Word: guatemala
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...reasons to oppose registration have emerged. Ronald Reagan's speeches and asides of the weeks since the November election have made it more than clear any new military action will be unjustified. Should a draft follow this registration, it could be for the purpose of fighting wars in Guatemala, E1 Salvador or elsewhere in Latin America. Continuing troubles in the Middle East have made enforcement of the "Carter doctrine" to protect American oil supplies more likely--involvement that would lead only to the useless loss of life and the possibility of nuclear escalation...
...region was a longstanding policy of supporting cooperative military regimes. The most glaring example of such support: the CIA-engineered military coup that toppled a reform-minded Guatemalan government in 1954. The Carter Administration seemed to foreshadow a change in policy with its human rights campaign. In 1977 Guatemala angrily rejected U.S. military aid because of the human rights provisions attached to it. In 1978, when Somoza's power was already threatened by the Sandinistas, Washington severed its special military relationship with the high-living Nicaraguan dictator. Soon afterward, the Administration announced a total reversal of previous U.S. policy...
...GUATEMALA. The upheavals in Nicaragua and El Salvador, in turn, have fed a rightist backlash in Guatemala. The main source of right-wing violence is the Secret Anti-Communist Army (ESA), a vigilante organization that appears to enjoy the cooperation of the country's repressive military leaders. The group's avowed mission: "Annihilate the left"-meaning anyone from a Marxist guerrilla to a moderate reformer. As in El Salvador, victims of ultraright hit squads include university students and professors, journalists, union leaders, priests and opposition politicians, many of whom have been tortured and mutilated. Armed leftists, meanwhile, have...
Amid this escalating violence, U.S.Guatemalan relations have sunk to a new low. Washington's pleas for democratic reform have gone unheeded. Like rightists throughout the region, Guatemala's military rulers appear to have written off the Carter Administration in hopes that a Reagan victory in November will reverse U.S. policy...
Despite the political chaos and repression, Guatemala's economy is growing by almost 5% a year, largely because of the country's increased nickel production and its new status as an oil exporter (258,000 bbl. sent to the U.S. since March). But most of the country's wealth remains concentrated in a few hands, despite a growing middle class. State Department experts believe that the country's potential prosperity could avert a total revolutionary upheaval, but only if political and social reforms are adopted. Says one frustrated U.S. official: "What they don't understand...