News Monitor on Guatemala 2001-2002

Guatemala Genocide page

Resources

Chronology

Note toward a Guatemala Chronology

BEFORE

1821 - The proclamation of independence (day and month)

1839 - Guatemala becomes fully independent.

1844-65 - Guatemala ruled by conservative dictator Rafael Carrera.

1873-85 - Guatemala ruled by liberal President Justo Rufino Barrios, who modernises the country, develops the army and introduces coffee growing.

1931 - Jorge Ubico becomes president; his tenure is marked by repressive rule and then by an improvement in the country's finances.

1941 - Guatemala declares war on the Axis powers.

1944 - Juan Jose Arevalo becomes president following the overthrow of Ubico and introduces social-democratic reforms, including setting up a social security system and redistributing land to landless peasants.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and ratified by the Guatemalan State by Decree 704 on 30 November 1949. Guatemala 22 Jun 1949 13 Jan 1950

May 14, 1950 - Guatemala ratified the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949

March 15, 1951 - Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman becomes president, continuing Arevalo's reforms.

June 27, 1954 - Land reform stops with the accession to power of Colonel Carlos Castillo in a coup backed by the US and prompted by Arbenz's nationalisation of plantations of the United Fruit Company.

Anti-communism and the National Security Doctrine (DSN) formed part of the anti-Soviet strategy of the United States in Latin America. In Guatemala, these were first expressed as anti-reformist, then anti-democratic policies, culminating in criminal counterinsurgency. The National Security Doctrine fell on fertile ground in Guatemala where anti-communist thinking had already taken root and from the 1930s, had merged with the defence of religion, tradition and conservative values, all of which were allegedly threatened by the world-wide expansion of atheistic communism. Until the 1950s, these views were strongly supported by the Catholic Church, which qualified as communist any position that contradicted its philosophy, thus contributing even further to division and confusion in Guatemalan society.

During the twenty years of Guatemala’s most rapid economic growth (1960-1980), state social spending and taxation were the lowest in Central America.

El levantamiento militar del 13 de noviembre de 1960

1962 armed Cuba, United States . From 1963 onwards, in addition to the legal restrictions, growing state repression

In March 1962, there were student riots in Guatemala City, costing 20 lives.

1963 - Colonel Enrique Peralta becomes president following the assassination of Castillo.[Guatemalan president General Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes] had become deeply unpopular, and the Americans feared that he lacked the stamina to fight the Communists. In the summer of 1963, former president Juan Jose Arevalo Bermejo reappeared and announced his candidacy in the elections which were then due. The army decided Ydigoras must go and, after consultation with Washington, arranged a coup on March 29. Ydigoras was replaced by the minister of defence, Enrique Peralta Azurdia.

1966 - Civilian rule restored; Cesar Mendez elected president.

Only recently in Guatemalan history and within a short time period did the Catholic Church abandon its conservative position in favour of an attitude and practise based on the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the Episcopal Conference of Medellin (1968), prioritising its work with excluded, poor and under-privileged sectors and promoting the construction of a more just and equitable society. These doctrinal and pastoral changes clashed with counterinsurgency strategy, which considered Catholics to be allies of the guerrillas and therefore part of the internal enemy, subject to persecution, death or expulsion. Whereas the guerrilla movement saw in the practise of what was known as “liberation theology” common ground on which to extend its social base, seeking to gain the sympathy of its followers. A large number of catechists, lay activists, priests, and missionaries were victims of the violence and gave their lives as a testimony to the cruelty of the armed confrontation.

Communist guerrillas fatally shot two US embassy military attaches in Guatemala City, the capital, on January 16, 1968, and they also killed the US ambassador on August 18, 1968, when he resisted a kidnap attempt. By 1970, leftist dissidents, abetted by rightist dissidents, had created widespread fear and turmoil through violence and murder. Leftist terrorists kidnapped and killed the West German ambassador on April 5, 1970, when the government rejected their demands ($700,000 ransom and the release of 25 political prisoners

July 1970 - Military-backed Colonel Carlos Manual Arana Osorio elected president.

1970s - Military rulers embark on a programme to eliminate left-wingers, resulting in at least 50,000 deaths.

1976 - 27,000 people are killed and more than a million rendered homeless by earthquake.

DURING

1978 selctive repression, dissapearances .the intelligence services of the Army, especially the G-2 and the Presidential General Staff (Estado Mayor Presidencial), obtained information about all kinds of individuals and civic organisations, evaluated their behaviour in their respective fields of activity, prepared lists of those actions that were to be repressed for their supposedly subversive character and proceeded accordingly to capture, interrogate, torture, forcibly disappear or execute these individuals.

“Death squads” were also used; these were initially criminal groups made up of private individuals who enjoyed the tolerance and complicity of state authorities. The CEH has arrived at the well-founded presumption that, later, various actions committed by these groups were a consequence of decisions by the Army command, and that the composition of the death squads varied over time as members of the military were incorporated, until they became, in some cases, authentic clandestine military units. Their objective was to eliminate alleged members, allies or collaborators of the “subversives” using the help of civilians and lists prepared by military intelligence. The various names of the better known “death squads”, such as, MANO (National Organised Action Movement), also known as Mano Blanca (White Hand) because of its logo, NOA (New Anti-Communist Organisation), CADEG (Anti-Communist Council of Guatemala), Ojo por Ojo (Eye for an Eye) and Jaguar Justiciero (Jaguar of Justice) and ESA (Secret Anti-Communist Army), were simply the transient names of the clandestine military units whose purpose was to eliminate the alleged members, allies or collaborators of “subversion”.

1978 Masacre de Panzós, Alta Verapaz, contra campesinos q’eqchi’ que reivindicaban derechos de tierra.

1980 Massacre at the Spanish Embassy. One Christian group -- the Campesino Unity Committee (CUC) -- organized the occupation of the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City on 31 January 1980, to draw attention to the peasants' plight. Troops set fire to the building, burning 39 protesters alive...

1981 massive counter insurgency social base of insurrectionEfectivamente los Planes de Campaña, Ceniza 81, Victoria 82 y Firmeza 83

June 81 tp dec 92 (64 5 of massces )

1981 - Around 11,000 people are killed by death squads and soldiers in response to growing anti-government guerrilla activity.

PAc organized.Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PAC)

1982 URNG created

In the late 1970s, the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank provided financing for the $1 billion construction of the Chixoy Dam, the largest hydroelectric plant in Central America. The dam itself was an engineering and financial boondoggle, generating an unpayable public debt in a country where only one-third of the population has electricity.

The reservoir waters of the dam were planned to inundate Río Negro and three other villages in the spring of 1982, but the villagers refused to give up their lands and their homes for what they saw as unfair compensation. With the land conflict brewing between the villagers and the National Institute of Electrification, the army ordered the massacres against the villages. Weeks later, dam waters silently rose, covering the remains of the abandoned and destroyed villages.

The Rio Negro, Rabinal case, a 1982 massacre of one hundred children and seventy-two women, was prepared to go to trial when on May 27, 1996, the three defendant—two former civil patrollers and one soldier—applied for amnesty under a 1988 law. Their amnesty application was rejected by every lower court until February 1997, when it went to the Court of Constitutionality. That court had a maximum of fifteen days to resolve the petition, yet at this writing it had still not been resolved. The Center for Human Rights and Legal Action (CHRLA) reported that the government “lost” evidence regarding similar atrocities in the early 1980s in the villages of Plan de Sánchez and Chichupac, Rabinal. During hearings on the case in February 1997, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights admonished the Guatemalan government to actively investigate the 1982 Plan de Sánchez massacre of 268 people.

July 1982 - [3 months from the end of his termm Romeo Lucas Garcia ousted by coup. Consistution infoce since 1965 abolished.American disapproval [of the Guatemalan government's scorched earth policy to deal with guerrilla activity in the highlands], and [president General Romeo Lucas Garcia's] own corruption, led to a coup in 1982 organized by junior officers, in which General Rios Montt was finally brought to power. He reined in the death squads in the cities, and allowed a greater freedom of political action there, but accelerated the fight in the countryside...

At least one village, Río Negro, lost half of its entire population.The names of the 177 victims were read aloud for all to hear, including the soldiers a stone's throw away. One widow stepped forward during the petitionary prayers to share her testimony and as the crowd drew in closer, the priest quietly wiped his tears. It became clear that the monument to the dead was dedicated as well to the living who refuse to live in silence and submission.

Days later, witnesses of the Río Negro massacre stepped forward to press charges against the civil defense patrol of Xococ, who had committed the atrocity

Political violence always leaves deep wounds in a society, but the scope of the Rabinal killings (19 massacres in total) and the fact that the army used civil defense patrols as their instruments of terror have ensured continuing trauma

suppoert for evangelical church.

military plan "vicotry 82" firmness 83 model villages. The Army’s perception of Mayan communities as natural allies of the guerrillas contributed to increasing and aggravating the human rights violations perpetrated against them, demonstrating an aggressive racist component of extreme cruelty that led to the extermination en masse, of defenceless Mayan communities purportedly linked to the guerrillas – including children, women and the elderly – through methods whose cruelty has outraged the moral conscience of the civilised world.

The petition which gave rise to the present case denounced the massacre of 268 inhabitants of Plan de Sánchez, Baja Verapaz, by members of the armed forces of Guatemala on July 18, 1982.

three stages selective repression ethnic massacres and scordched earth

consolidation, "amnesty"

These massacres and the so-called scorched earth operations, as planned by the State, resulted in the complete extermination of many Mayan communities, along with their homes, cattle, crops and other elements essential to survival. The CEH registered 626 massacres attributable to these forces.

December 1982 Las Dos Erres massacre 226 men, women, and children killed by soldiers and paramilitaries in the village - rights groups say more than 300 people were killed.

March 1982 - General Efrain Rios Montt gains power following military coup. In June the three member junta was dissolved and Montt became President.

Augusat 1983 - After 1 year and 2 months Montt ousted in coup led by General Oscar Mejia Victores, who declares an amnesty for guerrillasIn October 1983, Rios Montt was removed in a coup by disgruntled army officers. Among other complaints, they objected to the president's evangelism: he had become a tele-evangelist, and preached regularly on television, calling on Guatemalans to come to Jesus and be saved. Conservative Catholic officers, and younger men who had studied in the United States, did not appreciate the call.

The Reagan administration had approved the 1983 coup (though it did not initiate it). The new president, General Oscar Mejia Victores, introduced a new pacification plan, to be carried out with American help, called the "Plan of Assistance to the Areas of Conflict" (PAAC)...

AFTER

January 1986 to Jan 1991 - Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo elected president and the Guatemalan Christian Democratic Party wins legislative elections under a new constitution.

He was ousted in 1982 when dissident army officers seized power. In 1983 two military coup d'etats occurred (August and October), and in 1984 a constituent assembly was elected to draft a new constitution. Civilian rule returned to Guatemala in 1986 with the election of President Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo (1942-), followed five years later by President Jorge Serrano Elias (1945-). Serrano's attempt to suspend constitutional rights in 1993 led to his ouster by military, business, and political leaders. Later a temporary cease-fire with guerrillas restored some sense of democracy and led to a peace agreement (December 29, 1996) signed by four top leftist rebel leaders and government representatives.

October 10, 1987 - Guatemala ratified both protocols I and II of the Geneva Convention's Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977.

1989 - Attempt to overthrow Cerezo fails; civil war toll since 1980 reaches 100,000 dead and 40,000 missing.

1990 Masacre Santiago Atitlán, Sololá; comunidad exige retito del Ejército.In 1990 when the U.S. Congress cut off military aid to Guatemala following the killing of U.S. citizen Michael Devine, the CIA stepped in and restored it dollar for dollar in payoffs to the Guatemalan military.

1991 - Jorge Serrano Elias elected president. Diplomatic relations restored with Belize, from whom Guatemala had long-standing territorial claims.

A 1992 agreement between refugee representatives and the Guatemalan Government recognised returnees' rights,

1993 - Serrano forced to resign after his attempt to impose an authoritarian regime ignites a wave of protests; Ramiro de Leon Carpio elected president by the legislature.

1994 - Peace talks between the government and rebels of the Guatemalan Revolutionary National Unity begin; right-wing parties win a majority in legislative elections.

The CEH’s Report has been structured in accordance with the objectives and terms of the mandate entrusted to it by the Parties to the Guatemalan peace process as expressed in the Accord of Oslo, signed in Norway, on 23 June 1994.

"The Commission for Historical Clarification (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento HistóricoCEH) La was established through the Accord of Oslo on 23 June 1994, in order to clarify with objectivity, equity and impartiality, the human rights violations and acts of violence connected with the armed confrontation that caused suffering among the Guatemalan people. The Commission was not established to judge – that is the function of the courts of law – but rather to clarify the history of the events of more than three decades of fratricidal war. Christian Tomuschat

Otilia Lux de Cotí

Alfredo Balsells Tojo

Through its investigation, the CEH discovered one of the most devastating effects of this policy: state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the CEH, including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced disappearances. Victims included men, women and children of all social strata: workers, professionals, church members, politicians, peasants, students and academics; in ethnic terms, the vast majority were Mayans.

October 5, 1995 - Rebels declare a ceasefire; UN and US criticise Guatemala for widespread human rights abuses.

1995 Masacre de Xamán, Chisec, Alta Verapaz, comunidad de retornados.. In 1994, after more than a decade in exile, the families returned to Guatemala. A 1992 agreement between refugee representatives and the Guatemalan Government recognised returnees' rights, guaranteed their safety and promised them access to land. The families of Santiago and Maurilia settled on the Xamán farm, Chisec, in the department of Alta Verapaz, as part of a group of 206 families of Q'eqchi, Q'anjobal, Ixil, Mam and K'iché origin.

One year later, on 5 October 1995, Santiago Coc Pop and Maurilia Coc Max were killed by members of a military patrol from the "Rubelsanto" military barracks, Military Zone 21, which entered the farm and opened fire indiscriminately. In total 11 members of the community died and 30 others were wounded by military gunfire, including three soldiers. A soldier shot Santiago in the wrist, he then chased him and shot him again in the chest, killing him. Maurilia was shot in the back

1996 - Alvaro Arzu elected president, conducts purge of senior military officers and signs peace agreement with rebels, ending 36 years of civil war.

1998 - Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights campaigner, murdered.

inter-Amwericam commicsion on hr plan de sanchez massacre (case no. 11-763) reort no. 31/1999

1999 - UN-backed commission says that security forces were responsible for 93% of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war, which claimed 200,000 lives, and that senior officials had overseen 626 massacres in Maya villages.

guaya memory of silnce report was produced by the Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification

In consequence, the CEH concludes that agents of the State of Guatemala, within the framework of counterinsurgency operations carried out between 1981 and 1983, committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people which lived in the four regions analysed. This conclusion is based on the evidence that, in light of Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the killing of members of Mayan groups occurred (Article II.a), serious bodily or mental harm was inflicted (Article II.b) and the group was deliberately subjected to living conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (Article II.c). The conclusion is also based on the evidence that all these acts were committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part” groups identified by their common ethnicity, by reason thereof, whatever the cause, motive or final objective of these acts may have been (Article II, first paragraph).

After studying four selected geographical regions, (1) Maya-Q’anjob’al and Maya-Chuj, in Barillas, Nentón and San Mateo Ixtatán in North Huehuetenango; 2) Maya-Ixil, in Nebaj, Cotzal and Chajul, Quiché; 3) Maya-K’iche’ in Joyabaj, Zacualpa and Chiché, Quiché; and 4) Maya-Achi in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz) the CEH is able to confirm that between 1981 and 1983 the Army identified groups of the Mayan population as the internal enemy, considering them to be an actual or potential support base for the guerrillas, with respect to material sustenance, a source of recruits and a place to hide their members. In this way, the Army, inspired by the National Security Doctrine, defined a concept of internal enemy that went beyond guerrilla sympathisers, combatants or militants to include civilians from specific ethnic groups.

The tragedy of the armed confrontation

1. With the outbreak of the internal armed confrontation in 1962, Guatemala entered a tragic and devastating stage of its history, with enormous human, material and moral cost. In the documentation of human rights violations and acts of violence connected with the armed confrontation, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) registered a total of 42,275 victims, including men, women and children. Of these, 23,671 were victims of arbitrary execution and 6,159 were victims of forced disappearance. Eighty-three percent of fully identified victims were Mayan and seventeen percent were Ladino.1

2. Combining this data with the results of other studies of political violence in Guatemala, the CEH estimates that the number of persons killed or disappeared as a result of the fratricidal confrontation reached a total of over 200,000.

Among the cases registered by the CEH, insurgent actions produced 3% of the human rights violations and acts of violence perpetrated against men, women and children, including 5% of the arbitrary executions and 2% of forced disappearances.

2000 - Alfonso Portillo sworn in as president after winning the elections in 1999.

Romeo Lucas Garcia and Efrain Rios Montt - On June 14 2001 Judge Marco Antonio Posada ruled that two former presidents of Guatemala be investigated for allegedly conducting a policy of genocide against the Mayan Indians between 1978 and 1983.The ruling was the first time a Guatemalan court agreed to investigate the allegations. Garcia, won a rigged election in 1978, and his successor Mr Rios Montt, seized power in a coup in 1982. Lucas Garcia, who lives in Venezuela, is reportedly suffering from Alzheimer's disease and has not made any public statement for several years. Rios Montt is currently serving as the leader of Guatemala's Congress and as such he enjoys immunity from prosecution. Montt, also controls the political party of current President Alfonso Portilla.

2001 December - President Portillo pays $1.8 millon in compensation to the families of 226 men, women and children killed by soldiers and paramilitaries in the village of Las Dos Erres in the north of Guatemala in 1982.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1215000/1215811.stm

Rolando Alecio, a Guatemalan anthropologist who researched the Rabinal massacres for two years, "is an excessive trauma that lasts generations, an inhumanity that is strategically calculated to destroy entirely the psyche within people and any sense of community."
Family Members of the Disappeared in Guatemala (FAMDEGUA)

Artículo 376 of the Código Penal of Guatemala

http://www.unifr.ch/derechopenal/legislacion/cp_guatemala11.pdf