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Guatemala is a mainly mountainous country in Central America. It was once at the heart of the remarkable Mayan civilization, which flourished until the 10th century AD. When Spanish explorers conquered this region in the 16th century, the Mayans became slaves in their own homeland. They are still the underprivileged majority of Guatemala’s population.

Civil war existed in Guatemala since the early 1960s due to inequalities existing in the economic and political life. In the 1970s, the Maya began participating in protests against the repressive government, demanding greater equality and inclusion of the Mayan language and culture. In 1980, the Guatemalan army instituted “Operation Sophia,” which aimed at ending insurgent guerrilla warfare by destroying the civilian base in which they hid. This program specifically targeted the Mayan population, who were believed to be supporting the guerilla movement.

Over the next three years, the army destroyed 626 villages, killed or “disappeared” more than 200,000 people and displaced an additional 1.5 million, while more than 150,000 were driven to seek refuge in Mexico. Forced disappearance policies included secretly arresting or abducting people, who were often killed and buried in unmarked graves. In addition, the government instituted a scorched earth policy, destroying and burning buildings and crops, slaughtering livestock, fouling water supplies and violating sacred places and cultural symbols. Many of these actions were undertaken by the army, specifically through special units known as the Kaibiles, in addition to private death squads, who often acted on the advice of the army. The U.S. government often supported the repressive regimes as a part of its anti-Communist policies during the Cold War. The violence faced by the Mayan people peaked between 1978 and 1986. Catholic priests and nuns also often faced violence as they supported the rights of the Mayan people.

After 36 years, the Guatemalan armed conflict ended in 1996 when the government signed a peace accord (The Accord for a Firm and Lasting Peace) with the insurgent group, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). Part of the accords directed the United Nations to organize a Commission of Historical Clarification (CEH). It began work in July 1997, funded by a number of countries, including the United States. In February 1999, it released its report, “Guatemala: Memory of Silence,” which stated that a governmental policy of genocide was carried out against the Mayan Indians. The CEH concluded the army committed genocide against four specific groups: the Ixil Mayas; the Q’anjob’al and Chuj Mayas; the K’iche’ Mayas of Joyabaj, Zacualpa and Chiché; and the Achi Mayas.

In November 1998, three former members of a “civil patrol” were convicted in the first case arising from the genocide. In September 2009, the courts sentenced Military Commissioner Felipe Cusanero to 150 years in prison for the crime of enforced disappearance of six members of the Choatulum indigenous community. In June 2011, General Héctor Mario López Fuentes was caught and charged with genocide and crimes against humanity. In August 2011, four soldiers were sentenced to 30 years for each murder plus 30 years for crimes against humanity, totaling 6,060 years each for the massacre in a village of Dos Erres in Guatemala’s northern Petén region.

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Ben Kiernan – Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur

Robert Gellately – The Specter of Genocide: A Mass Murder in Historical Perspective

Rigoberta Menchu – Me LLamo Rigoberta Menchu y Asi me Nacio La Conceiencia

Research Terms

Summary of Genocide Proceedings before the Spanish Federal Court [PDF]

Prevent Genocide

The Guatemala Genocide Ruling, Five Years Later

U.S. policy and the dictator, General Efraín Ríos Montt – "a man of great personal integrity and commitment"

Washington D.C., May 10, 2018 —Five years ago today, one of the most celebrated human rights trials in Latin America came to a stunning conclusion when Guatemalan dictator, retired Army general, and self-proclaimed “president” Efraín Ríos Montt was convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity by a panel of three Guatemalan judges.  

To commemorate that milestone in Guatemalan history, the National Security Archive is posting the groundbreaking ruling that was issued on May 10, 2013, by the court that found Ríos Montt guilty. The Archive is also making a collection of 15 declassified documents available that chronicle Washington’s unabashed support for the dictator at the height of his powers, and the US Embassy’s determination to ignore the violence unleashed by his Army against civilians.

The verdict was unprecedented in Guatemala and around the world; never before had a former head of state been convicted by his own country’s justice system for the crime of genocide. Ríos Montt, 86 years old at the time of the 2013 trial, was sentenced to 80 years in prison. Many of the hundreds of spectators present in the courtroom stood and clapped, wept, and cheered as the verdict was read.

But the court’s decision was felt most powerfully by survivors of the Guatemalan Army’s scorched earth campaigns, which in the early 1980s sought to destroy them, their villages, and their culture in the Maya Ixil region of the country’s northwest. Ninety-seven men and women testified before the tribunal in the course of the almost two-month proceeding. They described repeated military sweeps through the Ixil communities that left a trail of death and mayhem in their wake. According to the testimonies, the soldiers massacred entire communities, raped and tortured their victims, looted and destroyed homes, hunted down fleeing refugees with helicopters, and occupied and destroyed sacred Mayan sites. Those captured were corralled into militarized camps where they were forced to stay, sometimes for years.

The witnesses’ searing words are preserved in the genocide tribunal’s ruling, a 718-page document that not only pronounces the sentence on Ríos Montt (see page 682 and ff.), but summarizes the statements of all 97 survivors, reports from dozens of expert witnesses, Guatemala military and other government documents, results from exhumations, truth commission reports, and human rights publications.

This is the story of just one of the 97 survivors of Ríos Montt’s Army attacks on the Ixil region of El Quiché in 1982. She was among a group of courageous women who appeared before the genocide tribunal to describe not only the destruction of their families, their homes, their livelihoods, but their sexual assault by soldiers. See the court’s ruling, pp. 516-17.

• The witness ANA PACHECO RAMÍREZ declared that: In the year 1982 she lived in the Juil settlement, Chajul. In that settlement, she lived with her husband on land owned by her parents-in-law. One night at 8 o’ clock the soldiers came to take her husband away. At nine they returned and took her to a field that was about a mile from the house. The soldiers raped her after they brought her to the field. They shamed her, they left her practically naked and it was other people who gave her some clothes to wear. Her husband was Ignacio Pacheco. They had children. One child was 30 days old. After [the rape] she decided to go back to her house but everything had been burned. Her child died in the fire when they burned her house because he was just a baby. She wept to see everything burned. She says her testimony comes from the grief caused by that time. What she seeks is justice. To be giving her declaration 30 years later is sad, her husband never appeared again. She says that she has experienced great sorrow and suffered enough. Her declaration is granted evidentiary value for the following reasons: a). She recounts how the soldiers arrived and took her husband away. b). She describes how the soldiers raped her. c). She explains that her baby, just thirty days old, was burned to death. d). The sorrow can still be observed in the face of the victim, remembering what happened.

In light of the 2013 ruling and the extraordinary personal stories of suffering and survival recounted by Ixil witnesses during the trial, it is disturbing to recall that at the time of the Ríos Montt regime (March 23, 1982 – August 8, 1983), the United States refused to acknowledge the role of the Guatemalan Army in the widespread killing of civilians. Instead, the administration – and President Reagan himself –  championed the Guatemalan leader and sought to lift the sanctions imposed by Congress barring US military assistance to Guatemala because of the atrocities committed by the Army.

* * * 

At the time of the 1982 coup that brought Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power, the Reagan administration was fighting a covert war against the Nicaraguan Sandinista regime and in need of allies in Central America who would support the anti-Sandinista contras . The overthrow of the reviled President Romeo Lucas García provided a welcome opening for Washington to reestablish ties with Guatemala and bolster US strategic goals in the region. Reagan officials were eager to embrace the country’s new leader; as a memo to President Reagan from his Secretary of State, George Shultz, said before Reagan and Ríos met for the first time, “The coup which brought Ríos Montt to power on March 23 presents us with an opportunity to break the long freeze in our relations with Guatemala and to help prevent an extremist takeover.” ( Document 11 )

Breaking the freeze proved to be more difficult than expected. Although U.S. officials repeatedly asserted to the press, in congressional hearings, and in their own secret internal communications that Ríos Montt had made tremendous strides in “human rights reforms,” international human rights groups were just as insistent about the Guatemalan military’s role in repeated brutal massacres in the country’s rural and predominantly Mayan regions.

Despite the public outcry, US diplomatic, military and intelligence officers in Guatemala and Washington perceived Ríos Montt and reported on his government in ways that served US interests. The declassified documents from 1982 described Ríos Montt as a leader who brought the Army under control, quelled the growing insurgent threat, and curbed human rights violations. If Lucas García was routinely characterized by US officials as a butcher, Ríos Montt was a democratic reformist, using legal tactics to fight a brutal insurgency. [1]   As the CIA analyzed, “Reporting from [multiple sources] indicates that human rights violations by the Guatemalan Government – widespread and chronic under former President Lucas – have decreased substantially to the point where discriminate violence (that is, targeting guerrillas) has replaced indiscriminate slaughter since Ríos Montt came to power.” ( Document 15 ; emphasis added)

The bias in reporting is clearest in US accounts of the massacres. Although evidence of atrocities committed by the Army reached the United States from human rights groups, humanitarian and refugee organizations, the Church, US Congress, foreign and national media, survivors and eyewitness accounts – and was noted in US reports – the US Embassy in Guatemala and officials in Washington were deeply skeptical. In some cases, US Ambassador Frederic Chapin and his political officers, officials of the CIA station in Guatemala and defense attachés posted in country called the alleged massacres inventions of disinformation and guerrilla propaganda. In almost all other cases, with some exceptions, United States officials blamed the guerrilla forces as the perpetrators of the mass killings.

This trend in US reporting bias from that period was directly contradicted by the conclusions of the exhaustive study of the Commission for Historical Clarification ( Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico —CEH), published in February 1999. The CEH found that the Guatemalan State, through operations carried out by the Army and paramilitary forces, was responsible for 93% of the human rights violations registered by CEH investigators; the guerrillas were responsible for 3% of the violations. [2] The CEH concluded that the Armed Forces committed “acts of genocide” in four regions of the country, targeting distinct ethnic groups, between 1980-83; for many of the genocidal acts documented by the commission, the periods of greatest intensity occurred during the Ríos Montt government. [3]

An analysis of the sources used by the United States to obtain the majority of its information on the massacres demonstrates that the most common were the Army, the Guatemalan press, Presidential Public Relations Secretary Francisco Bianchi, Sub-secretary Rafael Escobar Arguello, and civilians speaking in the presence of Guatemalan State officials ( Document 14 ). Documents describing massacres were rarely drawn from firsthand accounts by US officers who physically went to the sites and conducted inspections personally. [4]

In late August, US Ambassador Frederic Chapin wrote, “The guerrillas have waged a sustained and indiscriminate campaign of terror, arson, intimidation, kidnapping, mayhem, bombing, disinformation and murder.” ( Document 10 ) The State Department accepted the Embassy claims at first. An analysis produced in the same month observed that, “Human rights violations by Guatemalan security forces have decreased substantially over the past four months…During the same period, killings of civilians by the insurgent forces have reached unprecedented levels. The improvement in the human rights situation can be credited to the efforts of President Efraín Ríos Montt…” Although State Department analysts acknowledged that Army gains against insurgents were marred by “widespread allegations of atrocities by the troops…the Embassy does not as yet believe that there is sufficient evidence to link government troops to any of the reported massacres.” ( Document 6 )

By the end of 1982, however, the State Department was beginning to have doubts about the quality of the intelligence information and analysis reaching Washington from Guatemala. On November 23, in a highly unusual critique of its own Embassy, the State Department’s Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs questioned the credibility of US reporting on the human rights crisis in Guatemala. The secret, “eyes only” (highly classified) memorandum was prompted by intelligence obtained from the US Embassy regarding a massacre of civilians and other violations committed in and around Choatalum, Chimaltenango in late 1982. Having sent several cables discounting the veracity of the reports, Embassy officials suddenly reversed themselves after speaking with several eyewitnesses and an unnamed trusted source who confirmed that the Army had been responsible for the violence.

The Embassy’s contradictory accounts prompted the Bureau of Human Rights to review “most of the important cable traffic from Guatemala since March 23.” The Bureau’s analysis focused, in particular, on the sources of Embassy reporting and concluded that “Almost all of the Embassy early responses to charges of Army massacres were based primarily on asking the Army whether or not they were true.” Judging from the information reaching Washington, the State Department observed, “Our Embassy does not really know who is responsible for the killings in rural Guatemala.” Despite mounting evidence of the military’s involvement in violence, the memorandum concluded, the Embassy “ has not reported in any cable a single instance that it believes was done by the Army .” ( Document 12 ; emphasis in the original)

By the end of the Ríos Montt regime, the Embassy was producing more critical assessments of the Army’s role in human rights violations under Ríos Montt’s leadership, in part under pressure from the State Department internally, and in part because of evidence the Embassy obtained of the military’s role in the assassination of a Guatemalan employed by the US Agency for International Development (AID). 

On August 8, 1983, General Oscar Mejía Víctores took power in a military coup. By that time the CIA was conceding in a wide-ranging assessment of the Ríos Montt regime that “The Army used extreme violence against guerrilla-controlled villages during last year’s counterinsurgency offensive . ” ( Document 15 )

Just ten days after Ríos Montt’s conviction for genocide in 2013, the Guatemala Constitutional Court – under tremendous pressure from the country’s political right, retired military officers, and private sector – vacated the ruling for technical (not constitutional) reasons and ordered a new trial. Following repeated delays and appeals filed by Ríos Montt’s lawyers, the case was reopened in 2017. This time the trial would take place behind closed doors and without the presence of the press or public. Ríos Montt was said to be ill, even demented; he was wheeled to the proceedings on a stretcher from his detention under house arrest. On April 1st of this year, Efraín Ríos Montt died at 91 years of age, and the second genocide trial abruptly came to an end.

The Documents

Document 01

U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City

The US embassy’s monthly “Violence and Human Rights Report” for May 1982 is a representation of the dual policy of the United States in Guatemala and Latin America at the time. On the one hand, President Jimmy Carter’s human rights policy required embassies to produce regular reporting on a country’s human rights situation, resulting in what today is a valuable trove of data and narrative descriptions of human rights abuses. On the other, US policy supported anti-communist dictators, so the reporting was so skewed to fit US ideological objectives. “The savage massacre of large numbers of campesinos in specific attacks reflects a clear increase in attacks against unarmed Indians,” wrote the embassy. “…We did not attribute any of these killings to the GOG [Government of Guatemala].”

Document 02

Central Intelligence Agency

According to the CIA’s Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE), the principal threats emanating from Guatemala in mid-1982 are the terrorist acts of the Guatemalan insurgents and Ríos Montt’s political instability. According to the Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala (CEH), between the March 23 coup that ousted Lucas García and the end of May 1982 – just before this SNIE was finished – the Guatemalan Army had carried out a minimum of 64 massacres against indigenous communities of men, women, children, and elders in which more than 1,500 unarmed civilians were slaughtered – attacks that also involved rape, torture, burning alive, mutilation, beheadings, and forced disappearances. The US intelligence assessment of threats to US interests makes no reference to the genocide underway in Guatemala at the time of the SNIE’s publication.

Document 03

June saw a “Steady increase in Indian deaths over the last few months.” The massacres are ascribed exclusively to guerrillas.

Document 04

Congressman Charles Wilson visits Guatemala July 23-26 with two private businessmen at the government’s invitation. They fly in helicopters to El Quiché and land in Sta. Cruz del Quiché and Joyabaj. “He and his companions were favorably impressed by the absence of  signs of violence in Guatemala City and Antigua, as well as by conversations with troop commanders in El Quiché, in the primary conflict zone.” Later, the group learns about investment opportunities in Guatemala. “We believe Rep. Wilson left Guatemala strengthened in his conviction that the human rights situation has improved and that the U.S. should now move to improve relations,” writes the embassy. In other words, to lift ban on helicopter spare parts, and allow military training and assistance to the Guatemalan Army. According to the truth commission report, there were three massacres in Joyabaj in April 1982 in which over 150 people were killed, and a massacre of 75 people in Santa Cruz de El Quiché the same month. When Wilson was visiting, the counterinsurgency sweep called “Operation Sofía” was underway, targeting civilian settlements for violence and destruction.

Document 05

Defense Intelligence Agency

In the first week of July, shortly after the state of siege began, President Ríos Montt held a meeting with all senior unit commanders to motivate them to make Plan Victoria a success. Describing his speech, a US defense attaché reported that the new chief of state intended “to permit each commander as much freedom as possible” in fighting the guerrillas. “Rios said he was leaving the details up to them, and he expected results. ... He wanted each commander to take special care that innocent civilians would not be killed; however, if such unfortunate acts did take place, he did not want to read about them in the newspapers.”

Document 06

Department of State

The US embassy reports that the government has improved its control in the Mayan highlands through a strategic hamlet program, relocating locals into military-run villages. “A scorched earth policy is then applied in the surrounding area. These tactics have been accompanied by widespread allegations that government troops are regularly guilty of massacres, rape, and mayhem.” But the embassy does not have “sufficient evidence to link government troops with any of the reported massacres.”

Document 07

An example of the biased reporting coming out of the US Embassy in Guatemala during the Ríos Montt regime. The State Department and Congress are hearing from international human rights organizations about military atrocities against civilians, but the Embassy’s consistent response is that massacres were carried out either by “the left” or “unknowns.”

Document 08

Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research

The State Department’s intelligence division echoes the reporting it receives from its Embassy in Guatemala: “Killings of civilians by the insurgent forces have reached unprecedented levels.”

Document 09

The US Embassy reacts to a report from Amnesty International blaming the military for the majority of atrocities committed since the March 23 coup. The report, submitted as testimony to a congressional subcommittee on August 5, accuses the army of killing hundreds of noncombatant civilians. Evidently Amnesty accepts the claims of campesino activists. The US political officer writes, without irony: “How these peasants could have gathered information about these incidents – scattered all over Guatemala – is unexplained. Many of the incidents are unknown to the Embassy and to Embassy sources – the press, the Army, and the police.”

Document 10

U.S. Embassy in Guatemala

In what the US Embassy calls a “direct refutation… of Amnesty International’s accounts,” this document challenges the human rights group’s descriptions of six different attacks by what Amnesty believes are Guatemalan soldiers against communities of unarmed civilians. In each case, according to the Embassy, guerrilla forces were the real culprits. Ambassador Chapin concludes by asserting that “the guerrillas have waged a campaign of sustained and indiscriminate terror” in the Guatemalan highlands.

Document 11

In preparation for President Reagan’s meeting with Ríos Montt in Honduras, Secretary of State George Shultz calls the Guatemalan dictator an “avowed anti-communist” and an ally of the United States. Among the talking points Shultz supplies Reagan is reassurance that the administration will push for renewed US aid to the Guatemalan armed forces. “We have been considering how we can sell you military equipment, but Congressional opposition is strong among those who fail to appreciate the effort you are making to improve human rights situation.”

Document 12

Contradictions in reporting on human rights by the US Embassy in Guatemala and persistent criticism from congressional staff and human rights groups in the United States prompt the State Department to conduct a secret analysis of cable traffic from Guatemala since the Ríos Montt coup on March 23. The study reveals a remarkable failure on the part of the Embassy to identify a single massacre as having been perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army.

Document 13

US Embassy Guatemala

President Ronald Reagan and Guatemala’s chief of state Efraín Ríos Montt meet in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Also present are Secretary of State George Shultz and Ríos adviser Francisco Bianchi. Reagan tells Ríos Montt that the United States wants to help Guatemala. Ríos does most of the talking, requesting weapons and ammunition, construction materials, and US support in Guatemala’s negotiations to obtain international loans. He avoids committing to a date for holding elections for a new constituent assembly, despite being pressed to do so by Shultz.

Document 14

US Embassy officers visit various sites in the department of El Quiché in an attempt to see firsthand the effects of the conflict on Mayan communities in the area. Villagers are prompted by the Army to recount their terrifying experiences of attacks on their settlements, the looting and sacking, their flight into the inhospitable mountains, the starvation of their families as they hid for days without food. The violence is blamed on the guerrillas. “The above accounts were given in between sobs, tears and bitter denunciations of the guerrilla behavior,” wrote Ambassador Frederic Chapin. “The Embassy was fortunate to be able to debrief these villagers. Perhaps too fortunate…,” he added, in recognition that the interviews may have been staged by the Army.

Document 15

Shortly before Ríos Montt is deposed in a military coup, the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate assesses the gains made by the Guatemalan regime and the challenges that lie ahead. Although the agency continues to describe the dictator as a moderating force, a reformist, and an improvement over his predecessor on human rights, the analysis of Ríos Montt’s time in office is complex and frankly acknowledges the Army’s violent tactics in their war on the guerrillas.

[1] After meeting Ríos Montt at a conference of regional heads of state in Honduras in late 1982, President Ronald Reagan said famously the Guatemalan leader was “totally dedicated to democracy,” calling him “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.” See press release of December 4, 1982 , preserved by The American Presidency Project.

[2] UN Historical Clarification Commission. Memory of Silence. Chapter II, para. 1752-55

[3] In relation to the Ixil region of El Quiché alone, the CEH registered 32 massacres between March 1980 and November 1982, with 96 percent of victims of Maya Ixil origin. (Chapter II, para. 3274)

[4] See Document 12, in which a State Department analysis of US reporting on the massacres observed, “We have not done very many such inspections. I was directly asked by [a US government colleague]… exactly how many on-site inspections Embassy Guatemala has carried out. I don’t know the answer, but suspect it might be embarrassing.”

Guatemala’s history of genocide hurts Mayan communities to this day

Senior Law Lecturer in transitional justice and human rights, Queen's University Belfast

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Luke Moffett receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

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Up in the highlands of Guatemala, a dark history haunts the mist-covered treelines. In the late 1970s and 1980s, a raging civil war claimed the lives of some 200,000 people, most of whom were indigenous . Across the country, 626 massacre sites have been identified.

On April 16 1981, in the small mountain Mayan community of Cocop in northern Guatemala’s Ixil region, the army massacred between 70 and 90 civilians. Their bodies were piled up and burned. The survivors fled into the mountains to eke out a living off the land until the civil war died down in the mid-1990s.

Nearly 40 years on, the search for justice for the genocide’s victims continues – and the harm caused by the genocide affects the lives of many Mayan Guatemalans even today.

The killing of so many Mayans badly damaged their transmission of oral history and traditional knowledge, such as the use of local plants as medicines and traditional healthcare, and their own language and cultural practices. There was also a land dimension to the genocide, where people where forcibly displaced to make way for large-scale farming, mining, and hydroelectric programmes.

The genocide has also affected subsequent generations. During the war teachers fled the school, leaving children without an education. One of these former students, now an adult, told my co-researchers and I:

I was 11 when I witnessed the massacre. I was in second year in school. After the killings we all fled, but I couldn’t eat for over a week. Our lives stopped. I got no further education and I am left now as a peasant without any land. If it had not of happened I could have been a teacher or a nurse. After the massacre the way we lived stopped. My parents had cows, chickens and horses on their land. We lost everything. The army destroyed everything we had and left us with mental health problems and poverty.

The bodies of more than half the people killed in the massacre have been recovered, but more than two dozen bodies remain in mass graves. In Mayan tradition, burial rites are important for both the living and dead. The family and community of those killed are responsible for burying the dead to assist them in the next life, providing new clothing and other items they may need along their way. The failure to recover the body causes mental anguish for survivors who believe their loved one is in torment, unable to move on.

In 2008, the Guatemalan government provided some funding for simple concrete pantheons to house some of the recovered bodies, but it still has not provided any economic redress for their families, many of whom lost their main breadwinners. As one survivor of the massacre who lost his parents and siblings in the massacre told us, the army “left us with only dust after they burned all of our relatives”. Another survivor of the Cocop massacre lamented that 37 years on, she and her fellow victims are still waiting for justice: “The government has done nothing to ease our suffering.”

But despite all this, the victims of the genocide have not given up hope.

Never forget

Through both local courts the Inter-American system of human rights protection, they have spent years pursuing justice against those responsible for the genocide, among them Guatemala’s former president, Efraín Ríos Montt , and his head of intelligence, Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez . Both reigned during the worst part of the genocide against Mayan communities in Guatemala in the early 1980s.

While Ríos Montt was convicted of genocide in 2013 and Sánchez acquitted, the Constitutional Court annulled the verdicts citing due process violations. The trial was restarted in 2015, but in April 2018, Ríos Montt died at the age of 91. The trial against Sánchez continues, and is likely to last only a few weeks.

The victims are seeking reparations from Sánchez and the Guatemalan government to ease their suffering. Such reparations may include financial compensation, but also need to entail land restitution and measures to restore lost culture and heritage. Some of the victims my fellow researchers and I spoke to wanted Mayan history and knowledge to be taught to their children in schools in Mayan languages, and for a Mayan museum to be established in the western municipality of Nebaj to educate the community and future generations about what happened.

If the causes and consequences of the conflict and genocide in Guatemala are not addressed, the conditions for renewed violence will remain. The conflict was underpinned by poverty, marginalisation and racism against Mayan indigenous people, all of which still persist today – sometimes with violent consequences.

In April 2018, three indigenous community leaders were kidnapped and tortured for their opposition to the high prices imposed by a British energy company ; in May 2018, three indigenous leaders were killed for fighting for their communities’ land rights. Hundreds of other indigenous community leaders are being held without trial as political prisoners for their opposition to government and corporate activities. In 2015 a local human rights organisation documented 493 attacks against human rights defenders, most of them indigenous people.

In the meantime, the victims of Cocop continue to demand justice, but they won’t be around forever. As they get older, a new generation is rallying to make amends for the past before it is too late.

• Human rights
• Latin America
• Central America
• Indigenous peoples
• Maya people

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By  Logan Boon

University of Denver

Introduction

Guatemala is a nation of about 14 million people. It is geographically and demographically diverse, representing terrains that stretch from ocean to high mountains, and a population that is split between indigenous and Ladino (half indigenous/half Western) peoples. Guatemala has a high Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which continues to grow, but the disparity in socioeconomic levels within the nation is abysmal, mainly affecting the indigenous populations (Bureau of Western). After 36 years of civil war and genocide, beginning in 1960, Guatemala emerged into the light after the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords. Hailed as a tremendous success, Guatemala’s population still possesses deep divisions between the Ladino and indigenous populations, particularly within the government and political process. While the government has come far, creating a sustained peace in the country, much more is needed to ensure a sustainable peace and a united society in the future.

Precipitating Events: Democracy, Dictatorships, and US Interference

Following the economic crises in the 1930s, a group of working and middle class Guatemalans overthrew the country’s military dictator. For the next decade, Guatemala experienced democracy for the first and only time until the 1990s. Both of the elected presidents during this time, President Arevalo and President Arbenz, “guaranteed basic democratic liberties, abolished forced labor—which had been nearly universal for the indigenous population, guaranteed minimum wages and basic rights for workers and peasants, and increased social welfare and equality” (Jonas, 2000, 18). Beginning in 1952, under Arbenz’s leadership, the government established an agrarian reform, distributing land to over 100,000 families, primarily poor and indigenous, and expropriating unused land from the United Fruit Company, a US-based organization, to continue the reforms (Jonas, 2000, 19). 

The expropriation of the land from United Fruit Company set the United States on edge. The US had already been watching Guatemala closely, as the democratic presidents continued to establish social reforms and freedoms, including the acceptance of the communist party as a legitimate political party. Fearing Guatemala would become a strategic bloc of the Soviet Union in the Western Hemisphere, the United States took action (Jonas, 2000, 19). In June of 1954, a CIA-backed rebel group (?) entered Guatemala from Honduras and overthrew the Arbenz government. In its place, a pro-United States counterrevolutionary regime was installed. The new regime “immediately reversed the democratic and progressive legislation of the revolution, including land reform, and unleashed widespread repression” (Jonas, 2000, 19).

Crack downs on labor organizations, political opposition, and rural organizers continued for years to come, without opposition from the United States. In fact, the United States viewed the oppressive dictatorship as a positive change for Guatemala, seeing “two kinds of dictatorship, Communist (abhorrent), and right-wing (anti-Communist and acceptable as allies). Human rights are violated in Communist dictatorships and the US government will protest firmly. The hideous abuse of human rights in right-wing, authoritarian dictatorships is ignored or smoothed over” (Peace Pledge Union Info). The United States continued this relationship with Guatemala throughout the next three decades and multiple military dictators.

Issue Emergence: The First Wave

1960 marked the official start of the Guatemalan Civil War when an attempted military coup failed. The organizers of the coup managed to escape to Cuba and Eastern Guatemala, where they were able to begin mobilizing support to form a guerrilla force (Valentino, 2004, 206). By this point in history, “the illegitimacy of the ruling coalition and the refusal to permit even moderate reformist options created the conditions for the growth of a revolutionary guerrilla movement. Quite literally, there was no alternative ‘within the system’” (Jonas, 2000, 20).  After six years and two successive dictators (the United States- placed dictator was overthrown by another coup in 1958), a growing number of Ladino Guatemalans were ready for change. With no outlet to address their grievances within the political system, they were left with only resistance.

The first wave of guerrilla rebels, predominately Ladino, made an alliance with the military wing of the Guatemalan Communist Party but failed to gain widespread rural and indigenous support. The rural peasants had little interest in joining, “as they saw no reason to support one group of military officers against the other” (Valentino, 2004, 207). While the indigenous populations were both poor and discriminated against, this had been the norm for centuries, and they had no reason to support a small, inefficient grouping of rebel guerrillas who did not offer a better solution. They were also afraid of retaliation by the government and for the most part, remained bystanders to the first wave of guerrilla attacks.

This first wave of guerrilla efforts followed the Foco theory of guerrilla warfare, developed by Che Guevara. The theory insisted that “a small number of daring guerrillas could spark a national revolution by staging highly visible raids and terrorist attacks on government targets” (Valentino, 2004, 207). These attacks, then, would spark the revolutionary spirit and the rebellion would grow to the majority of the Guatemalan population. The first wave guerillas, however, employed minimal violence and had only about 6,000 civilian supporters. In the late 1960s, however, the guerrilla groups stepped up their attacks to a “bold series of kidnappings, assassinations and bombings” (Valentino, 2004, 207), sparking a violent campaign from the government in an effort to crush the guerrilla resistance and maintain its power. The government declared a state of siege and created a campaign that’s intent was to destroy the guerrilla bases in the eastern part of the country.  Rebels and their supporters were killed and their mutilated bodies were left in public as warnings for the rest (Valentino, 2004, 207).

Prior to the increased attacks from the guerrillas, the Guatemalan military was inefficient and poorly trained. However, once the threat of “communism” emerged (presented by the rebel groups who wished for inclusion of all political parties and who were supported by communist movements in other countries, like Cuba), the United States stepped forward again to professionalize the military and strengthen its counterinsurgency capabilities. In fact, the guerrillas were contained “only after a major counterinsurgency effort, organized, financed, and run directly by the United States along the lines of its operations in Vietnam” (Jonas, 2000, 21). In the end, although only a few hundred guerrillas had been active, the military killed between 5,000 and 10,000 people, creating the first wave of massive civilian casualties at the hands of the government. The government had effectively reduced the presence of the guerrillas and their supporters. During the next fifteen years there were only small-scale attacks by scattered rebel groups that were met with low-level counterterror efforts by the government (Valentino, 2004, 207-208).

Transformation: Changing Identities

During the early and middle 70s, while fighting was at a low, three major transformations in society took place, the first within the Catholic Church, the second within the guerrilla groups themselves, and finally within the indigenous populations. The transformation of the Catholic Church came at the grassroots level.  The leadership of the Church “began to shed earlier conservative positions and alliances, and align itself with social justice movements” (Totten, 2009, 379). Seeing the suffering of a vast majority of the Guatemalan population, the Catholic Church produced a “Church of the Poor,” which advocated against the suffering of the poor and marginalized populations of rural Guatemala. From this point on, the Church remained a crucial player in supporting the poor and documenting human rights abuses committed during the remainder of the armed conflict. As these changes took place, the government began to identify the Catholic Church as a part of the subversive movement and an ally of the Communists (Totten, 2009, 379).

Additional changes were being made in what was left of the guerrilla movement. The rebels realized that in order to win the armed struggle, they would need the support of the majority rural, inactive, indigenous population and began building relationships with them. This would prove a crucial component of gaining support for the future rebel movements. Acknowledging their failure to gain the support of the majority of rural Guatemala, particularly the indigenous populations, two of the three major guerrilla organizations “spent several years being educated by the indigenous population and organizing a political support base primarily in the western highlands” (Totten, 2009, 379).

Finally, the indigenous population of Guatemala went through a drastic transformation through a direct challenge to their identities. This challenge was brought on first by economic growth followed by drastic economic crisis, which “broke down the objective barriers that had kept the Mayas relatively isolated in the highlands” (Jonas, 2000, 22). The rural Mayans were forced to migrate to the coast and to the cities to participate in seasonal labor, increasing their interaction with the Ladino and urban populations. This interaction, rather than ridding them of their indigenous beliefs and values, “reinforced their struggle to preserve their indigenous identity” (Jonas, 2000, 22). This challenge of identity, coupled with removal from their own land through government reforms, created a large number of radicalized rural Mayans—they had had enough. During this same time, the government had stepped up presence and repression in the rural Mayan areas in further attempts to quell the rebel movements. This increased repression had “contradictory effects: rather than terrorizing the Mayas into passivity, by the late 1970s, it stimulated some of them to take up arms as the only available means of self-defense against state violence” (Jonas, 2000, 23).

Polarization and Spiraling: Rural Rebellion and Genocide

In 1976, a massive earthquake shook Guatemala, causing widespread destruction in the rural, highland areas. More than 20,000 individuals died and over a million were left homeless. In the wake of this tragedy, the government did very little to help restore the livelihoods of those affected (Valentino, 2004, 208). Without the aid of the government, severe poverty ravaged the rural indigenous populations. The guerrilla organizations, which had been biding their time, began to take advantage of the rural sentiments against the government and the rebellion began to spread. As the government began to increase violent strategies against the rural populations to prevent guerrilla support, their actions caused more and more individuals to join the guerrilla cause. In fact, “the majority of support for the guerrillas stemmed from the peasantry’s reaction to overly harsh government repression, not from revolutionary ideological impulses or social or economic discontent” (Valentino, 2004, 206).

The increased rural indigenous support drastically changed the insurgent strategy. Rather than following the Foco theory attacks by small groups, the guerrillas now had a mass-based strategy and the government was facing a growing rebellion of displeased peasants. At their height from 1980–82, the guerrillas had about 8,000 armed fighters and as much as 500,000 civilian supporters (Totten, 2009, 380). By 1981, the guerrillas had introduced themselves as a serious threat to the government, controlling “nine of Guatemala’s 22 provinces and [having] a significant presence in nine others” (Valentino, 2004, 209). With the increased guerrilla threats, the government, under then-President-General Romeo Lucas, changed their counterinsurgency tactics to “annihilate the guerrilla’s social base” (Valentino, 2004, 210). From 1981 until March of 1982, the government killed about 32,000 individuals , but the worst was yet to come (Valentino, 2004, 210). During this same time, several of the strongest guerrilla groups combined, creating a unified force for the first time in the civil war, forming the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity), or URNG (Totten, 2009, 380). The government had previously maintained the upper hand due to the inefficiency and lack of communication between the rebel groups. Now, this unified force presented a significant threat to the government of Guatemala, as the fractured groups united to create a powerful and efficient unit.

In March of 1982, President Lucas was dismissed by the army and replaced by General Efrain Rios Montt. Montt had been trained in counterinsurgency at the Academy of the Americas in the United States and took the government’s efforts to an entirely new level of violence and repression. In the period of 18 months following Montt’s acquisition of power, a strategic genocide was initiated in which Montt intended to “dry up the human sea in which the guerrilla fish swim” (Valentino, 2004, 210). In all, the military destroyed 440 villages (displacing over 1 million people) and killed up to 150,000 individuals (primarily unarmed indigenous civilians)  (Totten, 2009, 381). In the areas with the highest amount of guerilla activity, the military massacred over one third of the populations (Valentino, 2004, 210). The government also destroyed large parts of the highlands, particularly forests, in an effort to deny the guerrillas cover and shelter (Totten, 2009, 381).

Deescalatory Spiral: Movement Towards Civilian Rule

The violent counterinsurgency efforts by the Guatemalan government were successful in stamping out guerrilla resistance throughout the rest of the 1980s. The government reestablished its control over all guerrilla occupied territories and active guerrilla membership dropped to a mere 1,000 by 1988. In March of 1983, President-General Montt was overthrown by another military coup and General Oscar Victores took power (Valentino, 2004, 210). The overthrow of Montt was the first step in a long road to the return to civilian rule. While government repression continued, particularly through the blocking of opposition and left-wing political parties, the subsequent regimes began to understand that at least the façade of constitutional democracy was needed to win back the support of both the Guatemalan people and the international community (Jonas, 2000, 26).             Under Victores, a “constituent assembly was elected to write a new constitution containing basic guarantees of citizens’ rights, at least on paper, and presidential elections were held in late 1985” (Jonas, 2000, 26). The election remained “severely restricted and underrepresented” (Jonas, 2000, 26), however, it was deemed fair and free of fraud and for the first time in 15 years, non-military candidates were permitted (Jonas, 2000, 26). The election was won by a Christian Democrat, Vincio Cerezo, who did little to control or redirect military efforts away from opposition forces. Cerezo also continued the restriction of leftist opposition political parties and ignored the needs of the suffering indigenous populations (Jonas, 2000, 27).

The late 1980s led to the economic crisis that catapulted much of Latin America into poverty, negative growth, and increasing unemployment and inflation, while structural adjustment measures only exacerbated the problem. Without the ability to take successful measures against poverty, Guatemala now had “90% of the population living under the poverty line, with three-quarters of the population living in extreme poverty” and barely surviving (Jonas, 2000, 28). With a suffering support group and an opposition gradually moving towards reform, the URNG began to propose dialogue for the resolution of the war. Its support group of indigenous Guatemalans no longer wanted armed struggle:

Guatemala is one of the few countries in Latin America where the armed insurgent movement had operated continuously since the 1960s. But armed struggle is not what people choose: after 30 years of counterinsurgency war, and particularly after the holocaust of the early 1980s, the URNG could not simply propose another decade of war (Jonas, 2000, 31).

The URNG had begun to realize that its efforts would be more successful if it could gain power through political, rather than military means.

An emerging national consensus for the end of the armed struggle and for political negotiations was growing, led by the Catholic Church. In the fall of 1986, URNG sent a public letter to President Cerezo, proposing peace talks, to which the government did not respond (Jonas, 2000, 37). Even in August of 1987, when the Central American Peace Accords were signed in Guatemala City, ending the war in Nicaragua and paving the way for settlements in El Salvador, the Guatemalan government denied their need to negotiate. Stating that they had “defeated the insurgent leftist guerrilla movement, the army insisted that it had no reason to negotiate” (Jonas, 2000, 31). To reinforce their point, the government launched a final offensive “designed to consolidate its announced triumph over the URNG” (Jonas, 2000, 31). After three years of unsuccessful attempts, the government realized that it was not capable of achieving a true military victory and that formal peace talks were the only solution to the end of the civil war.

Elections were again held in 1990, and although further omission of leftist political groups occurred and only 30% of the eligible population voted, the elections were deemed non-fraudulent and represented a successful continuation of efforts towards civilian rule. Shortly before elections, in 1989, a National Reconciliation Commission was created by the Catholic Church to sponsor a National Dialogue. While the dialogue was boycotted by the government, army, and economic elites, a clear consensus emerged among “all other sectors in favor of a political settlement” (Jonas, 2000, 40). Meetings began in March 1990 between URNG and the new commission as well as with other political parties and social sectors. Present at all meetings was a representative of the UN Secretary General, participating as an observer (Jonas, 2000, 40).

Finally, in April 1991, “newly elected President Serrano opened direct negotiations with the URNG” (Jonas, 2000, 40). The emerging talks, which focused on democratization, human rights, and visions of the future, were resisted by the economic and military elites, who did not feel that a fully negotiated settlement was necessary or desirable. In late 1992, the process stalled over human rights issues and in 1993, President Serrano “attempted to seize absolute power, dissolve congress, and suspend the Constitution” (Jonas, 2000, 41). International pressure to remove aid and trade resulted in the removal of President Serrano. Ramiro de Leon Caprio took power in June 1993. Once his authority was validated, Leon put forward unrealistic preconditions on the negotiations, which included requiring the URNG to disarm before moving forward. With the outright rejection of Leon’s proposal by the URNG and their suspension of talks, the UN, who had previously played a third party, observational role, was asked to provide a more central, mediation and moderation role when negotiations resumed in January 1994 (Jonas, 2000, 43). Although the final road to peace was still wrought with stagnation, disagreements, and controversy, the involvement of the UN marked an important change in the direction and future success of the peace talks.

Conflict Resolution: The Peace Accords

In January 1994, talks resumed with a new central moderating role of the UN. Greater international involvement was welcomed and encouraged, including the formation of a “Group of Friends,” which included the governments of Mexico, Norway, Spain, the US, Venezuela, and Colombia (Jonas, 2000, 43). The remainder of 1994 included a series of important accord agreements, including the Comprehensive Agreement on Human Rights, The Agreement on Resettlement of the Population Groups Uprooted by the Armed Conflict, and the creation of a Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) through the Agreement on the Establishment of the Commission to Clarify Past Human Rights Violations and Acts of Violence that Have Caused the Guatemalan Population to Suffer (Jonas, 2000, 45). The CEH was controversial and challenged by military and economic elites, as it threatened to expose their roles in the massive number of civilian deaths during the early 1980s (Totten, 2009, 386). Though the government had signed each of these agreements, it did not seriously work to implement the requirements set forth within them. In fact, “human rights violations worsened dramatically and the war intensified during this period” (Jonas, 2000, 45). Based on the government’s lack of action, the URNG refused to continue negotiations until the provisions had been implemented.

When talks resumed again, one of the most hotly contested and controversial set of negotiations began: the Agreement on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples (AIRIP), which was signed in March of 1995. This agreement was extremely important, as the vast majority of those killed during the civil war and genocide were of Mayan descent. The agreement included statements that defined ethnic discrimination as a crime and that required indigenous rights, particularly language to be constitutionally recognized and officially promoted in “schools, social services, official communications and mass media, as well as legal proceedings” (Jonas, 2000, 45). Cultural rights and indigenous institutions were also to be protected, including “languages, names, ceremonial centers, sacred places, spirituality and use of native dress” (Jonas, 2000, 45). However, the most important declaration in the agreement specified the reformation of the constitution to make Guatemala officially “multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual” (Jonas, 2000, 45).

Coming off of a high point in negotiations after the signing of the agreement, a major scandal emerged from Washington. The scandal concerned “the involvement of a Guatemalan military officer on the CIA payroll in the early 1990s for the murders of US citizen Michael DeVine and URNG commander Efrain Bamaca” (Jonas, 2000, 45). The news severely stunted peace negotiations, which rolled to a halt and both the URNG and the international community pressured the US to break their decades-long tie with the Guatemalan Army. Following the departure from negotiations, in June 1995, the Consultative Group of Donor Countries, declared that “major funding for Guatemala would be withheld until after a final peace accord was signed and until tax reforms in Guatemala guaranteed internal financing” (Jonas, 2000, 46). For the first time, the economic elite in Guatemala joined the negotiating tables with the Government and the URNG as socioeconomic issues had been introduced. This proved to be a significant step in the peace accords, as all parties were now onboard with the negotiations.

In November 1995, a historical election, full of “firsts,” took place. For the first time since the civil war began:

a leftist coalition of popular and indigenous organizations came together as a political party, FDNG, to participate…the URNG agreed to suspend military actions during the last two weeks of electoral campaign, in exchange for a commitment from the major political parties that the peace negotiations would continue under a new government and that the accords already signed would be honored (Jonas, 2000, 46).

This means that the economic and political elite had finally agreed that the previously negotiated agreements were considered “Accords of State” and could not be removed or ignored by future governments.

With the election of President Alvaro Arzu of the Partido de Avanzada Nacional (PAN), winning by 2% of the votes, the government turned in a new direction. The leftist FDNG emerged as the third largest political party in the government. The government now included a “center-left ‘peace cabinet’ component” (Jonas, 2000, 50), and the government began to view and address the URNG as a negotiating partner, rather than using “ideologized attacks” including labeling the URNG as a “defeated force” or “subversive terrorists” or using other prevailing discourse from previous governments. In a return of good faith, URNG halted offensive armed actions in March of 1996, to which the government responded by halting offensive counterinsurgency operations, thus “marking the end of armed confrontations” (Jonas, 2000, 50-51).

Two more accords were signed; the first was the Agreement on Social and Economic Aspects and the Agrarian Situation, in May 1996, and the later and immensely important, Accord on Strengthening of Civilian Power and the Role of the Armed Forces in a Democratic Society, signed in September of 1996. The latter reform included “mandatory constitutional reforms to limit the functions of the previously omnipotent army to defend the national borders and of Guatemala’s territorial integrity…Eliminated…counterinsurgency units, reduced the size and budget of the army by one-third, and created a new civilian police force to guarantee civilian security.” (Jonas, 2000, 52). The accord also mandated reforms to eliminate impunity in the government and country by creating a new judicial system.

A final setback and potential threat to the success of the final signing of the peace accords occurred when “a high ranking cadre of one of the URNG organizations was responsible for the kidnapping of an 86-year-old woman from one of Guatemala’s richest families and a friend of President Arzu” (Jonas, 2000, 52-53). This breaking news was followed by the leak that the government had negotiated a swap in which… with the URNG for the kidnapped woman in exchange for the responsible cadre. Following the events, the government suspended demobilization and “with the backing of the UN moderator, suspended the peace talks for several weeks” (Jonas, 2000, 53). However, due to international pressure, the UN mediators and all of the previously signed agreements, the peace process continued. [1]  The final peace accord, the Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace was finally signed on December 29, 1996, creating an official end of the 36-year civil war in Guatemala (Jonas, 2000, 54).

In 1997, the final document of the CEH was published and presented in front of 10,000 individuals. The CEH had gathered testimony from 9,000 war victims and solicited written documentation from all players in the war, foreign and domestic (with little cooperation from the Guatemalan military). In its report titled “Memory of Silence,” the Commission found that “200,000 individuals were killed or disappeared during the course of the 36-year civil war…. that State forces were found to have committed 93% of the atrocities, the URNG was responsible for 3%, and the remaining 4% was carried out by other unidentified forces” (Totten, 2009, 386-387). The Commission also stated that it found that “rape and sadistic acts of sexual assault and torture against women were routine and systematic” and that the US involvement had been heavy in the development of counterinsurgency capabilities with full knowledge and indirect support of the massacres taking place. The CEH finding on the number of individuals killed, along with the overwhelming responsibility of the government for the deaths, created a controversial element of the CEH report. As genocide has not been included as eligible for amnesty in the final agreements of the peace accord, the government could (and should, according to the CEH) be prosecuted for their crimes (Totten, 2009, 388).

Sustainable Peace?

While Guatemala has made great strides to move forward from its turbulent past, the country still remains significantly divided. The country suffers from extremely high levels of violence, particularly against women and girls, and very few of the crimes are prosecuted. Due to the weak role of the civilian police force, the current and past presidents have increased the internal security role of the military, something that goes strictly against statements included in the peace accords. Besides an inefficient security force, Guatemala also suffers from extremely high levels of inequality, with the indigenous populations suffering the worst. Besides being impoverished, the Guatemalan indigenous population is also still severely excluded from the political, economic, and social structures of Guatemala.

Culture of Impunity

A few years after the signing of the final peace accords, Guatemala’s crime rates began to skyrocket. In 1998, Bishop Juan Geradri, the Coordinator of the Archbishop’s Office on Human rights, was murdered just two days after he shared the final report of the office. The report, “Recovery of Historical Memory,” also known as “Never Again” contained documents on the human rights abuses committed during the civil war. Three officers were were convicted for the crime in June  2001 and were sentenced to 30 years each (Pike, 2007). This crime was just the beginning of many to come that would involve human rights supporters, political activists and indigenous leaders. In 2002, “Guatemala experienced a grave crisis of public security. Assassinations, lynchings, kidnappings, theft, drug trafficking, prison uprising, among other acts of violence, affect the entire population and made 2002 one of the most violent years of the country’s post-war period” (Pike, 2007). In 2009, Guatemala experienced almost 6,500 homicides, and only 7% are investigated and only 2% involved a conviction (Freedom House, 2010).  

Most alarming about these acts of violence, however, is their increasing tendency to be against those politically affiliated, including indigenous leaders and judges. In fact, in 2010, Freedom House reported that over 49 judges and lawyers had been murdered since 2005 in the country and in 2007, one of the most violent elections in Guatemala’s history took place, with over 50 candidates, activists, and their relatives slain during the campaign period (Freedom House, 2010).

Organized crime and corruption are also growing problems in Guatemala, as drug trafficking remains one of the main sources of kidnapping and violence within the country. This problem is also spreading over into the security forces, as several police officers have recently been charged with drug-related crimes, which led to the 2009 dismissal of three top-level security officials. The judiciary system also suffers from inefficiency, corruption and intimidation, ensuring that justice remains threatened in today’s society (Bureau of Western).  

As the civilian security forces remain too weak and/or corrupt to deal with the growing problem of violence and organized crime, the past four Presidents have used a “constitutional clause to order the army to temporarily support the police in response to [the] nationwide wave of violent crime” (Bureau of Western). These actions are in direct threat to the 1996 peace accords, which stated that the mission of the armed forces would be exclusively on external threats. The increase of military presence in lieu of a secure police force is raising concerns among the indigenous and leftist populations. Fear remains that by growing the military, the government could once again create a reign of oppression against the Guatemalan population.

Finally, as a direct challenge to Guatemala’s turbulent past, very few of the top level individuals involved in the Guatemalan Genocide and Civil War have been brought to trial. While a few low-level soldiers have been placed on trial and convicted of several massacres that occurred during the war, individuals charged by the CEH, including former President Montt, remain un-convicted (Aviles, 2009, 13). A large majority of Guatemala’s Ladino and urban populations still deny that a genocide and massacres ever occurred, or, if they do believe, then they still understand them to be justified in effort to secure the State from a violent uprising (Hinton, 2009, 201). All of these actions have created what many scholars and human rights activists are calling Guatemala’s “Culture of Silence” (Hinton, 2009, 194). This silence has created an even greater level of discrimination of the Indigenous population by denying their suffering and violent past.

Indigenous Exclusion and Discrimination

As the indigenous population of Guatemala was the worst hit by the genocide and Civil War, they viewed the peace process as something that would benefit them in both the short- and long-term. The AIRIP promised greater inclusion into the political and social realms of Guatemala. However, while the indigenous population of Guatemala took the Accord as a sign of change and a better future, subsequent governments have interpreted the Accord loosely and viewed it as generally non-binding.  As such, the indigenous populations of Guatemala today still suffer from some of the worst poverty in the region, lack of land tenure and reform, political exclusion, and cultural exclusion.

The extreme poverty of the indigenous populations has yet to be seriously dealt with since the Accords. Even after the furthest-left leaning president that Guatemala has had, President Alvaro Colom, took power in 2008 ensuring that he would govern with a “Maya face,” the situation has not improved (Vallardes, 2010). Indigenous populations are severely at risk to poverty, malnutrition, and lack of sufficient schooling. In 2000, “eight out of 10 indigenous Guatemalans were poor, while among the non-indigenous rate was four out of ten. Those numbers have seen little change since” (Valladres, 2010). Furthermore, malnutrition among indigenous children under age 5 is about 58.6%, while it is 30.6% among non-indigenous counterparts. Indigenous populations suffer in the education realm as well and only “13.2% of the post-secondary student population…is indigenous” (Valladres, 2010). The lower socioeconomic status of the indigenous populations leaves them excluded from the mainstream of Guatemalan life, forcing them to struggle each day for their survival.

Because they are struggling, the indigenous populations are often taken advantage of by the government, even though the government is legally required to their voices and opinions. While the Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples stated that the “government would consider mandatory mechanisms for consultation when a project would directly affect indigenous communities” (Lemus, 2009), the government has done little to respect the opinions that these consultations produce. For example, international mining companies pose a threat to indigenous communities and are people off of their land. In 2005 a Canadian mining company was surveying areas surrounding multiple indigenous villages. The indigenous community came together to vote on the development of the mine, and nearly 100% were found to be severely opposed to its creation. The issue was taken to the Guatemalan Constitutional Court, which ruled that although the indigenous population has to be consulted before producing a mine or other development in or near their communities; their decisions have no legal standing (Lemus, 2009). Similar experiences have also occurred with the proposition of a large hydroelectric dam, which despite indigenous protests, has already displaced 3,500 community members and affected a further 6,000 through loss of land and livelihood (Lemus, 2009).

Another factor blocking the indigenous populations from participating in the political sector involves the language of political documents and the access to voting polls. There are still a limited number of political and government documents produced in indigenous languages (24 exist), and “few policemen, judges and other officials speak the indigenous languages.” There are also not many lawyers who speak indigenous languages and availability to translation services is scant (Aviles, 2009, 14). Furthermore, the election participation by indigenous populations remains low. Currently, less than half of the indigenous population is even registered to vote, with few actually actively participating in the election process. Another problem is the high level of illiteracy among the indigenous populations, limiting their knowledge of both the political process as well as the candidates running. Opportunity to vote and participate also plays a major problem, as many of the indigenous peoples live in isolated rural communities, where access to voting polls is slim. This has left the indigenous population severely underrepresented in the national arena. While Guatemala’s indigenous population represents somewhere between 40-60% of the overall population, currently only 15 of the 158 deputies in the National Assembly are indigenous (Aviles, 2009, 12). As such, their voices and concerns are rarely heard and taken seriously.

The indigenous Guatemalan population is also culturally excluded from society. Even though the AIRIP stated that Guatemala would become a multilingual, multicultural nation, it was not until “2002 that legislation was passed to protect their languages and to grant money to bilingual education” and even still, there are very few schools offering bilingual education in the indigenous areas, making it difficult for indigenous children to learn (Aviles, 2009, 14). Furthermore, there is a lack of national support for most indigenous rights and status, including “the right to wear traditional clothing, the right to use indigenous languages for education and judicial purposes, the right to administer their own indigenous systems of justice, greater political rights within indigenous communities and participation in national policy processes” (Aviles, 2009, 15).

Mending the Divisions: Towards a Truly Sustainable Peace

As Guatemala is a post-war nation, currently living in “peace” as far as armed conflict is concerned, drastic changes, such as the implementation of a power sharing or power dividing government would not be appropriate and would be likely to create further instability in the nation. As such, this paper makes the following recommendations in bridging the seemingly intractable divide between the indigenous and Ladino populations in Guatemala: (1) the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs; (2) increased availability of documents in indigenous languages and increased knowledge of officials in indigenous languages among security, judicial, and government; (3) increased access and opportunity to vote, (4) attempts to decrease the level of poverty in the indigenous populations, and; (5) increased capacity of civilian police forces.

Many nations in Latin America are beginning to realize the importance of having a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, including Venezuela, Paraguay, Bolivia, along with other areas in the world, including India, Australia, Canada, and Fiji. The government of Guatemala should consider the creation of a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs so that the issues surrounding the lives of indigenous peoples can be given a more prominent role in the political arena. Regardless of whether the percentage of indigenous peoples in Guatemala is 40% (government calculations) or 60% (international NGO calculations) (Aviles, 2009, 8), they represent a large portion of society. They are pressed with many problems that the rest of Guatemalan society does not have, particularly with cultural survival, language, poverty, and education. In addition to those issues, indigenous peoples also suffer discrimination on a daily basis. Creating a ministry to address these problems, may not initially solve all of them, but will bring indigenous problems into a place where they can no longer be ignored. While ministry positions are appointed by the President, this paper recommends the appointment of Rigoberta Menchu,1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, indigenous leader, and presidential candidate of 2007 as the head of this ministry. While Menchu only won about 3% of the total vote in the 2007 elections, she has a growing constituency and has a deep passion for both politics and the rights of indigenous peoples (Lemus, 2009). 

As discussed earlier, language remains a barrier to indigenous populations in Guatemala. Without access to government, political, judicial and social documents in their native languages, indigenous populations will not be able to be fully informed in the activities of the nation. They must be able to inform themselves of the politics of Guatemala if they are to truly be included in society. Furthermore, even though Guatemala is considered a multilingual nation, jobs in cities require employees to speak Spanish and frown upon traditional clothing. As schools in rural indigenous areas currently only promote Spanish language, the government needs to make a better effort to create bilingual education in these areas. The cultural survival of the native populations is crucially dependent upon retention of their language. Furthermore, they must feel that it is an important part of Guatemalan society as a whole. By producing documents in native languages, by training police forces, judiciary systems, and other civil-service officers in the languages of the indigenous populations, native peoples will feel like they are a valued and included part of society. Thus, the government should put greater effort into increased translation of documents into all indigenous languages (and making them widely available), training civil service employees in indigenous languages, and in increasing support for bilingual education in ingenious areas.

With an increased presence of indigenous issues, through the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, as well as the increased circulation of government and political documents in indigenous languages, the doors will open to wider participation in the electoral and political process. Widespread efforts should be made to register indigenous peoples to vote, followed by campaigns to inform them of the political and electoral process. Many indigenous peoples remain uniformed of the role that they can have in electing Presidents and government officials. Their apathy can also be traced to a feeling that indigenous affairs are far from the minds of most candidates. However, if indigenous populations had more of a voice, the rest of the political arena would be forced to listen due to the sheer force of their numbers. For instance, Menchu created a political party called WINAQ, meaning “people” or “humanity” in Quichua in an effort to gain a seat in 2012 (Lemus, 2009). In 2008, this party had 40,000 supporters and was still growing, making sure not to identify itself exclusively as an indigenous group, but rather a group that expresses the needs of all “villages in Guatemala: Maya, Ladino, Garifuna and Xinca” (Lemus, 2009). While indigenous populations should not have to have a specifically indigenous-oriented political party in power to promote their interests, it is a step in the right direction and is showing many indigenous communities that they do have a powerful voice when used.

In addition to increased political participation, the government should also create legal measures to work with indigenous populations in regard to mining and dam projects in and around their land. Currently, the government ignores indigenous voices even when these stakeholders are unanimously against such projects. They also displace these communities without compensation. The government, perhaps in partnership with a new Ministry of Indigenous Affairs, needs to create legal mechanisms for indigenous populations to disagree with, and potentially stop, such industries from taking over their land. When the projects provide a key aspect to the Guatemalan economy, the indigenous populations must then be consulted on proper compensation and resettlement efforts. They must become more included in the process.

If the indigenous populations are going to be able to actively participate in advocating for their political and human rights, their deeply rooted poverty must also be addressed simultaneously. With well over the majority of the indigenous population living below the poverty line, and most in extreme poverty (less than $1/day), their focus is on survival, not on voting in political elections. Rather, they are concerned about the malnutrition of their children, the lack of quality education (or the lack of ability to attend school), and land tenure issues. The Guatemalan government has attempted to alleviate poverty, namely by a Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) in indigenous areas, but they have had little success compared to other areas of Latin America.

Countries such as Brazil, have been extremely successful in raising large numbers of people above the poverty line, increasing school attendance and nutrition rates, and decreasing health problems, such as mother and infant mortality. Mexico and Brazil initiated cash transfers at rates of $15 per person for school children on stipulations of an 85% attendance rate and regular health check-ups. They also initiated similar programs for pregnant women and general programs for impoverished families. Through these programs, Brazil and Mexico were both able to decrease their Gini coefficients, which were similar to Guatemala’s current number, by 5% over a period of 10 years, while only contributing a small amount of money in relation to other government programs (Soares, 2007). Improving the quality of life of the indigenous populations is crucial to the overall success of the nation. Increased education, health and income would benefit the Guatemalan economy, as well as increase the ability for indigenous populations to participate in political, government, and social affairs. By becoming a more included part of society, they would be better able to spread the knowledge and awareness of their culture, sharing an important part of Guatemalan heritage.

Finally, one of the most important factors contributing to the future of Guatemalan peace and security is the increased capacity of the Guatemalan civilian police force. As armed violence, drug trafficking, and corruption of the police and judiciary units of the Guatemalan system are increasing, the government has had to increase military presence to retain security. Not only is this a violation of the Peace Accords, which stated that military force was only to be used only in external conflicts (Jonas, 2000, 52), but it instills a greater sense of fear and insecurity among the Guatemalan population, particularly the indigenous peoples. This paper recommends a greater portion of the overall budget of the government go towards retraining current police forces, hiring of additional forces to increase presence and capacity, and to increase the anti-corruption and impunity monitoring processes, to ensure that the security process is running as efficiently and transparently as possible. If the government cannot find the financial resources to make all of the suggested changes, this paper suggests that the government reach out to the “Group of Friends” from the Peace Accords for assistance. These partnering nations, as well as Guatemala, should see the crucial role that national security, through a civilian police force, rather than the military, has to the overall peace and security of the nation. If military presence continues to increase, there is a potential for increased rebel actions against the state, potentially sparking renewed conflict in the nation.

While Guatemala has most recently witnessed 36 years of violence civil war, including genocide, the country is making important positive steps. The creation and signing of various Peace Accords in the early–mid 1990s served as an important first step in removing the deep divisions within the nation and moving towards a stable and peaceful future. However, subsequent Presidents have failed to ensure proper application of multiple accords, most importantly the Accord on the Identity and Rights of Indigenous Populations. Through an increased military presence, increased poverty among indigenous populations, and little to no political participation or representation among indigenous populations, the government of Guatemala has made little change to ensure lasting peace in the nation. Peace can be created by increasing access and opportunity for indigenous people to participate in the political process. This can be accomplished by:

• translating official documents into indigenous languages
• training civil society in indigenous languages
• addressing poverty, poor health, and low levels of education
• improving the capacity of the civilian police force

 Guatemala has come very far since the beginning of the Civil War in 1960, but has much farther to go to ensure sustained peace and improved relations among its population. The changes necessary are within reach. They are possible through small measures of goodwill by the government and by increased recognition of the voices of the indigenous populations.

Works Cited

 Aviles, M., & Marthe, K. (2009). Guatemala - an inclusive democracy?, a case study of the indigenous inclusion in the democratization process.. Retrieved from  http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=24923&postid=1525204   Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. US Department of State. (2010, March 22). Background Note: Guatemala. Retrieved from  http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2045.htm   Freedom House. 2010. “Freedom in the World”.  www.freedomhouse.org   Hinton, A., & O'Neill, K. (Ed.). (2009). Genocide: truth, memory, and representation. USA: Duke University Press.   Jonas, S. (2000). Of centaurs and doves: guatemala's peace process. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.   Lemus, B. Peace Pledge Union Information. (2009, June 09). Guatemala’s neglected story: continued disregard for indigenous autonomy. Retrieved from  http://www.coha.org/guatemala%E2%80%99s-neglected-story-continued-disregard-for-indigenous-autonomy/   Peace Pledge Union Information. (2011). Genocide: Guatemala. Retrieved from  http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_guatemala.html   Pike, J. (2007, February 02).  Guatemala  civil war 1960-1996 . Retrieved from  http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/guatemala.htm   Soares, S. (2007, April). Conditional cash transfers in brazil, chile and mexico: impacts upon inequality. Retrieved from  http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCWorkingPaper35.pdf   Totten, S., & Parsons, W. (Ed.). (2009). Century of genocide: critical essays and eyewitness accounts. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.   Valentino, B. (2004). Final solutions: mass killing and genocide in the 20th century. USA: Cornell University Press.   Valladres, D. (2010, December 12). Guatemala’s neglected story: continued disregard for indigenous autonomy. Retrieved from  http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53843

[1]  In early December several agreements were signed including: An Agreement on the Definitive Ceasefire, the Agreement on Constitutional Reforms and the Electoral Regime, the Agreement on the Basis for the Legal Integration of the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, and the Agreement on the Implementation, Compliance and Verification Timetable for the Peace Agreements.

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The Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala (FAFG) has collected more than 500 video interviews from Guatemalan survivors and witnesses in Guatemala. All conducted in Spanish or K’iche’, the testimonies are being preserved and indexed by USC Shoah Foundation, which began adding them to the Visual History Archive in 2016. Currently there are 32 testimonies searchable in the Visual History Archive. FAFG continues to collect and grow the Guatemalan testimonies and collection.

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About the Collection

The Guatemalan Genocide refers to the killings of civilians, especially those of Mayan origin, as part of counter-insurgency operations during the 1960-1996 Guatemalan Civil War. While massacres took place in 1966-1967, the most intensive period of killings was from the Panzós massacre in 1978 until 1983. The VHA currently contains 14 interviews with survivors to the Guatemalan Genocide recorded by the Fundación de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala (13) and the USC Shoah Foundation (1). These interviews were recorded in 2015 in Guatemala (13) and the United States (1).

Brief Historical Background

Guatemala’s 36-year civil war devastated the Central American country in many ways, but one particularly brutal campaign by the government’s army stands out. An estimated 150,000 people—many of them rural villagers—were killed or “disappeared” in a three-year-long campaign to extirpate an ethnic group suspected of supporting antigovernment rebels.

As the Guatemalan civil war was about to enter its third decade in 1980, the army instituted “Operation Sophia,” which sought to undermine anti-government guerrilla by terrorizing or killing civilians whom the army suspected were supporting the insurgents. The primary targets were descendants of the Maya, whose indigenous civilization dominated the region until the arrival of Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century.

From 1980 to 1983, the army, supplemented by private “death squads” hired by wealthy landowners, systematically razed more than 400 villages, torching buildings and crops, slaughtering livestock, poisoning water supplies, and killing or abducting whomever they pleased. People who were snatched off the street or dragged out of their homes were often summarily executed and dumped in unmarked graves. They are called the “disappeared.”

At the same time, more than 100,000 women, most of them Maya, were raped, a United Nations commission later concluded. Amid the terror, as many as 1.5 million refugees—more than one in five people then living in the country—fled their homes. Around 200,000 people left the country entirely, crowding into refugee camps in southern Mexico.

Related Articles

Lesson for student protesters: Guatemala was genocide, Gaza is not

COMMENTARY Israel's brutal, indiscriminate counter-offensive in Gaza is indeed deplorable — but by equating it with genuine genocide like Guatemala's, protesters risk rendering genocide less meaningful.

Even at age 62, I remember the healthy, almost hormonal urge to protest injustice at age 22.

I also recall the undergraduate mission to learn the difference between kinds and degrees of injustices — so our protests would sound reasoned and credible and not petulant and gratuitous.

So on the one hand — although I denounce the demonstration lawlessness we’re seeing on campuses like Columbia — I understand the collegiate urge to protest the brutal Israeli counteroffensive in Gaza and Israel’s apartheid treatment of Palestinians.

But on the other hand, I’m dismayed by the students’ impulsive insistence that what they’re protesting is … genocide.

Which is why I think they’d do well to go back to class and discern the difference between Gaza and Guatemala.

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The latter is one of the injustice abysses my generation protested in the 1980s — a place where genocide did occur, as we’re reminded by a trial now underway in Guatemala City.

To be clear: I’m as disgusted as any Columbia freshman by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Gaza war campaign, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m an anti-Semite — it means I’m distressed by how unfairly Netanyahu’s brutish conduct reflects on the humane Jewish faith and community I revere.

Then again, I’m as appalled as any Jewish sophomore at Columbia by the Hamas leaders and militants who on Oct. 7 massacred more than a thousand Israeli civilians and took about 250 hostages, sparking the war. That terrorist atrocity just as unfairly reflects on the humane Muslim faith and friends I esteem — and we hear too little or nothing about that from the American kids in keffiyehs.

Their tent-camp condemnations would sound, well, more reasoned and credible if they included Hamas along with the Israeli Defense Forces.

And, just as important, they’d sound less petulant and gratuitous if they didn’t accuse the IDF of genocide.

Because what’s happening in Gaza today, for all its horrific excess, is not genocide.

Guatemala had a plan to erase the Maya's very identity and presence on earth. For all its horrible excess, Israel hasn't met that diabolical bar in Gaza.

Genocide is the intentional, targeted extermination of an entire ethnic group. The Holocaust. Rwanda. Bosnia. It’s a crime that eclipses even war crime. And it’s what Guatemalan prosecutors and witnesses are describing now in the genocide trial of former Army General Benedicto Lucas García.

In the 1980s, Lucas García and Guatemala’s U.S.-backed military carried out a campaign that decimated the country’s indigenous Maya.

The civil war raging then, and the right-wing government’s fight against left-wing guerrillas, were merely a pretext. Genocidal attacks on Guatemala’s Maya had been a sinister custom ever since the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado descended on the country 500 years ago. The Cold War simply spawned a 20th-century iteration of his barbarity.

Apocalyptic designs

I watched forensic experts exhume Maya remains in the 1990s. I heard their explanations that these were not battle casualties but homicide victims — executed every bit as routinely and programmatically in their villages as Jews were murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto.

What’s more, as an exiled Ixil Maya leader here in South Florida reminded me, there’s copious evidence that Lucas García’s mission had more apocalyptic designs than counterinsurgency. Many remember him stepping out of military helicopters at the scenes of massacres and bawling at survivors to never again wear their indigenous garments.

That to me is compelling proof of genocidal intent — slaughtering or removing people not just to deny a guerrilla army potential recruits, but to erase their very identity and presence on earth.

What Netanyahu and Israel’s military are doing in Gaza doesn’t meet that diabolical bar.

Yes, Netanyahu and the IDF have proven criminally indiscriminate in their attacks on Hamas forces in Gaza. Hamas has also proven criminally reprehensible, by using Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians as human shields. But we wouldn’t see more than 34,500 dead in Gaza today if the Israeli government weren’t so blind to, even contemptuous of, the Palestinian innocents caught in the crossfire — blind thanks to Netanyahu’s obsession with wiping Hamas off the map.

Still, that doesn’t mean Israel is following a premeditated plan to wipe Palestinians off the map.

U.S. college protesters need to understand that — because petulantly and gratuitously declaring genocide in Gaza makes the reasoned and credible identification of genocide in places like Guatemala less meaningful.