The "Voluntary" Civil Self-Defense Patrol System: The Bi-Polar World of "Quislings" vs. "Subversives"
As anthropologist Laura Nader (1989: 336) states, and as, apparently, the Guatemalan architects of counterinsurgency understood quite well, “the divided village is more susceptible to external domination.” The establishment of the civil patrols in Guatemala during the height of army strategizing for eradication of the URNG's rural/Mayan base is uniquely interesting because it pitted villager against villager in the context of role definitions of who was a “subversive” [i.e., anti-army, pro-“communist”] both inside and outside the local village.
While the patrol system demanded that local agriculturalists patrol on twenty-four-hour shifts every third day, or pay someone else to cover their shifts when they were away from home working on coastal plantations, the “voluntary” nature of patrolling came into question with the rise of civilian-led government in 1986.Once civil patrolling was officially defined as “voluntary,” this definition was tested “on the ground” by thousands of villagers tired of military indoctrination sessions and hours of forced labor for the army's benefit while their own agricultural work fell behind. One respondent whom I interviewed was called a guerrilla by local patrollers for exercising his legal right in refusing to patrol. He was left in a latrine hole for eighteen days at a local army base with his wife and young children, all partially submerged in a cesspool of floating human filth the entire time. He was driven out of his community for the second time by the civil patrollers, and threatened with death if he ever returned.
And when we left there [after the first displacement and relocation years earlier], the army said... the military commissioners said that “you have to be in the Civil Patrols.” And we had to do it, because if we do not participate in the patrols, they say that we are “subversives.” That we are “collaborating” there [in the village].
So then, we don't want these kinds of problems. For that reason, we have to be in the Civil Patrol.I patrolled, and so did my father [who is sixty-five years old]. And they said that they were “voluntary.” But it's not voluntary. Because if we're going to go away to work on a plantation or if we go away for a month... we have to pay someone to do our rounds. So then, we have to pay. And if we are away two months, we have to pay forty quetzales (about $7.25 at the time). And if we don't earn anything, what are we going to do?
If we don't pay, they say that we are “guerrillas.” That we don't want to patrol. Because the soldiers said, “Do your patrolling! Because, for you all, it's work, so that you can live tranquilly. You all look after your own villages and ...” All that! So then, that is the problem that we have.
Civil patrollers have not only been identified as some of the worst human rights abusers on the local level, exercising a sort of opportunistic terrorism, having the weapons and army backing through which to attain power at the village level. The patrol system itself is responsible for economic, agricultural, and familial hardship on participants and non-participants alike.