The Guatemalan genocide (Spanish: Genocidio guatemalteco), also referred to as the Maya genocide (Genocidio maya), or the Silent Holocaust (Holocausto silencioso), was the mass killing of the Maya Indigenous people during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive Guatemalan military governments that first took power following the CIA-instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilians at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965, and was a longstanding policy of the U.S.-backed military regimes. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces, mostly against civilians. Anti-communism was one of the main justifications for the mass killings with the military conflating Maya identity with communist subversion.
In the 1970s, the Guatemalan military began a genocidal campaign of mass killings and disappearances of Mayan peasants in the predominantly indigenous northern provinces. They accused the Maya of siding with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor who operated in the region. While massacres had occurred earlier in the war, the systematic use of terror against the Maya began around 1975 and peaked during the first half of the 1980s. The military carried out at least 626 massacres against the Maya during the civil war. They also acknowledged destroying 440 Mayan villages just between 1981 and 1983. In some municipalities, at least one-third of all villages were evacuated or destroyed by the army. Children were often targets of mass killings by the army, including in the Río Negro massacres between 1980 and 1982. A 1984 report by HRW discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror". In fact, the rights abuses were so severe that even the U.S. with its fervent anti-communist policy "kept its assistance comparatively limited. For most of the 1980s the Guatemalan army relied on fellow pariah-states like Argentina and South Africa for supplies."
An estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the war, including at least 40,000 persons enforced disappearances. A March 1985 study by the Juvenile Division of the Guatemala Supreme Court estimated that over 200,000 children had lost at least one parent in the war, and that between 45,000 and 60,000 adult Guatemalans had been killed between 1980 and 1985. The United Nations-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) found that 92% of civilian executions were carried out by government forces. The CEH documented 42,275 victims of human rights violations and acts of violence from 7,338 testimonies. 83% of the victims were Maya and 17% Ladino. 91% of victims were killed between 1978 and 1984, with 48% of deaths occurring in 1982 alone. In its final report in 1999, the CEH concluded that a genocide had taken place at the hands of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, and that U.S. training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques "had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation".
Former military dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) was indicted for his role in the most intense stage of the genocide. He was convicted in 2013 of ordering the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Indigenous group, but that sentence was overturned, and his retrial was not completed by the time of his death in 2018.
The Guatemalan genocide (Spanish: Genocidio guatemalteco), also referred to as the Maya genocide (Genocidio maya), or the Silent Holocaust (Holocausto silencioso), was the mass killing of the Maya Indigenous people during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive Guatemalan military governments that first took power following the CIA-instigated 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilians at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965, and was a longstanding policy of the U.S.-backed military regimes. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces, mostly against civilians. Anti-communism was one of the main justifications for the mass killings with the military conflating Maya identity with communist subversion.
In the 1970s, the Guatemalan military began a genocidal campaign of mass killings and disappearances of Mayan peasants in the predominantly indigenous northern provinces. They accused the Maya of siding with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor who operated in the region. While massacres had occurred earlier in the war, the systematic use of terror against the Maya began around 1975 and peaked during the first half of the 1980s. The military carried out at least 626 massacres against the Maya during the civil war. They also acknowledged destroying 440 Mayan villages just between 1981 and 1983. In some municipalities, at least one-third of all villages were evacuated or destroyed by the army. Children were often targets of mass killings by the army, including in the Río Negro massacres between 1980 and 1982. A 1984 report by HRW discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror". In fact, the rights abuses were so severe that even the U.S. with its fervent anti-communist policy "kept its assistance comparatively limited. For most of the 1980s the Guatemalan army relied on fellow pariah-states like Argentina and South Africa for supplies."
An estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the war, including at least 40,000 persons enforced disappearances. A March 1985 study by the Juvenile Division of the Guatemala Supreme Court estimated that over 200,000 children had lost at least one parent in the war, and that between 45,000 and 60,000 adult Guatemalans had been killed between 1980 and 1985. The United Nations-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) found that 92% of civilian executions were carried out by government forces. The CEH documented 42,275 victims of human rights violations and acts of violence from 7,338 testimonies. 83% of the victims were Maya and 17% Ladino. 91% of victims were killed between 1978 and 1984, with 48% of deaths occurring in 1982 alone. In its final report in 1999, the CEH concluded that a genocide had taken place at the hands of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, and that U.S. training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques "had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation".
Former military dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) was indicted for his role in the most intense stage of the genocide. He was convicted in 2013 of ordering the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Indigenous group, but that sentence was overturned, and his retrial was not completed by the time of his death in 2018.
1954 Guatemalan coup
The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état deposed the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz and marked the end of the Guatemalan Revolution. The coup had the goal of stopping and reverting the increasingly progressive policies of the democratically-elected Guatemalan government, which clashed with the business interests of US companies amidst the Cold War, notably the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita). It installed the military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas, the first in a series of U.S.-backed authoritarian rulers in Guatemala. The coup was largely the result of a CIA covert operation code-named PBSuccess.
Terror apparatus
Guatemalan intelligence was directed and executed mainly by two bodies: One, the Intelligence Section of the Army, subsequently called Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the National Defense and generally known as "G-2" or S-2. The other, the intelligence unit called Presidential Security Department, also known as "Archivo" or AGSAEMP (Archives and Support Services of the Presidential General Staff).
Archivo was formed with money and support from US advisers under President Enrique Peralta Azurdia, during which time it was known as the Presidential Intelligence Agency. A telecommunications database known as the Regional Telecommunications Center or La Regional was integrated into this agency and served as a vital part of the Guatemalan intelligence network. La Regional provided a link between the Presidential Intelligence Agency and all of the main security bodies, including the National Police, the Treasury Guard, the Judicial Police, by way of a VHF-FM intercity frequency. La Regional was also used as a depository for records and intelligence gathered on suspected "subversives", which would have included leftists, trade unionists, student activists, clergy, etc. This intelligence was used to draw up lists of persons to be assassinated.
Orders to carry out assassinations and "disappearances" were passed down the hierarchy to lower level security forces such as the Judicial Police (later renamed as the Detective Corps of the National Police and the DIT) or the Treasury Guard, whose agents – known as confidenciales – could be called from provincial army garrisons to be sent to the capital for unspecified purposes. Treasury Police and National Police confidenciales could also be contracted either through provincial army commanders or by direct contact with provincial commanders of the police services. The confidenciales assembled in the capital using this system were often used in covert operations involving the use of "death squads".
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has stated that the intelligence services in Guatemala have been responsible for multiple human rights violations. The Truth Commission writes that their activity included the "use of illegal detention centers or 'clandestine prisons', which existed in nearly all Army facilities, in many police installations and even in homes and on other private premises. In these places, victims were not only deprived of their liberty arbitrarily, but they were almost always subjected to interrogation, accompanied by torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the majority of cases, the detainees disappeared or were executed."
The CEH stated that at no time during the internal armed confrontation did the guerrilla groups have the military potential necessary to pose an imminent threat to the State. The number of insurgent combatants was too small to be able to compete in the military arena with the Army, which had more troops and superior weaponry, as well as better training and co-ordination. The State and the Army were well aware that the insurgents’ military capacity did not represent a real threat to Guatemala's political order. The CEH concludes that the State deliberately magnified the military threat of the insurgency, a practice justified by the concept of the internal enemy. The inclusion of all opponents under one banner, democratic or otherwise, pacifist or guerrilla, legal or illegal, communist or non-communist, served to justify numerous and serious crimes. Faced with widespread political, socio-economic and cultural opposition, the State resorted to military operations directed towards the physical annihilation or absolute intimidation of this opposition, through a plan of repression carried out mainly by the Army and national security forces. On this basis the CEH explains why the vast majority of the victims of the acts committed by the State were not combatants in guerrilla groups, but civilians.
About 35,000 people were to have died from the genocide.
Repression in the 1960s and 1970s
The use of terror by the military and police forces in Guatemala emerged in the mid-1960s when the military government began to use "disappearances" as a tactic to dismantle the infrastructure of the PGT and MR-13 guerrillas. On 3 and 5 March 1966, the G-2 and the Judicial Police raided three houses in Guatemala City, capturing 28 trade unionists and members of the PGT. Those captured included most of the PGT's central committee and peasant federation leader Leonardo Castillo Flores. All subsequently "disappeared" while in the custody of the security force and became known in subsequent months by the Guatemalan press as "the 28". This incident was followed by a wave of unexplained "disappearances" and killings in Guatemala City and in the countryside which were reported by the Guatemala City press.
When press censorship was lifted for a period, relatives of "the 28" and of others who had "disappeared" in the Zacapa-Izabal military zone went to the press or to the Association of University Students (AEU). Using its legal department, the AEU subsequently pressed for habeas corpus on behalf of the "disappeared" persons. The government denied any involvement in the killings and disappearances. On 16 July 1966, the AEU published a detailed report on abuses in the last months of the Peralta regime in which it named 35 individuals as involved in killings and disappearances, including military commissioners and members of the Ambulant Military Police (PMA) in coordination with the G-2. After the publication of this report, "death-squad" attacks on the AEU and on the University of San Carlos began to intensify. Many law students and members of the AEU were assassinated.
The use of such tactics increased dramatically after the inauguration of President Julio César Méndez Montenegro, who – in a bid to placate right-wing elements in the military – gave it carte blanche to engage in "any means necessary" to pacify the country. The military subsequently ran the counterinsurgency program autonomously from the Presidential House and appointed Vice-Defense Minister, Col. Manuel Francisco Sosa Avila as the main "counterinsurgency coordinator". In addition, the Army General Staff and the Ministry of Defense took control of the Presidential Intelligence Agency – which controlled the La Regional annex – and renamed it the Guatemalan National Security Service (Servicio de Seguridad Nacional de Guatemala – SSNG).
In the city and in the countryside, persons suspected of leftist sympathies began to disappear or turn up dead at an unprecedented rate. In the countryside most "disappearances" and killings were carried out by uniformed army patrols and by locally known PMA or military commissioners, while in the cities the abductions and "disappearances" were usually carried out by heavily armed men in plainclothes, operating out of army and police installations. The army and police denied responsibility, pointing the finger at right wing paramilitary death squads autonomous from the Guatemalan government.
One of the most notorious death squads operating during this period was the MANO, also known as the Mano Blanca ("White Hand"); initially formed by the MLN as a paramilitary front in June 1966 to prevent President Méndez Montenegro from taking office, the MANO was quickly taken over by the military and incorporated into the state's counter-terror apparatus. The MANO – while being the only death squad formed autonomously from the government – had a largely military membership, and received substantial funding from wealthy landowners. The MANO also received information from military intelligence through La Regional, with which it was linked to the Army General Staff and all of the main security forces.
The first leaflets by the MANO appeared on 3 June 1966 in Guatemala City, announcing the impending creation of the "White Hand" or "the hand the will eradicate National Renegades and traitors to the fatherland." In August 1966, MANO leaflets were distributed over Guatemala City by way of light aircraft openly landing in the Air Force section of La Aurora airbase. Their main message was that all patriotic citizens must fully support the army's counterinsurgency initiative and that the army was "the institution of the greatest importance at any latitude, representative of Authority, of Order, and of Respect" and that to "attack it, divide it, or to wish its destruction is indisputably treason to the fatherland."
The Zacapa program: 1966–68
With increased military aid from the United States, the 5,000-man Guatemalan Army mounted a large pacification effort in the departments of Zacapa and Izabal in October 1966 dubbed "Operation Guatemala". Col. Carlos Arana Osorio was appointed commander of the "Zacapa-Izabal Military Zone" and took charge of the counter-terror program with guidance and training from 1,000 US Green Berets. Under Colonel Arana's jurisdiction, military strategists armed and fielded various paramilitary death squads to supplement regular army and police units in clandestine terror operations against the FAR's civilian support base. Personnel, weapons, funds and operational instructions were supplied to these organizations by the armed forces. The death squads operated with impunity – permitted by the government to kill any civilians deemed to be either insurgents or insurgent collaborators. The civilian membership of the army's paramilitary units consisted largely of right-wing fanatics with ties to the MLN, founded and led by Mario Sandoval Alarcón, a former participant in the 1954 coup. By 1967, the Guatemalan army claimed to have 1,800 civilian paramilitaries under its direct control.
Blacklists were compiled of suspected guerrilla collaborators and those with communist leanings, as troops and paramilitaries moved through Zacapa systematically arresting suspected insurgents and collaborators; prisoners were either killed on the spot or "disappeared" after being taken to secret detention sites. In villages which the military identified as supportive of the FAR, the Army would publicly execute peasant leaders, threatening to execute more if the villagers did not collaborate with the authorities. Among the numerous clandestine sites used by the army for incommunicado detention and torture of suspects, was the army headquarters in the hamlet of La Palma near Rio Hondo, Zacapa, where hundreds of persons suspected of belonging to the FAR were tortured and executed under G-2 bureau chief Hernán Ovidio Morales Páiz in 1966 and 1967. Government forces often dumped the bodies of victims publicly to foment terror; the press regularly contained reports of unrecognizable corpses found floating in the Motagua River, mutilated by torture. Fishermen in the municipality of Gualan reportedly stopped fishing the Motagua on account of the large number of mutilated bodies found in nets.