Lonny Shavelson

Five Years After the Guatemalan Peace Accords,
What's a Guerrilla To Do?
"Guerrilla.com"*

© article and photos by Lonny Shavelson

(*Note: A version of this article was initially published
Dec. 26, 2001 in the San Francisco Chronicle. It is now
available for publication in other newspapers/magazines.
Text follows the images on this page.)

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Comandante Cesar Montes with Gaspar Reando Pablo, head of a
school for war orphans Montes helps support in Santiago Atitlán

Comandante Montes at the Santiago Atitlán school

Comandante Montes at the roadside grave of his wife,
who died in battle during the war

Montes discusses crops with refugees who returned to Guatemala
from Mexico after the war. Montes, using computer data bases,
helped the refugees get the land for a fair price.

Comandante Montes addresses a community meeting at a cooperative
farm for refugees who returned from Mexico after the war

Guerrilla.com

by Lonny Shavelson

(950 words)

Ex-guerrilla Comandante Cesar Montes knew only jungles, mountains and
M-16 rifles, until he bought his Toshiba laptop. Montes, the nom de guerre for
Julio Cesar Macías, was a leading commander of Guatemala’s Revolutionary
Armed Forces (FAR) during 36 years of civil war. Today, five years after
the signing of peace accords, if Montes chose a nom de paz, it could be
Guerrilla.com. Armed with his laptop, he has successfully battled the
national government to secure land titles for peasants and educational funds
for rural communities, victories that eluded him during years of warfare
that resulted in the deaths of 200,000 people.

When the war wound down in 1996, thousands of guerrillas descended from the
mountains to take up positions ranging from peasant farmers and pig raisers
to members of congress. But the vast majority faced poverty, housing
shortages, lack of land and jobs, and again-rising violence - la delincuencia -
in a country that has still barely engaged the peace.

Montes had spent three decades “fighting for the ideals of the left by
armed conflict” in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Then, throughout
the nineties, outbreaks of peace put the guerrillas out of work. But for
Montes, peace is merely war with different weapons.

“The world has changed,” he acknowledges, “but that doesn’t stop me from
fighting for social reforms.”

The Comandante starts his day in a Guatemala City apartment by tucking a
pistol in his belt, checking in with his armed bodyguard, then logging on to
his web site. “It’s innovative and daring,” he says, as if describing a
planned military ambush, “but we’re competing with the big presses and grand
information internationals, so we have to be bold.”

Using a computer data base, Montes recently won a land battle in the
southern coastal village of Carmen. Today, in his 4-wheel drive, Montes
picks up peasant farmer Hernandez Sacú at the turnoff to Carmen. Sacú spent
fifteen years in Mexican refugee camps during Guatemala’s civil war—until
the Peace Accords promised land to “returnees.”

“The government still thought of those of us who fled as subversives,” says
Sacú. “But we took the risk and came back.”

After the returnees settled in and started subsistence farms, the government
announced the price for the land. “They demanded $11,000 from each family,”
recalls Sacú. “We couldn’t even think of a number so high!” He sits back in the
4-wheel drive, pointing to Montes, laughing. “Then, the Comandante came.”

Montes accessed a computer data base of land values in the region, finding
that the government had raised the price for the peasants. He uncovered a
law that forbade the government from selling land to returnees for above
assessed value, and returned to Carmen with proof that each family must pay
$2,000, not $11,000, for five acres of land.

The returnees sold chickens, pigs, the few ancient cars they had—and
made the required 10 percent deposit on the land. Today, one year after the
purchase, they cooperatively own 190 head of cattle and anticipate paying
off the remaining loans within four years.

“When we discovered the truth from the Comandante,” recalls Sacú, “it was a
great victory. We held a fiesta for days.”

Many ex-guerrillas continue seeking victories in peace that eluded them in
war. Pedro Pala Lau, previously Comandante Pancho of the revolutionary
group Organization of the People in Arms, is now director of CONTIERRA, a
state agency that mediates land disputes and helps peasants regain land they
left after fleeing military persecution. The former rebel coalition,
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), is now a political party
that holds nine congressional seats, fighting with the conservative majority
party to follow through on the promises of the 1996 peace accords.

Many former guerrilla soldiers have returned to the land, some forming
agricultural cooperatives. Others, like Montes, continue on in local
battles. “The government claimed the villages of returnees are private
communities,” he says, “so they refused them public education funds.” The
state relented after Montes searched another data base and found laws
granting returnee villages government school funds. “Now I’m looking into
getting roads built,” he says, “and for technical help with the harvests.”

In another village, La Lupita, Montes works with campesinos to form a
cooperative for selling their crops. And in Santiago Atitlán, he raises
funds for a school of orphans from the war - with the help of international
foundation connections maintained by computer and modem.

Back in his apartment in Guatemala City, the new millennium guerrilla
breakfasts at his computer terminal beneath a poster of Che, a bowl of
yogurt and granola alongside his mouse. The Comandante attacks the keyboard
to upload pages to his website, checks in with his troops through a chat
room, deletes death threats from his inbox, then taps e-mail messages to
Panama, Mexico, Columbia, Chile, Argentina.

Montes has gained many supporters, and many enemies. Guatemalan newspaper
columnist Karin Escale recently accused him of being the “equal of bin Laden
and the Taliban,” writing that he is motivated by class hatred and a Marxist
ideology unsuitable for the new millennium.

Before closing his laptop down for the morning, Montes arranges a trip to
Mexico, where he advises congressional members of the leftist Party of the
Workers (PT) in the peace negotiations with the Zapatista guerrillas. Questioned
by a reporter what he most wants to ask Subcomandante Marcos, Montes replies
forcefully, “I want to know how much RAM he has, and the size of his hard drive.
Marcos is a genius at using computers for guerrilla warfare.”

Then the 60-year-old Guatemalan laughs. “There is no retirement for guerrillas,”
he says, “just a change in battles.”

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