Guatemalan genocide

The Guatemalan genocide, also called the Silent Holocaust, refers to the massacre of Maya civilians in the Central American country of Guatemala. The genocide took place during a civil war between left-wing guerilla groups and the Guatemalan Army that lasted from 1960 to 1996. The massacres occurred in part because the military believed the Maya were recruiting and hiding guerillas in their villages. Because of this, the military destroyed more than 600 villages and killed most of their inhabitants.

By the end of the civil war, more than 200,000 people were murdered or forcefully disappeared by the Guatemalan military. According to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 83 percent of those killed were unarmed Maya civilians.

Background

Guatemala is a small, mountainous country in Central America. Long ago, it was home to the Maya civilization, an advanced indigenous society in Mesoamerica, a term that describes Mexico and Central America before the Spanish conquered the area during the sixteenth century. Around the sixth century CE, the Maya civilization reached its peak. Unlike other indigenous populations in Mesoamerica, the Maya lived in one large region, which encompassed all of the Yucatan Peninsula and what is now Guatemala, Belize, and parts of the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco as well as the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. The Maya were skilled in architecture, mathematics, and hieroglyphic writing. They lived in great stone cities, which helped protect them from invasions.

Guatemala is known for its ethnic diversity. Its indigenous populations include the Maya, Xinca, and Garifuna people. These three groups have a population of about 12 million, which is half the country’s population. The Ladino population, which is of mixed Spanish-Maya heritage, constitutes the other half. Even though they are descendants of the Maya, the Ladinos consider themselves to be superior.

When the Europeans invaded the region in the sixteenth century, many Maya were either forced into slavery or killed. While the Maya managed to survive into the future, they are among the most underprivileged in the country and frequently face racism and discrimination.

Overview

Several events led to the civil war during which the Guatemalan army massacred hundreds of thousands of Maya. Among them was the democratic election of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman as president of Guatemala in 1951. The liberal Arbenz wanted to help the country’s indigenous people by giving them land. However, the powerful United Fruit Company (UFC), a US-based enterprise, owned more than half of the land in Guatemala along with the country’s railroads and steamships. The UFC grew bananas in Central America, which it sold in the United States and Europe. Arbenz instituted a program to buy back the land and redistribute it to Guatemala’s poor. This angered the company’s investors who accused Arbenz of being a Communist for failing to support US interests in Guatemala. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was a strong opponent of communism, and his law firm represented the UFC. His brother, Allen Dulles, was the director of the CIA and on the board of the UFC.

In 1954, the United States backed the Guatemalan military, which was led by Colonel Carlos Castillo. The military then ousted Arbenz, and Castillo became president of Guatemala. He immediately reversed Arbenz’s land redistribution and took away voting rights for illiterate Guatemalans. Castillo’s regime executed hundreds of people suspected of being Communists and dissolved the country’s labor unions. Soon, left-wing guerrilla groups began to fight against governmental oppression. Castillo was murdered in 1958 and General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes became president. Ydigoras’s administration was plagued with corruption, and his election caused significant social turmoil that led to the formation of a powerful gorilla group called MR-13.

Military Rule

After Ydigoras, Guatemala had a succession of presidents who tried to eradicate the guerrilla groups. One of the most ruthless was President Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio, elected in 1970. Arana encouraged the military to use violence to wipe out the guerrillas and the indigenous villages where they were thought to be hiding. Arana received substantial military support from the United States to protect the public from the guerrillas. The United States supplied the Guatemalan army with weapons, technology, and even military advisors. Arana’s regime used death squads, led by police and the military, to assassinate guerrillas, suspected guerrilla sympathizers, trade union supporters, and opposition leaders. During Arana’s presidency, more than 20,000 people were killed or disappeared.

Operation Sofia

At the height of the civil war in 1982, Guatemala was under the direction of General Jose Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a military coup and served as the country’s president for about a year. Rios Montt instituted a counterinsurgency campaign called “Operation Sofia,” which resulted in what would later be called the Guatemalan genocide. Using his “scorched earth” military strategy, Rios Montt ordered special elite units called Kaibiles to destroy and burn indigenous villages. The Kaibiles murdered villagers, slaughtered livestock, and polluted water supplies. They raped many women and murdered thousands of children.

During Operation Sofia, hundreds of thousands of Maya were either killed or forcefully disappeared. Those who disappeared were usually secretly abducted, killed, and then buried in mass, unmarked graves. In addition to those killed, about 1.5 million people were displaced from their homes and another 150,000 fled to Mexico.

In May 1985, a new constitution was approved that focused more on human rights. During the same year, Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo was elected president. He was the first civilian president of Guatemala in fifteen years. However, Cerezo was unable to control the military, and the death squads continued to assassinate civilians.

The massacres continued until 1996, when the Guatemalan government under the direction of President Alvaro Enrique Arzu Yrigoyen signed a peace agreement with the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (URNG), a Marxist rebel army. Part of the peace agreement directed the United Nations (UN) to create the Commission of Historical Clarification (CEH). In February 1999, the CEH released the report “Guatemala: Memory of Silence,” which stated that the government ordered a policy of genocide to be carried out against the Maya.

Aftermath

In 2009, internal records presented as evidence to the Spanish National Court were posted on the National Security Archive’s website. These records indicate under Operation Sofia, thousands of indigenous people were massacred. According to the CEH, these records prove that an act of genocide occurred against the Maya people.

A death squad diary was also discovered. This was a logbook of executions, kidnappings, disappearances, torture, and secret detentions between 1983 and 1985. The diary was kept by the Archivo, a secret intelligence unit under the direction of President Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores, who had led the country from 1983 to 1986.

Convictions

Many attempts have been made to seek justice against those responsible for the Guatemalan genocide. In November 1998, three former members of a civil patrol—civilians who assisted the military—were tried for genocide. They, along with 42 others, murdered 77 women and 107 children. The civil patrol officers were found guilty and sentenced to death. This was the first criminal case arising from the genocide.

In September 2009, former military commander Felipe Cusanero Coj became the first person convicted for forced disappearances during the civil war. Cusanero was found guilty of the disappearances of six peasant farmers and sentenced to 150 years in prison (25 years per person). Even after being convicted, Cusanero refused to provide the victims’ families with details about their whereabouts.

Former general Hector Mario Lopez Fuentez was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in June 2011. Lopez planned and authorized operations that resulted in the death of about 317 people. Lopez was also charged with participating in forced disappearances, torture, and executions. However, Lopez died in 2015 before being convicted.

In August 2011, three members of the Kaibile were charged with massacring 201 people in a village in northern Guatemala. The three men received a prison sentence of 6,060 years—30 years for each death and 30 years for crimes against humanity. A former second lieutenant was also sentenced to 6,066 for the same massacre but was given an extra six years for stealing from his victims.

Perhaps the most famous trial related to the genocide was that of Guatemala’s former president Efrain Rios Montt and his chief intelligence officer, Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez. Both were indicted for genocide because of the scorched earth policy they implemented in the 1980s, which resulted in the death of 1,771 Maya. Rios Montt was also accused of orchestrating torture, terrorism, and mass rapes. Rios Montt was convicted and Sanchez was acquitted, but the verdicts were overturned because of a technicality. The trial restarted in 2015 but Rios Montt died in 2018 before it ended. Also in 2018, Rodriguez was acquitted of both genocide and crimes against humanity. As of early 2019, Rio Montt was the only head of state ever prosecuted for genocide by his own country.

In May 2018, former general Manuel Benedicto Lucas Garcia was found guilty of the torture and rape of then nineteen-year-old Emma Guadupe Molina Theissen, who had been stopped at a roadblock while carrying political propaganda. Several days later, she escaped from the detention center where she was being held. Members of the military dressed in civilian clothes went to her home looking for her but found only her fourteen-year-old brother, whom they kidnapped. Her brother was never seen again. Lucas Garcia was sentenced to fifty-eight years in prison. Three other officials also involved in the torture and rape received the same sentence.

Restitution

Because of the genocide, the Maya’s culture and way of life have been irrevocably damaged. The loss of so many Maya means the loss of traditional knowledge, languages, and cultural practices. The Maya were also forcibly removed from their land during the civil war in part because the government wanted to use it for large-scale agriculture and mining. Maya children who have survived were unable to attend school during the civil war. Because of this, they have not learned to read and write, which limits their future to becoming peasants without land.

According to the Maya, the government has done little or nothing to help them. They seek restitution in the form of financial compensation but also in the form of land. They want measures to be taken to restore their culture and languages. This could be achieved by teaching Maya history and languages in schools. They request that a museum be established, so future generations can learn about the genocide. They want the causes of the genocide to be addressed to prevent such violence from occurring again in the future—yet violence because of racism still occurs in Guatemala.

Proposed Amnesty Bill

In June 2018, a bill was introduced that would grant retroactive amnesty to those who have committed crimes during the civil war, even serious crimes such as murder. Bill 5377 would also free members of the military who were imprisoned for crimes such as executions, forced disappearances, torture, and rape—most likely within twenty-four hours. If the bill is passed, those involved in the trials may be persecuted. Victims, witnesses, and lawyers may become targets of violence. As of early 2019, bill 5377 was temporarily stalled in the Guatemalan Congress. However, another legislative initiative was introduced that seeks to reduce prison overcrowding by releasing inmates over the age of seventy. This would free many former members of the military who were convicted of genocide.

Bibliography

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“Genocide in Guatemala.” Holocaust Museum, Houston, www.hmh.org/library/research/genocide-in-guatemala-guide/. Accessed 6 May 2019.

“Guatemala.” World Without Genocide, July 2018, worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/guatemala. Accessed 6 May 2018.

“Guatemala’s history of genocide hurts Mayan communities to this day.” The Conversation, 18 June, 2018, theconversation.com/guatemalas-history-of-genocide-hurts-mayan-communities-to-this-day-97796. Accessed 6 May 2019.

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