The Guatemalan Peace Accords and Implications for Democracy
Robert H. Trudeau
(prepared text of a presentation at the University of Kansas, Center of Latin American Studies, March 15, 1997; conference title: 1997 Update on Latin America)
I want to thank the Center of Latin American Studies at the University
of Kansas, and especially its director, Professor Elizabeth Kuznesof, for
inviting me to make this presentation to you this morning. I'm very happy
to be here.
I believe that we will be studying the quality of democracy in Latin America (and in the United States) for years to come, and that in addition to information we need analytic tools so that our studies can be more rewarding and fruitful. Offering these analytic tools is my main thrust this morning. I hope you'll leave this presentation armed with a useful conceptual framework for the study of democracy. However, let me alert you from the outset that this is an awfully large and controversial topic. One is not supposed to begin a talk by apologizing, but I think it only fair to warn you that I am not going to solve all the conceptual problems nor answer all the questions that lurk within this topic. Hopefully, it will be a good start, though, and, hopefully, you will be able to carry on and improve on these ideas.
Let me begin with a quotation from Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was elected President of Haiti in the early 1990s, deposed by the Haitian military, and then finally restored to office, with the assistance of US military forces, in 1994. Writing recently, Aristide said this:
If someone had suggested 15 years ago that by 1996 democracy would be the rule rather than the exception in Latin America, most of us would not have believed him [or her]. But dictator after dictator fell, election after election was held, and democratic governments were installed throughout the continent. More than two thirds of the world's population now lives in countries that officially are pluralistic democracies. (Latin America Press, Vol. 29, No. 2 (January 23, 1997): p. 3.)
Some people hearing that will be pleased to hear the good news. They may conclude that with the possible exception of Cuba, the problem of democratization in the hemisphere has been solved. Others, however, including myself, will receive this news with a healthy degree of skepticism. Some of you, if you are beyond being skeptical and have passed over into being cynical, may even view these sorts of pronouncements as essentially a public relations scam, a process by which powerful elites gild oppressive social systems with a democratic facade, so that foreign aid, business investment, and tourism will continue to flow. After all, you might say, even the Alliance for Progress in the early 1960s, a program that coincided with the last wave of democratization in Latin America, had a military side to it that produced a wave of coups d'état, counter-insurgency regimes, and obscene levels of human rights violations. Isn't Aristide over-stating the case?
President Aristide, however, is no right wing toady, nor is he an ingenuous fool, so his remarks bear some analysis, and should provoke us to think carefully about democracy in Latin America. That, incidentally, is precisely the point of President Aristide's essay, that we should think more carefully about the meaning of democracy and how we might advance its cause in Latin America. Here then is an outline of my presentation today, which incidentally will focus much more on Central America than on other parts of Latin America.
First, three major conceptual themes. In today's presentation, most of what follows this introduction will stress the third of these three, but it's important to have a more or less total picture of what I, at least, think about when I study democracy in places like Guatemala.
Second, as the title promises, I'll talk about Guatemala and the Peace Accords, in the context of the third of the three conceptual themes I'll be explaining in a moment.
Third, I want to talk a little about what we might do about democracy
in Central America, some ideas about how we might proceed, both as scholars
of democracy in Latin America and as political participants in our own
political process here in the United States
In the illustrations that follow, I am going to stress the third of the three themes you are about to hear. So, although I'll try to explain all of them reasonably clearly, given the time constraints, I'm going to go more quickly on the first two. Perhaps there will be time for questions later.
A. The first of these three conceptual themes is fairly straightforward. In studying democracy, we have to accept, as a starting point, that no society is going to have perfect democracy nor is any going to be completely totalitarian. We should think about democracy as something that varies in quality, and over time. Beware of absolute statements about democracy being a fait accompli, or totally absent. Democracy is not necessarily an all or nothing issue. Every nation is pretty much always more democratic than it might be, as well as less democratic than it ought to be, assuming we value democracy. Democracy is a continuum. It's always relative, and it's always in flux: change is the only constant. What we want to look for, then, is change in the quality of democracy over time, or changes that we think will affect the quality of democracy at some point. We want to ask questions like: "is El Salvador getting more democratic in the past five years, or less democratic?" And: "how do human rights conditions in Guatemala impinge on the quality of democracy there, compared to, say, ten years ago?"
B. My second conceptual theme speaks to the kinds of data we want to look for to try to answer the sorts of questions I've just raised. Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of data that are very important here: certain contextual conditions in a given society, and the behavior of political actors.
By "certain contextual conditions" in a given society, I refer to two broad categories of information:
By the behavior of actors, I'm referring to political participation, defined very broadly as the purposive behavior of people, usually but not always in groups, as they seek to affect the collective distribution of values, goods and services. It's important to measure what people do, how they actually behave politically: you act, I act, group X acts, political party D acts, and governments act. Sometimes what governments do is separated out as the study of public policy, but I think it's okay in the context of democratic studies to think about what governments do as political participation. Finally, remember, that political participation is purposive, and there are two types of purposes we should keep in mind:
In sum, this second conceptual theme gives you some suggestions about what kinds of information you might look for as you try to monitor democratic progress or decay in a given place, over time: we need to look at overall social and economic conditions, the historical legacy, individual attitudes towards democratic politics, and the actual behavior of individuals.
C. The third conceptual theme is this: we need to look for democracy in two places, the formal political process, and outside of that process in the society at large. We want to study the linkages between what goes on in both places, as opposed to focusing on simply one or the other.
We often think, and are taught to think, that democracy is to be measured only in the performance of the formal political process. So we are much more likely to look at the first than we are the second. If there is a major thesis for you today in this presentation, it is that we need to look at civil society as much as the formal political process if we are to study democracy accurately. Civil society is a place, if you will, where there is a lot of political participation, because it is behavior that seeks to affect quality of life, policy debates, and other participants. Moreover, this participation is often by groups and individuals who otherwise might not be included in the formal process to any large degree. Women, for example. What goes on in civil society is both a measure of the quality of democracy as well as a laboratory for its development.
To sum up this first section, then, I think it's impossible to think clearly about democracy without all of these dimensions in mind. They are all interrelated in important ways. For example, if you can imagine a country with excellent formal institutions that provide for honest elections but which also has death squads killing people who speak out or who organize pressure groups, how are we to measure the quality of its democracy? One way is to imagine that this is a democracy with some criminals or psychotics about. Another is to imagine that the political participation of some people aims to prevent the participation of others, by eliminating some of the participants, and that therefore there are some fairly serious problems in the democratic development of that place, even though the formal institutions seem to be in place. Moreover, you could imagine that the intensity of human rights violations might vary with the level of economic hardship, as actors get more, or less, desperate. If all of this happens in a society that has a culture that has normalized political violence, yet another factor enters the equation.
In short, though it is often tempting to seek a quick factual fix, I believe that we have to cast our analytic net wide and deep, even though we may ensnare a lot of different kinds of information that make our analytic task more complex.
Rather than continue on this abstract path, let's turn to a concrete example, the recently signed Peace Agreements in Guatemala. As we go through this, try to incorporate as much of the conceptual discussion as you can -- I will be highlighting the implications for the third conceptual theme, the interplay between the formal political process and civil society theme, but I urge you to think in terms of democracy as a continuum, political participation, democratic attitudes, economic security, etc.
The Guatemalan Peace Process has been in the news, I daresay, more than any other single event in Central American political news for the past couple of months. Internal warfare has been a characteristic of Guatemalan life since 1954, and has resulted in at least 100,000 known deaths, somewhere between 50,000 and 87,000 disappearances, and untold damage to the psychological, social, and economic infrastructure of Guatemalan society. Between 1954 and 1984, Guatemala's political life has featured a steady parade of military governments characterized by, with few exceptions, corruption, repressive violence, fraudulent elections, and little organized civilian participation in governance.
During the same time, Guatemala a wealthy nation in terms of resources, declined economically, to become one of the poorest nations of the hemisphere, second only to Haiti, for example, on indices of malnutrition and low life expectancy, especially among the Maya and women. Because of this poverty and social disintegration, and in spite of extraordinary waves of political violence and human rights violations, a set of vibrant political groups continued, for most of that period, to pressure Guatemala's elites for poverty relief, social modernization, and a more open political process.
Since the mid 1970s, some would say since as early as 1961, guerrilla warfare has been an added part of the mixture. By around 1981, the guerrilla organizations, unified as the URNG in 1982, came to be supported by many groups in the society, including many Mayan communities, and seemed poised to capture control of the state. But aided by US military technical and financial assistance, as was the case in 1954, and by Argentine and Israeli military assistance, the Guatemalan army conducted a genocidal war against its own citizenry: this decimated Mayan communities, drove most popular organizations and leaders underground or into exile, and dealt the guerrillas a severe military defeat, although it did not eliminate them, by any means. The human cost of this warfare was terrible, as suggested in this single datum: because of Army counter-insurgency, some 425 villages ceased to exist, their inhabitants murdered or driven into refugee camps in Mexico or into hiding in city slums.
In 1984, the weight of US policy shifted towards moving Guatemala towards democracy, at least at the formal legal level. Elections were held and a new constitution was drawn up. Most observers would describe these elections and subsequent ones as quite honest, although the resulting governments did not vary that much from their corrupt inefficient predecessors. Meanwhile, popular organizations again flourished, repression and human rights violations continued, and the guerrillas persisted. In spite of its civilian regimes, Guatemala remained a pariah nation, reviewed annually by the United Nations for human rights violations, and regularly threatened with trade sanctions by many industrialized nations. The country could make little social or economic headway.
Meanwhile, on a more global scale, trade liberalization, globalization of the economy, NAFTA, the end of the Cold War, and other such developments threatened to leave Guatemala in the economic dustbin of history. So that although the harshest stages of the civil war had ended around 1984, several years later Guatemala remained mired in the residue of its own bloodbath. Actors on all sides, from moderate military elites, to arch-conservative business elites, to corrupt politicians, to North American diplomats, to leaders of popular groups, and even the leadership of the URNG, recognized that there needed to be an end to both the unbridled power of the military and the instability implied by continuing civil war.
The Guatemalan Peace Process, then, emerges from this historical context, and was designed as a way to change the Guatemalan political process for a variety of reasons:
Yet with all the pressures in favor of peace by the late 1980s, publically to endorse negotiations with the URNG meant death threats: only the Catholic Church hierarchy and outsiders were able to speak publically in favor of negotiations. This began to shift in 1989, when Jorge Serrano, a presidential candidate, made the quest for negotiations part of his campaign and won the presidency, at least in part because of his advocacy on behalf of peace talks. The formal Peace process, then, began as early as 1990, with informal meetings that concluded that formal meetings would be held to pursue some sort of agreement. Beginning in 1991, there were a series of meetings between the URNG leaders and other groups, including, finally, the commercial elites and the Army. This first round was unsuccessful, but did establish the foundation for later talks. Meanwhile, international and domestic pressures continued to build. All this culminated, only this past December, after years of formal negotiations, with a pact called a "Firm and Lasting Peace Accord," and three other final documents, including: a formal cease fire, a document endorsing a series of constitutional and legal reforms, and a document incorporating the URNG leadership into the civil life of the country. (The text of these four documents is available in Panorama Centroamericano, Reporte Político (Guatemala), vol. 27 (3rd era) No. 122 (enero de 1997): Documents section, pp. 1-16.) There were earlier agreements on human rights, on the rights of the Maya, on social justice and land questions, on political structures, etc.
Note:
Does this mean an end to rancor and strife in Guatemala, does it mean that there are no longer any serious problems in the political process? Hardly. One of the documents I've just mentioned, the document incorporating the URNG leadership into the civil life of the country, for example, has become controversial: it has been interpreted as conceding an amnesty to anyone, including the military and the death squads, who committed human rights violations in the political context of the internal warfare.
The pursuit of justice for earlier human rights violations is an emotionally charged issue, as you might imagine; criminals certainly don't want to be prosecuted, and surviving victims and relatives of victims certainly don't want everything swept under the rug of a Peace Accord. To some observers, in sum, it appears that the URNG leadership may have pursued an agreement to ensure its own political future at the expense of a critical part of the social justice agenda it claimed it was pursuing in the past.
Although some, including human rights groups, interpret the URNG reincorporation document and the amnesty agreements to mean that torture, genocide, and other grievous crimes are excluded from any amnesty, the final interpretation remains cloudy because of vague language in the document. The judiciary will need to resolve disputes based on language before Guatemala can know if it will be able to exorcize its past demons or whether it will have to simply forgive and forget. But the Guatemalan judiciary has been weak and susceptible to threats and pressure in the past, so the prospects are at least shaky. (These arguments can be found in Panorama Centroamericano, Reporte Político (Guatemala), vol. 27 (3rd era) No. 122 (enero de 1997): pp. 9-10; and in Guatemala: The Bulletin of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, vol. 14, No.2, pp. 1-3).
The Peace Accord, in sum, reflects an historical moment, not only because it arises out of a difficult historical context but because it continues Guatemala's movement towards a set of formal political structures that are more open, more respectful of dissent, and hence, in short, more democratic. Like the 1984 election that led to a new constitution, however, the current Accords do not guarantee a smoothly functioning democracy, especially if there is perceived to be, or actually is, widespread impunity for those who committed human rights violations on the scale that has existed in Guatemala now for decades. The Accords are an opportunity for the development of democracy, but as we shall see below, a fairly tenuous window of opportunity at that, but not a guarantee.
Democratization of the formal political process, then, is necessary, but probably not sufficient, as a basis for consolidating democracy. We need to look outside, at the society at large, to see if formal democratization will translate into genuine democracy. Some brief observations, any one of which is a major topic itself, but we are short on time:
1. Economically, throughout Latin America, both poverty and inequality are growing, not diminishing, putting increasing pressure on governments, especially democratic ones open to popular pressure. To quote President Aristide once more:
Ironically, these transitions to democracy have coincided with the most severe economic crisis of the century... In Latin America alone, 240 million people live in utter poverty; an increase of more than 120 million since 1980.
The gap between the world's richest and the world's poorest grows every day, with the richest 20 percent of the world's population now absorbing 85 percent of global income, while the poorest 20 percent receive only 1.4 percent. (Latin America Press, Vol. 29, No. 2 (January 23, 1997): p. 3.)
Second, in Guatemala specifically, besides the poverty and inequality Aristide calls our attention to, street crime and personal insecurity are epidemic. Some of this is caused by ordinary criminals, and some of this is caused by poverty, but some is caused by people opposed to the Peace process, individuals or groups seeking to destabilize society, hoping for a military coup by the hardliners who are still a powerful faction of the Army. (Susanne Jonas, "Guatemala's 'Adios' to War," Christian Science Monitor (12/26/96)). Perhaps these criminals are living in the past, but the net result is that the past is still painfully real in the present. Combining these crime wave data with continued economic insecurity and misery, and we see that the potential for strengthening democracy, even when the formal legal pieces of the puzzle are in place, remains doubtful.
The Inter-American Development Bank, hardly a radical organization, in a recent document, notes that amid the wave of economic changes now sweeping the world, with all the trade liberalization and new prosperity, and new technology and communications, the major challenge facing Latin America in the 21st Century is how to increase social and economic equity in the region. The table that accompanies the article provides a graphic illustration: among the "losers" in the current surge of economic growth: Latin America, Wages, Women, Employment, and People with no assets. In short, Latin America is falling further behind in terms of social and economic equity, putting democracy in peril. (The IDB, (Newsletter of the Inter-American Development Bank), Vol 23 No. 10 (December, 1996), pp. 6-7. The table is reproduced at the end of this document.)
In Honduras, housing has become increasingly difficult to find, and homelessness is increasing. Even for the middle class, interests rates on mortgage loans average about 38 percent, as of last month, which puts housing out of the reach of even people with good jobs or professional positions. Such rates reflect government policy, not simply market forces, designed to keep the local currency stable against the dollar. (Latin America Press, Vol. 28, No. 48 (December 26, 1996): p. 2.) This Honduran policy is a kind of austerity that might make sense economically but which probably weakens political legitimacy, especially for a democracy that leads the people to believe that popular sovereignty is the rule.
That last sentence can be a transition to the topic of popular attitudes on democracy. How can democracy be meaningful to the poor of Latin America, who in Central America are the majority? Can it be anything other than hollow procedures? A couple of brief observations:
In El Salvador, the FMLN, the united guerrilla leadership there, has become a political party with seats in the legislature and even in the Central American parliament. But so little is being accomplished to alleviate the poverty of the majority that polls are reflecting massive frustration with all sides of the political spectrum, including the "progressive" Left represented by the FMLN. (Latin America Press, Vol. 28, No. 48 (December 26, 1996): p.1).
This kind of frustration and impatience is certainly reflected in my recent travels in Honduras. In two trips in the past seven months, I heard individual after individual, with only minimal probing, assail the political process as corrupt and essentially useless, or worse, in their struggle against poverty. There may be abstract support for democracy as a concept, but no patience with the current political options. Both major parties in Honduras are perceived equally negatively, it is my impression, and I predict that in the presidential elections next November, absenteeism will be very high.
In Guatemala two years ago, Efraín Ríos Montt, who was dictator during the worst years of the counter-insurgency in the early 1980s, and who was as murderous a dictator as Guatemala has seen in the past fifty years, was the single most popular figure during the last Guatemalan election campaign, and probably failed in his quest to become President only because his candidacy was ruled illegal.
The combination of these macro economic indicators and these micro attitudinal variables produces a very difficult situation for governments seeking to govern democratically. The formal legal structure promises democracy and hence suggests opportunities for real policy innovation. But the economic realities leave the State with very few resources; pressure to downsize governments and to privatize social services leaves governments unable to deliver for the majority, even when elites want to do so. The resulting syndrome of citizen apathy and cynicism makes the cycle all the more vicious and perilous, since support for dictators, leaders who can get things done, starts to seem rational.
Under the circumstances, democracy is in peril. Is there any hope? I believe there is. Let me use the Honduras anecdotes above as a bridge to a different topic, civil society. I earlier defined civil society as that set of intermediate groups that individuals use to improve their lives and affect public policy. Included are church groups, labor unions, cooperatives, mothers groups, grassroots environmental organizations, human rights organizations, in short, an eclectic set of organizations. A lot of literature is suggesting that a strong civil society helps solidify democracy, because participation in civil society groups supports what De Tocqueville would have called good "habits of the heart," including trust for others in the community, respect for the complexity of decision-making, and a pattern of personal involvement in community efforts to solve social problems.
Three current factors combine to give civil society a potentially major role in the democratic development of Central America.
The first is that we are witnessing an end to the recent cycle of violence and warfare, perhaps because of the end of the Cold War, perhaps because of domestic exhaustion, perhaps because foreign aid is now sufficient to buy off the antagonists. A lot of the social and economic root causes of conflict have not been resolved, but at least there is a relatively tranquil window of opportunity in which to work at the present time.
The second is the long history of communal activism in Central America. Whether it is Maya communities in Guatemala with their communitarian consciousness, or ladino or mestizo communities in Honduras with their need to cooperate in order to survive, the fact is that there is a tradition of joining in on communal efforts to solve problems, perform needed tasks, etc. A spirit not unlike what we believe existed in rural and small town America not so long ago is alive and well in rural Honduras, for example. Television has not yet ruined cooperative life in rural Honduras, yet.
Third, civil society is far more integrative than formal procedural democracies have been: it is here that new actors learn about democracy through action. For example, to quote Jean Bertrand Aristide again:
One of the defining characteristics of civil society is the high percentage of women's participation. Bearing witness against human rights abuses, organizing cooperatives, creating community health projects, women have long filled the ranks of grassroots organizations. (Latin America Press, Vol. 29, No. 2 (January 23, 1997): p. 3.
By contrast, the top ranks of the Guatemalan government, has sparse representation from women. In the cabinet, there is one woman, who is the minister of education. In the Congress, there is only one woman in the leadership structure, although in passing it is worth noting that this woman, Rosalina Tuyuc, is a Mayan who has been an outstanding supporter of human rights: she herself was widowed by political repression, and she has received numerous threats. Her political base is largely the result of her involvement in civil society groups. If civil society groups can effectively integrate the skills and energy of groups denied access in more traditional or formal circles, the quality of democracy can be improved, I believe.
In sum, there is a relatively peaceful moment, there are historical resources to draw on, people are anxious to prosper and improve their lives, government is not going to help because it can't or won't, and the time is ripe for working with civil society groups, not only to help them improve their own lives -- no small thing -- but also to improve the chances for improving the overall quality of democratic life, to help societies realize the potential implied by the formal legal democratization processes.
To sum up this section of my presentation, the Guatemalan Peace accord means little if Guatemalans cannot produce a democratic society, and this means not only improving the economy, it also means improving the quality of civic life. If you will permit me another quotation from President Aristide, that civil society groups, he says:
are rooted in the day-to-day reality of the poor. These actors are
undertaking the task of democratizing democracy: turning formal democracies
into living, participatory ones. (Latin America Press, Vol. 29,
No. 2 (January 23, 1997): p. 3.)
Civil society, then, is the battleground. I mean this in a couple of different ways:
First, it is really a battleground: human rights violations are still a distinct reality and certainly a potential threat to successful organizations that seek to change the economic status quo. Intransigent elites, whose own tradition includes repression of the poor when the poor resist oppression, are going to continue to act accordingly, if they can. These elites have always recognized that effective popular organizing is much more of a threat to their privilege than is formal, procedural democracy, which, as we've seen, produces frustration and, to date, little real economic and social change. The real problem for elites in places like Guatemala is not elections, its the organization of popular movements and civil society groups.
Second, this is the arena in which we observers and scholars need to focus our attention. That is, more of us need to shift our analytic focus away from the purely formal legal process into this larger realm. The empirical questions are real and urgent: can fostering small group activity really outweigh the repressive apparatus of, say, the Guatemalan army, and produce improved quality of democratic life? Does civil society produce genuinely liberal democratic attitudes, even in societies marked by severe economic inequality and insecurity, or will these economic factors win out in the end and produce cynicism and apathy, in spite of group activities? What kinds of groups have the best impact: any kind of organization? Political organizations? Local level economic efforts? All of the above?
I don't have the answers to those kinds of questions, but I do feel strongly that the future of genuine democracy in Central America lies with these sorts of issues, and not in questions about whether a two party system is better than a three party system, or whether or not an independent electoral tribunal is the key to democracy, even though, I again hasten to add, formal structures are important.
I want to touch on two more points: the first involves talking for a few moments about some activities in Honduras with which I'm involved, since they illustrate a lot of this discussion on civil society. And then I'll conclude with a couple of suggestions for you here today, who have listened so patiently.
In Honduras, I've decided, based on the thinking described a moment ago, that my own personal efforts must shift from research on the formal political process to activism in the realm of civil society. I've recently made two short visits to a rural village I originally visited over thirty years ago when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. This village, like most of rural Southern Honduras, is beset by serious economic problems: the population is growing fast and land is scarce. The climate and land are hostile to agriculture, but agriculture is the only means of rural sustenance for most people. Infrastructure is poor, and there is little capital for investment in things like, for example, vehicles, silos for crop storage, or modern equipment in general. Rural agriculture is done by hand, much as you or I would care for our small flower gardens.
In this situation of precarious agriculture and capital shortages, there is a fairly constant cycle of debt: commercial entrepreneurs come in from outside, loan money against future crops, and essentially guarantee themselves dirt cheap supplies of agricultural commodities which they can later sell for large profits. For the peasant farmers, the guaranteed result, even in good seasons, is bare survival and renewed debt: with their crops gone to pay their previous debts, they must borrow again merely to feed their families until the next harvest. While one does not wish to romanticize rural living, the fact is that one negative result of these economic dynamics is flight to cities and the growth of slums. While there are other factors accounting for its growth, the urban area of the city of Choluteca, the nearest large town to this village, which was a city of some 20,000 people thirty years ago, now has a population of perhaps 150,000.
A Honduran co-worker from thirty years ago, a leader in rural peasant movements who resides in this village, has just organized a kind of cooperative to help break this debt cycle. The mechanics are simple: buy the crops at a low market price at harvest time; store it; resell it later to the member families at a higher price but one lower than the market at that time; use the resulting profits: first, to help out more families the next year; and second to finance other community projects, including reforestation, diet improvement, consumer cooperatives, etc. My job is to provide the initial capital, the easy part. A similar, very successful effort in a neighboring municipality, begun some seven years ago, began with an initial investment of $300. We are not talking millions. Nor are we talking bureaucracy.
It's too soon to say if this effort will produce even economic benefits for one village, let alone any impact on the long term quality of democracy in Honduras, which we hypothesize civil society will produce, but it's a start. Check in a year from now for the latest update, which will be on my web page.
Finally, you here in the audience may or may not be able to become involved in similar efforts. If you can, wonderful. If not, here are two other kinds of suggestions.
First, become informed. I've only scratched the surface of what is going on in Central America, and there's a lot more to Latin America we haven't even touched upon. For you who are educators, inform others. To inform, in my view, means to motivate and teach skills, not merely to pass on information. In addition to my classroom teaching, I will seek "to inform" by bringing students, in small groups, to visit the same Honduran village and the grain project, hopefully every year.
What I've tried to do today here is offer you some concepts, analytic tools you can use to measure democratic progress in the region and to inform others. You need not accept the accuracy of any of the specific illustrations I've offered you today, you certainly can find your own and create your own mix of conceptual indicators. Hopefully you'll do so in a way that will be supportive of democracy and in a way that recognizes that democracy is much more than its formal legal infrastructure. (I would hate to think that anyone here will leave thinking to him- or herself: "aha, civil society is the real threat, so I'll support death squads seeking to eliminate popular organizations in order to prevent democracy from happening.")
Second, and more concretely about the Guatemalan situation, some final observations. The violence has been worse in Guatemala than anywhere else, and in many ways, the Guatemalan case is hanging in the balance because of the Peace Accords: you should urge your elected representatives to support policies that will help promote democracy there. This means that our foreign aid should not be military aid, nor should it be aimed solely at the biggest players in the economy: in spite of what some revisionists may write, neither the army nor the wealthy have been supporters of democracy as we understand it. Formal procedural democracy? Sure, they support that, for a variety of reasons depending on the circumstances, but they didn't then and probably don't now support participatory, civil democracy. We now know that a Peace Accord, no matter how democratic it may be in the context of recent Guatemalan history, is not enough. No, support for democracy in Guatemala should mean support:
Each of us will craft his or her own package. Probably many of you have already thought of many more creative ideas than these last few I've offered. My goal today, though, hasn't been to provide you with ten easy steps or a nice recipe for solving the democratic ills of Central America. Instead, I've tried to provide you with some conceptual insights and some illustrations to make them clearer. Briefly, I've suggested that to understand democracy, we need to focus on three major conceptual themes. These three themes asked you:
If there is a value bias in all of these concepts and illustrations, it is this thesis: democracy comes from below, not from above. As important as elite pacts be, as important as formal structures be; democracy is still something created by popular struggle, not by elites. If you look for democracy in the "below" parts of Central America, you will find extraordinary energy, valor, and skill. The people laboring in the civil society vineyards of Central America are truly inspirational for democrats everywhere -- we have a lot to learn from them in this country, and I hope we learn before it's too late to maintain our own democratic processes.
You will also find when you look closely at civil society in Central
America that there is still much to do, in spite of the welcome progress
in the democratization of the formal political processes.
Thank you all for your patience this morning.
Uneven effects of globalization
Policymakers face challenge of ensuring equity
| Winners | Losers |
| East, South East Asia | Africa, Latin America |
| Productive Output | Employment |
| People with assets | People with no assets |
| Profits | Wages |
| Skilled workers | Unskilled workers |
| Adaptive firms, workers | Rigid firms, workers |
| Techno-specialists | Primary Producers |
| Creditors | Debtors |
| Those not dependent on public services | Those dependent on public services |
| Large companies | Small companies |
| Men | Women |
| International markets | Local communities |
| Global Culture | Local culture |
Table from The IDB, Newsletter of the Inter-American Development Bank, Vol 23 No. 10 (December, 1996), p. 7.