Guatemalans Continue to Dignify Victims of Genocide
Guatemalans Continue to Dignify Victims of Genocide
By: James Rodríguez
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| Photo: James Rodríguez
Published 12 November 2015
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In the 1980s, U.S.-backed military forces in Guatemala massacred Indigenous communities. Today, Guatemalans continue to search for the victims.
The brutal Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996) left over 200,000 civilian victims. According to the United Nations Truth Commission, the Armed Forces carried out over 600 massacres against unarmed communities - mostly rural indigenous Mayans - as part of a counterinsurgency strategy that resulted in genocide. The Ixil Mayan region, located in the highlands of Quiché and composed of the municipalities of Nebaj, Cotzal and Chajul, suffered the brunt of counterinsurgency operations in the early 1980s. Dozens of massacres ravaged the local population, thousands fled seeking refuge in the deep mountain forests or lowland jungles, while many were forced to serve as Self-Defense Civil Patrolmen – makeshift paramilitary forces controlled by the Army and made up of local villagers conscripted by force.
Achieving some sort of inner peace for those alive by finding, exhuming and eventually burying family members who were killed or forcibly disappeared has been an ongoing and exhaustive process. Since 2011, however, the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) has been using sophisticated DNA technology along with software developed after the 9/11 attacks in the United States to speed up the recognition of thousands of victims exhumed from clandestine graves.
Since the early 2000s, human rights activists and war victims have focused on one principal strategy as a foundation for moving Guatemalan society forward: through judicial justice against the perpetrators and masterminds.
On May 10, 2013, for the first time in world history, a former head of state was not only tried for genocide and crimes against humanity in a national court, but also found guilty of these charges. Former Guatemalan de facto head of state Jose Efrain Rios Montt, who ruled Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983, was sentenced to 80 years of jail for ordering the deaths of 1,771 Ixil Mayans through the development and implementation of military plans aimed at killing unarmed civilians.
More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Guatemalans-Continue-to-Dignify-Victims-of-Genocide-20151111-0028.html