I fellal Americans, I want to begin denied by telling a story.

Compared with the hellish years of the last decade, Guatemala today seems positively

serene, but the gap between appearances and reality can be dangerously deceptive.

In the 1990s, Guatemala, the site of America's original Latin American coup, the blueprint

for the Bay of Pigs, Guatemala had been for decades a military dictatorship.

One writes abuses and murder on the scale of the 1988 Aguacate massacre, a common place

in Guatemala.

This is where death squads were invented 30 years ago, where terror in Central America

began and where it continues.

In its internal war to stamp out communism, socialism, organized labor and any kind of

left-wing militants, the junta killed as many as 200,000 people.

Most of them indigenous peasants and workers.

Students, trades unionists, Indian activists and local peasants are being made to disappear

at a frightening rate, and with presidential elections coming up in November, the pace

of the violence has increased.

Those that did not perish in these massacres were terrorized, tortured, or simply witnessed

their family and neighbors mutilated by the regime.

Now, this was done in the name of democracy, and it was done, it was said to restore democracy

because the Soviets had infiltrated the Guatemala government.

The Guatemalan army and its death squads received extensive training, hardware, and military

cooperation from the United States, from the Pentagon to USAID.

This was particularly true of the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who

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