Documentary on Genocide in Guatemala Death in Maya Villages

      In 1981 the Guatemalan army began to move into the Quiché Province in the Western Highlands of that country in an effort to eliminate a 3,000 man guerrilla force that had been challenging the military dictatorships since the 1960’s. Following the restoration of peace during the period 1982-1989, and in more recent years, rumors began to surface regarding mass killings and other atrocities committed by the Guatemalan forces against the civilian populations of indigenous Maya in various villages.  There had been reports by humanitarian groups that these massacres had occurred, and that the Guatemalan army was responsible, but they could not provide enough evidence to prove them.  According the U.S. Embassy and State Department, it was not possible to clearly determine whether the guerrillas or the Guatemalan army were responsible. 

     Seventeen years later, teams of forensic anthropologists and the family members of victims of the disappeared and murdered, began to reveal the secrets that had been kept from much of the public for many years.  Andrés, a husband and father of victims that he helped bury years before, aided the team in locating and digging up the graves of the victims.  Other witnesses to the crimes described how the soldiers went from house to house, and village to village, taking women and children to the cornfields and woods where they executed them. 

     The Guatemalan Truth Commission has since revealed that more than 400 separate such incidents occurred in the Western Highlands involving 100,000 victims and 95% were victims of the Guatemalan army, paramilitary, and vigilante groups.  Dr. Christian Tomeschat of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation, stated that during the counter-insurgency launched between 1981-1983, in certain parts of the country, agents of the Guatemalan government committed acts of genocide against the Mayan people.  However, the Guatemalan military did not show a keen interest in providing names of their leaders who might be responsible for ordering the massacres.  A Roman Catholic bishop who declared to his congregation that the people “needed to know the truth of the atrocities in order to heal”, was assassinated three days later near his home. 

     CIA and Defense Intelligence cables have revealed that the Guatemalan army believed that because the Ixil Maya were pro EGP, (a guerrilla group), they had “created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike.”  Also, declassified document that were later found describe how to murder and conduct counter-insurgency, including tactics for “disappearing” victims.  Since 1966 there have been approximately 45,000 civilians, union leaders, and students who have disappeared and not been found.  The systematic murder, torture, and disappearing of the Mayan Guatemalans is a manifest example of genocide in the Twentieth Century.  It was carried out by the forces ordered by the government, hidden mostly from the public at large, against an unarmed civilian population, including numerous rapes of women, with the primary purpose of eliminating the entire population of an indigenous ethnic group.  The genocide took place during a time of war, supposedly giving it justification.  Documentation was also established that implicated the U.S. Government in support of the Guatemalan army. 

     During his term President Clinton acknowledged and apologized to the Guatemalan people for past U.S. involvement in Guatemala and other Central American countries.  However, thirty years after the massacres occurred, the Maya communities are still desperately poor, and still seeking justice for the genocide committed against them. 

http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_guatemala.html

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/efrain_rios_montt/index.html