I meet Jorge Fuentes, Central American Parliament member, preacher and businessman at the home of Cesar Portillo’s daughter, Carmen Aida de Fernandez.

Fuentes is dressed in a business suit, and speaks with an energetic, sometimes boisterous style. The confident voice of an evangelical preacher or a faith healer. He tells me he is both.

Carmen acts as translator, though in his enthusiasm, Fuentes frequently interrupts to affect his own translation. He uses his whole body when he speaks, often waving his arms or slamming things for dramatic effect. He enjoys being provocative.

The conditions of the time of Jacobo Árbenz are the same now. I understand that the North American government is the leader of the world. The world needs a leader. It’s a good leader. It has a philosophy of human rights. But the people in the CIA, the State Department, the embassies, their history is not good. Because they partner with military governments and economic interests, and put aside the interests of the people, as those interests have no value to them.

Let’s say I am a powerful businessman in Guatemala and I have a problem with the president. And the President has ideas about social issues. (Fuentes knocks over a delicately crafted wooden napkin holder with a wave of his right hand.) People? Bullshit. I will say, “The president is a bad man, a criminal, a communist.” I will talk to the army and give the cue. “Cut him down, he’s a communist.”

Does that still happen today?

Yes, in Honduras, in many places. I could tell you some stories. OK, we are friends . . .

Fuentes reaches to hit the napkin holder again. Carmen Aida objects, grabbing the holder, laughing, “I bought this in Chile!” I put my hand over my glass. “Just leave the water, Jorge.” We laugh, then he continues.

An American comes and says I want to buy this company at x price. Then he eliminates the president if is not willing to give it to him. This is a real story, a real man, a friend, at 14 years old we went to school together. He had a lot of money, from Nicaragua, from the dictator Anastasio Somoza. (He takes off his coat and tie.) These names are in (former President Jorge) Serrano’s book, the second book. The second-best seller in Guatemala.

Was President Árbenz a communist? And if not, why was he called a communist?

He took some ideas about redistribution of property. He was fighting with commercial interests and they declared he was many things, including communist.

Let me tell you something. I am a businessman and a politician. My family, for many generations, has been in politics. I am trying to give you a bigger vision and with that vision you can change the names and times, and you will find exactly the same in all of Latin America. This originates in the colonies and the colonies had a certain structure.

He asks for paper and I give him my notebook. He grabs my red ballpoint pen and furiously draws a diagram of a central plaza, surrounded by four buildings.

The Catholic Church. The government. The business interests. The military. That is what you see in every town. If you go to any central park, you see this. This is the colonial structure. And there are tunnels at that time. The presidential house, the residence of the cardinal.

This institutional structure, this relationship between the military, church, business and government, he says, was inherited from Spain. He grabs my pen again. “Please keep it,” I laugh. “I bought a package on the bus for twenty-five cents. They’re not very good.”

They make an understanding between the military, the church, and the government. The church is looking out for the people, but the people do not have the power. The military sector commands the government. The rich families have a good relationship with the cardinal. He is invited to the family parties. And the cardinal says, please give me money for my purse. A little check. His dignity, values, righteousness, everything is affected.

I would think that there would be a theological structure put forward by the cardinal to suggest to the masses that this system is the will of God. Even in Árbenz’ time, there was a religious component to anti- communism. ‘Godless, atheistic communism.’

I am Christian and I am a preacher. I am full of the Holy Spirit. I pray for people to be healed. I love my Lord; He is the first place in my heart. The Catholic Church was the only church by law in many Latin American countries. We had a university founded years before the U.S. People, Creole people, began to think and to protest.

Justo Rufino Barrios Auyón was elected president of Guatemala in 1873. He was the country’s “first liberal dictator and the model for those who followed him, driven by a philosophy that emphasized order, science, and progress. Ruling until 1885, Barrios (known as El Reformador, The Reformer) focused on economic growth rather than political liberalism, encouraging foreign investment and expansion of the coffee industry . . . (And he) sharply limited the power of the Roman Catholic Church, passing laws that abolished the tithe, confiscated church property, and greatly reduced the number of clergy in the country. He welcomed Protestant missionaries, established civil marriage and divorce, and made the University of San Carlos into a secular national university.”

President Rufino Barrios put out all the nuns and priests, threw them out of Guatemala. He put out the properties of the church. The church had too many properties, got too rich. He was a reformer.

Carmen adds, “He closed all the convents in 1871. Barrios built La Reforma Avenue (a central, tree-lined downtown street).”

Jorge picks it up again.

At this moment, there is a revolution and they proclaim freedom of religion. Many countries did not have that. Guatemala started this. Then the Catholic Church returns to Guatemala, but they come like a dog with their tail between their legs. They lost their money, their power, their influence.

What did the powerful Catholic families think about this? Fuentes shrugs.

There was a revolution, obviously, and it affected the politicians and the military. Then the power increased in this triangle — economic, military, religious elites. The political sector came to have very little power. The economic sector put the military officers in the government. We had this for many years.

You talked about economic elites. United Fruit was a powerful company. What is your sense of United Fruit in the 1950s?

Guatemala has rich land. United Fruit had a strong position, but not as powerful as in banana republics like Honduras.

But Árbenz wanted agrarian reform and wanted to buy unused land from the company at the price that United Fruit paid as valuation for taxes. And United Fruit went to Washington and asked for an intervention. Wasn’t the company a significant factor?

Nah. United Fruit promoted another level of agriculture. They gave good salaries and promoted people. Nobody paid the salaries like the Americans, in any area that you looked. Communism, this is a phantom, a fantasy. Not real.

Fantasy? Americans were legitimately concerned about communism in 1954.

Let me explain something. Che Guevara was living here in Guatemala. He was promoting a liberation army. But the initial guerrillas were military men who saw that the officers were subservient to business interests.

In my personal opinion, the business sector of the U.S. was responsible for Castro. Cuba was the destination for cheap casinos, liquor, for tourists from the U.S. The military from the U.S. betrayed the Cuban military. The U.S. sent the military to rescue the soldiers in Cuba. The military then received a contrary order. The government wanted to have a crisis in Cuba because the tourism industry in the U.S. wanted to hurt Cuba.

I came to Christianity with a Cuban pastor named Victor Toranzo, who was one of the two ministers who supported Castro and the revolution. The original revolution used the imagery of the Virgin Mary and the cross and bible, because it was about the rescue of morality, of the economy and of the liberty of Cuba. Because North American tourism interests turned Cuba into a cabaret. The Cubans said, “We need to be free of these influences, their money, their boot on our neck.”

What happened when Cuba became communist?

When Castro doesn’t receive support from the U.S., the Russians come to help him and he shakes their hand.

Was he Marxist before that?

No, no, no, no, no. He has Marxist ideas, these ideas were the moda, the fashion of these times. The modern thinking was liberty, socialism. Everybody, all young people were talking about that. Everybody. The anti-communist leader of Guatemala, he was at one time working in these social movements. I was a deputy with him in the Central American parliament. The revolution of Castro was a revolution of freedom from the influence of the United States.

The civil war after the overthrow of Árbenz lasted 35 years. That’s a long time.

The longest guerrilla war in the world. Let me explain something. Guatemala is on the border of all the guerrilla movements in the area, including the south of Mexico. In Mexico, the name is Frente
(front) Zappatista, in El Salvador, Frente Farabundo Marti, in Nicaragua Frente Sandinista, in Guatemala no hay ningún frente porque la cabeza.

According to Carmen, Guatemala doesn’t have a frente because the heads of all the guerrilla movements were here in Guatemala.

Jorge Serrano, he signed in Europe the first document to finish the war during the government of Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (president from 1986-1991). In Norway, they signed the agreement for the return of peace in Guatemala, and there was big participation of all the sectors and Jorge was the leader of the National Commission of Reconciliation (NCR). The president of the NCR was Monsignor Gerardi, the bishop who was killed, but Serrano was the one who went to Norway.

Roman Catholic Archbishop Juan José Gerardi Conedera was one of the strongest voices speaking out against the atrocities committed during the Guatemalan civil war and defender of human rights. Starting in 1995, he and 800 volunteers staffed the Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Recovery of Historical Memory Project or REMHI) established by the Human Rights Office of the Archbishop of Guatemala with the aim of promoting reconciliation and healing for victims of the war. REMHI’s mandate was to reveal the history of the conflict through victims’ testimonies. It systematically collected these stories through interviews, case studies, historical documents and the print media’s outputs.

Bishop Gerardi presented the findings of the REMHI project on April 24, 1998, in a report entitled “Nunca Más” (Never Again). REMHI’s report found that “the military was responsible for 85 percent of the human rights violations committed during the 36-year period of civil war and that the guerrilla groups were responsible for nine percent . . . The report was especially controversial because it was the first to provide the names of the implicated individuals. More than 1,000 individuals and military members were named in the report.

 

 

Read more about Brian’s travels through Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia by purchasing “WAR: The Afterparty”.