Thursday, Dec. 29, 2011
THEN
On Dec. 29, 1996, the government of Guatemala and the leftist Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity sign a United Nations-brokered peace accord. The peace is considered a major, almost unimaginable feat. It ends 36 years of civil war that leaves 100,000 civilians dead or disappeared. With the conflict at an end, 200,000 paramilitary troops are disbanded and as many as 3,000 guerrilla fighters are resettled and reintegrated into society. The peace accords are a mix of loose and binding agreements with both sides making major concessions. The accords impose substantial constitutional reforms on the Guatemalan government that are internationally binding and are written down for verification by the U.N. The accord ends what was the longest and bloodiest of Latin America’s Cold War-era civil wars.
NOW
Today, civilian control over Guatemala’s military, as stipulated in the 1996 peace accords, can be seen in the military’s dramatically reduced size—as low as 16,100 people as of March 2010. The peace accords had mandated a troop reduction from 50,000 to 33,000, then President Alvaro Colom (2007-2011) set a tighter cap on troop levels at 20,000. In November 2004, the U.N. closed its Verification Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA), ending a 10-year project to monitor implementation of the peace accord and human rights improvements. However, democratic institutions in the small Central American nation have limited its capacity to cope with the legacy of violence and vigilante justice after years of war. Impunity remains a significant problem as the judiciary, although independent, struggles with corruption, inefficiency, and intimidation.
