Maya Diaspora: Guatemalan Roots, New American Lives

3. Flight, Exile, Repatriation, and Return: Guatemalan Refugee Scenarios, 1981-1998

CATHERINE L. NOLIN HANLON AND W. GEORGE LOVELL 3 Flight, Exile, Repatriation, and Return: Guatemalan Refugee Scenarios, 1981-1998 CENTRAL AMERICA in the 1980s was one of the most violent, politically unstable regions in the world. During the period that United Nations rhetoric calls the "lost decade," more than 2 million of the region's then 20 million inhabitants were displaced, most of them within Central America itself but with sizable displacements also into neighboring Mexico and beyond into the United States and Canada (CIREFCA 1992b; Jonas 1995). Official and unofficial reckoning for the 1990s indicates that problems associated with refugees were still a notable feature of Central American life, although the situation attracted little international attention (Tables 3.1 and 3.2). Within Central America, one country in particular has furnished seemingly endless statistics of horror and despair: Guatemala (Falla 1994; Manz 1988a). Other periods besides the 1980s and early 1990s certainly witnessed political upheaval and civil strife in Guatemala. No previous period, however, triggered such widespread slaughter, displacement , and destruction of long-established ways of life as the past two decades (Morrison and May 1994). Historically, ten years of socioeconomic reform (1944-54) ended with a military coup from which Guatemala, as a modern nation, has yet to recover (Gleijeses 1991; Handy 1994). Armed confrontation between government security forces and guerrilla insurgents was sporadic in the 1960s, abated somewhat in the 1970s, and reached unprecedented levels in the 1980s (Lovell 1995). Numerical indicators for the period from 1954 on are chilling: some 200,000 persons killed, 35,000 to 40,000 disappeared (the highest in any country in Latin America), 150,000 to 200,000 refugees in Mexico alone, and an estimated 1 million people displaced internally, roughly half the entire Central American total. Guatemala's national population when the violence was at its peak is estimated to have been between 8 and 9 million people (USCR 1993; CEH 1999). 35 Copyrighted Material TABLE 3.1: REFUGEES AND DISPLACED PERSONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA (MARCH 1990) ESTIMATED NUMBER OF UNDOCUMENTED COUNTRY CENTRAL OF REFUGE NICARAGUANS SALVADORANS GUATEMALANS AMERICANS Belize N/A N/A N/A 25,000-35,000 Costa Rica 46,000 N/A N/A 150,000-175,000 El Salvador 600 N/A 3,000-5,000 Guatemala 3,200 2,800 200,000 Honduras 23,000 2,800 450 200,000 Mexico N/A N/A 40,500 300,000 Nicaragua 7,000 500 N/A Documented 30,000 30,000 5,600 Returnees to 35,000 Internally 350,000 134,000 100,000 Displaced to 400,000 to 250,000 Source: AVANCSO 1992: 214 TABLE 3.2: REFUGEES AND DISPLACED PERSONS IN CENTRAL AMERICA (MARCH 1992) ESTIMATED NUMBER OF UNDOCUMENTED COUNTRY CENTRAL OF REFUGE NICARAGUANS SALVADORANS GUATEMALANS AMERICANS Belize 500 8,400 3,000 25,000-30,000 Costa Rica 25,000 N/A N/A 80,000 El Salvador 250 N/A N/A Guatemala 4,900 3,400 200,000 Honduras 0 0 0 50,000 Mexico N/A 4,000 43,500 300,000 Nicaragua 3,000 N/A N/A Documented 62,000 26,650 7,000 Returnees Internally 350,000 150,000 150,000 Displaced to 450,000 to 200,000 Source: AVANCSO 1992: 215 Copyrighted Material Flight, Exile, Repatriation, and Return: Guatemalan Refugee Scenarios 37 Coming to terms with the refugee crisis in Guatemala involves sorting through the available documentation with patience and persistence. We seek four goals: (1) to identify operational categories, especially ones that may be time and place specific and that take into account events and circumstances peculiar to Guatemala; (2) to sketch the rudiments of refugee flight; (3) to outline the salient features of refugee life in exile; and (4) to document the vicissitudes of refugee repatriation and return. Given that precise numbers can never be known, the exercise that follows must be viewed as more indicative than definitive of the scenarios we discuss. CATEGORIES Of major importance is the fact that the vast majority of Guatemalan refugees are Maya Indians, rural indigenous people who fled their homes in towns, villages, and hamlets in the highlands north and west of Guatemala City in order to safeguard their lives from violent attack from forces for the most part originating outside their communities (Carmack 1988). Maya Indians, according to the report of the Truth Commission, constitute 83.33 percent of recorded civil war casualties...