A "Dark Chapter" of the Cold War

Guatemala's four decades of State repression did not happen in a vacuum. There are discernible national and international causes. Powerful sectors of the Guatemalan society, allied with the US government and certain business sectors, benefited materially and economically from the repression. Guatemala's racial, economic and political structures have long favored the predominantly white and ladino (of mixed Spanish and Mayan ancestry) minority.

During the second half of the 20th century, the central justification for the use of repression against the poor, Mayan majority has been that of the "fight against communism". Indeed, since World War II, and particularly since 1954 when the United States orchestrated the overthrow of Guatemala's government, the majority of political crimes and human rights violations throughout the Americas have been committed by US-backed militaries and death squads -- always in the name of fighting communism.

The Strategy of Mass Murder and Terror

The Guatemalan military, and those who defend their actions, rationalize that during times of war innocent civilians are sometimes caught in the crossfire. In this way, they argue that the civilian death toll during the last several decades was an inevitable, if regrettable result of the internal armed conflict. This argument studiously ignores the fact that civilians and entire communities were intentionally targeted by the Guatemalan Army, particularly in the "scorched earth" campaign of the early 1980s.

The strategies of repression used in Guatemala were developed by the United States in the Vietnam War. When the Guatemalan State was no longer able to control the human rights/social justice demands of the civilian population through political means and a lower level of repression, it simply and brutally increased the violence, resorting to a campaign of massacres.

Though there had been massacres in the 1970s, and there have been numerous since, they were implemented as part of a calculated military policy in the early 1980s. In the infamous formulation, the Army figured that it would "drain the sea" of civilian support bases in which the guerrillas operated.

The profundity of the consequences are difficult to fully comprehend. Over 440 highland villages were destroyed; close to 200,000 people were killed or disappeared; uncountable numbers of children, women and men were raped and tortured; and over 1 million more were displaced from their homes.

Once a massified level of death and destruction was attained in the early 1980s, the Army could easily control much of the remaining population. After the height of the massacres in the early 80s, a lower level of repression continued, maintaining a profound fear among the population, and ensuring that no one would denounce the massacres or the whereabouts of mass graves.

At this point the Army began to provide food and other assistance to campesinos who were willing or coerced to live under military control in "model villages." General Hector Gramajo, Minister of Defense in the 1980s, explained that the new, post-massacre strategy was "more humanitarian," since the Army was "providing development [!] for 70% of the population, while we kill 30%. Before, the strategy was to kill 100%."

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The Exhumation Process

"The earth has hidden horrible truths about an infinite number of massacred Guatemalans. Now the earth begins to speak". -- Miguel Angel Albizures, political analyst, Siglo XXI, May 18, 1994.

It is difficult to estimate the total number of mass grave sites throughout Guatemala. The Catholic Church's Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory has verified the more than 400 cases of massacres and over 300 clandestine burial sites, but many consider this a low estimate.

EAFG (Forensic Anthropology Team of Guatemala) director Fernando Moscoso has gone farther in his calculations. "People have estimated that there are 400 of these clandestine cemeteries spread all over the country, but that is absurd," he told one reporter. "There are many, many more than that, the result of a systematic policy of extermination."

The legacies of fear and silence are only recently being overcome in much of Guatemala. Since 1992, 25 mass graves have been exhumed by forensic anthropologists from Guatemala and Argentina, the latter country's "dirty war" providing anthropologists there with an unwanted crash course in the excavation of mass graves.

Though every exhumation differs, each is part of a countrywide process of painstakingly uncovering the atrocities of the past. The numbers of bodies (mostly partial or full skeletal remains, some with shreds of clothing and shoes) recovered vary from three or four cadavers to hundreds. Taking a break from exhuming a mass grave at the Plan de Sanchez massacre site (where an estimated 250 persons were killed on July 18, 1982) a member of the EAFG commented: "Plan de Sanchez was not the biggest, nor the worst, nor the most tragic massacre in Guatemala. It was one more within a pattern, within the military counterinsurgency strategy of scorched earth."

The exhumation process is at once simple and profound: a people's attempt to recover (and, in a sense, repair) their personal, family and community history, to publicly tell the truth about the past, and to strive for some measure of justice.

Though not the only effort going on in Guatemala to expose the crimes and suffering of the past, the exhumations -- spearheaded, it needs to be emphasized again, by the surviving victims themselves -- provide the most graphic and blunt exposure of the crimes of the past.

Although nothing will ever change the horrors of the past, or heal the pain of so many families, the surviving victims proceed with the exhumations. Providing an initial response to a family's and community's loss, trauma and suffering, the exhumations also make a political statement. After the 'dig' and ensuing forensic laboratory work has been completed, the surviving victims rebury their murdered loved ones with religious and public ceremonies for all to see, including the individuals and institutions that committed the massacres.

Commemorative monuments are erected, including the names of the dead and the names of the guilty; it is a crucial element to the recovery of the surviving victims that they publicly remember the names and lives of the dead. In this process, community and family members find a degree of personal closure along with political empowerment.

<Back Forward>

• page 1
  Intro
  Dealing with the past
  
  
• page 2 [this page]
  A "Dark Chapter" of the Cold War
  The Strategy of Mass Murder and Terror
  The Exhumation Process
  
  
• page 3
  Justice and Reconciliation
  Conclusion
  Action