Guatemala (1981-1983)
The region that is now Guatemala was once a major center of Maya civilization. In the 1500s, Spanish colonizers imposed a racialized economic system of taxation and forced labor that endured after Guatemala’s independence. This decimated much of Maya culture; however, 23 Mayan language groups have resisted cultural extinction and are still spoken today.
Guatemalan elites, consisting mostly of Ladinos (white European descendants, people of mixed origin, and westernized natives), stripped Indigenous Maya communities of their land. This enabled corporations such as the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita, to control large areas of territory for banana and coffee production.
In 1954 Guatemalans elected Jacobo Árbenz as president based on his promise of agrarian reforms. These included requiring large landowners, such as the United Fruit Company, to pay more taxes. In response, the United States (US) supported a coup that overthrew Árbenz to install a far-right military dictatorship, which was followed by a succession of other military governments.
Various leftist guerilla groups emerged to resist the government’s repression, sparking a civil war in 1960. As more people protested the repressive system, international organizations reported extensive human rights violations by 1970, including the disappearance of 7,000 Ladino and Maya people living in predominantly urban spaces.
In 1981, President Fernando Romeo Lucas García, a military general, ordered a scorched-earth campaign aimed to destroy all real or perceived support for the guerrillas. This strategy targeted indigenous Maya people, including the Ixil, K’iche’, Achí, Chuj, and Q’anjob’al communities, who were considered “internal enemies.” General José Effraín Ríos Montt staged a coup in 1982, overthrowing President Lucas García and implementing Plan Victoria 82, which intensified village destruction, massacres, and rapes.
Survivors were forced to relocate into “model villages” that were tightly controlled by the army to supposedly isolate the villagers from guerilla fighters. Despite promises of support, authorities left people to die without access to proper health care or nutrition.
Military leaders labeled entire Indigenous communities as supporters of guerrillas and ordered their destruction. During the 36-year conflict, more than 200,000 people were killed, almost one million were internally displaced, and hundreds of thousands were forced to leave the country. Over 600 villages were destroyed, and an estimated 111 people were executed each day.
Survivors fled to forests and mountains, where they faced military bombardment, hunger, and years of displacement. Decades later, forensic teams and families exhumed mass graves across Guatemala to recover those killed during the war, over 80 percent of whom were Indigenous Maya.
The civil war ended in 1996. Two independent truth commissions later documented the genocide. However, incumbent President Álvaro Arzú refused to recognize their findings, as it would have required confronting the historical racial and economic exclusion of Maya people and the possible complicity of the ruling class. Instead, Arzú promoted a national campaign of forgiveness and reconciliation that halted efforts to hold military leaders accountable.
In 2013, a Guatemalan court convicted former dictator Ríos Montt of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Ixil Maya. This landmark trial marked the first time a former head of state faced such a verdict in his own country. Days later, a court overturned the ruling on a procedural technicality.