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Historical Perspectives
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Congressional Briefing on the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Intervention in Guatemala

INTRODUCTION

On June 24, Representative Maurice Hinchey’s office (D-NY) sponsored a congressional briefing entitled “The 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: A history of regime change, destabilization, and human rights violations.” NISGUA spearheaded the briefing with the co-sponsorship support of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC), Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, and Sister Parish.

Panelists and Their Statements

Alfonso Bauer Paiz was born on April 29, 1918. He graduated as a lawyer from the National University of Guatemala in 1942. He participated in the movement against the dictatorship of General Jorge Ubíco and following the October 1944 Revolution was elected to the National Congress and founded unions in the south coast. He was then the Labor and Social Security Coordinator, overseeing the application of the country's first Labor Code. In 1948 President Juan José Arévalo named him the country's Minister of Economy and Labor. Alfonso Bauer Paiz defended the national interests against the United Fruit Company, which opposed the new Labor Code. From 1951 to 1953 he worked as the General Manager of the National Lands Department, and the National Agrarian Bank, which financed the application of Degree 900 (Agrarian Reform). Following the overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, he fled for exile to Mexico and returned in 1957 to continue the political struggle and his legal practice. In 1963, after the military coup led by Colonel Peralta Azurdia, Mr. Bauer spent one year in hiding. Later he worked as a university professor, union advisor and defender of Guatemala's natural resources. Along with his family he was the target of threats and attempts on his life. In 1970 he was forced to take exile in Chile where he worked with the democratic government of Salvador Allende. In 1988 he worked with and provided legal assistance to Guatemalan refugees returning to their homeland from Mexico. In 1993, he returned to Guatemala with the first refugees and worked with the displaced populations. In 1999, he was elected to the Guatemalan Congress, as a member of the Alianza Nueva Nación political party, where he served until 2003.

Greg Grandin is an Associate Professor at New York University. He is the author of The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Duke University Press 2000), which won the Latin American Studies Association's Bryce Wood Award for best book on Latin America. His new book, from which the above essay is drawn, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (University of Chicago Press 2004) examines the history of Mayan involvement in the Communist Party leading to the 1978 Panzós massacre. He edited Denegado en su totalidad: Documentos estadounidense liberados, a collection of declassified U.S. documents pertaining to Guatemala, translated into Spanish and published in Guatemala by Asociación para el Avance de Ciencias Sociales (2001). He served as a consultant to the Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), the Guatemalan Truth Commission. He has published widely in scholarly journals as well as in The Nation and The New York Times.

Iduvina Hernandez is Executive Director of the Association for the Study and Promotion of Security in a Democracy (SEDEM), a Guatemalan NGO dedicated to promoting reform of the Guatemalan state intelligence services. She and her colleagues have documented increasing threats and acts of intimidation directed against journalists and human rights defenders, and issued reports on the remilitarization of Guatemalan society, the need for civilian control over internal security, and presidential campaign financing, among other topics. SEDEM has been one of the most active human rights organizations promoting the establishment of the Commission to Investigate Illegal Bodies and Clandestine Security Structures (CICIACS) whose purpose would be to investigate Guatemala’s illegal armed groups and their association with the State, organized crime, and human rights violations. A journalist by trade, Ms. Hernandez is a frequent Revista Domingo columnist for the daily newspaper Prensa Libre. Guatemalan President Oscar Berger recently appointed Ms. Hernandez to the Advisory Council on Security Matters (CAS).

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