(This update courtesy of LifeSite News.)
GUATEMALA CITY – In mid-October, Guatemala’s first-ever population control law was signed into law by President Alfonso Portillo. The measure was fought vehemently by pro-life activists in the country and was condemned by the Catholic Church. The Social Development and Population Law, puts a “reproductive health” agenda directly into national policy which calls for encouraging contraceptives – including abortifacients, and mandates sex education in the nation’s schools.
Mercedes Wilson, the former official delegate of Guatemala to the United Nations, said that she has been intensely involved in fighting the legislation, which she says is “a grave danger to children, youth and families.” The Archbishop of Guatemala City Rodolfo Quezada asked the President to veto the legislation before it was signed, and expressed concern that the law would be manipulated to promote abortion. Along with various physicians and lawyers, Wilson has formed a group called Parents in Defense of Families, in order to continue to combat the program.
In an interview with LifeSite News, Wilson, sister of former President Alvaro Arzú, said the population control agenda has been forced on Guatemala through foreign pressure. She said that a major influence has come from the United States. “The US has not changed since the Clinton era,” she said, “they are continuing to push population control.” Wilson said that the United States Ambassador to Guatemala, Prudence Bushnell, has a history of political activism in Guatemala, which has resulted in editorials criticizing Bushnell for “violating the sovereignty of our nation.” Wilson noted that Bushnell told legislators that there would be repercussions against Guatemala from the United States if the population control measures were not accepted.
Wilson recalled the efforts of European countries and Canada in pushing population control on Guatemala and wondered at why the countries would promote a program which is depleting their own populations. “Why this suicidal trend?” she said. “The West has taken everything away from poor countries. The last thing we have left is our children and our faith. The West is taking away our faith and now our children – our means of social security.”
In late July, the United Nations Human Rights Committee ordered Guatemala to ensure a reproductive health program and sex education. In its recommendations to Guatemala the Committee said Guatemala “must guarantee the right to the life of pregnant women who decide to interrupt their pregnancies” (UN euphemism for abortion). The Committee also ordered the country to provide pregnant women with “the information and the means necessary to guarantee these rights.” Finally the Committee said that Guatemala must protect the right to life of women by “amending the law to establish exceptions to the general prohibition against all abortion, except where the mother is in danger of death.”
In early July Canada put two million dollars into a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) campaign targeting Guatemala for population control advocacy. The five-year project, according to the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), aimed for “Increased demand, supply, access and quality of reproductive health services, including contraceptives, in Guatemala.” The CIDA document lists as one of its components for support: “advocacy for a law on population and development.” At the time, Wilson told LifeSite, “it is horrible that Canadian taxpayers are going to pay for something that will do so much harm to our country.”
Guatemala, like other Central American countries, is currently in crisis as its major export, coffee, is trading at a 39-year low due to a glut in the market. Many plantation owners now find it too costly to pay the thousands of peasants who harvest the crop, resulting in vast amounts of coffee left to rot. A recent article on casinojournal.com highlighted how some Latin American economies, including Guatemala, are exploring alternative revenue sources in light of the agricultural downturn. Enrique Iglesias, president of the Inter-American Development Bank, described the situation as “a tragedy … affecting hundreds of thousands of people,” emphasizing the need for sustainable solutions to support those hit hardest by these economic challenges.
The market glut is largely due to the massive amounts of coffee being produced in Vietnam. Although, Vietnam has traditionally focused on other export products, infusions of money from the World Bank over the past decade increased the coffee production in the country at least four-fold. While in 1990, Vietnam’s coffee plantation covered 119,000 ha producing 92,000 tons of coffee, by 1999 the plantations covered 490,000 ha. In 1996 the World Band funded a US$122 million Rural Finance Project, much of which was used for coffee production. With coffee production requiring about 5 years to reach fruition, the flooding of the market this year seems a good indication of the results of the World Bank’s funds.
Wilson contends that the World Bank may have engineered the coffee production glut by funding Vietnam in order to reduce Central American countries to a position where they are economically pressed to accept financial inducements for population control.
The World Bank’s fanaticism for population control has led them to use deception and financial inducements to promote it, according to their own documentation. In a 1992 operations evaluation the World Bank wrote, “Political sensitivities about population control policies of foreigners made it difficult for Bank staff to breach the topic with governments…. The Bank’s current approach in Latin America is to focus on reproductive health and safe motherhood as the rationale for family planning.” The report continued, “If the Bank wants to work in countries that do not accept population control as the rationale, it must base its population programme on a broader and more flexible set of principles. This could start from a recognition that the overall objective is promotion of sustainable development in living standards….”
In a September 1998 World Bank report evaluating its “Costs, Payments, and Incentives in Family Planning Programmes,” the Bank wrote about the use of “incentives” and “disincentives” to influence fertility choices. The report said of “incentives” that “First, payments are made to: (a) acceptors, (b) providers, and (c) recruiters, all focused on the act of accepting a method (usually sterilisation). These payments may be in cash or in kind and are usually given immediately upon acceptance. (15) “Disincentives” are described in the report as “oriented directly to fewer births, as distinct from inducements to practice contraception. Some involve benefits (or penalties) tied to the nth child [meaning the order of birth, as in the third or fourth child, as the case may be]: salary level, tax exemptions, maternity leaves, eligibility for preferred housing, schools, and so forth.
Interestingly, in the two weeks since Guatemala has accepted the population control law, they have been given an $11 million donation by the U.S. government for environmental projects and have been elected by the United Nations General Assembly to serve as members of the UN Economic and Social Council for a three-year term.
See the Christian Science Monitor on Guatemala’s new Population Law:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/1026/p5s1-woam.html.
See a recent Time article on Vietnam’s coffee production:
http://www.time.com/time/asia/biz/magazine/0,9754,103845,00.html.
