THE UNTOLD TRUTH OF THE DEATH SQUAD DIARY
BY ANNA HARNES/AUG. 16, 2021 4:29 PM EDT
In 1960, a brutal civil war broke out in the small Latin American nation of Guatemala. It would last 36 years and claim hundreds of thousands of lives. The war was one of the effects of the growing tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, and communist versus authoritarian factions in Guatemala devolved into violence following a 1954 coup d'état. The coup had been in part encouraged by the U.S. government after the left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz moved to nationalize American-owned companies, per PBS.
In total, the Center for Justice and Accountability estimates that around 200,000 people were killed during the war. The CJA noted that while left-wing guerrilla fighters participated in violence and murder, a vast majority of the extrajudicial killings were carried out by the military or military-adjacent groups. The indigenous Mayan communities were hit particularly hard, accounting for 83% of all fatalities. The Mayan population had originally been a source of grass-roots support for Marxist guerrilla fighters — in part because many governmental policies hurt poor and rural farmers. As the war raged on, the idea that the Mayans were communist sympathizers became embedded into the ideology of right-wing figures, even if not necessarily true.
In 1966, civilian rule was restored to Guatemala when Julio César Méndez Montenegro, a former law professor, was elected president over the military-backed candidate. However, instead of easing tensions, it only made the situation worse by escalating the military's counterinsurgent operations while empowering more liberal factions. In fact, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report that went so far as to claim that the time from 1966 onward was a "state of terror," meaning that the country was subject to the most extreme level of violence.
The military and other paramilitary organizations targeted groups that had either ties or perceived sympathies to communism. Particular targets included workers' unions, journalists, and student activists. Many historians believe that the start of the "state of terror" actually occurred a few days before the election of Méndez Montenegro. On March 6, 1966, 28 union members and leaders of the Guatemalan Workers Party disappeared after being arrested during a clandestine meeting. It was later revealed that they had been tortured before being killed.
Though the Guatemalan government always denied having any knowledge or involvement with the disappearances, a book known as the "Death Squad Diary," or "Diario Militar," revealed that this was not true.
THE DIARY WAS A CREEPY CATALOG OF MURDER
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