Guatemala: Blood In The Cornfields

This story-a first-person, present-tense narrative-begins in El Salvador and culminates in a Guatemalan pueblo, Santiago Atitl¡n, inhabited by the Naturales, Guatemala's Indians. The story takes the reader through one of the most repressive and turbulent eras in Guatemala's history, beginning in 1973 through 1994* when the Peace Accords were signed by the ruling government and the United Guerrilla Party of Guatemala (URNG) in neighboring Mexico. Through a series of episodes, sometimes humorous, but more frequently tragic, the author learns that there are really two Guatemalas-the Guatemala presented to the tourists in the pretty travelogues, and the real Guatemala, where disease and poverty abound, where repression is at its worst in the Western Hemisphere. The governmental abuses are intended to keep the "status quo" intact and to prevent any possible uprising within the country, but as with all abuses of repressive regimes, the terror inflicted on the Guatemalan citizens have resulted only in continuing chaos. While walking down the scenic path of Panajachel, the lake's leading tourist town, the author discovers that she, too, has somehow been made an enemy of Guatemala. *The Peace Accords signed in 1994 were a political failure, and it was not until December 29, 1996, that the ruling government, its military and the guerrillas reached an agreement to end the conflict which will greatly determine whether Guatemala will be able to know a real peace without further blood-spilling in her cornfields.