Caesar Sereseres: The Bloodiest Hands on Campus

     Some of you have had the distinct "privilege" of meeting Caesar Sereseres, the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the School of Social Science, here at UCI. Sereseres bills himself as an expert on "foreign policy strategy and formulation in Mexico and Central America, revolutionary guerilla insurgency, and civil-military relations in Latin America".

     But where does his expertise originate? Aside from his doctorate from UC-Riverside in 1971, he worked in the U.S. State Department's Office of Policy Planning in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs from 1985-1987, and was a consultant for the RAND Corporation in national security studies.

In the early 1980s, he helped devise a counterinsurgency (read: state terrorism) program for Guatemala, along with Colonel George Minas, who served as military attache to Guatemala in the 1980s. Under their program, according to a State Department report, "military, civil patrols and police continued to commit a majority of major human rights abuses, including extrajuridicial killings torture and disappearances." Their plan included the use of means of "population control such as Vietnam-style military-controlled strategic hamlets and civilian defense patrols" (McGehee 1999; Covert Action Information Bulletin, Spring 1994). Essentially, he organized a program to help a military dictatorship maintain power after it overthrew a democratically-elected president, and then massacre the Guatemalan people who resisted. Even more unnerving, the counterinsurgency campaign waged in rural Guatemala looks suspiciously like an ethnic-cleansing campaign, as entire villages of indigenous peasants were massacred without even a suspicion of insurgent activity.

"The strategy of control was also characterized by a litany of human rights crimes that stand out not only in the region but in the world. The violence was so severe in the early 1980s in Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú's home department of Quich, to cite but one example, that the entire Catholic archdiocese shut down and withdrew, with all its priests, nuns, catechists, and many parishioners. The situation there and in other departments by 1982 led Guatemala's Conference of Catholic Bishops to conclude: Not even the lives of old people, pregnant women or innocent children were respected. Never in our history has it come to such grave extremes" (Smyth 1995).

     As an indirect result of Sereseres' counterinsurgency program, Guatemala has become a central location for drug trafficking, as the military leadership he helped install are now heavily implicated in the drug trade.

     It is unknown what role Sereseres has played in other civil wars, mass killings, and large-scale acts of repression in Central and South America, but given his clout as a regional counterinsurgency expert and his involvement with the U.S. State Department, C.I.A., and RAND Corporation, it is likely that he is at least partially responsible for many more deaths than those in Guatemala.  Where else has Sereseres-induced acts of genocide occurred?  Honduras?  El Salvador?  Mexico?  Peru?  Chile?  Each of those countries has seen similar mass killings in the years that he was active as an advisor.

     Even on campus, his counterinsurgency efforts are felt.  Through his involvement in finding sources of funding for student organizations, he is given some ability to marginalize and demobilize activist groups on campus.  Additionally, his efforts to help students "get ahead" in college through independent research can also be seen for their ulterior motives: to bring potentially dangerous students -- those coming from poor backgrounds who have begun to see the flaws in capitalist society -- under his wing and totally dependent upon him, thus again marginalizing and depoliticizing them.  By systematically institutionalizing students and student organizations, Sereseres is partially responsible for the widespread apathy and apolitical nature of the UCI campus.

Sources:

McGehee, Ralph. 1999. CIA Support of Death Squads. http://www.serendipity.li/cia/death_squads1.htm

Covert Action Information Bulletin. Spring 1994. p28-33

Smyth, Frank. 1995. Guatemala's Gross National Products: CocaDollars, Repression, and Disinformation. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/47/002.html