Guatemala: A New Red Offensive

Communist subversion takes many forms in Latin America. In Venezuela, it is killing city policemen and blowing up pipelines. In Peru, it is peasant invasions of highland haciendas. In Uruguay, it is strikes and demonstrations. In Guatemala, Communists are using another weapon: kidnaping. Over the past few months, the Communists have thrown a crippling scare into the business community, weakened the economy and, with the approach of presidential elections, visibly shaken the reform-minded government of Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, 57, who has been running the country since 1963.

Moscow & Peking. Peralta launched Guatemala on an unparalleled course of prosperity—expanding agricultural production, attracting new industry and increasing foreign trade—then announced that he would step aside after constitutional elections on March 6. The country’s two bands of Communist guerrillas—one Moscow-oriented and the other Peking-style—were only an occasional nuisance. Then, in November, they launched their kidnaping spree.

A wealthy Guatemala City builder was abducted only a block from the city’s main military fort and released for $80,000. The country’s Norge and General Electric distributor was good for $100,000, a banker’s son for $75,000. In all, nine kidnapings were reported; no one knows how many others were kept quiet by terrified families. Only once did police even come close to catching the Communists, fought a three-hour gun battle with several gang members attempting to pick up the $75,000 ransom for the son of a Guatemala City hotel man. One kidnaper was killed, two captured, but three others escaped, and next day, the victim’s family got a phone call: “You had better produce.” The family did, and he was released.

Número Uno Issue. A few weeks ago, Peralta decreed an automatic death penalty for kidnapers, put an army colonel in charge of all Guatemalan police and offered a $25,000 reward each for the two guerrilla leaders. “The government,” said Peralta, “is perfectly able to maintain law and order and guarantee security to the citizenry.”

Many businessmen were not so sure. By last week some were hiring their own private goon squads for protection. Others were making regular monthly payments to the guerrillas as insurance. Still others were moving their families to El Salvador, Mexico and the U.S. Private investment was at a virtual standstill, thus contributing to a recent downslide of the economy, which is suffering from indigestion after too much prosperity too fast.

The guerrillas have become the número uno campaign issue in the March elections. The candidate of the opposition right-wing National Liberation Movement claims that he could end the guerrilla threat in two or three months with “a few extreme measures”; the government’s Institutional Democratic Party candidate insists the terrorism is “only a temporary phenomenon.” Meanwhile, in Guatemala City last week there were rumblings that if Colonel Peralta cannot end the terrorism, some other military strongman might just step in without benefit of any election at all.