Unions March Against Privatization

Cerigua Weekly Briefs, No.11, 11 March 1997

Guatemala City, March 11. Thousands took to the streets March 7 in the first major protest against President Alvaro Arzu Irigoyen's unpopular economic measures. And today the Catholic Church added its voice to the growing clamor for the suspension of the government's ambitious privatization program.

When unions first called for a protest against privatization and skyrocketing consumer costs, representatives of the ruling National Advancement Party (PAN) dared labor to fill the central plaza with demonstrators.

With this demonstration "we'll be able to measure the real strength and power to mobilize of the labor organizations," said PAN legislator Jorge Mendez Herbruger prior to the march.

Most analysts here agree that the labor movement -- dormant for many months -- met the government's challenge.

The march, called by the Unity of Popular and Labor Action (UASP) and the newly created Guatemalan Workers Union (UGT), mobilized more than 10,000 unionists, students, housewives, campesinos and street vendors.

Labor leaders said even they were surprised by the size of the turnout.

But President Arzu dismissed the protesters as a small group of bureaucrats unhappy with recent reforms he says will force them to put in a full day's work. "It's not fair that people are denied access to services because the state has to maintain this troop of lazy bums," said the president.

Since the December 29 signing of peace accords to end the civil war here, the PAN has accelerated its program of neoliberal reforms. Critics blame these changes for the sharp jump in the consumer price index last month. Prices rose 2.33 percent in February, according to the National Statistics Institute, a 360 percent increase over February 1996.

The average urban wage of 890 quetzales (US$148) a month does not meet the minimum of 1,500 quetzales (US$250) needed for a family's basic living costs, according to a report released today by the Office of Guatemala City's Archbishop. The Church warns that the sharp deterioration of public services and growing unemployment and crime are generating "a dangerous climate of social ingovernability" in the country.