(Estimated Pub Date) the Challenge of Ethnic Conflict to National and International Order in the 1990S: Geographic Perspectives- October 1995

Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268
Summary of Discussion
Discussant: Mac Chapin
Although we all saw a good deal about Central Amer-
ica on television and in the newspapers during the
1980s, interest in the region has been eclipsed in
recent years by events in Eastem Europe, Russia, the
Middle East, and so forth. Central America is a rela-
tively tiny area; it has less than 5 percent of the land
surface of the United States and about one-tenth of its
population. One of the big differences between this
part of the world and the other regions that we have
been discussing is that we are not going to find sepa-
ratist indigenous groups in Latin America. Certainly,
in Central America, there are no Indian groups that are
going to attack the central govemments.
I want to talk about the indigenous people who are,
aside from a few isolated groups in Central America,
virtually invisible. The region’s indigenous peoples
are located primarily in two regions, the Guatemalan
highlands and the coastal regions adjacent the Carib-
bean Sea. Both locations are classic areas of refuge.
Mayan Indians speaking 22 different languages
inhabit the densely populated Guatemalan highlands.
Numbering approximately 4.5 million people, they
compose half the country’s population and half "the
indigenous population of Central America. Virtually
all the other Indians of the region are found stretched
along the Caribbean coast between the southern por-
tion of Toledo district in Belize and Panama.
At the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, most of the
6 million Indians then living in Central America were
located in population centers along the Pacific side of
the region where there were much better soils, a more
hospitable climate, and less rainfall. After the Span-
iards arrived, approximately 80 percent of the popula-
tion was killed off largely through diseases;
demographically, the Indians are just now starting to
recover.
Many of the region’s Indian populations, who were
not either assimilated or exterminated, moved to areas
where the Spanish had no interest. Some groups
moved to the highlands of Guatemala-—where they
did not even send priests for several centuries--and
others migrated toward the Atlantic coast jungles.
The region has three countries of some importance
from an ethnic standpoint: Guatemala, El Salvador,
and Nicaragua. The largest concentrations of Indians
in Latin America are found in the Guatemalan high-
lands. The hatred between the country’s Latinos and
Mayan Indians is palpable. This intense ethnic hatred,
which has grown over time, was most recently mani-
fested in the extremely bloody civil war that reached
intensity in the mid-1970s and that lasted until about
1983. During that period 100,000 Indians were killed.
Scorched earth policies were practiced by a number of
Guatemalan leaders. It was a war of extermination.
The Guatemalan Govemment used the military
against the ethnic population.
The situation in El Salvador is similar to that in Guate-
mala. El Salvador currently has an Indian population
of about 500,000. Over the centuries, there have been
a series of attempts to eliminate the Indian popula-
tions. In the 1880s the last communal territories were
abolished by decree and the Indians were displaced.
The last ethnic war in El Salvador was in 1932 when,
within the space of about a week, the military
marched out and killed about 35,000 Indians. It con-
sciously searched out people who were dressed like
Indians, who looked like Indians, and who spoke an
Indian language. There have been no ethnic conflicts
in El Salvador since that time. The conflict has really
shifted; the rural poor have become the surrogates for
the ethnic population. An extension of the same battle,
it is essentially over land and resources. During the
1980s the target was principally peasants—in contrast
to the Indians, who were organized.
During the Nicaraguan civil war, the Mosquito Indi-
ans who inhabit the Atlantic coast region with its for-
estry and offshore marine resources were forcibly
relocated. Since the end of the war they have returned
to their homes but have been in the middle of attempts
by multinationals to cut down the coastal forests.
________———-——Approved for Release: 2018/06/01 C00123268