6000 people women and children. died during the first day at the camp. They were so starved that they could only be fed intraveneously. He told me that he thought that half of them would be dead within two months.
local hospitals wouldn't even deal with these people because they thought they were guerrillas.
United States Was secretly aid the Guatemalan even before the official resumption of arms supplies. As I said before, for the US it's the key country in the region. Because the regime has coherent anti-insurgenc strategy it's going to be a long war. There is little prospect of a quick victory. We have to strong solidarity move.
What we are seeing today is the Central Americanisation of the wai — all the countries of the region are drawn into it, under tutelage. We have to say that the US has not just a policy for El Salvador or Nicaragua. Reagan has a strategy In the countries I have mentioned there is a strong popular movement and in Guatemala a very advanced guerrilla movement. When we campaign on El Salvador and Nicaragua, we have to make that clear and build with the of the - so that in the future we don't have to start on solidarit with a country like Guatemala from the very beginning.
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