-Caveat Lector- Guatemalans Have Mixed Feelings on Peace RIO NEGRO, Guatemala, Nov 2 (Reuters) - On the morning of March 13, 1982, a military column entered this sleepy Mayan village in central Guatemala searching for Marxist guerrillas. What followed was one of the worst massacres in a 36-year civil war that helped earn this poor Central American country a dreadful human rights record. According to survivors' accounts, 70 women and 107 children were raped, tortured and killed in the bloodshed in Rio Negro, some 40 miles (64 km) north of the capital. The men of the village had fled into the countryside before the soldiers arrived. Nearly three years ago, the Guatemalan government and leftist rebels signed a peace accord, putting an end to war that had killed 200,000 people and turned hundreds of villages, like Rio Negro, into killing fields. Now, as the country prepares for Sunday's first presidential elections since the end of the war, many Guatemalans want to see more benefits to peace than simply an end to the violence. "The war is over and there is no going back but it will take us at least 20 years before we start seeing the reconstruction of Guatemala," Rigoberta Menchu, the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told Reuters in a recent interview. The Guatemalan war was the longest of a string of conflicts in Central America that pitted leftist rebels against military governments. "THE BROADEST PEACE PROCESS IN THE WORLD" After 10 years of contacts and rocky negotiations that spawned four governments, the administration of President Alvaro Arzu and the National Revolutionary Guatemalan Unit (URNG) signed a far-reaching peace accord on Dec. 29, 1996. The aim was not just to end the war but to create a new Guatemala based on civilian rule, racial diversity and better living conditions for the poor. Under the accords, the URNG demobilized its 3,500 guerrilla members. The former rebel group is running as a political party on Sunday for the first time. "The peace process in Guatemala is the broadest peace process in the world," said Juan Pablo Corlazzoli, deputy director of the United Nations Mission in Guatemala (Minugua). "The experience in Guatemala will be a reference for other peace processes in the world," Corlazzoli said. But the country is still far from overcoming the social and economic problems that many analysts said fuelled the conflict. An estimated 31.7 percent of the country's population of 11 million is illiterate, the highest illiteracy rate in the Americas after Haiti, according to 1998 figures, the latest ones available. About 80 percent of the population live below poverty levels. Infant mortality among Mayans, who are 60 to 65 percent of the population, remains the highest on the continent. Electricity, running water and health care are all but luxuries in most Mayan communities, where barefoot children grow maize or herd cattle to supplement their parents' meagre incomes. "The peace accords were conceived as a project to build a new nation from scratch," said Hector Rosada-Granados, a sociologist who represented the government during peace negotiations. "If they are not translated into something that calms hunger the accords will be lost. The problem is that there is a Guatemala that refuses to let go its privileges and admit the other Guatemala into a national project," he said. THE "HIDDEN POWER" IN GUATEMALA The peace accords cut by a third the 43,000-strong army, but the military remains a powerful force. In a victory for groups representing war victims, a Guatemalan court last October sentenced three former members of right-wing paramilitary groups to die for their involvement in the Rio Negro massacre. But attempts to prosecute high-ranking military officials for the Rio Negro massacre and other war crimes have been unsuccessful in what some analysts say is proof that Guatemala's so-called "hidden power" has not been dismantled despite the return of civilian government in 1986. Plans to raise Guatemala's tax revenue -- one of the lowest in Latin America -- to 12 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2000 from the current 9 percent to pay for health, education and housing programmes for the poor have been postponed until the next government due to setbacks. To help finance peace and reconstruction programmes, the international community pledged $1.8 billion for Guatemala. About half of that has been disbursed but donors say they are waiting for deeds before giving out more money. "The international community will follow closely to see if the new government is committed to peace. There's no blank cheque," said Jose Roberto Lopez-Calix, the World Bank's representative in Guatemala. The three main candidates for Sunday's elections -- Alfonso Portillo, from the opposition rightist Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG); Oscar Berger, from the ruling Party for the National Advancement (PAN); and Alvaro Colom, from the leftist New Nation Alliance coalition (ANN), which includes the URNG -- have all pledged to stick to the spirit of the peace accords. Copyright 1999 Reuters . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ======================= Robert F. Tatman Computer Help Desk Desktop & LAN Services Systems Department Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. 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