Word: guatemala
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Political leaders of all persuasions attribute successes-and, occasionally, failures-to the Almighty. But few do so with more fervor and sincerity than Guatemala's Brigadier General Jose Efrain Rios Montt, 55, a born-again member of the California-based Christian Church of the Word. Montt took it as God's call in March that he leave the church school where he was academic director (TIME, April 5) and join the three-man junta that had been picked to run the country by the junior officers who ousted General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia. In an equally swift maneuver...
...move took most of Guatemala's 7.5 million people by surprise. Rios Montt requested and secured the resignation of Brigadier General Horacio Egberto Maldonado Schaad, a docile officer who was apparently tired of being a figurehead. After that, he summoned his other partner, Colonel Francisco Luis Gordillo Martinez, to breakfast at the presidential residence and demanded the colonel's resignation. Gordillo Martinez stubbornly refused to submit it. He reconsidered, however, when heavily armed soldiers restrained him and escorted him to his office...
...Falklands crisis has had a different effect on another country engaged in a longstanding territorial argument. For more than a century, Guatemala has had its eye on Belize, a tiny neighbor that gained its independence from Britain eight months ago. Says a Guatemalan newspaper editor: "When the Argentines first went into the Falklands, a lot of people here were saying, 'Bravo, we should do the same thing and invade Belize.' But now, after watching the British these past few weeks, that feeling has changed to, 'Thank God we never tried.' " Meanwhile, at the United Nations most...
American companies with a stake in the region still have enthusiastic hopes for the Reagan plan. Says Thomas Johnson of the American Chamber of Commerce of Guatemala: "It's marvelous. It's perfect. It's just what we needed." U.S. firms in the country include Texaco, General Telephone & Electronics, Rayovac and Du Pont...
Maybe then, the importance of the coup is the rule the U.S. may have played in bringing it off. If Washington did organize Garcia's overthrow, then it would appear we have regressed back to the covert action days of the 1950s and 1960s. Such a policy gave Guatemala 28 years of military dictatorship and brought about the Bey of Plgs fiasco. And it characterizes the same mindset that led Presidents Johnson and Nixon to he to the American people about U.S. action abroad. We had all hoped that the crisis of integrity our government underwent was scrapped along with...