Guatemalans Vote for New Order

By Chris Hawley

GUATEMALA CITY — After a bloody campaign that saw the murder of about 50 politicians and activists, Guatemalans voted Sunday for a new president they hope will pacify one of Latin America’s most violent, unequal countries.

Polls last week indicated no candidate was likely to take more than 50% of the popular vote, meaning a runoff in November would be required.

The two leading candidates were A´lvaro Colom Caballeros, a businessman, and Otto Perez Molina, a former military general.

There were no reports of violence Sunday, but the Associated Press reported that the mayor of San Jose Villanueva, just outside this capital city, was accosted by a crowd accusing him of trying to vote twice.

In El Gallito, a neighborhood of Guatemala City controlled by drug gangs, voters recounted muggings and burglaries they had suffered, and said they were desperate for a president to establish order.

“All we want to do is live in peace,” said Aime Gonzalez, 30, a payroll clerk who said she had been mugged three times, most recently a year ago.

Guatemala had about 6,000 murders last year and has become a key transit point for cocaine shipments headed to the USA. Violence and a lack of jobs have led many to emigrate, and the number of Guatemalans living in the USA has jumped more than 70% this decade to about 560,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan research center in Washington.

The campaign, which includes races for legislative and municipal posts, has been Guatemala’s most violent since 1996 peace accords ended a 36-year civil war. The economy is likely to grow more than 5% in 2007, thanks in part to a free-trade agreement with the United States that took effect last year, but Guatemala’s average annual income of about $5,000 is still half that of neighboring Mexico.

Perez Molina, 57, gained in the polls recently with promises to use an “iron fist” against crime. He proposed dispatching the army to high-crime areas, much as the Mexican government has done.

“Iron fist, head and heart!” chant singers in one of his campaign ads.

Another candidate was Rigoberta Menchu´, winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. Menchu´ is respected among the country’s Mayan Indians for her civil rights efforts, but she was trailing badly in polls.

Colom, meanwhile, has won support with a center-left platform calling for more equality for Mayan Indians. About 42% of Guatemalans are of Mayan descent, and they tend to be poorer and less educated than the rest of the population.

On Wednesday, Colom warned against using the military to fight crime, noting that the army had committed massacres in the 1970s and 1980s in the name of law and order. He has promised to strengthen the national police instead.

Colom’s National Unity of Hope party has been especially hit by violence: At least 19 members were killed in the run-up to the election, according to the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human rights group.

Guatemala’s Electoral Supreme Court imposed strict rules on voters to prevent violence and vote-selling. Use of cellphones and cameras was prohibited, so voters could not photograph ballots to collect payoffs from party militants.

Still, WOLA said there was a “well-founded concern” that many congressional and local candidates were funded by organized crime.

Guatemala City electrician Rene Godines, 64, said he was finding it hard to get excited about any of the candidates. “God will decide who he wants in power — because the promises of men, who knows if they’ll ever be kept,” he said.

Hawley is the Latin America correspondent for USA TODAY and The Arizona Republic (c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.