ABSTRACT
Guatemala ranks near the bottom of every major indicator of public health and economic well-being. Poorer and sicker than the rest of the nation, people of the rural highlands bear the brunt of a continuing military occupation which civilian rule in the capital has left largely untouched. Throughout his term in office President Vinicio Cerezo has consistently ruled out expropriatory land redistribution as a means of ending the poverty in which most rural residents live. Government intransigence on the issue of land reform cannot be fully understood outside of the context of fierce resistance on the part of Guatemala’s wealthy landed elite to any form of redistribution, however minimal. The Committee for Peasant Unity (CUC) was formed in 1978 as a means of building cultural, economic and political bonds among Guatemala’s largely indigenous rural population. Defying traditional categories of organization, the CUC functioned as part union, part cooperative and part political-cultural advocate for land reform and social change.
