Students in front line of Guatemala battles

Press, 15 July 1980, Page 17

Students in front line of Guatemala battles

By

JOE FRAZIER,

Associated Press-NZPA

“They come armed to the teeth, but we have only pencils with which to defend ourselves,” said a San Carlos University official in Guatemala City. “It’s the same each time, maybe 10 of them with pistols and machineguns. Whey they’re done, they give a shot in the head to make sure.”

The hit squads who kill people daily in Guatemala are striking hard at San Carlos, the national university. Victims have included professors, students, and administrators, and not all have had political ties.

The violence started a decade ago but has increased in intensity. In the

past two years, at least 44 student leaders, professors, and administrators have been murdered and at least 23 more have been wounded in murder attempts. Three have vanished, apparent kidnap victims.

“The students say they are organising a selfdefence force,” said the official. He asked not to be identified, “because you can get killed for saying the wrong things.” He added that at least 400 people associated with the university have left the country in fright. Rightly or wrongly, San Carlos is viewed by rightists in and out of the

Government as a hotbed of communist activity. “Guatemala is at war with communist Russia,” said a wealthy sugar-grower and exporter. He regards the university as an enemy stronghold. The increase in violence coincided with the election of a new rector, Saul Osorio Paz, who reoriented some of the programmes at the unviersity, bringing San Carlos into a closer involvement with the social problems of the country.

Hard questions were asked by the university about how Guatemala was benefiting from multinational companies operating here, and its reliance

on foreign capital, especially American investment.

“Of course there are leftists here,” the university source said. “There are leftists in every university. But they are not dominant. They were defeated in the last student election,” Osorio Paz has been in self-imposed exile since April, but violence at the university has not ceased. The source said the attacks appear to come from ultra-right forces within the Government, but added: “We have no concrete proof of that.”

In June, two men were captured by students after an attempt to kill a stu-

dent on the campus. One, the students said, carried Government identification. The students, who wore masks and were presumed to be members of the selfdefence force, shot one of the two to death with his own pistol and burned the other alive.

San Carlos, like many Latin-American universities, is autonomous and Government troops are not allowed to enter the buildings. Many of the victims were killed as they left home, as they walked through the modern, treedotted campus, or as they sat in their cars waiting for a traffic light to change. Labour leaders, businessmen, police, and soldiers also are frequent victims of gunmen. The constitution requires that the Government support San Carlos. Since 1976, the enrolment has doubled to nearly 38,000, but the level of support has not changed.

“The Government fulfills its role to San Carlos as the consitution requires,” said Major Rolando Archila Marroquin, spokesman for General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, President of Guatemala.

It is difficult to say how many people die violently each day in Guatemala and how many of those deaths are politically connected. By some estimates, the daily toll may reach 30. The Government has plated down the violence and complains of an international campaign against Guatemala, a country whose human rights' policies have led to

a suspension of United States arms aid and severe criticism by many human rights groups. Archila Marroquin says that the positive aspects of Guatemala are ignored in favour of the unfavourable ones. On the surface, Guatemala appears to be a heavily forested nation of gentle people. The capital of one million people is a bustling, modern city. “If you just went to work each day and never read the papers, you would never know there were problems here,” one resident said. A reading of one day’s newspapers showed a peasant shot to death; two bodies found with their hands cut off; five people found shot or clubbed to death in two utility trucks;

two Interpol agents killed and a third wounded; a man shot 16 times found beside a highway; a man shot to death in front of his house; a young police officer shot to death; and an unidentified man found tortured and shot to death near the downtown area of the capital. Two men and two women were found killed in the interior of the country. The men had been tortured, the women had been burned. Press reports said all four appeared to be students. Shortly after 4 p.m. last Tuesday, in a crowded sector of Guatemala City, within earshot of the national palace, gunmen on a motor-cycle opened fire on a car carrying a hospital electrician, Jose

Carlos Castellanos Moreira, killing him instantly. Newspapers quoted Moreira’s co-workers as

saying he had no known political ties. They speculated that that may have been why he was killed.