{"id":507,"date":"2012-04-10T23:12:20","date_gmt":"2012-04-10T23:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/?page_id=507"},"modified":"2012-04-10T23:12:20","modified_gmt":"2012-04-10T23:12:20","slug":"contex","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/contex\/","title":{"rendered":"Context"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

from What War? Testimonies of Maya Survivors<\/em><\/p>\n

To understand the devastating civil war, referred to in Guatemala as la violencia<\/em> or the \u201cinternal armed conflict,\u201d it is necessary to go back to the invasion by Spanish conquistadors in 1521. The Spanish colonization of Central America was driven by the quest for gold and by the desire to \u201csave souls\u201d by converting the \u201cheathen\u201d to Catholicism.The lives of the Maya and other, smaller indigenous groups in what would become modern Guatemala, were irrevocably transformed by the Spanish conquest. Since that time, the history of the indigenous people of Guatemala has been marked by subjugation, colonialization and foreign intervention. These events, although occurring almost 500 years ago, are still referred to as \u201cthe conquest,\u201d clear evidence of the effect that this history continues to have on present-day Guatemala.<\/p>\n

As in other countries in Latin America, Guatemalan civil institutions have been fragile and unstable.What distinguishes Guatemala, however, is the length of time and the extent to which the military has remained so deeply entrenched in power since independence from Spain in 1821. And, in fact, independence from\u00a0Spain did little to liberate the indigenous people, as Ronald Wright observes in Stolen Continents:<\/em>\u201cIt soon became clear that independence from the Spanish Empire did not mean independence for the Maya. For them…the so-called liberation was merely a white settler takeover…\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The notable exception to this military domination was the ten years from 1944\u20131954,called the\u201cDecade of Spring.\u201dThe governments of Juan Jos\u00e9 Ar\u00e9valo (1944\u20131951) and Jacobo Arbenz (1951\u20131954) were democatically elected. Ar\u00e9valo referred to his government as\u201cspiritual socialism,\u201d declaring,\u201cWe are socialists because we live in the 20th century.\u201d Later, the Arbenz government attempted significant land reforms that challenged business interests of the United States, particularly those of the United Fruit Company. In response, United Fruit exerted political influence on the Eisenhower administration, resulting in the 1954 CIA-backed invasion which overthrew Arbenz, and installed a puppet government.<\/p>\n

What followed was a half century of U.S. involvement in the internal affairs of Guatemala, during which right-wing military governments were supported. Military dictators Lucas Garc\u00eda (1978\u20131982) and Efra\u00edn R\u00edos Montt (1982\u20131983) were trained in contra-insurgency warfare and torture techniques at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Under their jurisdiction state-sponsored terror became a reality, and the \u201cscorched earth\u201d (la tierra arrasada<\/em>) policy was implemented in the highlands against rural Maya villages.The Official Report of the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, (hereinafter referred to as the REHMI Report for its Spanish acronym) describes this as…\u201ca grisly holocaust for people living in the so-called conflictive areas.\u201d(REHMI,Volume 3, page 112). I first heard la tierra arrasada mentioned by Fernando who described this policy:\u201cIn the 1980s, during the rule of General Efra\u00edn R\u00edos Montt, brutal practices were used against the guerrilleros, anyone they thought were communists\u00a0or who they thought were supporting them. La tierra\u00a0arrasada<\/em>ra\u00a0was the practice, that is burning the land, killing everyone in the villages who the army suspected of having anything to do with the guerrillas.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In June 1994, Guatemala\u2019s Truth Commission was established. The three members of the Commission were charged with the task of clarifying \u201cwith objectivity, equity, and impartiality, the human rights violations and acts of violence connected with the armed confrontation that caused suffering among the Guatemalan people.\u201d (Prologue, CEH Report).The Truth Commission was mandated to \u201cissue a report…containing the results of its investigations and its recommendations for national reconciliation and promotion of a culture of tolerance…The report would not individualize responsibilities for specific human rights violations or have judicial objectives or consequences.\u201d2<\/p>\n

On December 29, 1996, peace accords were signed ending 36 years of civil war. In 1997, the Truth Commission began taking testimonies from over 9,000 war victims. And on April 24, 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi presented the final report of The Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala, Guatemala, \u00a1Nunca m\u00e1s!<\/em> Two days later, Bishop Gerardi was brutally murdered outside his residence in Guatemala City.<\/p>\n

In February, 1999, an audience of more than 10,000 people gathered to hear the Truth Commission present its report, which revealed these staggering facts:<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the internal armed confrontation there were 626 massacres, 1.5 million people were displaced, 150,000 became refugees, and more than 200,000 were dead or disappeared. In the Ixil region alone between 70% and 90% of the villages were burned to the ground. [These were]…acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, numerous groups of Mayans. [They] were not isolated acts or excesses committed by soldiers who were out of control, nor were they the result of possible improvisation by midlevel Army command.With great consternation, the Commission concludes that many massacres and other human rights violations com- mitted against these groups obeyed a higher, strategically planned policy….\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The CEH Report documented that \u201cState forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations\u201d (page 20) and that \u201c83% of the victims were Mayans\u201d.The Report stated, unequivocally, that the army had conducted acts of genocide against the Maya people, acts committed \u201cwith the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, groups identified by their common ethnicity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the chapter entitled \u201cPeace and Reconciliation,\u201d the CEH Report \u201cdedicates its work to the memory of the dead and other victims of over three decades of fratricidal violence in Guatemala\u201d concluding that:<\/p>\n

“To achieve true reconciliation and construct a new democratic and participatory nation which values its multiethnic and pluricultural nature, the whole of society must…assume the commitments of the peace process.This…requires a profound and complex effort, which Guatemalan society owes to the thousands of brave men and women who sought to obtain full respect for human rights and the democratic rule of law and so laid the foundation for this new nation. Among these, Monsignor Juan Gerardi Conedera remains at the forefront.”<\/p>\n

If memory is the soul of history, as Elie Wiesel declares, then all Guatemalans must be allowed, in fact encouraged, to speak out about the past in order to \u201cconstruct a new democratic and participatory nation,\u201d a new Guatemala.<\/p>\n

For more information on the civil war in Guatemala, we include this article, a geographic analysis of the massacres and human rights violations during the conflict.<\/p>\n

[scribd id=89896021 key=key-uia7pj1i774cpdk0fq3 mode=list]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from What War? Testimonies of Maya Survivors To understand the devastating civil war, referred to in Guatemala as la violencia or the \u201cinternal armed conflict,\u201d it is necessary to go back to the invasion by Spanish conquistadors in 1521. The Spanish colonization of Central America was driven by the quest for gold and by the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-507","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/507"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levinger.net\/cualguerra\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}