Dictating Democracy: Guatemala and the End of Violent Revolution (review)

In May 1993, Guatemalan president Jorge Serrano dissolved congress, the courts, and the public prosecution service, alleging that the corruption and intransigence of the national political class made it impossible for him to govern. Initially it seemed Guatemala might go the way of Peru under Fujimori—a weak democracy transformed into a new kind of dictatorship by executive decree. Yet within a month Serrano was in exile, and the constitutional order ushered in by the military in 1985 had been restored. By the end of 1996, a final peace settlement had been reached with the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG), bringing to an end one of Latin America's longest, most violent, and seemingly most intractable armed conflicts.

Rachel McCleary sets out to examine the crisis of 1993, focusing on the role played by the two main national elites—the organized private sector and the armed forces—in preventing an overthrow of the constitutional order. She provides us with a wealth of detail on events in the key months, based on extensive archival consultation and numerous interviews with key actors in two of Guatemala's most hermetic elite sectors. The book's greatest strength is the painstaking portrait it provides us of the highly fluid period when Guatemala's fragile electoral democracy was sorely tested. Through a careful analysis of interelite positions and maneuverings, McCleary explains why it ultimately survived the challenge of the Serranazo.

However, her broader argument is less convincing. Drawing on the general literature on transitions and—more ambitious still—on analyses of the relationship between capitalism and democracy, McCleary claims that Guatemala after 1993 represented a consolidating, free-market democracy within the so-called Third Wave. Her central contention is that between 1982 and 1993 the private sector and the military were in conflict over economic policy: the former favoring economic liberalization while the latter sought to maintain a more inward-oriented and clientelist dispensation. After the failed autogolpe, she contends, both sectors forged a consensus (an "elite convergence") to liberalize politics and the economy, which in turn paved the way to the 1996 peace settlement.

The organized private sector, in the shape of the Comité Coordinador de Asociaciones Agrícolas, Comerciales, Industriales y Financieras (CACIF), is clearly the good guy in this narrative. McCleary maintains that they forced the army to liberalize and credits them with a more decisive and progressive role in contemporary Guatemalan politics than is supported by the evidence to date. Certainly CACIF's support was vital to the successful conclusion of the peace agreement, yet since 1996 its leadership has steadfastly resisted all attempts to increase taxes, as agreed in the accords themselves, seriously impeding their compliance. And while electoral democracy remains in place, the military continues to maintain their "tutelary powers and reserve domains," again despite the stipulations set out in the peace accords. McCleary asserts that after 1993 Guatemala became a "consolidating democracy"—yet this must surely entail something more substantiating than the absence of threats to the constitutional order. On any regional scale, Guatemala's democracy—marred by high levels of socioeconomic inequality, ethnic exclusion, poverty, violence, and low citizen participation—is notoriously weak. Vested interests have continued to dominate, disproving McCleary's easy assumption that the free market and more democratic politics go hand in hand; indeed, export-oriented policies in Guatemala (and elsewhere) have proven just as prone to clientelism and rent seeking as inward-looking industrialization strategies.

Nonetheless, McCleary is right to insist on the key role played by the armed forces and the CACIF in events in 1993. She also correctly signals the failed coup as a watershed: as she argues, the networks built during May and June 1993between the military, the private sector, and—though to a lesser extent—the popular sector were of critical importance in facilitating...