Word: guatemala
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...third time in as many weeks, national security forces went on alert, surrounding Guatemala City and searching cars on highways leading into the capital. The occasion was the six-month anniversary of the Aug. 8 coup that brought General Oscar Humberto Mejía Víctores to power. Although the day passed without any protest or disruption, the heightened security and the absence of any official celebration underscored the extreme uneasiness felt by the government of Central America's most populous (7.9 million) republic. As in neighboring El Salvador, a leftist insurgency poses a permanent challenge...
Known as the "country of eternal springtime," Guatemala appears peaceful. Late-model cars breeze along the capital's tree-lined boulevards, and restaurants draw crowds with such delicacies as imported stone crabs and tender churrasco steaks. But that façade of tranquillity conceals some unpleasant facts. According to Western diplomats, the average number of violent deaths each week has increased from 150 under former President Efraín Ríos Montt to 190. Daily newspapers display incongruously cheerful pictures of students and young professionals who have "disappeared." Earlier this month an engineering student known for his leftist...
...northern highlands, reducing the armed resistance to 3,000 men. But Mejía's methods have come under fire from human rights groups. In a 260-page report, Manhattan-based Americas Watch, a controversial group that is often accused of being too sympathetic to the left, called Guatemala "a nation of prisoners." One of its targets was a government plan that moved some 10,000 Indians into well-guarded compounds. The Guatemalan army notes that its security is designed to keep rebels out, not peasants in. "What they call a concentration camp," says Lieut. Colonel Edgar Dominguez...
...commission also recommended resumption of military aid to Guatemala, where the government is currently keeping a much smaller leftist insurrection in check; increased military aid of an unspecified amount to Honduras, Nicaragua's northern neighbor, where U.S. troops will soon be winding up joint exercises that are scheduled to be renewed in July; and a repeal of the existing ban on U.S. aid to foreign police forces. The ban was enacted to prevent the U.S. from underwriting human rights abuses by authoritarian regimes, but it has had the perverse effect of denying security assistance to democratic Costa Rica, which...
...Costa Rica. El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. Belize, Panama and even Nicaragua, if it agrees to internal reform...