Guatemalan genocide

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.[33] 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.[34] The death squads operated with impunity – permitted by the government to kill any civilians deemed to be either insurgents or insurgent collaborators.[28] 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. [35]

Blacklists were compiled of suspected guerrilla collaborators and those with communist leanings,[36] 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.[27] 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[37] 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,[38] 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.[39] 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.[40] Fishermen in the municipality of Gualan reportedly stopped fishing the Motagua on account of the large number of mutilated bodies found in nets.

Estimates of the number of victims of the army-led counter-terror in the east run in the thousands to tens of thousands. In a 1976 report, Amnesty International cited estimates that 3,000 to 8,000 peasants were killed by the army and paramilitary organizations in Zacapa between October 1966 and March 1968.[41][42] [43] Other estimates put the death toll at 15,000 in Zacapa during the Mendez period.[44] As a result, Colonel Arana Osorio subsequently earned the nickname "The Butcher of Zacapa" for his brutality. Many high-ranking veterans of the terror campaign – who became known as the "Zacapa Group" – went on to hold positions of great power in subsequent military regime. Among those involved in the Zacapa program were four future Guatemalan presidents – Col. Arana Osorio (1970–1974), Gen. Kjell Eugenio Laugerrud Garcia (1974–1978), Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia (1978–1982) and Gen. Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores (1983–1986). Arana's garrison intelligence chief – Col. German Chupina Barahona – went on to become the commander of the Mobile Military Police (PMA) and later chief of the National Police.

In July 1970, Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio was inaugurated as president of the republic. Arana, backed by the army, represented an alliance of the MLN – the originators of the MANO death squad – and the Institutional Democratic Party (MLN-PID). Arana was the first of a string of military rulers allied with the Institutional Democratic Party who dominated Guatemalan politics in the 1970s and early 1980s (his predecessor, Julio César Méndez, while dominated by the army, was a civilian). Arana had been elected on a platform promising a crackdown on law and order issues and subversion. Colonel Arana, who had been in charge of the terror campaign in Zacapa, was an anti-communist hardliner and extreme rightist who once stated, "If it is necessary to turn the country into a cemetery in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so."[45][46]

Despite minimal armed insurgent activity at the time, Arana declared a "state of siege" on 13 November 1970 and imposed a curfew from 9:00 PM to 5:00 AM, during which time all vehicle and pedestrian traffic—including ambulances, fire engines, nurses, and physicians—were forbidden throughout the national territory. The siege was accompanied by a series of house to house searches by the police, which reportedly led to 1,600 detentions in the capital in the first fifteen days of the "State of Siege." High government sources were cited at the time by foreign journalists as acknowledging 700 executions by security forces or paramilitary death squads in the first two months of the "State of Siege".[47] This is corroborated by a January 1971 secret bulletin of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency detailing the elimination of hundreds of suspected "terrorists and bandits" in the Guatemalan countryside by the security forces.[48]

While repression continued in the countryside, the Arana government began an unprecedented wave of killings and "disappearances" in the capital, despite minimal guerrilla activity. Arana established a new plainclothes secret police agency known as the 'Detective Corps of the National Police' which specialized in surveillance and political policing activities.[49] This new security agency – working in tandem with special commandos of the military and units from '4th Corps' of the National Police – abducted and murdered thousands of suspected subversives in Guatemala City during the 'state of siege.'[50] As in the earlier campaign in Zacapa, bodies were found floating in rivers. Each day, mutilated, unidentified corpses were displayed in the amphitheater of the General Hospital of Guatemala City for relatives of missing persons to identify.[47] Victims included Arana's critics in the media, members of left-wing political movements, labor unionists and student activists. As in the earlier repression, security agents carried out mass disappearances of entire groups of persons. In one instance on 26 September 1972, the Detective Corps detained eight top leaders and associates of the PGT – half of the Party central committee – in a single raid. All eight were turned over to '4th Corps' squad commander and notorious torturer Juan Antonio "El Chino" Lima Lopez and were never seen again.[51]

According to Amnesty International and domestic human rights organizations such as 'Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Persons', over 15,000 civilian opponents of the security forces were found dead or "disappeared" between 1970 and 1973.[52] The few survivors of political detention by the security forces described tortures such as suffocation with a rubber "hood" filled with insecticide.[41] Many killings were attributed to groups such as the 'Ojo por Ojo' (Eye for an Eye), described in a US State Department intelligence cable as "a largely military membership with some civilian cooperation".[53] Aside from targeting persons labeled as subversives and political foes, security forces also targeted common criminals under the guise of social cleansing groups such as the "Avenging Vulture".[54]

Amnesty International mentioned Guatemala as one of several countries under a human rights state of emergency, while citing "the high incidence of disappearances of Guatemalan citizens" as a major and continuing problem in its 1972–1973 annual report.[55][56] Overall, as many as 42,000 Guatemalan civilians were killed or "disappeared" between 1966 and 1973.[57]

In 1978, the repression against the Indigenous farming cooperatives began to spread from the department of Quiche into other areas which comprise the Northern Transversal Strip (FTN). In Panzos, Alta Verapaz natives began to be subjected to human rights abuses which accompanied their eviction from their land by farmers and local authorities who supported the economic interests of the Izabal Mining Operations Company (EXMIBAL) and Transmetales.[lower-alpha 1]

In 1978, a military patrol was stationed a few kilometers from the county seat of Panzós, in a place which was known as "Quinich". At that time, the organizational capacity of the peasants was increased by committees which claimed titles to their land, a phenomenon that worried the landlords. Some of these landlords requested protection from the governor of Alta Verapaz, including Flavio Monzón, who stated: "Several peasants living in the villages and settlements want to burn urban populations to gain access to private property."[lower-alpha 2]

On 29 May 1978, peasants from Cahaboncito, Semococh, Rubetzul, Canguachá, Sepacay villages, finca Moyagua and neighborhood La Soledad, decided to hold a public demonstration in the Plaza de Panzós to insist on their claims to the land and express their discontent which was caused by the arbitrary actions of the landowners and the civil and military authorities. Hundreds of indigenous men, women and children went to the square of the municipal seat of Panzós, carrying their tools, machetes and sticks. One of the people who participated in the demonstration states: "The idea was not to fight with anyone, what was required was the clarification of the status of the land. People came from various places and they had guns."

There are different versions of the account on how the shooting began: some say it began when "Mama Maquín"—an important peasant leader—pushed a soldier who was in her way; others say that it started because people who were trying to get into the municipality kept pushing each other, which was interpreted as an act of aggression by the soldiers.[63] The mayor at the time, Walter Overdick, said that "people of the middle of the group pushed those who were in front.[63] A witness says that one protester grabbed the gun from a soldier but did not use it and several people say that a military voice yelled: "One, two, three! Fire!"[23]

The shooting lasted five minutes, and it came from regulation firearms which were carried by the military as well as from the three machine guns which were located on the banks of the square. Between 30 and 106 local inhabitants (figures vary) were killed by the army.[64] Several peasants with machetes wounded several soldiers. No soldier was wounded by gunfire. The square was covered with blood.

Immediately, the army closed the main access roads,[65] despite that "indigenous felt terrified." An army helicopter flew over the town before picking up wounded soldiers.[23]

After the massacre at Panzos, repression against the indigenous population became increasingly ruthless and a pattern of systematic killings and acts of genocide began to emerge. Several lesser known mass killings occurred during the same time period. On 8 September 1978 the Mobile Military Police of Monteros, Esquipulas, acting on orders from local landowners César Lemus and Domingo Interiano, abducted eight campesinos from Olopa, Chiquimula Department. On 26 September, the Military Police returned to Olopa and seized 15 additional villagers. All were subsequently found dead from drowning and hanging. The next day, the Assistant mayor of Amatillo, Francisco García, addressed himself to the Court of Olopa to report on the events and to request identification of the bodies in order to bury them. That very night Garcia was also abducted and murdered. All told, more than 100 villagers of Olopa were murdered by the Mobile Military Police in 1978, including several religious workers, 15 women and more than 40 children. The PMA were reported by peasants to murder small children in Olopa by grabbing them and breaking their backs over the knees.[66]

At the same time in Guatemala City, the situation of abductions and disappearances at the hands of the judiciales worsened after Col. German Chupina Barahona was appointed as the chief of the National Police. Chupina openly spoke of the need to "exterminate" leftists. On 4 August 1978, high school and university students, along with other popular movement sectors, organized the mass movement's first urban protest of the Lucas García period. The protests, intended as a march against violence, were attended by an estimated 10,000 people. The new minister of the interior under President Lucas García, Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz, promised to break up any protests organized without government permission. The protesters were then met by the Pelotón Modelo (Model Platoon) of the Guatemalan National Police, then under the new director-general, Colonel Germán Chupina Barahona (like Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia, a member of the "Zacapa Group" and former commander of the PMA). Employing new anti-riot gear donated by the United States Government, Platoon agents surrounded marchers and tear-gassed them. Students were forced to retreat and dozens of people, mostly school-aged adolescents, were hospitalized.[68] This was followed by more protests and death squad killings throughout the later part of the year. In September 1978 a general strike broke out to protest sharp increases in public transportation fares; the government responded harshly, arresting dozens of protesters and injuring many more. However, as a result of the campaign, the government agreed to the protesters' demands, including the establishment of a public transportation subsidy.

Wary of the possibility that the scenario unfolding in Nicaragua at the time would occur in Guatemala, the government of General Romeo Lucas Garcia began a large-scale covert program of selective assassination, overseen primarily by Interior Minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz and National Police chief Col. German Chupina Barahona, who together controlled all of the military and paramilitary security services. Targets included peasants, trade unionists, cooperative members, student activists, university staff, members of the judiciary, church leaders and members of centrist and left-leaning political parties. The deaths of these people, labeled as "subversives" by the government, were largely attributed to a new vigilante organization calling itself the "Secret Anticommunist Army" (ESA), a group linked to the offices of Col. Germán Chupina.[69][70][71] The ESA had announced its existence on 18 October 1978 in the aftermath of the bus fare strikes and authored a series of bulletins announcing its intent to murder government opponents.[72] A parallel operation targeting common criminals began at roughly the same time the ESA began its operations. The killings of common "criminals" by the security services were subsequently blamed on a death squad called the "Escuadron de la Muerte" (EM). This new wave of mass killings benefited from a government publicity campaign in which regular statistics were provided by government spokespersons on killings of "subversives" and "criminals" which the authorities attributed to the ESA and the EM, ostensibly as a way of using the media to downplay the government's responsibility and terrorize the left.

Statistics reported in the domestic press (often originating from government spokespersons) and by human rights organizations suggest that a minimum of 8,195 persons were assassinated in Guatemala in 1979–80, a rate which exceeds Col. Arana's "state of siege" in 1970–71.[73] Abductions and disappearances of civilians by the death squads were carried out under the public eye by heavily armed personnel sometimes identifying openly as members of the security forces, and traveling in vehicles easily identifiable as belonging to the Guatemalan National Police and other security agencies, particularly red Toyota jeeps either unmarked or sporting military license number sequences.[74][75] Unrecognizable cadavers were frequently found mutilated and showing signs of torture.[76]

The bodies of many of those abducted by the death squads in the city were disposed of in San Juan Comalapa, Chimaltenango Department, which became notorious as a dumping ground for cadavers. In March 1980 the cadavers of student activist Liliana Negreros and some three dozen others were found in a ravine on the outskirts of Comalapa.[77] Most had been killed with a garrote or shot in the back of the head and showed signs of torture. The U.S. embassy called the discovery "ominous" and suggested that the extreme right was responsible. CIA sources indicated that "Highest levels of the Guatemala government through the National Police hierarchy are fully aware of the background of the burial site. .[It] was a place where the National Police Detective Corps disposed of its victims after interrogations."[78]

A new agency known as the Presidential General Staff (known by the Spanish acronym EMP) was placed under the command of Col. Héctor Ismael Montalván Batres in 1979. After its formation, the EMP took control of the telecommunications unit La Regional which was renamed Archivo General y Servicios de Apoyo del EMP – AGSAEMP – or Archivo for short. As documented in Amnesty International's 1981 report, the telecommunications annex of the National Palace served as a command center for the death squads, as it had in the early 1970s under Arana.[79] A center existed within the National Police known as the Joint Operations Center (Centro de Operaciones Conjuntas de la Policía – COCP), which forwarded intelligence on "subversives" from the National Police headquarters to the Archivos. Such information included the names of potential death squad victims. Documents were later recovered from the National Police archives which were sent from the COCP to the EMP to notify its agents of "delinquent subversives" and their whereabouts, including exact addresses.[80][lower-alpha 3]

At the National Palace, a special group known as the CRIO (Centro de Reunion de Informacion y Operaciones) would convene to review operational intelligence and plan counterinsurgency operations. The CRIO consisted of all of the country's primary intelligence and security chiefs, including Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia, Col. Chupina, Interior Minister Donaldo Alvarez, Gen. Hector Antonio Callejas y Callejas (Chief of the G-2 under Lucas) and the heads of the Treasury Police and the Chief of Migration. It based on meetings of the CRIO that "hit lists" for the death squads were drawn up. [81]

Beginning in the mid-1970s, the government began amassing troops in the countryside to supplement existing PMA detachments and local military commissioners in counterinsurgency operations against the EGP. The level of militarization in the countryside increased after 1979 when conservative elders in the Ixil triangle began requesting the Army's support in eliminating communists. Disappearances and killings of peasants in the Ixil region increased in scale during this period. In 1981, General Benedicto Lucas Garcia (the president's brother) became Chief of Staff of the Guatemalan Army and implemented a new counterinsurgency campaign with the help of the US MilGroup and advisors from Israel and Argentina.[82]

Counting on renewed shipments of military supplies from the U.S. (including helicopters and terrestrial transport vehicles), and an aggressive policy of forced conscription, the Army was able to mobilize troops for a large scale sweep operation through the indigenous Altiplano. The sweep operation began on the Pacific coast in August 1981 and advanced into the highlands in subsequent months.[83] At the time, the National Institute of Cooperatives (INACOOP) declared 250 rural cooperatives illegal in Guatemala, due to alleged ties with Marxist subversion. Subsequently, the army used the official membership lists of these cooperatives to ferret out those they believed to be communist sympathizers and many cooperative members within the indigenous community in the highlands were assassinated by army death squads or "disappeared" after being taken into custody.[84]

On 1 October 1981, a new "task-force" known as 'Iximche' was deployed on counterinsurgency sweep through Chimaltenango, eventually moving into El Quiche and part of Sololá later in the year. In Rabinal, Baja Verapaz on 20 October 1981, the military seized and armed 1,000 Indian men and organized them into one of the first "civil patrols" of the decade,[85] a feat which was illegal under the Guatemalan constitution at the time.[86] In a matter of months, the army implemented this system on a widespread basis on the countryside. In creating these militias, Gen. Benedicto Lucas effectively created a structure which superseded local government and was directly subservient to white ladino military authority.[87][88]

Under the leadership of Benedicto Lucas Garcia, what had begun as a campaign of selective repression targeting specific sectors of Guatemalan society began to metamorphose into a policy of extermination. Wholesale massacres of Mayan communities became commonplace, in what was perceived at the time as a marked change in strategy. In some communities of the region's military forced all residents to leave their homes and concentrate in the county seat under military control. Some families obeyed; others took refuge in the mountains. K'iche's who took refuge in the mountains, were identified by the Army with the guerrillas and underwent a military siege, and continuous attacks that prevented them from getting food, shelter and medical care. Sources with the human rights office of the Catholic Church estimated the death toll from government repression in 1981 at over 11,000, with most of the victims indigenous peasants of the Guatemalan highlands.[89]

In 2018, Benedicto Lucas Garcia and three others would be successfully convicted for the 1981 torture and rape of 19-year-old Emma Guadalupe Molina Theissen. Benedicto Lucas Garcia and the other three men captured Theissen at a roadblock and then exploited her detainment as political propaganda during this time.[90] They were also found guilty of the forced disappearance of her teenage brother.[91]

In the remote Guatemalan highlands, where the military classified those most isolated as being more accessible to the guerrillas, it identified many villages and communities as "red" and targeted them for annihilation. This was especially true in El Quiche, where the army had a well-documented belief from the Benedicto Lucas period that the entire indigenous population of the Ixil area was pro-EGP.[92] A major part of Ríos Montt's pacification strategy in El Quiche was "Operation Sofia", which began on 8 July 1982 on orders from Army Chief of Staff Héctor Mario López Fuentes. "Operation Sofia" was planned and executed by the 1st Battalion of the Guatemalan Airborne Troops with the mission to "exterminate the subversive elements in the area – Quiché."[93]

During Ríos Montt's tenure, the abuse of the civilian population by the army and the PACs reached unprecedented levels, even when compared to the Army's conduct under Benedicto Lucas. These abuses often amounted to overkill, civilians in "red" areas are reported to have been beheaded, garroted, burned alive, bludgeoned to death, or hacked to death with machetes. At least 250,000 children nationwide were estimated to have lost at least one parent to the violence; in El Quiche province alone these children numbered 24,000.[94] In many cases, the Guatemalan military specifically targeted children and the elderly. Soldiers were reported to have killed children in front of their parents by smashing their heads against trees and rocks.[13] Amnesty International documented that the rate of rape of civilian women by the military increased during this period. Soldiers at times raped pregnant women. The Guatemalan military also employed pseudo-operations against the peasants, committing rapes and massacres while disguised as guerrillas. One example is the massacre of up to 300 civilians by government soldiers in the village of Las Dos Erres on 7 December 1982. The abuses included "burying some alive in the village well, killing infants by slamming their heads against walls, keeping young women alive to be raped over the course of three days. This was not an isolated incident. Rather it was one of over 400 massacres documented by the truth commission – some of which, according to the commission, constituted 'acts of genocide.'"[9]

Montt was an Evangelical Christian, and his religious zealotry gave a theological justification to the massacres, the logic of which has been summed up by journalist Vincent Bevins as follows: "they are communists and therefore atheists and therefore they are demons and therefore you can kill them."[95] Most of the victims practiced traditional Mayan religions.[95]

The CIIDH database documented 18,000 killings by government forces in the year 1982. In April 1982 alone (General Efraín Ríos Montt's first full month in office), the military committed 3,330 documented killings, a rate of approximately 111 per day. Historians and analysts estimate the total death toll could exceed this number by the tens of thousands.[96] Some sources estimate a death toll of up to 75,000 during the Ríos Montt period, mostly within the first eight months between April and November 1982.[97]

After overthrowing General Efrain Ríos Montt in a coup on 8 August 1983, the new government of General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores moved to systematically eliminate what remained of the opposition by using the previously established means of torture, extrajudicial killing and "forced disappearance"- particularly at the hands of the 'Department of Technical Investigations' (DTI), specialized units of the National Police and the "Archivo" intelligence unit.[98] For the purposes of selective terror, the CRIO was reconstituted and meetings between high ranking security chiefs were again held in the presidential palace to coordinate the repression. Officers who participated in the CRIO selection process included new jefe of the G-2, Col. Byron Disrael Lima Estrada; chief of the EMP, Juan Jose Marroquin Salazar and National Police Chief, Col. Hector Bol de la Cruz. In Mejia Victores's first full month in power, the number of documented monthly kidnappings jumped from 12 in August to 56 in September. The victims included a number of US Agency for International Development employees, officials from moderate and leftist political parties, and Catholic priests.[99] Intelligence was "extracted through torture" and used by the CRIO to coordinate joint military and police raids on suspected insurgent safe-houses in which hundreds of individuals were captured and "disappeared" or found dead later.[100] A special counterinsurgency unit of the National Police was activated under Col. Hector Bol de la Cruz known as the Special Operations Brigade (BROE), which operated out of the fifth police precinct in Guatemala City. The BROE carried out the work of National Police squads which had been disbanded under the previous government – such as the Commando Six – and was linked to dozens of documented forced disappearances.[101]

In a report to the United Nations, Guatemala's Human Rights Commission reported 713 extrajudicial killings and 506 disappearances of Guatemalans in the period from January to September 1984. A secret United States Department of Defense report from March 1986 noted that from 8 August 1983 to 31 December 1985, there were a total of 2,883 recorded kidnappings (3.29 daily); and kidnappings averaged a total of 137 a month through 1984 (a total of approximately 1,644 cases). The report linked these violations to a systematic program of abduction and killing by the security forces under Mejía Víctores, noting, "while criminal activity accounts for a small percentage of the cases, and from time to time individuals ‘disappear’ to go elsewhere, the security forces and paramilitary groups are responsible for most kidnappings. Insurgent groups do not now normally use kidnapping as a political tactic."[100]

Between 1984 and 1986, military intelligence (G-2) maintained an operations center for the counterinsurgency programs in southwest Guatemala at the southern airbase at Retalhuleu. There, the G-2 operated a clandestine interrogation center for suspected insurgents and collaborators. Captured suspects were reportedly detained in water-filled pits along the perimeter of the base, which were covered with cages. In order to avoid drowning, prisoners were forced to hold onto the cages over the pits. The bodies of prisoners tortured to death and live prisoners marked for disappearance were thrown out of IAI-201 Aravas by the Guatemalan Air Force over the Pacific Ocean ("death flights").[102]

La Llorona, located about 18 kilometers from El Estor, department of Izabal (part of the Northern Transversal Strip), was a small village with no more than twenty houses. Most of the first settlers who arrived there were from the areas of Senahú and Panzós, both in Alta Verapaz. In 1981, the population totaled about 130 people, all of them were members of the q'eqchi' ethnic group. Few of the people spoke Spanish and most of them worked in their own cornfields, sporadically, they worked for the local landowners. In the vicinity are the villages of El Bongo, Socela, Benque, Rio Pita, Santa Maria, Big Plan and New Hope. Conflicts in the area were related to land tenure, highlighting the uncertainty about the boundaries which existed between farms and communities, and the lack of titles. Because the National Institute of Agrarian Transformation (INTA) was not registered as a legitimate owner of land which was occupied by La Llorona, the members of the community continued to believe that the land belonged to the state, which had taken steps to obtain its title to the property. However, a farmer who was very influential in the area occupied part of the land, generating a conflict between him and the members of the community; on their own initiative, men of the village devised a new boundary between the community's land and the farmer's land, but the problem remained dormant.[103]

In the second half of the seventies when the presence of guerrillas in the villages was first reported by Ramon, the commander of the aparacimiento, who talked to people and said that they were members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. They passed many villages, asked what problems their residents were experiencing and offered to solve them. They told the peasants that the land belonged to the poor and they also told the peasants that they should trust them. In 1977, Ramon, a guerrilla commander, regularly visited the village of La Llorona and after he found out that the issue of land ownership was causing many problems in the community, he taught people to practice new measurements, which spread fear among landowners. That same year, the group which was under Ramon's command arbitrarily executed the Spanish landowner José Hernández, near El Recreo, which he owned. Following this act, a clandestine group of mercenaries, dubbed the "fighters of the rich" was formed to protect the interests of landlords; the public authority of El Estor organized the group and paid its members, stemming from the funding of major landowners. The group, irregular, was related to the military commissioners of the region and with commanders of the Army, but mutual rivalries also existed. The secret organization murdered several people, including victims who had no connection to insurgent groups.[103]

In December 1978, the EGP group's leader, Ramon, was captured by soldiers of the military detachment in El Estor and transferred to the military zone of Puerto Barrios; after two years of imprisonment, he escaped and returned to El Estor; but this time, he returned as an officer in the Army G2 and he joined a group of soldiers that came to the village. On the evening of 28 September 1981, an army officer who was accompanied by four soldiers and a military commissioner met with about thirty civilians. At seven o'clock, over thirty civilians, mostly from "Nueva Esperanza", including several 'informants' who were known to military intelligence, gathered around La Llorona along with some military commissioners and a small group of soldiers and army officers. Then they entered the village. Civilians and commissioners entered twelve houses, and each of them removed men from their own homes and shot them dead outside; those men who tried to escape were also killed. Women who tried to protect their husbands were beaten. While the military commissioners and civilians executed men, soldiers removed the victims' belongings; within half an hour, the perpetrators of the assault left the village. The bodies of the victims, fourteen in all, were in front of houses. Women ran to the nearest village, El Bongo, and asked for help, despite the fact that they would have been killed if they revealed what had happened. After a few hours, women came back with people who helped them bury the bodies. Days later, widows, with almost 60 fatherless children were welcomed by the parish of El Estor for several days, until the soldiers forced them to return to their village. Two widows of those who were executed on 29 September established a close relationship with the military commissioners from Bongo. This situation triggered divisions that still exist in the community.[103]

The economic and social activity was disrupted in the village: widows had to take the jobs of their husbands; because of their lack of knowledge of the cultivation of land, they harvested very little corn and beans. Diseases were also widespread, especially among children and the elderly, there was no food or clothing. The teacher who worked in the village only came part-time, mostly out of fear, but he left after he realized that it was not worth staying because young people had to work. Nor could they spend money on travel. The village had no teacher for the next four years. The events finally triggered the breakup of the community. Some village women knew that their husbands were killed because they knew three others who were linked to the guerrillas and they were also involved in a land dispute.[103]

According to the Historical Clarification Commission, the landlord who the villagers had the land dispute with took advantage of the situation in order to appropriate another twelve acres of land.[104]

The report of the Recovery of Historical Memory lists 422 massacres committed by both sides in the conflict;[105] however, it also states that they did the best they could in terms of obtaining information and therefore the list is incomplete; therefore the list includes some cases documented in other reports as well. Most documented massacres by state actors occurred between 1981 and 1983.

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• Schirmer, Jennifer (1988). The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3325-4.
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