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twelve Anumber of people told me they had heard the bombs being dropped. I didn’t know whether to believe them or not. “Not that close to Antigua,” I remember thinking. I remained skeptical until I read about it afterward, the accounts confirmed by official military sources. On Sunday, February 25, 1990—the day the Sandinistas lost the Nicaraguan election—four fighters belonging to the Quetzal Squadron of the Guatemalan Air Force bombed hilly locations in the Guatemalan township of Magdalena Milpas Altas, where the Organization of People in Arms had earlier engaged an army patrol in combat. The bombing did not take place in some remote, mountain stronghold but in a small community near the old colonial capital, these days a tourist town where Sunday visitors normally fill the central plaza and keep Maya vendors and local merchants busy. I found Antigua the Sunday following the air raid to be a lot quieter than usual.Visitors stayed away not just because of what had happened in Magdalena Milpas Altas, but because the army and guerrillas had clashed again two days later, in Santa María de Jesús, a township only half-an-hour’s bus ride from Antigua and less than fifty kilometers from Guatemala City. Almost unnoticed by the rest of the world, the war in Guatemala drags dishearteningly on. The army claims that incidents such as those at Magdalena Milpas Altas and Santa María de Jesús (just two of a growing number of confrontations largely unreported outside the country) involve only a small group of “terrorists” left over from the counterinsurgency war of the 1980s. If resistance is so slight, why, one wonders, does the army feel compelled to maintain such a conspicuous presence, not just in and around Antigua but throughout the western highlands? The visibility of the national armed forces, in the countryside most of all, underscores its hold on virtually every aspect of Guatemalan life. At the army barracks in Sololá, the military has imprinted its mark on the landscape, literally as well as figuratively, by constructing its A MilitArized soCiety (1–10) a Beauty that hurts  entranceway in the shape of a helmet placed on top of a pair of combat boots. The role of the army in civil society, its self-stated vision of what kind of a country Guatemala should be, is worth examining in some detail. In August 1987, less than a week before the presidents of Central America convened to sign the peace accord known as Esquipulas II, a group known in Guatemala as the Private Enterprise Council organized a “National Forum” that it called “Twenty-Seven Years of Struggle for Liberty.” Part of this forum consisted of official presentations by military personnel, with several representatives outlining the army’s blueprint for the Guatemala of the future. Counterinsurgency in the 1980s was justified, one official said, “to rescue the nation from subversion and terrorism, a situation that has arisen due to the incompetence of previous governments.” The army felt itself, in the words of Colonel Terraza Pinot, “compelled to assume control of the government, so that national dignity could be restored and people’s faith in their institutions renewed.” In another speech, General Héctor Gramajo, President Cerezo’s minister of defense, spelled out how the army views its role as guardian of both democracy and nationhood: At this time we consider ourselves to be the institution that gives impetus to democracy. We defend the interests of the nation in its totality, not the interests of a political party, group, or institution. We protect the interests of the nation through political and military action that encompasses all the nation. This action has reciprocal consequences throughout Guatemala. What General Gramajo means by “reciprocal consequences” is unclear. It may simply be military jargon for fear, harm, and harassment should any priest, lawyer, union representative, or university professor dare to speak out against the army’s way of doing things. One of Gramajo’s colleagues, General Manuel Callejas, summed up army objectives: We seek to create a framework of security that permits integrated development in the best of conditions, supporting in all our greatness the different sectors of the nation, especially the most needy, focusing the discharge of our duty on achieving both the supreme national goal and the common good. The “discharge of duty” Callejas refers to can only be exercised by commanding not just the apparatus of government but all that makes the country [18.117...

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