Introduction
Home to roughly 15.5 million people, Guatemala contains one the largest indigenous populations in Central America, with nearly 60% of its population indigenous; the remainder consists of ladinos [people of mixed European descent]. Historically, there were many class tensions between the ladinos and the indigenous remnant from Spanish conquest, thus leading to imminent conflict.
Guatemalan Civil War
This terroristic repression caused left-wing insurgents to rise up in response against the military, leading to a cycle of rebellion and government oppression.
"How could I tell them of watching a soldier bayonet my aunt in the stomach, rip out her four-month fetus, and smash it against a house post? How could I speak to them of our children waking up screaming in the middle of the night, beyond comforting, and of our nightly prayers to God for justice in our land? And how should we seek justice, by arming ourselves?" |
Silent Holocaust
"You must watch their eyes. No one will talk. You must try and see what they may be trying to tell you with their eyes...If you try to [go to the countryside]...the thing that will most move you is the silence. They will not talk to you because to talk would mean risking their very lives, and the people are already terrorized and prefer not to talk. What you'll really notice is that people will do one of two things. Either they will say that the army is very good, or they will not say anything. They are never going to tell you that it's the army that attacks them." |
The "Silent Holocaust" began with Ríos Montt in 1982. He targeted Mayan indigenous groups, convinced they were the source of the insurgency.
"In reality, the subversives need the support of the population. There is a principle of Mao Zedong, where he says that water is to the fish what the people are to the guerrilla. The fish, without water, dies! The guerrilla, without the people, dies."
-Colonel Francisco Gordillo Martínez, member of Montt's military triumvirate; When the Mountains Tremble
Ríos Montt and his administration subsequently mapped out the complete genocide of designated Mayan communities, while employing the usage of concentration ("model") camps. A later investigation by the United Nations CEH (Commission for Historical Clarification) documented 626 army massacres between 1981 and 1983. |
"[The CEH found] evidence of multiple ferocious acts preceding, accompanying, and following the killing of the victims. The assassination of children, often by beating them against the wall or by throwing them alive into graves to be later crushed by the bodies of dead adults...pouring gasoline on people and burning them alive...The military destroyed ceremonial sites, sacred places, and cultural symbols. Indigenous language and dress were repressed...Legitimate authority of the communities was destroyed."
-Greg Grandin, "It Was Heaven That They Burned"; qtd from Guatemala: Memory of Silence; Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification