COUP IN GUATEMALA

COUP IN GUATEMALA

Bill Kraus, 37, a former US Navy F 14 Fighter pilot, and Olga Romanova,
36, a former Soviet Air Force MiG 29 fighter pilot were not married,
but friends living together in Guatemala. They started AirTaxi Company
in Guatemala with a Antonov - 2 Biplane. The Antonov - 2 or "Anoushka"
("Annie"), as Russian pilots know it, was built to the specifications
of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of the USSR, for service as
a long-range bush plane. The plane could seat 8 passengers comfortably.
Aeroflot adapted it for use as a regional transport aircraft and flew
all over Soviet Central Asia.

Olga and Bill flew tourists and passengers to and from Ciudad
Guatemala, Rio Dulce, Quirigua, Tikal, Quezaltenango, Lake Izabal and
Puerto-Barrios to the Mayan ruins of Quirigua. Collecting tourists from
hotels, passage through Avenida Reforma, Avenida Las Americas, Plaza
Mayor, Cathedral, Palace of the Captain Generals, visits to Mercado
Chichicastenango and the Iglesia de Santo Tomas were included.
Diversions to Tikal, Uaxatun, El Sibal, Dos Lagunas, Nakbe, Mirador,
and La Muralla were added to the excursions in this beautiful tropical
paradise.

Life in Guatemala was uneventful for them. It lacked certainty although
it offered tranquility in their lives. Visits to Mayan ruins, camping
El Chiclero style, with hammocks and mosquito nets, nature trekking,
photographing exotic flora and fauna filled their days. They
appreciated the huge Pimienta Gorda and Chico Zapotes trees in the
forest, exotic xate plants, orchids and bromeliads. In autumn through
spring they went sport fishing in Puerto Quetzal and the coast of
Salvador. After a solid breakfast the took a charter boat and caught
marlin, sailfish and dorado. This was different from their daily
routine in the armed forces. They found life enjoyable until the coup
happened.

The first Tuesday of September is normally a day for coup d'etat in
Central America. Like people living in cities on a geological fault
line, one never knows when an earthquake will hit. In Guatemala
military coups were so often, one did not know when one was to come. So
it was last Tuesday morning. It was as good a day as any for a military
coup. And it was.

The small group of junior Guatemalan Army and Air Force officers who
led last Tuesday's coup expected a civilian military junta to take
power and a date for presidential elections to be announced
immediately. They learnt their textbook coup strategies in the Escuelas
de Americas, in USA.

Most coups in Central America have a TV script. As is usual, TV
stations, radio stations are put under heavy armed guards, tanks and
jeeps mounted with canons. Politicians and military officers suspected
with doubtful loyalties are taken for "questioning" in the military
barracks and the National Stadiums. Trade Union leaders, leftists,
liberal priests, activist nuns, and intellectuals with liberal
persuasion are also drawn into the dragnet. Leftist students are
dragged from their beds bundled into cars without number plates and
detained. An emissary is sent to the US Embassy and the CIA station
chief, to explain the "situation", and now, crisp briefings for CNN TV
journalists were included in coup plans and timetables to meet the 6:00
PM News Deadline of American TV Networks.

Bill and Olga were driving from San Jose on the lonely road by the
coast heading towards Mazatenango. They saw a military roadblock, with
an olive green APC, and one young soldier with rifles. They slowed down
and stopped. The soldier came over and gestured Olga to roll down the
window.

Soldier: "Where are you coming from? Please come out. We want to search
your car."

Bill: "We are coming from San Jose on our way to Mazatenango."

Bill and Lola stayed inside the car, putting together their documents.
People without proper documents are dead meat in Guatemala. At this
point a stocky officer with designer dark glasses and a heavy automatic
in his holster appeared. Peeking behind his bushy moustache a set of
fine white teeth, two of them were made of gold. He smiled and
introduced himself as Captain Juan De Dios Ortiz Romero.

Ortiz : La documentacion, por favor.

Bill and Olga hands over their Residence Permits.

Ortiz : Tiene algo que declarar?" (Do you have anything to
declare?),"Abra, por favor." (Open please.)

As Bill was opening the trunk of the car, the soldier pushed him away
with the barrel of the gun. Olga reacted by moving back a bit, her
right hand just below her bust. Olga was carrying a 9mm Skorpion
automatic concealed under her shirt.

Ortiz: I see you are pilotos.

Bill: Yes, we operate Air Taxi company for touristas.

Ortiz: I see you fly many times to San Marcos. Do you know Commandante
Everardo - the leader of the communistas?

Bill: No! I don't know Commandante Everardo.

Ortiz; You know, Guatemalan Secret Service D-2 may be interested in
you.
Bill: Why should D-2 be interested in us?
Ortiz: Many indigenos are buried in Montanita near the Cabuz
River.

Bill: There are a lot of people buried all over Guatemala!

Ortiz (with a cruel smile): But only the one in Las Cabanas hold the
body of Commandante Everardo. Perhaps and you know his real name -
Efrain Bamaca Vesquez.

Bill: But, I don't know who he is, Captain Ortiz.

Ortiz: Commandante Everardo was the communista lider of ORPA!

Bill: If there were people buried in sugar cane fields, or dumped in
the Pacific how would I know? We are only Air Taxi operators!

Ortiz: D-2 can always find the information they want. They can hold
your woman incommunicado, interrogate her many times, kill her and
dispose her body in an unidentified location.

Bill: They will do that just to get information?

Ortiz: The other day I was offered money&;#8230;too much money... to
get information.

Bill: What kind of information?

Ortiz: Secret information.

Bill: You are a very lucky man Captain Ortiz. That information is
always easy to give.

Ortiz: Easy? Why?

Bill: If it is secret enough, you alone will know it. All you need is a
little imagination, Captain Ortiz.

Ortiz: In Guatemala, you need a lot of imagination.

Olga: Not unless you are the unfortunate sons or daughters of
'Xmukane'!

Ortiz: There are two classes of people in Guatemala: those who can be
tortured and those who can't.

Captain Ortiz Romero stepped aside and he began to talk in a sotto
voice to the soldier. They two came back and now Olga was taken to one
side, by a tree, Captain Ortiz Romero facing her. His eyes were burning
with desire! He was much shorter than Olga, and felt uncomfortable
being confronted by a non-submissive woman. The soldier then confronts
Bill.

Soldier: The captain says your friend is a spy. What she was doing when
she was flying to San Marcos was not innocent. The captain can predict
your American embassy will ask us to do nothing.

Bill: This could become a nasty international incident.

Ortiz: We are the ones who could make an international incident of
this, but frankly it is not worth the effort.

Olga: Why not execute us ?

Soldier: We will investigate in our own time, in our own way, although
in this Semana Santa the Guatamalan people cannot afford to waste
resources on people who have revealed they to be our enemy.

Ortiz: Now do you understand what I mean?

Captain Ortiz Romero walks around Olga ogling her. He was shorter than
her. He takes a pause in front of her, with his cane in his hand
caressing her languorously with the cane over her bust, several times,
slowly and deliberately, as if to titillate her. Captain Ortiz lewdly
watched Olga. She quivered each time the cane passed from the bottom of
her chin, sensuously over her elongated neck, then her full bust,
stopping briefly on the nipples and then slowly over her stomach to the
exposed belly button. Her shame-filled gaze was steadfastly down as she
was humiliated repeatedly by Captain Ortiz who had a cruel grin of
satisfaction on his face.

Olga moved back and took a defensive stance, her hands ready to
retrieve her gun under her shirt. Captain Ortiz Romero takes the
soldier to one side and whispers something in his ears.

Soldier: The captain says an investigation depends on many factors. The
position of our friends at the Russian embassy must be taken into
account before premature steps are taken.

Bill: Russian embassy? Why?

Ortiz: Yes, Russian embassy! After everything is over. The only issue
we have here is an identification of a foreign national who has died on
Guatamalan territory. Do you accept Senorita Olga Romanova is only a
Russian citizen Senor Bill Kraus?

Ortiz took a lot of pleasure in threatening his two hostages.

Olga whips around with her Skorpion and takes a spread-leg stance,
without heeding Bill's warning, and takes aims at Captain Ortiz Romero,
and shouted in a firm voice:

Basta! Bastardo! Manos Arriba! (Stop! Bastard! Hands up!)

Captain Ortiz was in a state of suspended animation, frozen in time and
space.

Olga: I was willing to shoot the soldier, and I am willing to kill you,
Captain Ortiz!

The soldier holds the carbine limply in his hand, pointing to the
ground, and Captain Ortiz, taken aback, does not even try to reach his
holster, conceding the advantage of the fast and first draw to Olga.
The midday sun cast only a brief shadow.

Olga: I want you two to lie face down, with your hands on your head.
Don't move!

Captain Ortiz and the soldier meekly lie face down, with hands on their
heads.
Bill takes the .45 automatic from Captain Ortiz's holster and pitches
it far into the brush, and Olga takes the carbine away from the soldier
and throws it into the ditch.

Ortiz: Don't kill me, please! Please, don't kill me!

Olga: Don't make a false move! Que lastima! Que pena! Con gran pesar
mio&;#8230;! I will put two bullets in the backs of your heads - tu
degenerado bastardo!

Olga walks away, pacing slowly backwards. Captain Ortiz and the soldier
lie still, fearing the worst. A long silence followed. To make her
point, Olga rapidly fired two bullets into two discarded beer bottles
on the roadside, lying next to Captain Ortiz Romero, cleanly
decapitating the necks of the beer bottles.

Olga fired two more shots at Ortiz, intentionally just missing his big
ears. Olga was a deadly with her Skorpion. Ortiz and the soldier lay
still in cold fear, till they drove off.

The proclamation of independence of Guatemala in 1821, an event
prompted by the country's Spanish descended elite, saw the creation of
an authoritarian State which excluded the majority of the population,
was racist in its precepts and practices. The power was concentrated in
the Spanish descended rich landowners. These are neither perfidious
allegations, nor figments of the imagination, but an authentic chapter
in Guatemala's history.

Bill and Olga had no choice - they fled Guatemala.