The Mayan Genocide
NO. 1
This is a bottom-up approach to what happened to the Maya people. The genocide, or La Violencia, started in 1978 to 1984 under the regimes of General Lucas Garcia (1978- 82) and General Rios Montt (March 1982—August 1983). La Violencia speaks of a time where, for the Mayan people of Guatemala an era of terror and fear, where over 440 villages were massacred, 1.5 million people were displaced, over 150, 000 people fled into external refuge, and over 100,000-150,000 were classified as dead or ‘disappeared.’ In the CEH Final Report, which is the Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification, the data appears that over 626 villages massacres, over 150,000 fled to Mexico, and more than 200,000 people died or ‘disappeared.’ The vast majority of the victims of violence committed by the army were civilians, and an overwhelming 83% of victims were unarmed Mayan men, women, children, and elderly who fled their communities. Anthropologists label this period as the Phenomenology of terror, or the structures of terror. It is the idea of past horror, how people make sense or respond to that lived experience, and how does it affect people socially.
NO.2
The army justified these massacres in rural Mayan communities during La Violencia because they were ‘scorching communists’, according to Efrain Rios Montt. The Guatemalan army’s campaign against the Maya was revealed on October 5, 1981, which the Dept. of State classified as secret. At the time, General Romeo Lucas Garcia believed that the policy of repression was working, and the state dept. Official writing in the memo was ‘the extermination of the guerillas (freedom fighters), their supporters and sympathizers as the measures of a successful policy of repression. The army used ground troops and aerial forces to saturate the mountain in which the Mayan communities lived with firepower. Given that over 87% percent of the victims were Maya, there is no doubt that the Guatemalan army violated human rights and Articles 2(a), (b) and (c) of the United Nations Conventions of the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Why did the Guatemalan army want to brutalize and kill innocent people continually? Because of the systemic racism that has existed since the Conquistadors arrived from Spain. One high-ranking army official, in a 1994 interview, (who in 1982 commanded a platoon responsible for the Ixcan massacres, including the massacre of Pueblo Nuevo) told [Victoria Sanders] that, ‘’The Indian Problem. Who can tell us what to do about it? They are ignorant. They are dirty. They don’t even speak Spanish. We made some mistakes, but we had to terminate the guerilla.’’ The Guatemalan army carried out its first genocidal campaign of massacres against the Maya because they were Maya.
NO.3
How could people not know about this, how could this have happened and the U.S. not know about it? Did the U.S. know about it? Of course, the U.S government knew, the CIA, the State Department, and the U.S Embassy justified the Guatemalan army’s destruction of the social, political, and material culture of the Maya in general because it was noted in the documents cited that Lucas Garcia believed that the ‘extermination’ was the measure of the success of his policy of repression and that they had a direct hand in the genocide. So extermination was not just a means but a goal. The U.S. provided not only political but military aid. The CEH found that the Maya suffered 626 known army massacres, but up to date, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG) has carried out more than 190 exhumation
NO. 4
How could this be kept under wraps? I only heard about this in my sophomore year in college when I read Buried Secrets, Truth, and Human Rights in Guatemala by Victoria Sanford. It was not in my textbooks, and no teacher explained this. Probably because they were ignorant of things, and the U.S. had a hand in these atrocities as I was. Fear. Fear is the motivator. Fear comes from the violence, which silenced the Maya by closing off opportunities for social and political participation, curtailing their freedom of speech. In the case of the Guatemalan genocide, it is our right as human beings to document exactly what happened to them and who was responsible for the genocide so that the children of the survivors don’t ever have to live in that kind of fear again.
