Self-Styled Justice in Guatemala

Far from outsiders, the detained members of the People's Social Cleansing Group are all native Mayan Indians who, like most of the population here, have had no formal schooling and are more comfortable in their indigenous Tzutujil language than in Spanish.

The man who police say they believe was the leader, Tomas Susof Ramirez, is a 60-year-old farmer who lived with his wife and youngest daughter in a two-room, concrete-block hut with only an open fire for a kitchen. His wife said she keeps a pot of coffee hot all day to serve the stream of visitors from their evangelical church.

The Santiago Atitlan region, ringed by volcanic peaks in a setting of uncommon beauty, was a hotbed of leftist activity during the civil war and the scene of brutal massacres by military and paramilitary units.

Neighbors of Susof Ramirez, who asked not to be quoted for fear of retaliation, said he was a member of a guerrilla unit at the time. Like the others arrested, he is in jail pending further investigation.

His son, Pedro Susof Damian, 28, denied that his father had been in a guerrilla group, but he recalled the dangers that many ordinary residents faced from the paramilitary squads.

"My parents used to tell me you had to be very careful. These were mean, dangerous people," he said in an interview at his parents' home on Monday. "If they even suspected you of sympathizing" with the guerrillas, "they would kill you."

The 1996 peace accords brought a measure of prosperity to the region. Wealthy Guatemalans began building chalets along the lake's stunning shoreline, and streams of foreign backpackers browsed the local textile markets. Even modest families began replacing their old adobe-and-straw homes with cinder block and sending their children to school instead of having them work the fields.

But the atmosphere of paranoia and distrust of authority never abated.

"I've been a policeman for 19 years and worked all over the country," said an officer who was transferred to the region two months ago, "and I have never seen people as closed as the ones here."

Gradually, the dangers of the war years were replaced with a new threat: rising crime, including roadside banditry and theft of ripening coffee, corn and other crops. Susof Damian said he and his father arrived at one of their fields to reap a large quantity of avocados several years ago, only to find that every last plant had been cut down.

"My father had been working that land from dawn till dusk for months," Susof Damian recalled. "He was so angry he fell to his knees and started crying."

The police seemed powerless to stop the criminals, and in some cases they became part of the problem. Two years ago, four policemen were nearly lynched here after residents spotted them changing out of their uniforms by the roadside and preparing to ambush motorists.