Guatemala genocide why

Virtually every major official involved in plotting the coup had a family member or business connection to United Fruit, and in President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA to arm, fund, and train the men who would overthrow the government the next year.

The U S continued to provide funding to the government until President Jimmy Carter took office in an d cut off military aid because of human rights abuses. The subsequent Reagan administration increased aid, citing human rights improvements.

This was clearly not the case, as the s was one of the deadliest periods of the genocide. Nearly all of the aid was going to the rural highlands where Mayans were most targeted.

Despite the overwhelming role of the U. The genocide itself did not receive much coverage by the U. In the midst of the Cold War, the guerrilla movement was an easy target, and guerilla fighters were often labeled as dangerous communists and were even falsely blamed as the perpetrators of massacres carried out by the government.

By the mids the international community was more aware of the human rights abuses occurring in Guatemala and put pressure on the government to end the war. In , the United Nations became involved in brokering a peace deal between the government and the guerrillas, and on December 29, , the Accord for a Firm and Lasting Peace was signed by the URNG and the Guatemalan government. Justice Process. In , Guatemala elected Claudia Paz y Paz as attorney general.

She was the first woman to hold the position and was responsible for beginning the justice process against perpetrators of the genocide. He was the first head of state to face genocide charges in his own country. He was also accused of torture, forced disappearances, state terrorism, mass rapes, and crimes against humanity. In May , Montt was found guilty of genocide for his role in the massacres of more than 1, indigenous Ixil Mayans.

The next year, the Constitutional Court forced Paz y Paz out of her position seven months before her term expired, preventing her from overseeing the retrial of Montt. The retrial eventually began behind closed doors, but Montt died in April before a verdict was reached. A retrial was ordered, but suspended in a ruling on May 6, On March 31, , in a separate case, a court ruled that Rios Montt could stand trial for genocide in the Dos Erres Massacre, in which more than civilians were killed.

As the national courts of Guatemala prove their intent to prosecute grave crimes, the Spanish National Court will not likely proceed. Further, the Commission found the state responsible for ninety-three percent of the acts of violence and the guerrillas URNG-Guatemalan Revolutionary Union responsible for three percent. The Ixil and Ixcan areas are located in the northern part of El Quiche with the Ixcan jungle north of the Ixil mountains.

There are 3, known victims of these massacres. If we locate the number of massacres and victims by date on the calendar of the regimes, Lucas Garcia is responsible for forty-five massacres with 1, victims from March to March and Rios Montt is responsible for thirty-two massacres with 1, victims from March to March CHART 5 Average Number of Victims per Massacre :However, it would be misleading to simply conclude that the number of massacres and massacre victims decreased under Rios Montt because 1, Maya fell victim to thirty-two army massacres under his regime.

Moreover, rather than a decrease in genocidal activities in the area, the number of victims per massacre actually increased under Rios Montt from an average of thirty-seven victims to forty-five, or an eighteen percent increase in number of victims per massacre. Furthermore, if we limit the time of study from the last three months under Lucas Garcia and the first three months under Rios Montt, we find Maya victims of twenty-four massacres under Lucas Garcia and 1, victims of nineteen massacres under Rios Montt.

Though there is a twenty-one percent drop in the number of known massacres, there is a twenty seven percent increase in the average number of victims in each massacre under Rios Montt.

In the first three months of the Rios Montt regime, the average number of victims per massacre increases from thirty-two to fifty-six. Further, the qualitative difference between an average of thirty-two and fifty-six victims is not village size, it is the systematic inclusion of women, children, and elderly in the slaughter.

Whereas it is during the last six months of the Lucas Garcia regime that the army began to include women, children, and elderly as targets in some massacres, it is under Rios Montt that their inclusion became a systematic practice.

Here again, while there is a thirteen percent drop in the number of massacres under Rios Montt, there is a twenty-five percent increase in the number of massacre victims during the first year of his regime. Again, under Rios Montt, there is an increase in the efficiency of the massacres with thirty percent more victims per massacre, on average.

And again, I want to emphasize that this thirty percent increase represents the systematic inclusion of women, children and elderly as massacre victims. CHART 8 Massacre Victims in Salama and Rabinal :If we combine the massacres in the municipality of Rabinal and the departmental capital of Salama, we find the ladino-dominated Salama suffered one percent of massacres while the predominantly Achi-Maya Rabinal suffered 99 percent of the massacres.

Another 95 Achi died in massacres during the last three months of the Lucas Garcia regime in - an average of 32 massacre victims per month. The army destroyed everything we had and left us with mental health problems and poverty. The bodies of more than half the people killed in the massacre have been recovered, but more than two dozen bodies remain in mass graves. In Mayan tradition, burial rites are important for both the living and dead.

The family and community of those killed are responsible for burying the dead to assist them in the next life, providing new clothing and other items they may need along their way. The failure to recover the body causes mental anguish for survivors who believe their loved one is in torment, unable to move on.

In , the Guatemalan government provided some funding for simple concrete pantheons to house some of the recovered bodies, but it still has not provided any economic redress for their families, many of whom lost their main breadwinners. Both reigned during the worst part of the genocide against Mayan communities in Guatemala in the early s.

Such reparations may include financial compensation, but also need to entail land restitution and measures to restore lost culture and heritage. Some of the victims my fellow researchers and I spoke to wanted Mayan history and knowledge to be taught to their children in schools in Mayan languages, and for a Mayan museum to be established in the western municipality of Nebaj to educate the community and future generations about what happened.