Inside the court, the justices are hearing arguments against the proposed reform and the proposed referendum (vote) that would activate the reforms. One of the main arguments the opposition is circulating is that it is unconstitutional to make all 50 articles into one single "yes" or "no" vote. The crowd outside is unanimously for the reforms and is here to pressure the court to throw out the arguments against them.

Walking among the crowd, I feel as if I am witness to a peaceful act of revolution. Gloria, a Mayan woman from Tecpan, senses it, too. "We are in this moment deciding history" she told me. She wants the vote to happen soon, because if the reforms pass, her ethnicity, culture, and language will be officially recognized in her country. "We ask that they hold the referendum on the reforms no later than May."

"Why is it important to you that the referendum remain one question?" I asked. "Many of Guatemala's citizens are illiterate." She pointed out. "How could they vote on a ballot with 50 different questions?" I had never thought of it that way. Only 65% of the population is literate, and many of them only partially. Rural, indigenous populations, particularly women, make up the vast majority of the illiterate Guatemalans. Linking the vote to literacy - as was done in the 1950's - would effectively eliminate the section of the population which is already most vulnerable to exploitation.

What's in the reforms?
Official recognition of the indigenous population and their language, culture and cosmology is one of the themes covered in the reforms. Once in place, Guatemala will no longer be officially a hispanic country, but rather it will acknowledge that it is multicultural, multilingual, and multiethnic, with twenty-some languages spoken by 50% of the population. Another part of the constitutional reform deals with improving the country's judicial system. Up to now, justice has been hard to come by. Imagine that someone in your town robbed several of you neighbors, or worse, molested some young children. You think you know for sure who committed the crime. That person is still walking about freely, and there is little chance that he will be brought to justice by the court system. What would you do? This has often been the case here in Guatemala, as the judicial system has been typically weak and corrupt, and violence rampant. In several towns in Guatemala, angry crowds of lynch mobs who are fed up with crime, violence, and a weak judicial system, have taken matters into their own hands, beating the suspected criminals to death. (This happened a record 25 times in February!) The suspects may or may not have been robbers or child molesters, but now several townspeople have become murderers. If the reforms pass and a more just system is enforced, these lynchings may stop.

Historically in Guatemala, the civil police force has been inadequate. Instead, the army patrolled the streets. The army has been repeatedly accused of violating civil rights. The constitutional reforms will mandate that a civil police force be in charge of internal affairs, and the military will only protect the boarder. As the army is said to have perpetrated many human rights abuses during the civil war, removing their presence from the interior of the country will hopefully strengthen the peace.

I left the scene with a lot on my mind. I realized that Guatemalans are working to institute policies and protective systems that I take for granted at home in the United States. American history tells us that lynchings and institutionalized racism used to be common, even acceptable, in the United States. Seeing the legislative process here in Guatemala helps me appreciate why and how things have come to be the way they are in my own country.

AFTERNOTE: I sent this article to the web site over a week ago, but somehow it got lost in cyberspace and didn't make it. Since then, demonstrations have been occurring across the country, but the court has ruled that it is indeed unconstitutional to make the referendum only one single question. The court recommended that Congress split the referendum into six questions based on the six themes it covers: Guatemalan Indigenous Rights, Legislative Branch, Executive Branch, Judicial Branch, a System of a Council on Development, and the Guatemalan Military and Civil Security Force (Police).

Abeja