Guatemalan Political History: National Indian Policy, 1532-1954

Abstract

The relationship between Spanish and later Guatemalan state with Mayan Indians over past four centuries is a fundamental component of Guatemalan political history. Since beginnings of nation, when Mayans were political and military entities of power and independence with whom Spanish had to come to terms; to 1944-1954 Revolutionary Era, when Indian communities were finally conceded limited social, economic, and political rights; and period from 1979 to 1984 in which military regimes killed tens of thousands by some estimates as high as 80,000 Indians; Indian population has been persistently in consciousness of national officials. While it would be both intuitively satisfying and correct to employ a colonialism or conquest model to describe Spanish legacy of cruelty and oppression which has, unfortunately, been almost systematically continued since Guatemalan independence in 1821, such an atheoretical approach (colonialism is less a theory than a description of a political-economic phenomenon) would give an oversimplified view of what actually transpired. It also would obscure fact that Guatemalan Indian policy -the course of action pursued by State in its relations with Mayan Indians of region -is not instantaneous creation of any one person. Nor, for that matter, is it a comprehensive, incremental, or rational process as Kingdon has argued.2 The pressing need to comprehend current social, political, and physical crisis confronting Guatemala's indigenous peoples demands understanding what Migdal has described as the fates of public policies.3 One line of research suggested by Migdal calls for a recognition that policy formation and implementation are determined not solely by of policymaking process itself' but also by contexts within which policies are conceived and implemented.'4 Migdal identifies three such contexts: 1) actors cognitions, or his borrowed term psycho-cultural realm; 2) institutional environment, including level of institutionalization and type of existing institutions and; 3) longitudinal study of policies, or in other words, where does a particular policy fit in relation to other policies? And which policies preceded it?5 This article focuses on longitudinal development of Guatemala's Indian policy, but also asserts that level of institutionalization has an affect on state's ability to formulate and implement policy. I am, therefore, concerned almost exclusively with describing and explaining role of Guatemalan State in creating kind of national Indian policy-making labyrinth that developed from Spanish colonial period to end of Arbenz administration in 1954. More specifically, I will seek to answer following questions: 1) What types of policies were developed and why? 2) Were there any significant variations over time in state's policy? 3) If so, what prompted these, and who were principal actors? Finally, 4) What were historical sequences of these policies? Where pertinent, I will discuss both parallels and significant differences between Indian policies of Guatemala and United States. This is necessary in order to begin an underexplored research focus on comparative public policy analysis which at least offers possibilities of theory building. It is certainly true that there are fundamental socio-economic, legal, constitutional, and other cultural as well as structural differences separating Indian tribes and state policies of large industrialized nations and those of Central and Latin American countries. Nevertheless, these differences, as much as similarities, may actually help us understand different types of policies developed in a given nation.