Word: guatemala
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...Rother missed his village church near the banks of Lake Atitlán. And he missed the Indians, whose dialect he knew so well that he sometimes spoke it at Mass. Last April, when friends in Guatemala told him that the explosive political atmosphere had quieted down, he decided to go back. He told his family: "If I have to die, I will die there. I want to be there with my people...
Rother was an unlikely target. In all his years among the Indians, he had scrupulously avoided controversy. Other American priests in the area considered him the most conservative of their group. Said the Rev. Ron Burke, who had worked with Rother in Guatemala: "He was the real low-key type, just doing his job. His real delight was upgrading the agricultural and health level of the people, training and teaching them...
Rother was the ninth priest-and first American-to die this year in Guatemala's continuing political strife. According to a report by Amnesty International, an organization that keeps track of political repression around the world, there have been some 5,000 political murders in Guatemala since Lucas García became President in 1978. No precise statistical breakdown is available, but most outside observers agree that the right is responsible for the overwhelming majority of the killings. Much of the violence is the work of government security units, which are waging an all-out campaign to crush...
...silenced, and political pluralism is dead. Though García cannot legally succeed himself in next March's presidential election, there is little doubt that a like-minded rightist, such as General Aníbal Guevara Rodríguez, the Defense Minister, will move into the palace in Guatemala City...
Despite this record of violence and political repression, the Reagan Administration has been seeking ways of improving ties with Guatemala and resuming the military support that had been cut off because of Jimmy Carter's human rights policies. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Stephen Bosworth put it, "The Administration is convinced of the need to try a new constructive policy approach to Guatemala. The policies of the past clearly failed...