ABSTRACT
Smith has suggested that a major goal of the military campaign of the early 1980s was to destroy all forms of economic autonomy in the Indian communities, in order to make the peasant population available for wage work on the Southern Coast. Whether or not it was primary, that goal meshed well with the counterinsurgency goal of annihilating the guerrilla organizations themselves. The latter objective was not fully achieved, nor did the army strategically defeat the guerrillas, as will be seen. Nevertheless, the ability to destroy their social base constituted a major "victory" for the army, while converting the army into Guatemala's modern death squad. Many have considered the triumph of counterinsurgency to be so complete as to negate the possibility of continuing revolutionary struggle in Guatemala. The Guatemalan election of 1985 represented a rupture from the past in some respects, but not in others.
