From National Security to National Stability

Due to intensified grassroots struggles and the growth of the revolutionary movement during the period from 1975 to 1982, the military regime found deficiencies in the counterinsurgency model that essentially had been in existence since 1965 despite occasional readjustments. With the weakening of the powerful group that backed General Romeo Lucas, the economic crisis, and the change in the correlation of forces at a regional level, the military high command decided on a 180 degree shift in its counterinsurgency policy; it defined a new strategy that was articulated in the National Plan for Security and Development (PSND).

Adapting the basic principles of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC), the Guatemalan army developed its own counterinsurgency doctrine, convinced that in order to disrupt the insurgent strategy, it was necessary to counter it with a strategy of comparable complexity, depth, territorial extension, and duration. In other words, the expansion and intensification of military actions would be accompanied by political, social, economic, psychological, and propagandistic actions, as well as an aggressive international political campaign.

The global impact of this strategy was manifested by human rights violations in the context of the scorched earth policy, massacres, the phenomena of internal displacement and refugee flight, the formation and conduct of the civil patrols (PAC), the creation of development poles and model villages, and the establishment of a judicial order that supported and justified this policy.

In 1980 and 1981, as Chief of Staff of the National Defense, General Benedicto Lucas implemented a strategic offensives plan that included massacres, scorched earth operations, and the creation of the civil patrols. After the coup d’etat of 1982, a planning group was formed within the army to fine-tune and implement a plan that included the above-mentioned tactics. This work team was composed of members of the Center for Military Studies (CEM), the Defense Staff (EMD), the General Secretary for Economic Planning (SEGEPLAN) and a group of advisors to General Efrain Rios Montt (Gramajo: 1995).

Although the direct objective of the military coups of 1982 and 1983 was to resolve the confrontations between the dominant sectors, to do so it was necessary to recover military control of the country, that is, to eliminate the insurgency. These objectives were articulated in the PSND which, in 1982, made it possible to continue the military operations initiated by General Benedicto Lucas.

The change from National Security Doctrine to National Stability Doctrine occurred between 1980 and 1984. This policy change is reflected in the "Thesis of National Stability" drafted by a group of high level army officers led by now-General Héctor Alejandro Gramajo (Gramajo: 1989). In it, these officers described their proposal as "a contribution of the Guatemalan Army resulting from a review of the doctrine underlying its existence and based on the current context in the country..." (Gramajo: 1989). This Guatemalan version of the U.S. doctrine of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) was institutionalized in the 1985 Constitution.

The massive, indiscriminate human rights violations that occurred between 1978 and 1983, as well as the more selective violations committed after 1984 as part of the counterinsurgency war, were the result of careful planning. They were not isolated and spontaneous acts as the military authorities have professed. The data presented in this report demonstrate that the army’s actions in violating human rights had precise objectives. The methods, the victims, the scope, and intensity of repression all support this assertion.

Figure 3 presents the Guatemalan army’s structure during the transition period discussed above.

Figure 3
The Guatemalan Army’s Structure During the "National Stability" Phase

Source: CIIDH, (Inforpress: 1988)

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