Mass Movement For Social Reforms
For several years after the "state of siege" under Osorio, the insurgency remained largely inactive, having been largely defeated and demoralized on all fronts during the counterinsurgency. Despite the initial success of the counterinsurgency, the use of repressive tactics and the military establishment's lack of respect for human rights generated discontent with the Guatemalan populace. Additionally, massive economic inequality persisted, which was further compounded by external factors such the 1973 oil crisis, which led to rising food prices and decreased agricultural output due to the lack of obtainability of imported goods and petrol-based fertilizers. Additionally, during the 1974 presidential elections, a blatant electoral fraud favored the government's preferred candidate, General Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García, representing the right-wing alliance between the MLN and the Institutional Democratic Party (MLN-PID), against a center-left alliance promoting the ticket of Christian Democrat General José Efraín Ríos Montt (later president from 1982–83) and leftist economist Alberto Fuentes Mohr. Inflation, imbalance, public outrage at the electoral fraud and the discontent with human rights violations generated widespread protest and civil disobedience, which culminated in the emergence of a mass movement which persisted throughout much of the decade.
The political pressures and tensions created by the existence of the mass movement prompted the government to placate the discontent populace by coopting some of the oppositions proposed economic reforms. Unlike previous presidents, General Laugerud did not begin his term with the use of military repression to consolidate power. The administration even began to negotiate solutions to labor disputes between unions and industries rather than silencing the workers through violence, which had been characteristic of the previous two presidencies. This period marked a political opening for the opposition and allowed for greater political freedoms.
At the height of this political opening, on February 4, 1976, a devastating 7.5 Mw earthquake shook Guatemala. Over 23,000 Guatemalans perished in the disaster and close to a million were left without adequate housing. The earthquake had a political impact as well: the visible incapacity and corruption of the government to deal with the effects of the catastrophe led to a rise in independent organizing and made many survivors deeply critical of the government. It became apparent that the political system in place was ineffective with respect to ensuring the welfare of the populace. It also served to instill a heightened desire for infrastructural reforms to be made, and many saw it as the government's responsibility to make allocations for these improvements. In poor barrios disproportionately affected by the quake, due to poor infrastructure neighborhood groups helped to rescue victims or dig out the dead, distribute water, food and reconstruction materials, and prevent looting by criminals. The political pressures generated in the aftermath of the earthquake put greater pressure on the military government of Guatemala to induce reforms. This would be later met with increasing resistance from the ruling oligarchy.
Read more about this topic: Guatemalan Civil War
Famous quotes containing the words mass, movement, social and/or reforms:
“For half a mile from the shore it was one mass of white breakers, which, with the wind, made such a din that we could hardly hear ourselves speak.... This was the stormiest sea that we witnessed,—more tumultuous, my companion affirmed, than the rapids of Niagara, and, of course, on a far greater scale. It was the ocean in a gale, a clear, cold day, with only one sail in sight, which labored much, as if it were anxiously seeking a harbor.... It was the roaring sea, thalassa exeessa.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.”
—bell hooks (b. 1955)
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)
“Until politics are a branch of science we shall do well to regard political and social reforms as experiments rather than short-cuts to the millennium.”
—J.B.S. (John Burdon Sanderson)