Dangerous Rumors

By Laura Lopez/Mexico City

The word-of-mouth allegations spread rapidly throughout Guatemala: gringos are snatching babies and ripping out their vital organs for sale abroad. Eight babies, the whispers assured, were found with their stomachs slashed open. One had a $100 bill stuck in its abdomen, plus a note that said in English, "Thanks for your cooperation."

There was no evidence that such gruesome trade exists. But an anti-foreigner paranoia took root swiftly and with savage results. Two American women wrongly suspected of kidnapping children suffered attacks that left one victim near death.

The reasons for the hysteria are uncertain. Diplomats and fearful foreign residents believe the rumors are being deliberately spread to incite violence and derail the civilian government's fast-moving peace negotiations with leftist guerrillas of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, who have fought a 33-year civil war. In recent years hundreds of human-rights observers and peace supporters -- the majority from the U.S. and Europe -- have flocked to Guatemala to work with and help protect local activists. Some conservatives and editorialists have called for these foreigners to be thrown out of the country.

Long resentful of what they view as outsider meddling, army officers were further angered by a March 29 agreement on human rights that will allow a U.N. verification team to move freely within the country to inspect military bases and guerrilla camps.

First victim of the disinformation was Melissa Larson, 37, a jewelrymaker from Taos, New Mexico. For two weeks prior to her arrival, worried mothers had been passing on the story that someone had seen the butchered cadavers of eight children. For undisclosed reasons Larson was detained by police on March 7 in Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, 55 miles south of Guatemala City. An angry crowd of several hundred people soon gathered outside the jail, shouting, "Hang the gringa!" forcing police to evacuate Larson to another jail. The enraged rioters burned down the police station, set fire to vehicles and fought police until tanks rolled in to restore order. Larson was kept in "protective custody" for 19 days before she was found innocent of baby- trafficking charges and released. "One thing I've learned from this experience is the power of the lie," she said. "It was an assault because I am a foreigner, a racial attack. God knows why."

The next case was worse. June Weinstock, 52, a journalist and environmentalist from Fairbanks, Alaska, had innocently caressed a boy's head on March 29 after taking photographs of children at a market in the northeastern town of San Cristobal Verapaz. Suddenly, a peasant woman shouted that her son had disappeared. A crowd gathered and began to beat Weinstock. Moments later when the missing boy reappeared, the mother tried to stop the attack. But the mob was egged on, according to a government investigator, by state road workers who threatened to burn Weinstock alive. She was stripped, stoned, stabbed repeatedly, then left for dead. The army arrived nearly six hours after the incident began. Police later took Weinstock to a hospital. Late last week her condition was upgraded from coma to "stupor."

In the wake of the attacks, the U.S. State Department issued a traveler's advisory warning American citizens to stay away from Guatemala, and the U.S. Peace Corps has ordered its more than 200 workers in the country back to the capital. Even there, the assassination April 1 of the president of the Constitutional Court and the sniper bullet that wounded a Congressman five days later have added to the instability. "Whoever is behind all this wants to provoke a state of emergency," says government investigator Claudio Porres. "They want us to return to a dark past when everything was resolved through a military coup." President Ramiro de Leon Carpio stepped back from declaring a state of emergency but promised to take severe measures to ensure security.

Investigators believe the incidents were planned by one group. Diplomatic sources say two military intelligence agents were reported among the rioters in Santa Lucia. "The only institution with the capacity to act in various areas of the country, that can spread the rumors and incite the population through a vast network of civilian collaborators, is the army," contends a local human-rights expert.

Ironically, though illegal trafficking in babies for adoption abroad is a major business in Guatemala, foreign involvement is said to be minimal. In fact, attorney general Telesforo Guerra Cahn alleges that 20 local gangs are engaged in buying or stealing children and that one of the biggest illegal- baby-trafficking lawyers is the current president of the Supreme Court, Juan Jose Rodil Peralta. "We've tried to prosecute him, but it's hopeless because he controls the court system and the judges," says Cahn. "He's also protected under parliamentary immunity."

Whatever officials like Cahn may have concluded, however, average Guatemalans continue to clutch their children when they see foreigners on the streets.

With reporting by Trish O''Kane/Guatemala City