The Long Road to the Negotiation Table...And to a Permanent Home

In the late 1980s the army's operations against the civilian populations hiding in the mountains lessened. But the CPRs still lived precariously, isolated from the rest of Guatemala. It became crucial to seek outside help. In March 1990 the CPR leaders called an assembly among the communities, and four representatives were chosen to secretly make their way down to the capital, Guatemala City. Their mission was to break the news to the world of the existence of the CPRs - and seek urgently needed political and material support. "It was then that many people both in Guatemala and outside realised that we weren't simply guerrillas - as the army had always been saying - but that we were communities of women, children, all civilians," says Nazaria Tum Sanic, one of the four people chosen to represent the CPRs in the capital. In February 1993 the first visit over land by outsiders to the CPRs was organised. More than 400 people, including church representatives, human rights activists, journalists and foreign representatives, took part. This was a new stage in the life of the CPRs.

In a climate of relative security compared with previous years, the highly organised communities turned their hand to erecting more solid housing, extending their crops, organising simple schools and even health clinics. With the support of international NGOs, first aid and paramedics courses were run. "We were chosen by the community to give classes. It was still pretty basic. At first the children used pieces of wood for exercise books and charcoal for pencils," says Andres Lopez, now the school director in one of the resettled communities. When the youngsters filled up a "page", they simply wiped off the charcoal markings and began again, he says with a smile.

As the war ground to a close and the government and rebels of the URNG came to the negotiating table to settle their differences. A new and potentially conflictive situation was beginning to brew for the CPRs, since the land that they were occupying in the mountainous regions belonged to other peasants, who, with the fighting over, were starting to reclaim their properties. As a result the CPRs leaders also entered into talks with the government over resolving their particular needs for land and reinsertion back into economic, political and social life.

The whole process of identifying and selecting properties took the best part of three years. First the government wanted to relocate all the families together, then changed tactics, and tried to offer them areas distant from one another. "All we knew how to do before was flee. Now we were learning how to stand up to and bargain with the authorities," says Agapito Pastor Lopez, one of the CPR negotiators. While the talks over prices, locations, and other details spanned out, some people in the communities back in the mountains were beginning to grow impatient. "People were asking, when will we be moved, they pressured us. Some even began suspecting that we were trying to delay the whole process in cohoots with the government," he recalls, laughing. With mounting pressure on the government of President Alvaro Arzú from key national actors, like the Catholic church, as well as from international organisations, the first estate El Tesoro, in Uspantán, Quiche, was finally purchased in early 1998, for 450 families to resettle on.