The Coup That Got Away

By Thomas A. Sancton

A born-again general steals a junior officers' revolt in Guatemala

It was done quickly, quietly and with stunning precision. At 8 a.m. last Tuesday 20 junior officers stalked into a barracks at the Mariscal Zavala Brigade's headquarters on the outskirts of Guatemala City. Heavily armed and dressed in camouflage battle fatigues, they announced to their comrades: "The coup is on. Are you with us or against us?"

The same scene was played out at barracks across the country, and, with few exceptions, Guatemala's junior officer corps closed ranks behind the insurgents. Tanks, armored personnel carriers and 105-mm howitzers appeared in the plaza before the ornate, colonnaded National Palace. As some 500 infantry troops encircled the area, the coup's chief planner, a boyish, clean-shaven captain named Carlos Rodolfo Munoz Pilona, set up his field headquarters in an arcade of shops on the far side of the square.

That was the beginning of the end for the government of General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, which was widely considered to be one of the bloodiest and most corrupt regimes in all of Latin America. Lucas Garcia's abrupt exit also meant that his hand-picked successor, General Angel Anibal Guevara, who was elected to the presidency on March 7 amid widespread charges of fraud, would not be taking over next July as planned.

The sudden turn of events in Guatemala came at a critical moment for Central America. The coup took place just five days before the elections in El Salvador, which the U.S. had hoped would shore up the authority of centrist President Jose Napoleon Duarte and help him put down the violence of both right-wing extremists and leftist guerrillas. At the same time, the Reagan Administration had been feeling out the possibility of future negotiations involving Nicaragua and Cuba to reduce tensions in the region and end the bloodshed in El Salvador.

Guatemala's coup at first raised some hopes in Washington that the new regime might be sufficiently moderate to permit a resumption of U.S. military aid, which was cut off in 1977 because of the country's appalling human rights record. Government forces need U.S. arms to fight an escalating insurgency by leftist guerrillas that Washington charges is backed by Cuba. Thus the coup makers' initial statements in favor of democracy seemed to offer a chance for positive change in Guatemala, and closer ties with Washington.

But what began that morning as a coup by young reformers turned into something that more resembled a comic opera. At 9 p.m., when the new leaders appeared on national television, it became painfully apparent that the young officers had no real plan for setting up a new government. Observed a foreign diplomat: "Unfortunately they came up with only half a plan--how to throw the rascals out."

Instead of the clean-cut junior officers who had staged the military operation, two generals and a beefy colonel stood before the cameras wearing battle fatigues and bearing bolstered pistols. Their leader was retired Brigadier General Jose Efrain Rios Montt, 55, a dark-haired, silver-mustached officer who had run unsuccessfully for President in 1974 with the backing of the Christian Democratic Party and was generally thought of as being a moderate. The general launched into a rambling, emotional diatribe that left some Guatemalans and foreign observers wondering who was running the country--and where it was headed.

Rios Monti's only real driving force seemed to be a born-again religious faith. "Above all," he declared, "I am trusting my Lord and my King, that he shall guide me. Because only he gives and takes away authority." Some Guatemalans quickly dubbed their fervent new leader "Ayatullah Rios Montt."

A major disappointment was that the general failed to call for new elections and political pluralism. The next day, indeed, Rios Montt and his fellow junta members announced that they were abolishing the congress, suspending the constitution, and would rule by decree until further notice.

The Guatemalan coup showed again how little real control the U.S. has over events in its own backyard. U.S. analysts had been aware for several months of the rising dissatisfaction among the junior officers. Bearing the brunt of the fighting against the guerrillas, the lieutenants, captains and majors had become increasingly bitter over the corruption of the Lucas Garcia regime, and wanted to clean up the country's human rights image in order to obtain U.S. military aid. They therefore called for fair elections and an end to el continuismo, the old-boy network of senior military officers that has ruled the country for the past 27 years. Instead, the March 7 balloting was marred by numerous irregularities, charges of fraud and the victory of yet another general over three civilian candidates.

Although they knew of the unrest in the officers' corps, U.S. embassy officials in Guatemala were totally unprepared for the coup. When word of the action first arrived by telephone, few staffers believed it. Finally, embassy officials went to the National Plaza and were astounded to find it surrounded by soldiers and artillery. Grumbled a U.S. analyst: "Our intelligence here was about as good as four ladies playing bridge."

When Captain Munoz and his troops set up their coup headquarters in the National Plaza on Tuesday morning, their demands were clear. They planned to hold new elections in 60 days and to bar military men from running for office. They hoped to weed out official corruption, turn over power to a new civilian government and get back to the war.

The young turks' first task was to clear out Lucas Garcia and his accomplices. Flying toward a northern battle zone on the morning of the coup, a helicopter pilot told passenger Benedicto Lucas Garcia, the President's brother and the army's chief of staff, that he had to turn back because of mechanical failure. When the chopper landed, young officers escorted the general, known as Benny, to his office at the airstrip. They invited him to the National Palace to help negotiate his brother's surrender. Benny defiantly announced his refusal to cooperate. Finally, he brushed past his captors' guns and said, "I will be at home if you need me." He then retreated to his farm in Alta Verapaz.

Back at the capital's central plaza, meanwhile, the besieged President sent out aides to negotiate with Captain Munoz. The coup leader's conditions were simple: turn over the government and clear out of the palace by 3 p.m. or be fired upon. The rebels' next move was to broadcast a message over national radio: "An urgent call is made to General Efrain Rios Montt and to Leonel Sisniega Otero" to join them in the National Plaza.

Sisniega, who had just run unsuccessfully for the vice presidency, was a key member of the ultraright-wing National Liberation Movement (M.L.N.). He and his running mate, M.L.N. Leader Mario Sandoval Alarcon, had joined the four other defeated civilian candidates in protesting what they alleged was Guevara's fraudulent election. Sisniega showed up at the plaza with his right sleeve rolled up, a sign of participation in the coup, then announced his support of the movement. He thereafter dropped out of sight, presumably pushed aside in the ensuing power shuffle.

The other man summoned to the palace, Rios Montt, had actually come close to winning the presidency in 1974. He had been polling as much as 56% of the vote as returns came in on election night; then TV sets suddenly went blank all across the country. Next morning, the government declared its official candidate, General Kjell Eugenio Laugerud Garcia, to be the new President and the ultrarightist Sando val to be Vice President. Rios Montt, who was supported by the moderate Christian Democrats, at first protested the vote. After government thugs kidnaped two of his children and attempted to kill his brother, however, the general accepted a "golden exile" post as military attache to the Guatemalan embassy in Spain. He remained there until 1978.

It was unclear at week's end why Rios Montt was brought into the coup in the first place. According to some accounts, he was summoned only to negotiate the surrender of Lucas Garcia. Other observers feel that he was intended to serve as a respectable figurehead for the junta. He had served as army chief of staff and as head of the national military academy, where he earned a reputation for honesty among young officers involved in the coup. "Picking him was logical," said a foreign diplomat in Guatemala City. "He wasn't actively in the military. He wouldn't have to turn against his bosses to get things done. And he wasn't trying to get into power. The junior officers just didn't know that there were new elements in his thinking" (see box).

Rios Montt arrived at the coup headquarters at 1 p.m., wearing civilian clothes and looking uncertain. He talked to the young officers, asked about their aims and indicated that he wanted to keep civilian politicians out of the new government for the time being. While all this was going on, a pudgy army colonel named Manuel Argueta wandered into the plaza. Alarmed, he started to leave, but the junior officers ordered him to lend his support. By midafternoon, Argueta was serving as one of six advisers to the new junta.

At 4:10 p.m., a Lucas Garcia aide came to the plaza and informed the rebels that the palace was ready for them. The ousted President had left by a side door and headed north to his plantation in Alta Verapaz. Led by Rios Montt, the rebels entered the empty palace. A few minutes later, General Horacio Maldonado, a silver-haired, barrel-chested officer with connections to both Rios Montt and the rightist M.L.N., arrived at the palace. By the time the third--and present--junta was named that evening, Maldonado was the new Interior Minister. Colonel Francisco Gordillo was Minister of Communications. Rios Montt was Minister of Defense and had, by then, taken charge.

When it came time to address the country on television, Rios Montt discarded a speech the junior officers had prepared for him and improvised a fire-and-brimstone sermon of his own. He played to the cameras with an almost ludicrous panoply of theatrical effects. Stabbing the air, raising and lowering his tenor voice, he alternately threatened, pleaded and cajoled. "Eight years ago they cheated the people," he shouted, in reference to the 1974 election. "Four years ago they cheated the people. Now just a few days ago they cheated the people again."

But Rios Montt showed no more sympathy for civilian politicians than for Lucas Garcia's clique. "We don't want any more political opportunists," he roared. "We don't want the same faces." To both the leftist guerrillas and the rightist death squads, the general said, "Lay down your arms. There will be no more dead bodies on the roadsides. We will execute by firing squad whoever goes against the law. But no more murders." He outlined no clear policies but instead recommended "prayer to God our Father" as the way to solve the country's problems.

Rios Montt's hold on power is hardly secure. The junior officers, who still control the guns and troops, are uneasy with the turn of events. The six officers now serving as "advisers" to the junta, a group that includes Captain Munoz Pilona, are watching Rios Montt's moves closely and could conceivably launch a countercoup. Sums up a U.S. State Department analyst: "The coup leaders are still sorting themselves out. There is no clear-cut winner yet, no one who has consolidated power."

As glad as they are to see the Lucas Garcia regime toppled, U.S. policymakers are not optimistic about the prospects of closer ties with the new junta. Since elections are so important to Washington's policy on El Salvador, Rios Montt's failure to call for new elections poses a prickly problem. Without some promise of free elections and an end to repression, the Reagan Administration can hardly hope to resume military aid.

What Guatemala now appears to have is a pragmatic, anticorruption government with heavy religious overtones. "It will not be enough for them to cast themselves as moderate," insists a top U.S. official in Washington. "They have got to demonstrate results." Still, he adds, "there is an element of hope where previously there was none." That much, at least, could be said for the coup that got away.

--By Thomas A. Sancton. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington and James Willwerth/Guatemala City

With reporting by Johanna McGeary, James Willwerth

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