OPERATION

The military operations Victoria 82 and Sofa demonstrate the aims and strategies of Guatemalas Army during the darkest period of the countrys recent history. We offer a brief

SOFA
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analysis of these military plans from different points of view historical, anthropological, psycho-socialout of our belief in Guatemalas infinite capacity to transform its current situation..

SumMarY
Short notes on a long armed conflict From racism to genocide The tyranny of Ros Montt and Operation Victoria Operation Sofa Targeting women: feminicide The risks of union struggle The truth underground The pain of impunity A new dawn Seeds against forgetting
Graphic Design: Studio BOTERO Translation: Neil Mann

2 4 7 12 20 23 26 29 32 35

Rural people moved against their will by the Army. Nebaj, 1982.

Taking the fishs water away

mpunity is a sea in which the criminals of armed conflict swim. During the armed conflict, the Army was inspired by the well-known Maoist dictum that the guerrilla, supported by the people, exists within their community as the fish does in water. It put into practice a strategy of taking the fishs water away, in other words, destroying the communities that might support the guerrillas, so that they could not use popular support to sustain themselves. In this way, the racist government planned, executed and justified one of the cruelest and least punished genocides in Latin America. Today, those responsible for these hateful crimes swim in a sea of impunity and occupy important positions of power in the democracy. This situation not only makes a mockery of the victims, survivors and the people as a whole, but also means that the state is committing a serious breach of the rules of international law, as well as jeopardizing the credibility of its institutions at both national and international level. As the United Nations has repeated: the prosecution and conviction of those

responsible for crimes, along with the compensation of victims, are obligations on all States and must not be substituted in any way or delayed. Only the determination and tireless efforts of organizations for human rights and victim advocacy have managed, with a few but important sentences, to crack the wall of impunity that stands between the victims and their struggle for justice. Within the framework of open trials for genocide in the country, the Justice and Reconciliation Association (AJR: Asociacin Justicia y Reconciliacin) demanded that the Guatemalan Army hand over the campaign plans dubbed Victoria 82 (Victory 82) and Firmeza 83 (Firmness 83) and the plans for an operation labeled Sofa. The Army gave the Courts of Justice the first two plans in a more complete form than they had given to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH: Comisin de Esclarecimiento Histrico), but said that Operation Plan Sofa (POS Plan Operaciones Sofa) had been lost. At the end of 2009, the analyst Kate Doyle received one of the twenty original copies of POS.

This plan of operations shows that in 1982, during Ros Montts government, there was a strategy, formulated down to the last detail, to destroy every sign of life in the Ixil area and to leave it in ashes, including the municipalities of Santa Mara Nebaj, San Juan Cotzal and San Gaspar Chajul. These military documents give: the names of those responsible for the crimes committed as part of this extermination mission; the movements and reports of the patrols operating there; the faxes sent in an unbroken chain of command; the successes achieved in obliterating indigenous communities and razing their property to the ground. We humbly dedicate this short publication to all the victims, survivors and their families. To borrow the words of Eduardo Galeano, we wish to say that, it was worth it, that so many men and women did not die in vain. That there are lives that are wonderfully long, because they continue in others, in those who come after. Lives that remind us that we are not condemned to choose the same. We thank all of them for continuing to help us not to lose our way, not to accept the unacceptable, never to give in, and never to get down from the beautiful horse of dignity.
Comisiones obreras Trade Union. Guatemala, Tierra de rboles, 2011

To see the complete original Operation Plan Sofa, go to: www.madridpazysolidaridad.org www.ccoo.es


Photo/photo text: C Jean-Marie Simon/2010. Guatemala, Eternal SpringEternal Tyranny

They make you sing the national anthem and the Army anthem, and then they tell you that the Army guarantees and protects the Guatemalan economy and the rich people, and the reason why they protect the rich is that theyre the ones who give work to the Guatemalan people and someone has to protect the people who give work. They tell you that a guerrilla is someone who steals. They never tell you what it means to be a guerrilla or a communist. They tell you that Cuba and Nicaragua have communists but you never know who is really the enemy. Former soldier, Guatemala City.

Short notes on a long armed conflict

Antonio Garca *
Referendum= Trap BEHIND Fear lies FREEDOM

n order to give a clearer sense of the context in which Operation Plan Sofa was formulated and carried out, here are a few quick brushstrokes to sketch the internal armed conflict that devastated Guatemala for 36 years.. Ten years of democratic reforms under Arvalo and Arbenz ended in 1954 with the triumph of a coup supported by the United States. The United States disseminated the idea throughout Latin America that any government that took direct responsibility for the welfare of its people, showed intellectual curiosity or desire for economic independence was considered communist. The U.S. systematically intervened from then on to maintain the regime installed by the CIA and, when Congress imposed some limitations, delegated responsibility for supplying the means, weapons, military advisers and training necessary to commit the brutal crimes to various client states (Israel and Argentinean neo-Nazis). The inability of the Guatemalan State to address legitimate social demands and claims led to a repressive system, whose main objective was controlling the population that wanted to rebel against their miserable living conditions. The rural population undertook community programs to pull themselves out of their silent suffering, which were immediately destroyed by those who wanted to reimpose the traditional order.1

* Lawyer, in charge of the legal committee of the Comisiones Obreras Trade

Union.

You gringos are always worried about the violence done with machine guns and machetes. But there is another kind of violence that you must be aware of, too. I used to work on the hacienda. My job was to take care of the dueos dogs. I gave them meat and bowls of milk, food that I couldnt give my own family. When the dogs were sick, I took them to the veterinarian. When my children were sick, the dueo gave me his sympathy, but no medicine as they died. To watch your children die of sickness and hunger while you can do nothing is a violence to the spirit. We have suffered that silently for too many years. Why arent you gringos concerned about that kind of violence?2 Structural injustice, which persists to this day; the closing of political spaces; racism; discrimination; the consolidation of exclusive and antidemocratic institutions that refuse to promote any substantial reforms that might have reduced the structural conflictsthese, according to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), are the

factors that determined at a profound level the origin and subsequent outbreak of the armed conflict, which dragged out from 1960 to 1996.3 The conditions of semislavery and misery, called traditional life by the lites, came under threat when the peasant population, Indians primarily, began to lend support to guerrillas after the government crushed their nonviolent efforts to overcome them. The dynamics were the familiar ones. Local self-help organizations, many established by the Church, had developed during the 1970s and functioned effectively with wide participation by the rural population, achieving impressive resultsand calling forth the usual response [in Central America]: murder of priests and community leaders, and generalized massacre and repression.4 Reports by Amnesty International, Survival International and Americas Watch were aware of the exponential increase of violence in the early 80s, when entire villages were reduced to ashes and there was systematic torture. A network
C Lorena Pajares Snchez
1

2 3

Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace (2nd edition; Boston: South End Press, 1987), 28. Chomsky, Turning the Tide, 67. United Nations Commission for Historical Clarificaion on Guatemala (CEH), 12 vols. Guatemala: Memory of Silence (Guatemala: UN Office for Project Services, 1999), Ch. 4, p. 24, 12. Chomsky, Turning the Tide, 28, citing ed. Cynthia Brown, With Friends Like These, Americas Watch Report on Human Rights and U.S. Policy in Latin America (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 194, 185ff.

Short notes on a long armed conflict

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A woman detained with her children at the military base at Nebaj. 1982.

of parallel apparatuses of repression was created, replacing the judicial activity of the courts and establishing an illegal punitive system run by military intelligence structures (G-2). We wonder if this network is still functioning and why successive governments since the signing of the peace have not dismantled it. The direct or indirect collaboration of key economic and political sectors is more than demonstrated in both the successive military governments and also the civilian ones overseen by the army. Jeane Kirkpatrick, a leader in the Reagan Administration said: Traditional autocrats [the ones we do and should support, Kirkpatrick explains] leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other resources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. Because the miseries of traditional life are familiar, they are bearable to ordinary people who, growing up in the society, learn to cope, as children born to untouchables in India acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for survival in the miserable roles they are destined to fill.5 Anti-communist policy received strong support from right-wing political parties and powerful sectors of society in Guatemala. The U.S. did not hesitate to support the successive military regimes in its strategic backyard. The National Security Doctrine was taken up without problems in Guatemala, expressed first in terms of anti-reform, then anti-democracy, and finally, as counter-insurgency with criminal intent. The anti-communist thinking took root in the country and was joined by a vigorous defense of religion, traditions and conservative values that supposedly saw themselves threatened by the world expansion of atheist communism.6 In the case of
5 6 7 8 9

Soldiers Song Soldier, do not shoot me, soldier. I know your hand is shaking soldier, do not shoot me. Who put those medals on you? How many lives did they cost you? Tell me if its right soldier with so much blood. Who wins? If its so wrong to kill, why kill your brother? Vctor Jara
(Chilean singer-songwriter and musician)

Turning the Guatemala: Turning the Turning the Guatemala:

Tide, 8. Memory of Silence, Ch IV, p. 24, 14. Tide, 30. Tide, 31. Memory of Silence, Ch. IV, p. 24, 15.

Guatemala, United States support was most evident at the military level in terms of strengthening the national intelligence apparatus, the sale of equipment and weapons, training officers for counter-insurgency warfare, all key areas involved in the commission of the serious human-rights violations that the army committed during the conflict. The bloodiest governments of the 36-yearlong armed conflict were those of Lucas Garca, Ros Montt and Meja Vctores, between 1980 and 1984. During these years, As the London Economist noted in 1983, with the help of Israeli advisers, [Guatemala] has succeeded where a similar campaign in neighbouring El Salvador, pushed by American advisers, has failed, though the price of success has been very high, including sadistic butchery and one million homeless Indians.7 Elliott Abrams, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Human Rights, argued that the violence and the refugees were the price of stability. In 1984 in an appearance before the United States Congress, he said that Meja Vctores (Ros Montts Depu-

ty Defense Minister and later Head of State) was continuing the great number of improvements on human rights that Rios Montt had begun. The Reagan Administration had also praised the policy of Lucas Garca, for his positive advances, although it claimed that it had not provided direct military aid to Guatemala until later, in 1982, when Ros Montt staged his coup and began his dramatic improvements [in human rights].8 In Guatemala, for several decades the National Security Doctrine promoted by the U.S. became the Armys raison dtre and State policy. At the same time, the concept of the internal enemy, inherent in this doctrine, became ever more widespread for the State. The CEH has recorded 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. The victims included men, women and children from all levels of society: workers, professionals, priests and nuns, politicians, farmers, students and academicsin ethnic terms, the vast majority belonged to the Maya population.9 As we shall see in discussing the plan for Operation Sofa, the States repressive response was completely out of proportion to the military strength of the guerrilla groups and can only be understood within the framework of the countrys profound social, economic and political conflicts. In the period 19781982 there was, among large sections of the population, growing social activism and political opposition to the continuation of the established order, whose organized expressions, in some cases, maintained links of various kinds with the insurgency. However, at no point in the internal armed conflict did the guerrilla groups have the military capabilities necessary to pose a threat to the State. The State and the Army were aware, at all times, that the insurgencys military capacity did not represent a real threat to the political order in Guatemala. In 1982 they devised plans for a military campaignOperation Victoria 82knowing full well that they were not fighting against the guerrillas but rather wiping out whole villages, inhabited only by an unarmed population of indigenous peasants, all under the guise of regarding them as the guerrillas social support. One of the most common crimes of this armed conflict, and one that has left so many consequences, is that of forced disappearance. More than 45,000 innocent people are still missing and only one soldier and a few paramilitary personnel have been convicted for the crime. This year marks 30 years of the disappearance of the writer and fighter Alade Foppa. Taking responsibility as a writer, she used her pen and every means of expression to challenge enslaving stereotypes, unfair restrictions and any violation of dignity. She had a son with Juan Jos Arvalo and married Alfonso Solrzano, an official in the governments of Arvalo and rbenz and founder of the Guatemalan Labor Party. She lost two of the children she brought up to work for justice. She disappeared on December 19, 1980. Her voice is that of all men and women who fought for a fairer Guatemala and paid a very high price for it. Their names are in our memories.

The Army directing the annual Indian festival in Nebaj, Quich, 1982. Racism justifies control through fear of violence and assures the system of domination. At the same time it is a key element in explaining why military operations were carried out such viciousness and brutality. This racism has recently been exacerbated by the elites who consider themselves white.

Marta Casaus Arz *

Racism and Genocide

The Guatemalan genocide in the light of Operation Sofa: an interpretation and a reflection
such, it must have a series of elements: One is the objective of exterminating an ethnic, religious or cultural group. The essential thing is to declare this group an absolute enemy and therefore previously barbarized or animalized and separated from their humanity.1 The other element is the degree of intentionality, which means finding out whether it was planned from the very top with the decided intention of exterminating the ethnic group. Secondly if the executors were involved in designing, planning and implementing it. Thirdly, analyzing the rules and practical methods by which of acts of genocide, deportations, starvation, torture, terror, massacres were put into practice. Fourthly, examining what Feierstein terms as genocidal social practices that accompany ittraining methods, refinements, legitimation and consensuswhich imply prior planning.2 I want to start from the basis of the relationship between racism and genocide, a matter that is hotly debated in Guatemala and throughout Latin America. In those multiethnic and multicultural states with ethnic minorities or minoritized majorities, such as Guatemala, where racism also plays a fundamental role in the social structure, in the science and the structure of power, these practices, attitudes and expressions contribute to the execution of genocidal acts and social practices.3 We consider this connecting thread of racism crucial in analyzing the case of Guatemala, to seeing how it goes on mutating and metamorphosing over a succession of historical stages, the spaces in which recreates and reproduces, and as power elites and the church construct and recreate it, via the State, to become normalized so that even the subordinate classes use it as part of how they formulate their own identity. For Foucault, racism is inserted as a new mechanism of state power, which exercises the right to kill or eliminate the Other in the name of sovereignty. He claims that the most murderous states are also the most racist. These starting premises allow us to situate the racism that comes from the State and to analyze it, not only as an ideology of difference and inequality, not only as a form of discrimination and oppression between classes or ethnic groups, but also as a logic of extermination and exclusion, as a technology of power.
1

Introduction, premises and starting point

he war that Guatemala underwent resulted in more than 200,000 casualties, according to the report of the Historical Clarification Commission. For the first time in the countrys history, an official commission has confirmed that racism is a fundamental factor in explaining the cruelty and discrimination with which military operations were carried out against the indigenous communities in the West. It has further been confirmed that, according to the rules of international law, acts of genocide were committed by the Army who branded groups of Mayan people as the enemy within. The first thing we ask ourselves is how this could happen. What could have provoked it? Why so much cruelty and horror? What relationship exists between racism and genocide, both social practices that are articulated as technologies of power? What does Operation Sofa add to the confirmation of racism and its link with the Guatemalan genocide? The genocides of the twentieth century have been part of modern bureaucracy and the culture of rationalism, and they could appear again at any time. That is the reason for my interest in investigating the phenomenon in the light of Operation Sofa, which proves collusion between the Army, the oligarchy and the CIA in planning the Guatemalan genocide. In the opinion of experts such as Bauman, Uvin and Kuper, Goldhagen, and Bruneteau, for genocide to be defined and categorized as
* Professor of History of the Americas, Universidad Autnoma de Madrid. Author of numerous publications, including: Genocidio: La ma_xima expresio_n del racismo en Guatemala? (Genocide: The Ultimate Expression of Racism in Guatemala?) and Guatemala: linaje y racismo (Guatemala: Race and Racism).

Foucault, Michel J. (1992). The State Must be Defended in Bernard Bruneteau (2006), The Century of Genocide, Violence, Massacres and Genocidal Processes from Armenia to Rwanda. 2 Feierstein, Daniel (2007). Genocide as a social practice, between Nazism and the experience of Argentina. (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica) 3 There is a great deal written on this subject: see the work of Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence, The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998). D. J. Goldhagen, Hitlers Willing Executioners (New York: Knopf, 1998) and Bernard Brunettau, The Century of Genocides, op. cit.

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Racism and Genocide

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The historical-political foundations of genocide are rooted here in the way that the homogeneous states in Latin America were constructed.4 In the State and its repressive apparatus, genocide operates as the ultimate expression of racism, because it constitutes an intrinsic element of the state itself and forms part of a central axis that is used and manipulated by elites in power who consider themselves white. Studies on genocide have shown how responsibility for the enormity of genocide rested not only with the fascist state, but with the civilian population, and they give warning of the enormous dangers that we run if we do not deactivate these racist practices that lead to genocide.5 In the case of Guatemala, it is necessary to investigate those sociological, political and psychological variables, and especially the historical background that gave rise to the survival and normalization of racism and genocidal acts.6 In that context, in view of documents recently brought to light about Operation Plan Sofa, along with many other Army and CIA documents, I consider that the state has played an essential role in the reproduction of racism and the planning of genocide. In fact one of the main contributions of Operation Sofa is to confirm the seamless operation of a chain of command that begins with the orders of Chief of Genral Staff, Lpez Fuentes, coordinator of the plan Victoria 82, and reaches down to the leaders of each one of the patrols that made up the three paratroop companies. The 20 copies of Operation Plan Sofa distributed to the various battalions confirm the explicit mission to exterminate the civilian population and how that order came directly from high command in order to develop counter-subversion operations, population control and psychological operations with to exterminate all ENO encounters with the enemy and the FIL, local Irregular Forces, namely indigenous civilians in the Ixil area with no links to the armed struggle.7 The following are some of the basic premises about the States involvement in the genocide in Guatemala which reinforce the narrative in Operation Sofa: The Guatemalan racist state perpetrated a genocide against the indigenous population and this was because, historically and structurally, it possessed, in its intrinsic nature, the repressive, ideological and legal apparatus to carry it out. The Guatemalan State is a racist state that uses state racism as a technology of power, when it loses control of the indigenous population and fears that they might rise up and take revenge. In this sense, everyday racism and the normalization of racism play a crucial role in the imagination of the ladinos, the military and political elite, who have revived the fear of re-

Everyday racism and the normalization of racism play a crucial role in the imagination of the ladinos, the military and political elite.
verse racism, in the form of a backlash against their own historical and social domination. The racist state is by nature exclusionary, authoritarian and discriminatory, and uses all means of coercion at its disposal to exercise power and consolidate a system of exploitation and domination, so that race becomes the linchpin of the differences and inequalities. It is a state that, faced with a crisis in domination or an inter-oligarchic struggle, resorts to genocide as a final solution to maintain control, and supports itself substantially through repression as its main route. It is a state whose strategy has been to assimilate or integrate the Other according to the homogenizing model of nationhood and has historically resorted to eugenics as a strategy for improving the breed and to genocide to maintain its dominant status. The features identified here formed a substantial part of the Guatemalan State and therefore we arrive at categorizing it as a racist state, which favors state racism, or massive and indiscriminate use of brute force, as the most common mechanism to justify control by means of violence and ensure a global system of domination.
The Indian as a public threat: Racism as technology of extermination

In the 80s, a 17-year-old coffee-picker with her child on her back. Jocotenango, Sacatepequez. In the last fifteen years, maternal mortality has been reduced from 248 to 133 cases per 100,000 live births and is three times higher in indigenous women than in the non-indigenous population. However, this rate is the fifth highest in Latin America.

cost the lives of more than 200,000 people, more than 83% of them Mayan, and resulted in acts of genocide against the indigenous population. This violence had a background in racism insofar as they sought to exterminate the Maya people, declaring them the enemy within.8 Out of the total number of human rights violations that affected life and physical integrity, 70% were committed against Mayans and only 10% against ladinos; in terms of casualties recorded by the CEH, 89% were Mayan speakers and proceeded predominantly indigenous municipalities: Quich, Kekchi and Kakchiquel. Reading Operation Plan Sofa, it is immediately obvious in how many paragraphs the word extermination occurs. In Operation Sofa, the central mission of these companies was to carry out offensive and counter-subversive operations and psychological operations in the Operations Gumarcaj area, in coordination with the Task Force, to give greater impetus to these operations and to exterminate subversive elements in the area.
6

It is in this context that social Darwinism, with all the theories about the hierarchy of races and the extermination of the same, takes on an unusual historical value and as part of a hegemonic current contributes to genocide. It is what a certain writer referred to as the murderous imaginarium of social Darwinism. 5 The same phenomenon occurred in Nazi Germany, where the civilian population took a good part of the responsibility for the Holocaust by their silence, if not by their complicity. Bauman believes that it is impossible to try to explain the Holocaust as a monstrosity of the past or as something incomprehensible that is alien to our civilization, because the system and ideology that led to Auschwitz remain intact. This means that the nation state itself is out of control and that at any moment acts of this nature can be unleashed and happen again. The uniqueness and normality of the genocide is what ensures its repetition. Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

Guatemala has been one of the clearest cases, only comparable with the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo and possibly in Rwanda. The extermination of the indigenous population was undoubtedly the work of the Army and the power elite at the height of the war that, according to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH),

A book from the Center for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), on the first meeting about racism and genocide in Guatemala, brings an underdiscussed topic like this for analysis and further reflection. CALDH, Genocidio la mxima expresin del racismo (Genocide: The Ultimate Expression of Racism) (Guatemala City: Maga, 2004). 7 See Operation Sofa, 13 report from patrol 1. In the Periodic Reports on Operations (IPOs), especially the report IPO no. 1 from Colonel Castellanos, correspondent to the first battalion of paratroopers, it is reported how they yoked the civilian population together with the guerrillas, making them out to be responsible for supporting the guerrillas, when they were simple peasants who were fleeing in terror from the massacres. 8 This fact is well documented in Operation Plan Sofa and the CEHs Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio (Guatemala: Memory of Silence) (Guatemala City: UNOPS, 1999), vol. 5, Conclusions and Recommendations. In sections 108, 109, and 110122 the report concludes that the Guatemalan state, between 1981 and 1983, committed acts of genocide against the Mayan population.

operaTion SofIa destroy the internal enemy, but to debase and animalize it, meaning that the Mayan people, the indigenous population, were objectified and dehumanized, referred to impersonally as FIL, ENO, the children termed derogatorily as chocolates, and the women called by the names of animals, as well as stripped of their physical and moral integrity. Other considerations that arise from this: 1) The foundations on which the genocide is builtboth in its institutional aspect, the racist state, and in its repressive and ideological apparatusremain intact. 2) The perpetrators of genocide are fully identified but have not been punished, not even named individually as in other Truth Commissions, and they are responsible for much of the current violence. Despite being mentioned in the documentation of Operation Sofa, no cases have been filed against them or brought to trial. 3) The power elites, who govern and lead the country, and the economic elites continue expressing their racist and discriminatory attitudes, practices and displays all the time. Within the white elite, racism has worsened, reactivated in behavior and practices that are even more intolerant without, any need for cause, but particularly when they fear the arrival of an Indian in power.
In the face of these situations of helplessness and impunity

Some of the massacres committed in Guatemala during this period allow us to see how, in the form of the violence, torture and elimination directed against women, children and indigenous people, there was planning and premeditated strategy from the high command, a deliberate intentionality coming from military leaders targeted at physically exterminating a people and their offspring and triggering genocide against the civilian population of Mayan origin.9 The Armys brutality was merciless in areas of Mayan population and most of them were accompanied by insults such as raza de coches, indias de mierda.10 There were also practices such as extracting the fetus alive from a pregnant woman or even amputating her breasts, as well as leaving signs of rape on dead bodies, such as objects in their vaginas or stakes in their bellies.11 One of the most striking elements in all these testimoniesand of course fully reflected in Operation Sofais the objectification of the Other or their animalization. Regarding these Others as things or objects was one of the most effective tactics for Nazi executioners and the killers of other genocides in carrying out their mission to save humanity, where cleansing of the population, in many cases, or improvement of the race played a crucial role. The fact that in none of the documents related to Operation Sofa are the victims considered as people or indigenous people or individuals, and certainly never as victims, is one of the ways the military objectified them away took away their humanity.12 The documents of Operation Sofa list the dead or murdered in the same way as animals, houses, traps or other objects; at no time does it speak of either the indigenous population or Mayans, a term that is absent from the entire plan: they are enemies, ENO, local irregular forces, FIL, or subversives.13 Children are referred to as chocolates, a clear reference to their copper-colored skin. What appears in the reports is that two chocolates were eliminated, or five FIL dead, or they are referred to as a 17-year-old undocumented element, or an item in plain clothes was eliminated, 25 horses, 70 sheep, 35 cows and 15 FIL were eliminated.... Only when they are evacuated, or made prisoners, do they become subjects again, three orphaned children were evacuated, female and male children, and old people were evacuated, captured: children, women and old people. Only then do they regain their humanity, become people again, human beings with identifiable gender or age. During Operation Sofa which lasted for only one month three days (from July 16 to August 19, 1982), the area was devastated with an indescribable level of violence, villages were destroyed, there
9

Two tears When I was born they put two tears in my eyes so that I could see the size of my peoples pain.

Hope Yesterday I passed by the cemetery. I questioned many who sleep without a grave. And though they died, they wore no hope. And though they died, they wore no hope. Hope. The birds heard the voice of my heart And happy, they sang their songs of justice and/ freedom. And happy, they sang their songs of justice and/ freedom. Hope. Humberto akabal
(Guatemalan Maya poet)

What is striking in the case of the Guatemalan genocide is the huge number of rapes and murders perpetrated against children (18%), most of them arbitrary executions. In the documentation for Operation Sofa, the soldier Mario Roberto Grajeda Toledo reports that over three days alone, during 25, 26 and 28 July 1982, the Army captured 91 children, 73 girls, three newborns, 69 women and 52 men. All were categorized as local irregular forces (FIL). 10 According to the CEH, rape, including gang rape, was inflicted on indigenous women (89%), of whom 35% were under 18. The insults are not easily translated, being far stronger than the literal meaning spawn of pigs or shit Indian women. 11 CEH, Memoria del Silencio, vol. 5, p. 32. 12 On the subject of animalization the other and its effects in cases of genocide, see Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence. Roger Paul Droit, Genealoga de los brbaros: Historia de la inhumanidad (Barcelona: Paidos, 2009).

were massacres, sieges of the civilian population, indiscriminate bombing, destruction of animals and goods, and the Army instilled a level of psychological terror, as it forced more than 100,000 Indians into internal displacement, many dying of starvation and cold in the mountains or trying to cross the border. All these data in the plan for Operation Sofa mean that we are in complete agreement with the assessments given by Victoria Sanford,14 the Fundacin Rigoberta Mench, CALDH (Center for Human Rights Legal Action), Chirix,15 Montejo, Payeras, Brett,16 Prudencio Garca,17 Castellanos and many others, concerning the responsibility of the Guatemalan State, the Army and the power elites who designed and implemented a strategy of genocide against the Mayan population. Tracing the orders set out in Operation Sofa confirms that the High Command and the people involved in the governments of Kxel Laugerud, Lucas Garca, Ros Montt and Meja Vctores, had the clear intention of committing genocide against the indigenous population and that it was designed, planned and executed from the military leadership, with the collusion of the power elites and the CIA. Operation Sofa gives concrete proof of the two elements that enable us to classify the strategy as genocide. There was both the intent to exterminate the Ixil population, and also the motivation to gain control of the population in order to make them more ladino and erase the Ixil in them. The means used were the massacres within broader psychological warfare and displacing the population to development stimulus zones, or using a strategic hamlet program copied from Vietnam, all in order to achieve dissociation from their culture. Operation Plan Sofa, once again, gives clear evidence not only that they aimed

Why should we not seriously consider the possibility of a revival of racist and genocidal prejudices that can raise their heads at any time, giving rise to further acts of genocide, such as those that happened less than a decade ago and that are occurring elsewhere in the world, with the silence and complicity of the entire international community? Why not be aware that we continue to have a ticking time-bomb in our hands? I think all men and women have in our hands the duty and moral responsibility to think about it and to try to prevent it. I will conclude with the words of one witness, who carried the bones of a member of his family wrapped in his backpack, and told the tribunal the following: I will not bury him yet, I want a paper saying they killed him (...) that he was guilty of no crime, was innocent .... then we will rest (testimony to the CEH). This terrible lesson cannot be forgotten, nor is it healthy for a society that aims to live in peace and democracy to try to erase the past, to forget it and not to demand justice for these crimes against humanity.

13 Roddy Brett (2007). Una

guerra sin batallas: del odio, la violencia y el miedo en el Ixcan y el Ixil (1972-1983) (Guatemala City: F . & G. Editores). This book gives tangible proof of Army involvement and the close links between racism and genocide. 14 Victoria Sanfords excellent book proves how the Guatemalan Army planned and reported about this strategy to the U.S. State Department, in recently declassified reports (January 1998). She states that these declassified CIA and State Department documents contain evidence of genocide. Victoria Sanford, Violence and Genocide in Guatemala, pp. 32 and 33. 15 Emma Chirix (2004). Subjetividad y racismo: la mirada de los otros y sus efectos (Subjectivity and Racism: The Gaze of Others and Its Effects), in Los desafios de la diversidad, Instituto de Estudios Interetnicos (IDEI), No. 18, November Year 11. 16 Roddy Brett, Una guerra sin batallas, pp. 228-29. 17 Prudencio Garca (2005). El genocidio de Guatemala, a la luz de la sociologa militar (Sepha, Madrid).

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Ros Montt in the center, with General Horacio Egberto Maldonado Schaad (left) and Colonel Francisco Lus Gordillo Martnez (right). While the U.S. State Department claimed that the new government publicly declared that it was committed to ending the violations perpetrated under the government of Lucas Garca, on May 27, 1982, the bishop of Guatemala, stated: Never in our countrys history have we been in such a dire situation. These killings are genocide.

Sofa Duyos *

he bloodiest years of armed conflict began in 1980 with the government of Lucas Garca and were abating in 1983 with the departure of his successor, Ros Montt. Both governments were the most repressive of the conflict and wreaked unprecedented havoc on the non-combatant civilian population. According to the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), 81% of the human rights violations recorded by the Commission took place between 1981 and 1983. In those early years of the 80s, the alliance between the oligarchy and the military was eroded by a succession of electoral frauds and bloody repression, aimed at holding on to power through the systematic murder of the countrys intelligentsia, community leaders, university teachers and students, people of culture, labor leaders, even civilian candidates for the presidency. Meanwhile, revolutionary movements were strengthening and, for the first time, the indigenous population was joining the guerrillas en masse, particularly the Organizacin del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA; Organization of People in Arms) and the Ejrcito Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP; Guerrilla Army of the Poor).1 The Army perceived the fact that a high percentage of the countrys population was made up of indigenous peoples as a threat. Their wretched living conditions meant that they appeared dangerously liable to influence from the examples Castros followers and the Sandinistas, and particularly a natural ally of the guerrillas. But this fear would not have turned into killing and torture if there had not been a pre-existent profound contempt on the part of the military toward the indigenous people, the product of a
* Coordinator of the program Human Rights in Guatemala for Fundacin Madrid Paz y Solidaridad/Comisiones Obreras.

Governments Three Branches in the Service of Genocide

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Ros Montts Tyranny:

the Local Irregular Forces (FIL) organized to act as armed self-defense units, the Army responded with Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC; Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil); to oppose the Clandestine Local Committees (CCL; Comits Clandestinos Locales) that acted on behalf of local government in areas under insurgent control, the Army created the Inter-Institutional Coordinators; and against the Communities of Population in Resistance (CPR; Comunidades de Poblacin en Resistencia) they set up the Model Villages (concentration camps).3
Ros Montt: I declared a state of siege so that we could kill legally.4

Women members of the EGP guerrilla force.

historical and structural racism. We cannot ignore that those who came to power between 1980 and 1983 belonged to a social group that considered itself white and of European descent, who not only advocated improvement of the race but were supporters of eugenics and the extermination of the indigenous population as way to integrate them into the nation.2 As the Army believed that it had control of the towns and had dismantled the guerrillas on the South Coast, it focused its efforts on the offensive against the guerrilla fronts on the Altiplano, starting with Chimaltenango. Troops began to fight the insurgency copying the insurgents own strategies: to combat

After the coup dtat of March 23, 1982, the Military Governing Junta was installed headed by GENERAL JOSE EFRAN ROS MONTT and also including HORACIO EGBERTO MALDONADO SCHAAD and FRANCISCO LUS GORDILLO MARTNEZ. This Junta was appointed the highest authority in the Republic of Guatemala; it set aside the Constitution and exercised executive and legislative functions until June 8 of
1 2 3 4

M. Casas, Genocidio: La mxima expresin del racismo en Guatemala? (Guatemala City: F & G, 2008), p. 55. Ibid. H. Rosada Granados, Soldados en el poder: proyecto militar en Guatemala (Guatemala: Funpadem, 1999), p. 159. Statement by Ros Montt on Guatemalan television in 1982, cited Noam Chomsky, Turning the Tide (2nd ed; Boston: South End Press, 1987), p. 55.

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the same year, when Ros Montt concentrated all the Juntas powers in his own hands and held them until August 8, 1983. General Ros made a series of changes in all institutions for the military to remain in full control of the reorganization of government, the armed forces, and the police, as well as the political life of civil society.5 The civil authorities were under military authority and, consequently, had to obey the Military High Command faithfully. Laws were passed that concentrated power, violated International Norms and Behavior, and facilitated the regimes crimes. The government of General Ros Montt put out a series of decrees to make it easier to violate the human rights of a population whose individual guarantees, freedom of movement and of trade, were suspended. On May 24, 1982, he promulgated the Decree of Amnesty and, as we shall see shortly, in June began on the Plan of Campaign called Victoria 82, which, in its Annex F, established: Creating a legal framework and justification for fighting Subversion openly (p. 35). The Army argued: That to carry out vigorous and firm action to annihilate subversion, not provided for in the Governments excellent proposals to grant amnesty that expired on June 30 this year, it is necessary to increase the strength of the Armed Forces (...) (Decree 4482); on July 1 a State of Siege was declared (Decree 4582). With this it was possible, according to the Manual of Counter-Subversive Warfare (p. 4), to smooth out many obstacles, especially in the moral and psychological sense, because the feeling of danger makes repressive measures more acceptable (to the general population) and actions (by the Army) more intense. The judiciary collaborated in this criminal policy through the Courts of Special Jurisdiction (Tribunales de Fuero Especial), which judged political opponents secretly and without due process, although the vast majority of such opponents were disappeared. Ros Montt told representatives of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR): I am the one who makes the laws. I guarantee the public a fair use of force. Instead of bodies in the streets, Im going to shoot those who commit crimes.6 Access to justice during this period was virtually non-existent for the population in general and for the indigenous Mayan population in particular. Reporting crimes was not only extremely dangerous but it was formally impossible to do, thereby guaranteeing impunity for the Army and other State forces who participated in the genocide (MDS II. 2.375.1933). In conclusion, the military plans of extermination were executed with great efficiency because Ros Montt controlled all three branches of government: He managed Executive power through the Military Junta and directly controlled the army because he was also Minister of Defense.
5

Rafael Yos Muxtay, kidnapped in 1985, said: If you lift your head, they break it. If you open your mouth, they close it. If you take a step forward, youre dead.

This photograph was taken by Jean-Marie Simon during the armed conflict. The situation today is very similar: at most of the large mines where more than 600,000 rural inhabitants work, wages are between 22 and 25 quetzals, far below the minimum wage established by law, and this for a working day of more than 10 or even 12 hours.

Jean-Marie SiMon

Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny

He arrogated to himself Legislative power by overriding Congress and dictated regulations that facilitated repression. And he took control of Judicial power through the Courts of Special Jurisdiction, which acted in the service of the military government, as did all the civil authorities. This takeover of all state institutions by Ros Montt facilitated the crime of genocide, which is unthinkable as an individual fact, without the state apparatus, without the structure of hierarchy and obedience of the Guatemalan Army, which proceeded to act without moral limits outside international law.
Victoria 82: Ros Montts Scorched Earth Plan

The war is fought in all fields: in the military, the political, and especially in the socio-economic. The mind of the population is the main goal. 7 The Army defined the Guatemalan nations way of life and aspiration, and was supported by the oligarchy, as long as their economic, social and political interests were not affected. In April 1982, the Military Government Junta issued the National Security and Development Plan (PNSD), which established national objectives in military, administrative, legal, social, economic and political terms. This National Plan identified the main areas of conflict, including the departments of El Quich, Huehuetenango and Chimaltenango. Therefore, it is no coincidence that between 1978 and 1984, 76% of the massacres committed took place in these three departments, espe-

Jennifer Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), p. 26. Hereafter cited as GMP in textCEH (Comisin de Esclarecemiento Histrico / Historical Clarification Commission), Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio (Guatemala: Memory of Silence), (Guatemala City: UNOPS, 1999), Ch. II, vol. 2, p. 375, 1932. Chapter II, divided into four volumes, deals with Violations of Human Rights and Acts of Violence. Hereafter cited in the text as MDS with references in the order: chapter, volume, page, section. Available online at: http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/mds/spanish/toc.html. Abbreviated English version: shr.aaas. org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/toc.html. Campaign Plan Victoria 82, Guatemala 1982, Annex H, Permanent Orders, p. 46.

cially in El Quich, where 52% of them were recorded (MDS II.3.257.3080). The Army also defined who the nations enemy was, declaring the enemy communist, criminal, subversive, insurgent.... Its main objective was to separate and isolate the guerrillas from the civilian population. According to the Manual of Counter-Insurgency Warfare, the entire population becomes a target in the war, so as to prevent the subversive movement from developing and ultimately to destroy it. This Manual defines the war against subversion as total (in all fields of human activity), permanent (as long as international communism exists), universal (it must involve all the nations of the free world) and national (it must be rolled out across the entire national territory). A section of the Armed Forces criticized the way in which President Lucas was running the war. The absence of a long-term plan prompted the Army to set out the need for a carefully designed counter-insurgency strategy. Lucass line officers were called the tacticians because they supported razing the villages 100%. On the other side were the strategists who supported Ros Montt and favored a formula of destroying 30% and re-educating the surviving 70%. By applying recovery clean-ups, the strategistsintelligence officers and those trained in the special forcescoldly planned first to exterminate thousands upon thousands of indigenous noncombatants in waves of terror and then recoup any refugee-prisoners left over in order to ensure the permanent destruction of the combatants infrastructure. (GMP 45). Journalist Allan Nairn quotes the words of Sergeant Jos ngel, who participated in operations in the Ixil area in which over 500 people died: We tell the people to change the road they are on, because the road they are on is bad. If they dont change, there

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is nothing else to do but kill them. When the journalist asks: So you kill them on the spot? the sergeant replies: Yes, sure. If they dont want the good, there is nothing more to do but bomb their houses.8 General ROS MONTT, as Head of State and Minister of Defense, entrusted design of military counter-insurgency plan to three officers of the strategist group, who had experience in military strategy: RODOLFO LOBOS ZAMORA, CSAR AUGUSTO CCERES ROJAS and HCTOR ALEJANDRO GRAMAJO MORALES. These three colonels, from the Ministry of Defense, Army General Staff and the Center for Military Studies respectively, along with some civilian professionals and administrators, reformulated Lucass military strategy and prepared a long-term NATIONAL PLAN FOR SECURITY AND DEVELOPMENT (GMP 2223). General GRAMAJO in an interview with anthropologist Jennifer Schirmer stated: One of the first things we did was to draw up a document for the campaign with annexes and appendices. It was a complete job, with planning down to the last detail (GMP 44). The Military High Command designed a strategy aimed at wiping out the enemy, divided into three stages: During the first stage, the Army would apply selective repression and obtain the information necessary to select those populations to be labeled red zones. As the Manual of Counter-Insurgency Warfare itself says, in the red areas the wreaking of havoc was inevitable (p. 5). The Army selected these to reduce to ashes. In the second stage, in selected areas, called killing zones (matazonas) by GRAMAJO, no sign of life would be left: they would raze entire villages, burn the land, kill everybody without distinction and hunt down the survivors. The campaign plans Victoria 82 and Firmeza 83 correspond to this phase. The department of El Quich was in a red zone, as were all the Ixil villages where, from July, the Army would implement its plan of annihilation, Operation Sofa. In the last stage, from 1984 on, repression went hand in hand with forms of reorganization and control directed at the surviving population and at preventing old ways of life reemerging, if these endangered the exclusive system that suited the oligarchy. Indigenous communities were dismantled by means of military control to get rid of the indigenous elementperpetuating racismand thereby reintegrating these survivors into what the Army called normal life. The plans labeled Institutional Reunion 84, National Stability 85 and Advance 86 would implement this strategy. Officers of the Army General Staff, seated at their office desks, designed scorched earth operations, perfectly aware that, more than the land, it was the people that was being razed.9 In June the plan of widespread repression called Victoria 82 was already completed, systematizing in black and white all the operations that were already underway in the field (MDS II.3.301.3165). The Victoria 82 plan, coordinated by General HCTOR MARIO LPEZ FUENTES and overseen by General HCTOR ALEJANDRO GRAMAJO as inspector general and Vice Chief of
8

Military occupation of Finca La Perla, Ixcn, Quich.

The Meeting The street narrows on me with the joy I have, without having imagined it, my darling, I meet you. Coming and going, struggling for the things most dear even if it wore out our hands it leaves our life open. Why keep rolling Like the stone to the void, I learned that walking I can conquer whats mine. Now, my darling, with this huge joy I am not separating from you although the street is narrow. Vctor Jara
(Chilean musician and singer-songwriter)

Allan Nairn, The Guns of Guatemala: The merciless mission of Ros Montts army, New Republic, April 11, 1983, pp. 1722, at p. 20. A journalist specializing in Central American affairs, Nairn spent April to September 1982 accompanying the Guatemalan Army. Prudencio Garca, El Genecidio de Guatemala a la luz de la Sociologa Militar (Madrid: Sepha, 2005), p. 377.

General Staff, was made a priority for the State and all its resources were put at the service of the war: every government agency and institution was involved in its implementation, including all Ministries, services and education centers, as well as all international or government aid bodies. The budget of the Ministry of Defense was increased and all civil authorities were placed under military authority. Every unit of the security forces was given a specific mission and the obligation to coordinate constantly in order to increase efficiency. Every command had to obtain maximum collaboration from and control of the National Police and Treasury Police. The command structure was strengthened, not only because communication between each Area of Operations and the Army General Staff had to be continuous, but also because all the details not covered by the plan needed to be checked in advance with the General Staff (Vic-

toria 82 Plan, Instruction AA p. 16). Objectives were achieved through strict military discipline and hierarchy of ranks: Gramajo and the General Staff were given reports every hour and every day concerning the progress of the offensives (GMP 46). The body of soldiers grew from 27,000 to about 36,000including the mobilization of 2,000 reservists (GMP 47)and the most heavily contested areas were filled with Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PACs). Out of the total number of the violations reported to the CEH, PAC patrolmen took part in 18%, of which 85% were carried out by PACs in conjunction with the Army or other government forces, and in 15% of cases the PACs acted alone (MDS II.3.227.3179). For the better part of 36 years, the Army kept itself supplied with soldiers through forced recruitment. 20% of young men from rural areas were forced to take part in two years of military service: Back then they grabbed people to serve. Anyone who didnt serve was a guerrilla, Well kill you, they said. We said then its better for us to go.10 The Directorate of Intelligence (D-2, under Chief RODRGUEZ SNCHEZ) and the Directorate of Civil Affairs (D-5, directed by CONTRERAS BEJARANO) played a central role in the Victoria 82 plan, with responsibility for controlling the population left alive. The order was to destroy the communities and then use the recoverable survivors as slave labor for reconstruction according to military ideology. The scientific application of anti-communist strategy in the Victoria 82 plan meant that in 1982, when it started to be implemented, there was such an explosion of violence that 48% of all the cases of the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) are referred to this year (MDS II.2.320.1739). In 18 months, more than 75,000 people died, concentrated between April and November 1982 (GMP 44). The State Security Forces committed 93% of all human rights violations and acts of violence at this stage and also of the conflicts total (MDS II.2.324.1754).11
10

ODHAG (Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala): Report of the Inter-Diocesan Project Recovery of Historical Memory (REMHI), (Guatemala Nunca Ms, Guatemala City, 1998), Case 9524: Barillas, Solol, Quich, Volume II, pg. 160. 11 These forces include the national army, the PACs, military commissioners, other state security forces and death squads. In 3% of the violations the CEH has confirmed the responsibility of the guerrillas and in 4% of other and/or unidentified groups.

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In 1982 Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PACs) were organized in the area, which caused conflict within the local population: since the patrolmen were all Mayan, it created a division: the patrolmen and those who didnt want to be They used a slogan of the Armyswhoever doesnt support us is the enemy and should therefore die.

Civil patrolmen burning the guerrilla flag in Nebaj, El Quich.

execution of operations directly targeted against communities of unarmed civilians, identified as siding with the guerrillas, with the objective of destroying them in whole or in part, without regard to the victims age, sex or condition.13
THE ENEMY

MISSION: Extermination

Inspired by the well-known Maoist dictum that the guerrilla, supported by the people, lives within it like a fish in water, the State pursued a strategy of taking the fishs water away, in other words, depriving the population of any the resources that might support the guerrillas, thus stopping them from sustaining themselves with popular support. The mission of the plan, in the words of Ros Montt, was to surgically excise evil from Guatemala and dry up the human sea in which the guerrilla fish swim (GMP 45). Furthermore, according to their own Counter-Insurgency Manual: destroying these armed forces will not then be an objective in itself but will be a means to regain control of the population. This destruction is difficult only because of the battle. It is necessary to drown them and reduce them to their status as guerrillas, occupying by force the areas or places from which they can obtain their human and material resources (Ed. 1983, p. 69). On its second page, the Victoria 82 plan says: THE MISSION: The commands involved will conduct SECURITY OPERATIONS, DEVELOPMENT, COUNTER-SUBVERSION AND IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE in their respective Areas of Responsibility from H Hour of D Day, until further notice, with the object of locating, capturing or destroying groups of subversive elements, to ensure the peace and security of the Nation. As for the captured, after carrying out tactical interrogation on them, torture, they should be transferred to a detention center and immediately reported to Intelligence, the G-2 (p. 18). To ensure that all personnel involved in the mission knew what their orders and tactics were, each Unit Commander, before starting operations, had to read to the men in the unit the standing orders in Annex H of the Plan and provide those who could read with a document containing the key points. According to Annex H, the mission is to annihilate and the tactics are to deceive, to find, to attack and to annihilate them. In more than half of the massacres commit12 13

54% of the massacres are accompanied by extreme cruelty and 97% of these cases involved the Army of Guatemala CEH, Memoria del Silencio, Annex I, vol. 1, Illustrative Case No. 60, p. 70.

ted during the conflict extreme cruelty was used, and in 97% of these cases the Army was involved (MDS II.3.258.3082),12 which, as part of its policy of devastation, also systematically attacked cultural, spiritual and religious elements of deep significance to the Mayan people (MDS II.3.272.3104). Everything was planned down to the last detail. To coordinate the forces involved in the Plan, the units were ordered to be in constant motion and, once detected, the enemy was to be pursued until capture or elimination; meanwhile, units were to report in their movements so that they could be provided with immediate logistic support if necessary and in order not to lose contact (p. 14). This order in the Victoria 82 Plan meant that the Army, after the massacres, not only wiped out the population and devastated the community, but also tried to eliminate people who had fled the area. The soldiers continued cleansing the area, capturing and executing all those who fled, making it clear that the operation was not limited to dispersing the population, but sought to destroy it totally (MDS II.3.293.3146). The CEH has even recorded five cases of massacres perpetrated by the Army of Guatemala inside Mexican territory (MDS II.3.297.3150). The plan to exterminate the civilian population is laid out in irrefutable fashion in Victoria 82, when it states that that the mission of psychological operations is to reduce the subversive threat to a nuisance and eventually eradicate it (p. 31) and the purpose of psychological operations for the troops is to convince them of the necessity of the extermination of the enemy (p. 39). The mission was relentless: So we have to finish them, we have to end them, men, women, children, until there is nothing any more, no one here from this group, which is getting help from Cuba (Case 1640, Sechaj, Los Pinares, Alta Verapaz, 1982. Volume II, p. 4, REMHI). The CEH believes that the case of the massacre of the community in CHEL, CHAJUL, is an example of how the Army eradicated subversives as its main goal: Its an illustrative case of the application of the Victoria 82 plan in the Ixil area, where the Army used its task forces (Special Forces) in the

The enemy is within Guatemala, is the internal enemy of the United States anti-communist National Security Doctrine. This is how the CEHs truth commission outlined it: The broad concept of internal enemy put forward by the government was relaunched with particular violence and intensity in the eighties, and included not only those who were actively trying to change the established order, but everyone who could potentially come to support this struggle (1947). Page 17 of the Victoria 82 plan mentions the groups targeted by the Armys operations, which include: Living Revolutionary Organizations (Organizaciones Revolucionarias Vivas: ORV), Mass Revolutionary Organizations (Organizaciones Revolucionarias de Masa: ORM)such as the church, unions, associations, cooperativeslocal power, refugee sympathizers, and subversive criminal gangs. For the Army, according to its Manual, nobody is indifferent in the fight against subversion: There will be a active favorable minority in the fight against subversion, a neutral majority and an opposing minority. The technique consists in relying on the favorable minority to draw the neutral majority to itself and to neutralize or eliminate the opposing minority (p. 4). If the population is not neutral and therefore is not recoverable, military operations will be expanded and more havoc inflicted. In addition, for the Army, everyone who flees is an enemy, as if they were not, they wouldnt flee. This principle succeeded in blurring any distinctions between guerrilla fighters and civilians. One womans comments illustrate how the civilian population was treated, even young children: A boy of six months, how is he going to have done crime? Are they also going to say that hes a guerrilla or will be when he grows up ... ? The Army was not prepared to deal with the cause that some members of the Catholic Church had managed to communicate from the perspective of liberation theology, denouncing the workers subhuman conditions and army violence, and mobilizing sections of society that increasingly identified with the revolutionary options and, therefore, with the enemy. More than 40 priests were killed during the conflict.

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11

The Army must treat civilians as if they were combatants. Therefore it concentrates the recoverable population whose life has been spared by its devastation into refugee camps.
Monsignor Juan Jos Gerardi Conedera, bishop of Guatemala and director of the Archdioceses Office of Human Rights (ODHAG), was brutally assassinated by members of the Army on April 26, 1998, two days after publicly presenting the Report on the Recovery of Historical Memory in Guatemala (REMHI). Some of the murderers have been convicted, though not those who masterminded the crime. The Command of the Secret Anti-Communist Army [ESA] is presenting by means of this bulletin an ultimatum to the following trade unionists, professionals, workers and students: ... [it] warns them all that it has already located them and knows perfectly well where to find these nefarious communist leaders who are already condemned to DEATH, which will therefore be carried out without mercy... Bulletin No. 6, January 3, 1979, ESA14 Many union leaders were eliminated as a result of openly anti-union government policy. The State Security Forces systematically did away with the general secretaries and Executive Committee members of the union at Coca Cola, one of the protagonists of the union movement between 1970 and 1980. At the same time, in 1983 all the sugar unions on the South Coast were decapitated, for example with disappearance of the union leaders and advisers at Ingenio Pantalen. Both cases illustrate the links that the employers had

Guatemalan soldier in the New Life refugee camp, near Nebaj, Quich.

with the security forces, especially the Mobile Military Police, and its collaboration with the government policy of dismantling the union movement.15
Targeting Women

The Manual of Counter-Insurgency Warfare states: The soldier usually has a great dislike for policing operations and for repressive measures against women, children and the sick in the civilian population, unless he is extremely well indoctrinated in the need for these operations.16 Only with trainingwhich dehumanized the soldiers and convinced them that the enemy to vanquish was a being without rights, less humanis it possible to comprehend the brutal deeds and tortures which the Army inflicted on women, boys, girls, helpless people, often in front of their families. They were trained for terror and trained to justify it. The testimonies collected make it clear that the women who were used to accustom the soldiers to the practice of rape were prostitutes: The Army brought whores to their soldiers: first went the lieutenant and then all the soldiers over a week, some visiting up to ten times. They changed them [the women] every three months (MDS II.2.27.2397). Appendix B of Victoria 82, on psychological operations for the troops, designated recreation areas for the soldier to keep his fighting spirit, with amenities including contact with the female sex. The ultimate goal of the operations was to convince the troops of the need to exterminate the enemy (p. 39). This is how the Army conducted training in the practice of rape as a weapon of war against women, in general, and against their people, the Mayans, in particular. 88.7% of rape victims identified in the CEHs records (with information on ethnic group) were Mayan (MDS II.2.23.2390). One third were under-age girls (MDS II.2.23.2391).
The Mayans as Enemy of State

clamations of subversion resonate with them, with the banners about the scarcity of land, immense poverty, and because they have received long years of awareness raising, and see the army as an invading enemy.... (p. 29). The 1972 Manual of Military Intelligence G-2 puts it clearly: The enemy has the same sociological traits as the people from our Altiplano. The Victoria 82 plan itself, in several sections, orders putting emphasis on controlling the transient workers who move from the Altiplano to the South Coast to do seasonal work (p. 13). This order from the Victoria 82 plan would result in the extermination carried out in the Ixil region in Operation Sofa. The Victoria 82 plan explicitly labels the enemy as an ethnic group and considers it a special focus of annihilation operations. Thus, when it chooses the target for such operations the list is exhaustive: The population in general and different ethnic groups in particular: Kakchiquel, Kekch, Quich, Ixil, Mam 1, Mam 2, Tzutujil, Rabinal Achi, Pocomch , Aguateco, Jaclateco, Chuj, Kanjobal (Victoria 82, p. 35). According to the CEH, the identification of Mayan communities with the insurgency was intentionally exaggerated by the government, which, relying on traditional racist prejudices, used this identification to eliminate possibilities that the population would help the insurgents or join their ranks, either at that stage or at a future time. The CEH concludes that the massacres, scorched-earth operations, kidnapping, and executions of Mayan authorities, leaders and spiritual leaders, represented not only an attempt to destroy the guerrillas social bases, but also and above all to de-structure the cultural values that ensured communities cohesion and collective action.18 Moreover, the undeniable reality of racism as a doctrine of superiority expressed permanently by the State is a fundamental factor in explaining why the Army put the plan of Victoria 82 into action with such particular cruelty against hundreds of Mayan communities in the West and Northwest of the country. Between 1981 and 1983, more than half of the massacres and scorched earth operations were concentrated against indigenous communities (MDS 33). Racism is also expressed by the very fact that 83.3% of victims of human rights violations and acts of violence recorded by the CEH were of Mayan ethnicity (MDS 1745),19 and in the fact that there was an especial concentration of deaths in this population group (MDS 3081). Only villages where ladinos predominated escaped the Armys systematic slaughter.20 Nothing was left to chance. The razing of hundreds of indigenous communities was precisely calculated by the Army High Command and was executed faithfully, even with extreme zeal, through each link in the chain and it still remains unpunished. The orders to eradicate were clear and no one can deny that they were carried out savagely, leaving all kinds of scars in their aftermath. This is the legacy of the death of General Efran Ros Montt and his Army: genocide.
18

14 CEH, Memoria

del Silencio, Annex I, vol. 1, Illustrative Case No. 67, p. 111. 15 CEH, Memoria del Silencio, Annex I, vol. 1, Illustrative Case No. 109, p. 319. 16 Manual of Counter-Insurgency Warfare, Appendix A, p. 10. 17 CEH, Memoria del Silencio, ch. 4, p. 29, 31.

As described in Victoria 82s Annex on psychological operations, The great masses of the nations Indians from the Altiplano have found that the pro-

CCEH, Memoria del Silencio, ch. 4, p. 29, 32. These ratios are calculated according the 97% of the victims where the CEH was able to determine membership of an ethnic group (MDS II.2.32.1745). 20 D. Stoll, Between two armies in the Ixil towns of Guatemala, 1993, quoted in Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project, p. 56.
19

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During 1982 and 1983, the local Army stationed in Chupol, Chichicastenango, brought a hooded man to point out the guerrillas collaborators. It is not known how many of the men indicated had actually collaborated with the guerrillas, as the Army had a quota to fill: once pointed out the result was elimination.

Operation Sofa:
Collective work, coordinated by Sofa Duyos *

Army special forces on a mission of extermination

fter ROS MONTT came to power in March 1982, the Army carried out massacres that were even more serious and widespread than any committed before.1 It was in such a context that Operation Sofa was put into action: a scorched earth operation executed by more than 500 paratroopers and the Kaibil special operations forces.2 Between July 15 and August 19, 1982, it aimed savagely to exterminate the Mayan people living in the municipality of Nebaj, Quich, under the pretext that they might join the guerrillas. As clear from the 1982 military appraisal entitled Operation Ixil, which deals with the area where Operation Sofia was implemented and where the Ixil people lived, since 1977 this had been a zone of special operations by order of the Armys highest level: In view of the fact that the Ixil region came to be an area of subversive conflict, high command ordered the establishment of an area of operations with jurisdiction in the municipalities of Chajul, Cotzal and Nebaj ... The military action was carried out successfully, but the problem still exists even four years later, and, as is natural with this type of action, resentment is spreading in the local population at an alarming rate without any peaceful solution
* Coordinator of the Guatemala Program at Fundacin Madrid Paz y Solidaridad.

apparent.3 The policy of destruction of the Ixil area would last until December 1987. As a chronicle of destruction announced in February 1982, the United States, through the CIA, knew about the plan to devastate the entire Ixil Triangle and knew that the Guatemalan Army took the view that because most Indians in the area support the guerrillas, it will probably be necessary to destroy a number of villages.4 On July 30, the leader of one of the patrols in Operation Sofa reported that the local people was convinced that the guerrillas struggle was good and stated: We are fighting a plague that we should have started on long ago. (OS 173).5 The Army not only thought that a large part of the guerrilla forces was located in the region, but also that the Ixil people were the enemy. This identification resulted in a large number of massacres that swept the Ixil area.6 A secret CIA cable of the time reported it
1

Prudencio Garca (2005). ElgenocidiodeGuatemalaalaluzdelaSociologaMilitar (Madrid, Sepha), p. 386. Most of the documents quoted here are colleted in Operation Sofia: Documenting Genocide in Guatemala, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 297 (December 2, 2009). Hereafter OS in the text. Available online at: www.madridpazysolidaridad.org. Both OperationSofa and OperationPlanSofa are used to refer to this plan of operations, its implementation and documentation. Operacin IXIL, article published in RevistaMilitar (September-December 1982) on Civilian Issues in the Ixil area, p. 28. National Security Archive, TheGuatemalanMilitary:WhattheU.S.Files Reveal, vol. 2, Document 19, top secret CIA report, 5 February 1982, page 2. Available online at: http.//www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/ NSAEBB32/vol2.html. Hereafter USF in the text.

as follows: In mid-February 1982 the Guatemalan army reinforced its existing force in the central El Quiche department and launched a sweep operation into the Ixil triangle. The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) and eliminate all sources of resistance (USF doc. 20, p.1). The scorched earth operations worsened after March 1982 in the Ixil area (the Ilom and Chel massacres). In January, many villages had disappeared and most of the regions social infrastructure, so that the mountaintops had become sites of resistance for the communities. The people had fled the terror and were surviving outside their villages, organizing their resistance in large groups of more than 1,000 families. When Operation Sofa started in July, the Army started to persecute a population made up of different Mayan peoples to the point of destruction. And there was an express order to kill all the Indians:
5

Patrol Report No. 007 of the 4th patrol, signed by Patrol Leader, Infantry Lt. Abner Isaac Monterroso Mrida, Santa Mara Nebaj, July 30, 1982. CEH (Historical Clarification Commission), Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio (Guatemala: Memory of Silence), (Guatemala City: UNOPS, 1999), Ch. 2, vol. III, p. 310, 3186. Chapter 2, divided into four volumes, deals with Violations of Human Rights and Acts of Violence. Available online at: http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/mds/spanish/ toc.html, though the section numbers are not continuous as in the printed version, most of which is also available on the web. Abbreviated English version: shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/toc.html. Hereafter MDS in text.

Photo/text by photo: C Jean-Marie Simon/2010. Guatemala, Eterna primavera-Eterna tirana.

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13

Ros Montt: The aim is to dry up the human sea in which the guerrilla fish swim.
In 1981 and 1982 we heard from Army specialists, natives of Sacapulas and other Quich municipalities, who had access to the command of the military base No. 20 in Santa Cruz del Quich (6th Military Zone Marshal Gregorio Solares), about the order that the first and second in command had given to kill all the Indians. Some pilots and people responsible for the commanders security, took their families out of Quich for safekeeping, since the order was real (MDS 2.III.314.3198). The conclusions of the Patrol Report No. 001 of the First Battalion of the Paratroop Regiment on Operation Sofia already mention that the guerrillas had left the area and it conveys how for some patrols the operation had been a success because it eliminated support and supply bases. In addition, these patrol reports showered congratulations on those who carried out the orders to destroy the enemy with zeal and dedication (OS 192)7 and who showed excessive aggressiveness and determination in combat (OS 160).8 Their combatants were the Mayan population. The order to kill all the Indians meant that throughout the conflict, fatalities were concentrated in the Mayan population, with the Kiche affected most, suffering 25% of the arbitrary executions in massacres, followed by the Kaqchikel (14%), the Ixil (13%), the Qeqchie (11%), the Achi (8%), the Mam (6%) and Chuj (5%) (MDS 2.III.258.3081 and graph 15). These figures are especially revealing with regard to Ixil victims, as the percentage of victims relative to the total is much higher than the percentage of the population of this group in relation to the national population (2%) (MDS 2.III.186, graph 12).9 As mentioned in the previous chapter, the coordinator of the Victoria 82 Plan was the Chief of General Staff, General HeCtor Mario LPez FuenteS, who gave the order for each Command involved to deliver their planning documents within a given period (deadline June 21) through its S-3 operations officer. At the same time, for the ixil area, there was secret planning at top level for operation Sofa. LPez FuenteS gave the order to draft it directly to Colonel FranCiSCo nGeL CaSteLLanoS GnGora as Commander of the Operation. WHO WAS INVOLVED IN OPERATION SOFA? The Army High Command and Elite Special Forces The Chief of General Staff, HCtor Mario LPez FuenteS, had direct and complete control of the operation, given the importance that it held for Army High Command. The Operation Commander kept him directly informed of the beginning and end of each phase, as well as many other details.10 CaSteLLanoS GnGora also received communications from Deputy Defence Minister Meja VCtoreS (OS 22). On July 14, 1982, as CaSteLLanoS GnGora Colonel of Infantry and Commander of the Military Base of the Paratroop Regiment General Felipe Cruz (BMTPGFC), sent General LPez FuenteS Copy No. 1 of the 20 copies of Operation Plan Sofa, prepared by his command section in

Soldier in the belltower at Nebaj, 1982.

So many centuries against a single minute So many knives to cut a flower So much bullet to tatter a flag So much shoe to crush a dewdrop So much fire to burn a lily So many hunters to hunt one deer So much coward against one valiant So much soldier to shoot a child.

Luis

de

Lion

(GuatemalanPoet)

9 10

11

Report by Scotland 2 Patrol. Palomo recommends that congratulations should be offered to Corporal Miguel ngel Quevedo, Paratrooper 1st class Cesar Augusto Lpez y Lpez and Paratrooper 2nd class Carlos Armando Galicia Torres for their work and performance in the destruction of the ENO, where their zeal and dedication has been noted. Patrol Report No. 001. It singles out as noteworthy the actions of Eliseo Chinique Vsquez who showedexcessiveaggressivenessanddeterminationincombat. 7% of massacre victims were ladinos (Guatemalans of European ancestry). Lpez Fuentes indicated the weaponry that needed to be allocated to the operation (communication 07/14/82), and also ordered the Commander of Air Force to place a helicopter at the disposal of the operation (07/16/82). Castellanos asked Lpez to authorize the helicopters fuel (07/20/82), and also, after informing him of the arms allocation, asks Lpez directly for replacement (08/26/82). General Order 19, p. 35, No. 173. (Ros Montts General Orders have not been released publicly but have been cited as evidence in trials.)

compliance with the order given by the Armys Chief of General Staff. Signed personally and with the official seal of the Command of Puerto San Jos, it states: I have the honor to address you in order to send, enclosed with this letter, Copy No. 1 of 20 copies of the PLAN for OPERATION SOFA, prepared by this command in accordance with the order of the Chief of General Staff of the Army. I remain, Sir, your respectful servant. Puerto de San Jos, July 14, 1982 (OS 76). Paratroopers and Kaibiles, the special forces of the Guatemalan Army, executed Operation Plan Sofa. CaSteLLanoS GnGora and at least two of the company commanders were Kaibiles, so that High Command was assured that the inhuman orders directed against men, women and children would be carried out from the top. When detailing the Execution, the plan indicated that the operation would be conducted in two phases. The first would be carried out with two series of excursions from the Military Zone Felipe Cruz, one to Military Zone Marshal Gregorio Solares in Huehuetenango and the other administrative to Nebaj. The second phase would be by airlift to Palob and Parramos to begin offensive operations. Copy No. 2 was sent to the Wing Commander DEMA P.A. Fernando aLFonSo CaStiLLo raMrez, Commander of the Local Force (FAG).11 Its mission was to provide fire support.

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According to Victory 82, The Air Force provided air cover for the duration of the execution of Mobilization with priority to affected areas.12 The air base personnel, who received training and equipment from the United States, performed support duties for the troops in the field and bombing raids.13 Its mission in Operation Plan Sofia is given as: It will support the Operation as requested in coordination with the C.O.C. of the Army General Staff (OS 3). Copy No. 3 was sent to the Commander of the Military Brigade General Manuel Lisandro Barillas, Quetzaltenango, Infantry Colonel jorGe Mario MoraLeS daz.14 The Brigades mission according to the plan of Operation Sofa was: It will support the Operation as requested, in coordination with the First Battalion the Parachute Regiment of the BMTPGFC (OS 3). Copy No. 4 was received by Infantry Colonel DEM. HCtor LeonidaS Hernndez CataLn, Commander of Military Zone Marshal Gregorio Solares, Huehuetenango.15 His commands mission in Operation Sofia was the same as that of the Brigade at Quetzaltenango: It will support the Operation as requested, in coordination with the First Battalion the Parachute Regiment of the BMTPGFC (OS 3). Operation Sofa was implemented in the Huehuetenango Military Zone Area, which also includes El Quich. Copy No. 5 was sent to Infantry Colonel byron diSraeL LiMa eStrada as Commander of the Task Force Gumarkaj. On August 1 he was replaced by the Commander of Infantry roberto enrique Mata GLVez.16 byron LiMa was also the Deputy Commander of the Huehuetenango Military Zone.17 The mission of the four companies of the Task Force was: It will continue counter-insurgency operations, population control and psychological operations in its jurisdiction and support the operation in coordination with and at the request of the Commander of Operation Sofa. Coordinating with three companies of Operation Sofa, the Gumarcaj Task Force had the role of giving further impetus to the operations and destroying subversive elements in the area (OS 3). task Forces are specialized forces, where different Army corps are brought together, and they are characterized by their flexibility. They were tasked with controlling a given territory and population, but in addition to this shared mission, they might have other more specific missions. The General Staff made decisions and planned the operations involving the Task Force and the various military zones (MDS 2.III.306.3176). The Commander of the Task Force kept the Chief of the General Staff informed directly and constantly during the course of operations. Gumarcaj Operations Areaone of the 10 areas that were created in order to carry out the military planscomprised the municipalities of Chajul, Ne-

Refugee camp, Ixil.

Destroying these [guerrilla] forces will not, then, be an end in itself but a means to regain control of the population.
Army Manual.

12 13

14

15 16 17 18

19

Campaign Plan Victoria 82, p. 23. Archdiocese of Guatemala, Interdiocesan Project Report on Recovery of HistoricalMemory(REMHI), vol. II, ch. IV, p. 106. Hereafter REMHI in text. Appointed March 24, 1982, by General Order 7, until June 25, 1982 (General Order 19, p. 36), when he was replaced by Infantry Colonel Rodolfo Lobos Zamora (General Order 20, p. 6) General Order 10, No. 211, April 16, 1982. General Order 19, No. 89, p. 36. General Order 10, No. 212, April 16, 1982. R. Brett (2004). Encuentro en Guatemala sobre Racismo y Genocidio inGenocidio,lamximaexpresindelracismo (Conferencia magistral, Guatemala, 2004), p. 22. General Order 39, 1981.

baj, Cotzal Uspantn, Cunn, Sacapulas, San Andrs Sajcabaj, St. Bartolom Jocotenango, San Pedro Jocopilas, Canill , San Antonio Ilotenango, Santa Cruz del Quich, Chich and Chinique, the central region of El Quich. Between June 1981 and December 1982, 24.82% of the total number of cases for the country were recorded here, and 98.84% of the victims were Mayan (MDS 3198). Most of the Task Force were ladinos from the East. This has been interpreted as an attempt to ensure that the troops would follow orders in a brutal manner, as the High Command had no confidence that Indian soldiers would have been able to carry out such acts of genocide successfully against their own ethnic group.18 Copy No. 6 went to Infantry Colonel CarLoS doranteS Marroqun as Deputy Commander of the Felipe Cruz Military Base.19 From 22 July, the Colonel had been Acting Commander of Operation Sofa. (OS 56 & 86). Later on, Infantry Colonel aLFredo GarCa GMez was appointed new commander of the base (OS 73, 74 &91),20 taking over with a just few days of the operation left. None of these changes affected the execution of High Commands orders, because the commanders were effectively interchangeable cogs. This copy of the Operation Plan, comprising a total of 359 documents, is the one that became available to civil society. Copies No. 7, 8, 9 and 10 were sent to the Officers of the S1 (responsible for all matters relating to personnel under military control), the S2 (which is responsible for intelligence activities and counterintelligence),21 the S3 (in charge of organization, training and operations) and the S4 (responsible for supply, evacuation, medical care, transportation and services). Copy No. 11 was sent to the Commander of the First Paratroop Company, the Quetzals, raL

arturo iLLeSCaS GarCa,22 who knew his orders as part of the shared Operation Plan, gave orders to his subordinates to carry them out and elicited the information necessary to communicate that they had been fulfilled to his superiors. The Company consisted of 4 patrols, Cameroon 1, Cameroon 2, Cameroon 3 and Cameroon 4. It had 5 junior officers, 125 paratroopers and 35 civilians: a total of 165 people. Copy No. 12, went to the Commander of the Second Company, the Pentagons, MarCo tuLio VaLdez Pineda.23 It consisted of 5 patrols: Scotland 1, Scotland 2, Scotland 3, Scotland 4 and Scotland 5. It had 5 junior officers, 145 paratroopers, 5 guides: a total of 155 people. On August 15, 1982, Cavalry Major joS eSteban aranGo barrioS (S-3) and Infantry Major otto Fernando Prez MoLina24 reported that Scotland 3 found in contact with the enemy in the vicinity of Salquil and Xepiun, where they repelled an ambush and went in pursuit, backing up Scotland 2s operation. They state that there were 4 Local Irregular Forces (FIL) dead, 18 adults and 12 children captured. The confrontation with the enemy was July 22, 1982, and the report details the names of the 32 paratroopers involved (OS 316). After this massacre, the Operation Commander communicated to the Gumarcaj Task Force Commander: I inform you that today at 1100 hours there were captured in the vicinity of SALQUIL (8712) 18 adult persons, 12 children, request command for support effect control, supplies and reintegration into their normal life.25 The message hides the execution of the 4 people labeled FIL. At other times, the patrols reported the elimination of FIL who were women and children. The Operation Plan itself labels them
20

21

22 23 24

25

Appointed Commander of BMTPGFC on August 16, 1982, by General Order No. 20 (p. 6). The role of military intelligence is described in REMHI, vol. 2, pp. 65-69 and 88-94. His signature and command appear on OS 323. His signature and command appear on OS 276. For references to Arango, see OS 6, 210, 316, 320, 333; to Prez, see 211, 316, 320, 341. Prez is the Tito Aras referred to in Allan Nairns The Guns of Guatemala (NewRepublic, April 11, 1983), as the commander of the Nebaj base (p. 17). Enciphered message S3-005, July 22, 1982 (OS 28).

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enemies by indicating that on the Border Front the guerrillas are accompanied by approximately 70 FIL among which the presence of women and children has been detected (OS 9). Copy No. 13 was sent to the Commander of the Third Parachute Company, the Arrows, Mario roberto Grajeda toLedo.26 It consisted of 5 patrols: France 1, France 2, France 3, France 4 and France 5. It had a total of 149 personnel: 5 junior officers, 141 parachutists and 3 civilian guides. According to page 1 of the Operation Plan, the three companies divided into four platoons each as their organization for combat. MISSION: extermination Operation Plan Sofa designated who, how and when the indigenous communities living in the Nebaj municipality were to be attacked and destroyed. The military detachments at La Perla, Cotzal and Chajul supported the operation in coordination with and under the command of the Operation Commander. The mission of Operation Sofa was the extermination of the population. The Plan itself uses the word exterminate in the Operations core mission: THE MISSION: The First Battalion of the Parachute Troops ... on D-2 will initiate counterinsurgency offensive operations and psychological operations and in the area of Gumarcaj Operations, in coordination with the Task Force mentioned, to give greater momentum to said operations and exterminate the subversive elements in the area (OS 3). The CIA reported: The well-documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike (USF doc 20, p. 3). A witness (a senior officer in the Guatemalan Army) told the CEH: Once I received an order personally from the Chief of Defense General Staff to wipe out an entire population and I told the major who was in charge of the region at that time, look, theyve given me the order to disappear San Juan Cotzal (MDS 3243).

operation ixil had been formulated earlier (1981) as a military study and describes the danger of the Ixil population because of its historical and ethnic characteristics, and highlights the need for an intense, deep and well-studied psychological campaign to rescue the Ixil mind-set so that they feel part of the Guatemalan nation.27 The Armys idenfication of the indigenous people as the internal enemy had a strong impact on the communities cultural practices, since, as refugees and displaced people, many decided not to wear their costume or speak their language for fear of being identified by the Army and attacked for being Indians. Operation Plan Sofa reiterated the objective of psychological operations as being to reintegrate the survivors into normal life. The 3rd Company Commander sent the recommendation: ... the indigenous people who have fled from the villages to the mountains should reintegrate into normal life and not be afraid of the army. This type of patrolling wears out personnel and equipment and because of the action carried out (elimination of guerrilla support bases) it lends credibility to the ENO to discredit us with the people (OS 163). Another element in the whole is how the communities of the Ixil area had begun to take up new forms of self-sufficiency and form cooperatives to manage resources in order to climb out of poverty; this meant that they stopped going to the South-Coast farms to work as semi-slave labor. It is no coincidence that the peasants who were concentrated and reeducated as new Ixil in the Acul Model Village (December 1983) in Nebaj, were forced to perform hard labor on these farms on the South Coast, as the interests of the oligarchy demanded. Military and economic interests came together to thwart new ways of life and organization that tried to change the unjust established order. The Army called the area the Ixil Triangle, using the name of the Ixil ethnic group for a combat zone, which underlines the identification of the devastated area with the Mayan ethnic group
C Jean-Marie Simon/2010

inhabiting it. The Army used Indian names for military operations in El Quich, such as Operation Xibalb which means hell in the Kiche language. It also used indigenous symbols to name its most brutal fighting forces: the Kaibil (and remember that the Kaibil is a killing machine28) is a name derived from the Indian leader Kaibil Balam. The intention was to use indigenous symbols so as to replace the cultural significance that they held for the communities. The patrols were under no illusions that the population was the objective: The population of these areas has always lived in appalling conditions and this has therefore made them easy soil for communist doctrine, I recommend punishing them and fighting them militarily... (patrol report, OS 163). The plan specified that there were two guerrilla fronts accompanied by Local Irregular Forces (FIL), who were rarely armed. The patrols themselves reported that they did not fight with the guerrillas: The guerrilla force had already left the area before the operation and the little harassment came from small groups (FIL) (patrol report, OS 215). That means that there was only one plan for Operation Sofa, with its preand post-operations, directed exclusively against the non-combatant Mayan population. This was also what the CIA reported: The army has yet to encounter any major guerrilla force in the area. It successes to date appear to be limited to the destruction of several EGP-controlled-towns and the killing of Indian collaborators and sympathizers (USF doc. 20, p. 3). This fierce assault against them meant that the indigenous population were the group most affected by violence during the armed conflict (MDS 1746).
The Army implemented three offensive operations

In its 1st operation, July 16 to 31, 1982, on the one hand, it left inside its zone of operation most of the territory where the areas and population in resistance were located. On the other, the movements of all patrols in the three companies involved marked out a diamond figure in order to isolate the population within its boundaries from any kind of external support. In its 2nd operation, August 3 to 7, patrols also described a diamond shape, with different lines and angles, centered around Xesibacvitz hill. The companies and patrols were directed toward Xesibacvitz beside the hamlet of La Pista and village of Nebaj. As in the 1st operation, the Army bombed it, attacked by land, tracked and ambushed two central nuclei of resistance in the village and its surroundings, as well as the Xejalvinte resistance. In its 3rd operation, August 9 to 19, the 2nd and 3rd Companies directly attacked the population who had been displaced from the mountaintops to the valleys as a result of the 1st Operations offensive. The three companies went in to finish off the people who had fled the terror. Later on, a 4th operation was set in motion, which had begun as part of the Operation Sofa as the final destruction. This operation, also known as the great siege of Sumal Grande hill, began after Operation Sofa had officially ended in mid-August 1982 and bore
26 27 28

Women concentrated in Nebaj, 1982.

His signature and command appear on OS 301. Operacin IXIL, RevistaMilitar (September-December 1982), p. 44. MDS p. 56, 885: TheKaibil is a killing machine when foreign forces or doctrines assail the country or the Army, ninth of the Kaibils Ten Commandments.

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down inexorably on the population until January 1983when the siege was reinforced as part of the Campaign Plan Firmeza 83and ended in 1987. This operation involved Gumarcaj Task Force, troops from Cunene, Sacapulas Aguacatn, Chiantla, La Perla, Chajul, Zona Reina and Uspantn, as well as members of Civil Self-Defense Patrols from all these locations. From mid-August 1982, the Army surrounded between 18,000 to 25,000 people at Sumal Grande. Countless people died in the siege as a result of massacres, hunger and cold, and sickness. The bombardment of the besieged population on Sumal Grande was continuous, and the Army even shot fire bombs with white phosphorus that set the forest alight. Some people managed to break through the siege toward the end of 1982 or early 1983, and were massacred crossing the Xacbal river, as they tried to reach the sites of resistance in Santa Clara, Amajchel and Caba, north of Chajul. Inside the operations ring remained all the displaced population from the town of Nebaj, Xesibacvitz hill, Puerta del Cielo, Acul, Vicalitza, Vipana, the village of Tzalbal with its homesteads and townships, Vixocon-Cosonip, Vixocon-Virr, the population of the cantons of Palop, of Salquil Grande, of Vicalam and from the banks of the Chel river, particularly Vega Sichel and Xecuxtun, as well as, people from the cantons of Sumal Grande and between them, Tizumal.
Standing Orders: Destroy all signs of life

Wounded girl at the Nebaj base.

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The living conditions of the civilian population under guerrilla control are fairly difficult, lack of medicines and food mean that everybodys life is focused entirely on survival. Every time they flee, they leave behind what little they have. The idea is that the camps should always be on high ground, but now Cameroon 1 found a camp in a ravine, and a second, they found plenty of huts, as well as boxes of corn and salt, pigs, chickens, which were destroyed by Cameroon 1 (patrol report, OS 145). To carry out Operation Plan Sofa the commanders of the three companies gave a series of explicit orders to the respective patrol leaders as pieces within an obedient and disciplined hierarchical machine, trained for the cruelest operations against the civilian population. The mission of destruction was constant. When communities had managed to recover, the Army struck again, destroying homes and their food-supply, to prevent them surviving. In some places, like the village Xoloch, where Operation Sofa patrols operated, the Army returned three times to destroy everything (MDS 3312). The way in which the Army identified and destroyed the enemy was also reflected in the CIA secret cable: Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed. ([word redacted] comment: When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed.) The army has found that most of the vi27 28

When they run and go into to the mountains that obligates one to kill them.... Because they might be guerrillas. If they dont run, the army is not going to kill them. It will protect them.
under complete Army control). And surrender would not guarantee that the Army would not kill them. The commands to reduce the Ixil area to ashes were:

Farmers killed in September 1982 at the Nebaj military base.

29

Operacin IXIL, RevistaMilitar (September-December 1982), p. 44. MDS p. 56, 885: TheKaibil is a killing machine when foreign forces or doctrines assail the country or the Army, ninth of the Kaibils Ten Commandments. Allan Nairn, The Guns of Guatemala: The merciless mission of Ros Montts army, NewRepublic, April 11, 1983, p. 19.

llages have been abandoned before the military forces arrive. An empty village is assumed to have been supporting the EGP and it is destroyed. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees in the hills with no homes to return to. The EGP apparently can not protect and feed such large numbers and the refugees, mainly Ixil Indian peasants, are making contact with the Army and offering to collaborate in exchange for food and shelter (USF doc. 20, pp. 23). In interview, Sergeant Jos ngel said: When they run and go into to the mountains that obligates one to kill them (...) because they might be guerrillas. If they dont run, the army is not going to kill them. It will protect them.29 He acknowledged that the army had killed men and women, about twenty in each of the villages and he mentioned villages passed through by Operation Sofa patrols, such as Acul, Salquil, Sumal Chiquito, Sumal Grande. Sergeant Raimundo also stated that the people fleeing to the mountains out of fear of the Army were considered subversive, even the children. Some fled out of fear, justified by what they had seen or known the Army do, others because they refused to join the Civil SelfDefense Patrols or were unwilling to concentrate (stay in the villages as directed by the Army and

1. Wipe out the population During 1982, the Army brutally struck at the Ixil area and indiscriminately attacked the civilian population, including a very high number of women, children and the elderly. In the Ixil Area 97.80% of the Mayan people was affected (MDS 3581). The Army used highly destructive weapons. Annihilating the population was the main objective. According to the Report of the Archdiocese (the Informe REMHI Recuperacin de Memoria Histrica), the total number of fatalities in 1982 committed directly by the Army or under its supervision was 8,857: the Army killed 5,252 people alone, and 2,270 people with the Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC), and PAC patrolmen executed a further 1,335 people (MDS vol. 4, p. 524). the massacres, a terrifying crime the massacres: exterminate the subversive elements in the area Patrol Report No. 001 states that when people in the village Acul saw the Army approaching they sounded the alarm, bringing everyone together and that the patrol took advantage of the fact that they were together to fire on them. The officer responsible for the April massacre had already warned what could happen in the village: ... Look ... back in Acul, yesterday a lot of people were killed, I mean, yesterday I

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killed them ... if need be I will finish off half the village so that peace can come to Nebaj... (MDS vol. 7, p. 119). The CEH recorded 18 illustrative cases of massacres in 1982 carried out with great brutality and attributable to Ros Montt, totaling more than 1,400 victims (the Chel and Ilom massacres in the Ixil area), most in El Quich. REMHI recorded a total of 451 massacres in 1982, in which 8,385 people died. Among these massacres, 180 qualify as particularly serious, with aggravating factors of torture, rape or cruelty, committed by the army and/ or paramilitaries in 1982. 109 of these, the vast majority, were committed in Quich; in the whole country, there were 26 massacres in July and August 1982, the months (together with June) with the highest number of massacres, pro rata, especially cruel in their execution and attributable to Ros Montt (REMHI vol. 4, pp. 509, 513 & 530). In 1982, in the hamlet of Xoloch, Tzalbal village, in the Nebaj municipality of the Quich depart-ment, Guatemalan Army members executed three hundred people, all women and children, apart from ten men. There were 310 unidentified victims (Case 15231, CEH). In the same year, in the village of Tzalbal itself, Manuela Pastor and twenty unidentified people voluntarily surrendered to the Guatemalan Army: the soldiers executed everyone (Case 3473, CEH). Operation Sofas patrols passed repeatedly through the village Tzalbal and its hamlets to raze them (OS 152 & 182). The soldiers were masters of life and death over the entire population. As examples of the massacres, we present the following: On July 17, 1982, in the village of Las Majadas, Aguacatn municipality, Huehuetenango, personnel from the Guatemalan Army assigned to the Nebaj military detachment, Quich department, executed six men and one woman, two boys and seven girls (Case No. 5618, CEH). In July 1982, in the hamlet Chortz, Chuatuj village, municipality of Nebaj, members of the Guatemalan Army and PAC from the village of Chex, Aguacatn, indiscriminately executed the inhabitants of the communities of Chortz and Chuatuj. Later, the soldiers and civil patrolmen looted and destroyed the houses (Case 15666, CEH). On August 15, 1982, residents of San Francisco Javier were displaced to the mountains surrounding Palob, Salquil village, municipality of Nebaj, Quich. Guatemalan Army personnel assigned to Salquil detachment massacred 31 people. The bodies were left where they lay and were eaten by animals (CEH and direct witnesses). This massacre is recorded in REMHI as massacre No. 272 (REMHI vol. 2, p. 43). REMHI also records four massacres committed in August 1982, three in Nebaj and one in Cotzal. In August 1982, the REMHI
30 31

We just want to be human No one cried here. Here we just want to be human, give landscape to the blind, sonatas to the deaf, heart to the wicked, skeleton to the wind, clots to the hemophiliac and a bosss kick and a reminder that our breast weeps. When youve been under widows sheets. When youve seen hunger pass you going the other way. When you have trembled in the mothers /womb, without yet knowing air, light, the cry of /death. When that happens to us, eyes do not cry but rather our human and wounded blood. No one cried here. Here we just want to be human. Remind the exile of his homeland to see him wallow in nostalgia. Carry a loaf into a street of famished people so that they throw themselves to bite us to /the soul, give misery a chickens face so hunger can devour it, give saliva alone the taste of wheat and essence of milk to the storm. When you are born amid torn diapers and when you are born without diapers. When they have neatly cleared our digestive /system for us. When we are told, eat, eat your misery, wretches. When that happens, its not tears that wet the pupils its a simple habit of squeezing our fists in /our eyes and saying: no one cried here, here we just want to be human eat, laugh, love, live, live life and not die it. No one cried here! otto Ren CastiLLo
(Guatemalanpoet)

Nairn, The Guns of Guatemala, 18. Nairn, The Guns of Guatemala, 19-20.

report records: massacre No. 317 in the village of Nebaj, committed by the Army and PACs; massacre No. 300 committed by the Army and PACs in the village of Sumal; massacre No. 304 by the Army in the village of Chuatuj. Also, massacre No. 245 committed by the Army in San Juan Cotzal. In almost all cases of massacres of indigenous communities by the military between 1981 and 1982, the soldiers raped the women (MDS 2402).

Persecution to the point of death If the first procedure of razing the villages left any survivors, the second one started: persecuting displaced people who had fled. Once they had achieved the purpose of emptying the areas where the guerrillas were allegedly supplied, the population continued to be pursued into their places of refuge, where there was more killing and destruction of crops. This persecution to death shows that the intention was more than just taking away the fishs water and reveals the intention to exterminate the group identified as the enemy, wherever they were (MDS 3307). Moreover, the persecution of the displaced led the Army to commit at least five massacres in Mexico (MDS 3150). Patrol reports denoted the systematic execution of men, women and children in completely defenseless situations as mission accomplished. Some patrols did not specify the people killed but mentioned fighting, the success of the mission and spent ammunition. Others reported the execution, in total, of three children, three women, one youth, three men, twelve FIL and two alleged combatants. These killings might have been under orders, as the executions are reported under encounters with the enemy. The soldiers themselves confirmed that they killed civilians: Lots of unarmed people, women refugees, but we havent had actual combat with guerrillas.30 The CEH recorded in 1982, in Nebaj, 23 cases where more than 30 people were executed, including children, with cruelty and torture; another seven cases in Chajul and six in Cotzal. So openly was it acknowledged that the unarmed civilian population was the enemy, that ruthless execution was routinely reported to superiors. Patrol Report No. 001 of Operation Sofa notes: in a ravine a woman was hiding and noticing an outside presence the point man fired eliminating her and two chocolates [children]; an element in civilian clothes without documentation was eliminated trying to escape; another was eliminated, trying to flee. It also reports the elimination of an undocumented element about 17, fleeing, as well as an undocumented man who came out of some rocks with his hands up (OS 155). Report No. 002 mentions a small battle and notes that, tracking in the ravines nearby, they found the bodies of two women and a child, and two children aged 2 and 3 alive (OS 144). According to Sergeant Jos ngel, interviewed by Allan Nairn, each soldier also had a lasso to tie people up and torture them with an interrogation technique learned at Cobra, an Army counter-insurgency course for special troops. The soldiers expected those interrogated to provide specific information such as the names of people who spoke to or gave food to the guerrillas. Failure to do so implied guilt and resulted in an immediate trial and summary execution. Captain Raimundo concluded: Almost everyone in the villages is a collaborator (...) They dont say anything. They would rather die than talk (...) then they say if you kill me, kill mebecause I dont know anything, and we know theyre guerrillas. They prefer to die rather than say where the compaeros are.31

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OPERATION SOFIA
2. Forced Transfer: making them into new Ixil
LIkE THE CICADA So many times they killed me So many times I died, But still Im here rising again. I give thanks to misfortune and the hand with the knife, because it killed me so badly, and I carried on singing. Singing in the sun like the cicada, after a year underground, like a survivor returning from the war. So many times they erased me, So often I disappeared, I went to my own funeral, alone and crying. I made a knot in my /handkerchief, but then I forgot that it was not the only time and I carried on singing. Singing in the sun like the cicada, after a year underground, Like a survivor returning from the war. So many times they killed you so often will you rise again How many nights will you spend in desperation. And when the ship wrecks and when darkness falls someone will rescue you, to go on singing. Singing in the sun like the cicada, after a year underground, Like a survivor returning from the war. MaRa eLena WaLsh
(Cantanteargentina)

Reports of the Truth Commission (CEH, including Memoria del Silencio) and the Archdiocese (ODHAGs Informe REMHI) reveal that the army used the torture of rape and sexual violation systematically and with complete impunity during the armed conflict. In the Ixil area, they continued raping women during the implementation of Operation Sofa. In June, the Army had fought with extreme savagery against 357 people in Chuatuj, Nebaj; the people were hacked with machetes, hanged, burned and raped (Case 11313, CEH). The PACs also committed this terrible crime during 1982, for example in Cotzal, where four women were raped and executed with a firearm (Case 3220, CEH). Overall analysis of the data from the CEH shows that torture was directed primarily toward the Mayan people (MDS 2340). The places where most of the torture occurred correspond to the places inhabited by the Mayan groups hardest hit by political repression: the Kiche, Qeqchi, Mam, Cakchiquel, Ach and Ixil. In addition, these departments had the highest poverty levels nationwide (MDS 2198). Women, elderly people, children were victims of the most terrible tortures. During 1982, the Army tortured people to death in the village Sumal and the municipal center of Cotzal (cases 3775 and 3215). Setting people alight, burning them alive, was a method often used by the Army (see Case 3781, a child burnt alive in Nebaj, and Case 3122, an elderly woman burned alive in Xoloch, CEH). In some cases, the community was forced to attend the execution and participate in it. This is a collective testimony from the village Salquil, Nebaj: I gathered all the people very well and I ran to the little village, rang the bell and everyone came together ... the officer sat down with three people and thats when he said ... What do you want be doing with these men, because you are collaborating with the guerrillas ... Look, guys, if you want peace, you yourselves are going to hang these people ... they were hanged and died (MDS 3336). In the slaughter at Acul, Nebaj, the Army ordered the leaders (spiritual guides) to take their sons and nephews and bring them to the cemetery where they would be executed: Men of heaven have to lead men to hell (MDS 3337). Beyond individual torture, these collective tortures attempted to destroy a groups identity, morally weakening them through terror and undermining their organization. bombings The villages and hamlets where Army companies operated were bombed during the whole of Operation Sofa. The aim was to terrorize the population into abandoning their homes and move away so that capture or killing would be easier. The bombings show that the attack was indiscriminate against unarmed civilians. About 200 families lived in Tzalbal; about 60 families in Corralcay; about 20 families in Vipecbalam: Yes, they were villages and hamlets: not a place of silence, not a mountain, nor a guerrilla camp, but a settlement. Persecuting those who fled
32

Operacin IXIL, RevistaMilitar, p. 38.

the bombing till they were wiped out was also part of the mission of the three companies that carried out Sofa, along with the Gumarcaj Task Force. On the other hand, the population was persecuted and bombed during their displacement. In the Ixil area they bombed the people who were moving. And those who were captured or surrendered voluntarily continued to be subjected to human rights violations, despite being under the Armys complete control (MDS 3594). During 1982, the CEH specifies cases of bombings in this area of operations during Operation Sofa, from April (the refugee population in the mountains near the village Tzijulch, Nebaj municipality, Case 3265) to December (bombardment of the village of Xoloch, Tzalbal, Case 3517).

Capturing and concentrating the surviving population. Operation Ixil described one of the alternatives for dealing with the rebellious Ixil people: intensifying ladinization of the ixil population so that it disappears as a marginal subgroup of the national way of being.32 The Army subjected those whose lives it spared in order to integrate them into the nation. The plan was to concentrate them in their own village or to force relocation to refugee camps. In late 1983, they created the model villages (concentration camp copies of Vietnams strategic hamlets), starting with Acul, Nebaj. Victoria 82 ordered: identify areas of population concentration, affected by subversion (sympathizing refugees) (p. 17). In compliance with that order, all reports mention the control of refugee survivors. Mario Roberto Grajeda Toledo reported on August 20, 1982, that over the period of July 25, 26 and 28, 1982, the army had captured mainly children: 24 men, 29 women, 38 boys, 31 girls and a newborn. In three days, they captured a total of 123 people (OS 345). In total, the patrol reported that during operation Sofa 350 men, women, elderly and children were taken against their will to refugee camps for indoctrination, to ladinize them, to erase the Ixil, and re-educate them into a way of life that suited the military and the oligarchy. As for psychological operations, Nern (Nero), signing the report of patrol Scotland 3, indicates that in the second phase the FIL captured and presented were not eliminated. They were pardoned and evacuated as refugees (OS 197). So the army killed indiscriminately following orders and spared lives arbitrarily. Without any objective reason it killed or pardoned, wielding power of life and death in the communities and causing terror with violence, cruelty and irrationality. The psychological warfare program was developed with nationalist fervor, the discourse of Guatemalan-ness and the introduction of religious sects. In a letter of July 22 addressed to the Chief of General Staff, Castellanos Gngora requests a broadcasting radio for the Ixil Triangle or a Psychological Operations work team to prepare flyers to counter communist propaganda. He indicates that the political and revolutionary ideas inculcated by the EGP must be fought with ideas and armed acts aimed at the permanent military units of the EGP. In this way, they established rules that restricted freedom and mobility, for example, by instituting mandatory registration, and channeled daily life toward war. According to the Manual of Counter-Insurgency Warfare, captured personnel are not to be considered prisoners of war, so they should not be characterized as such or regarded as such under the Rules of Land Warfare. Said personnel are defined as a common criminals by the Military Code of the Republic of Guatemala and as outlined in the Penal Code (Annex A, p. 10). Delinquent children without any rights.

OPERATION SOFIA
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destroy what little social infrastructure has survived the devastation Since 1980 and during the first five months of 1982 they had laid waste to the area, but with Operation Sofa the Army came in to destroy what remained, such as peoples champas (huts/ shelter) (in Acul, villages in the area of Tzalbal and Salquil Grande) and secret markets such as the Casa de la Sal in Xoloch or Cosonip, la Vega de Sichel and Vicalama. and on to death ... by starvation, disease, cold ... As a consequence of fleeing in terror, hundreds of people, including the elderly and children, died of hunger, cold and disease before and during Operation Sofa (Cases 3191, 3686 and 3658, CEH). According to REMHI, 1982 was the year when the highest number of people died from starvation, disease, grief or sadness (REMHI vol. 4, p. 509). The Army planned to pursue all who fled and were sheltering in the mountains, on the pretext that everyone fleeing the Army was the enemy, as otherwise they would not flee. The Army counted on people coming out of shelter in search of food so that it could finish them off or expecting them to surrender in exchange for food. Soldiers and patrolmen even eliminated the elderly and constantly harassed the refugees in the mountains (Case 2607, CEH). In an Operation Sofa report, Patrol No. 1 of First Battalion Paratroopers lists encounters with the enemy and their outcomes, saying that on one occasion it saw a man who upon seeing the patrol tried to flee but was eliminated he was carrying only food (juice, rice, salt) (OS 168).33 Two weeks after the massacre perpetrated by the Army in Acul, Nebaj, on April 22, 1982, the Army itself burned the houses and crops. The survivors, who went to live in the mountains, suffered extreme hardships, were under constant attacks and bombardment from the Army. Almost one third of the survivors of the massacre died in the mountains (Case 107, CEH). In the documents of Operation Plan Sofa it is clear that between General Ros Montt and the leaders of the patrols that carried out the orders, there were three intermediate commands: the Chief of General Staff, the commander of Operation Sofa and the company commander. Everything was planned and supervised regularly. Operation Sofas mission was considered a military success although the guerrillas had already left the area. The indigenous population continued to suffer devastation during General Ros Montts government. In 1986, a third of the rural population of the Ixil area had been wiped out.34 And the General was checking at every step to see how killing all the Indians was approaching its goal: to surgically excise evil from Guatemala.35

A girl hides from a soldier behind her mother, who watches her land being scorched.

disappearance The State Security Forces were responsible for more than 40,000 disappearances over the whole period of the armed conflict, and disappearance is a crime that takes a heavy toll on loved ones. The CEH recorded 17 cases of disappearance in the Ixil area in 1982. Between July and August, seven men and one child (Cases 216, 3618, 3315, 3297, 16532). In 1982, according to REMHI 1,474 disappearances occurred, more than 40% of the total (REMHI vol. 4, p. 509). El Quich was again the department hardest hit, by a long way, for this crime as well as direct killing, rape, cruel treatment and tortureaccounting 57% of the national total of victims (REMHI vol. 4, p. 512).
3.Destruction of resources to prevent the populations survival

Each soldier also had a lasso to tie people up and torture them with an interrogation technique learned at Cobra...
Seize and destroy property The order to destroy the boxes (where corn and other foods are kept), kitchen utensils, grinding stones, clothing, medicines, was central to the mission and so patrols rigorously reported their destruction. Hundreds were systematically destroyed: those people their living conditions are fairly difficult.... otherwise we are always going to be running around in the mountains after them and every time the poor people. (OS 161) Cut all external and internal supply movements The Army ring fenced the subversion by cutting supplies of food, clothing, soap, farm tools, salt, etc. In 1980 and 1981, all the formal markets in Nebaj and neighboring municipalities were destroyed; in 1982, the population subsisted on small crops of corn and had opened secret corridors to Cunen, Sacapulas, Aguacatn, Chiantla and the northern point of Nebaj, through which its supplies passed. To carry out the tasks of burning and destroying corn, the staple food and a key element of their identity as a people, the Army relied on the Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC), which went round methodically with the Army, obliterating all the crops along every path taken by the patrols of the three companies involved in Operation Sofia. As the farmers of Chajul (198284) said: The job of the patrols was to burn our crops, burn our houses, that was their work (REMHI vol. 2, p 137).

burn the villages The CEH could not establish exactly how many communities existed in the Ixil area before the violence, but believes that between 70% and 90% of communities there were razed (MDS 3311). According to the report, in only three cases of massacre was the town not burned, in all other cases the villages where massacres had occurred were physically destroyed during or after the slaughter. On the other hand, many other villages where there no massacre took place were burned or destroyed because the population had fled. The massacres were accompanied by physical destruction of the communities because both were part of the scorched earth operations (MDS 3305). According to information from the CEH, scorched earth operations executed by the Army in 1980 and 1983 caused the total or partial destruction of around 90 villages: 54 villages in Nebaj, 26 in Chajul and 10 in Cotzal (MDS 3310).

33

34

35

Report by Head of 1st Patrol, Infantry Lt. Rodrigo Guzmn, July 29, 1982. Carol A. Smith (1998). TheMilitarizationofCivilSocietyinGuatemala: Economic Reorganization as a Continuation of War, Latin American Perspectives 17, 4, No. 67, pp. 8-41. Cit. in J. Schirmer, The GuatemalanMilitaryProject, 56. J. Schirmer, TheGuatemalanMilitaryProject, 45.

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Those who carried out the crimes against women were trained in the rape that was committed systematically on womens bodies. The School of Military Studies and the Victoria 82 campaign transformed women into objects for the troops entertainment and a battlefield on which to attack the enemy and destroy them. The feminicide that swept the country after the conflict is the direct descendant of those brutal practices that have been perpetuated by going unpunished.

Targeting women
Victoria Sanford *

Post-conflict violence

n this article, I explore the human rights crisis now taking place in a Guatemala at peace. I provide an overview of the armed conflict within the country toward the end of the twentieth century and specifically consider the genocide of the eighties in order to assess the post-conflict violence of twenty-first-century Guatemala. Within the structures of daily, institutional and organized terror, we will examine the contemporary phenomenon of feminicide: the institutionalized killing of women. An analysis of the criminal investigation into the murder of Claudina Isabel Velsquez Paiz reveals the role of government with respect to feminicide in Guatemala and their responsibility for failing to guarantee equal protection under the law for all citizens. Claudina Isabel was one of the 518 women murdered in 2005. Every year it becomes more and more dangerous to be a woman in Guatemala. Between 2002 and 2005 the number of murders of women increased by over 63%, and almost 40% of these deaths took place in, or very near, Guatemala City. Most of them were between 16 and 30 years old. In 2005, 68% of female victims were under 17.1 In 2006 more than 600 women were killed. In 2007, an average of two women were murdered every day.

Feminicide and post-conflict violence in Guatemala

Currently, the number of homicides is alarmingly high: 53 per 100,000 inhabitants (OSAC 2009). The current rate of mortality in Guatemala is at about the level of the rate of female mortality in the early eighties, when Guatemala was at the peak of a genocidal war that took the lives of 200,000 people. The Guatemalan people are still waiting the justice, while the genocides live free. In this hostile environment of genocide and impunityin which the generals and their genocidal accomplices benefit from impunitythe Guatemalans are seeing the rate of homicides rise. During five years of peacetime, the number of recorded murders was 20,943. If the rate continues to rise at the same speed, there will be more victims of violent deaths in the first 25 years of peace than in the 36 years of armed conflict and genocide. Alston points out that while the female population increased by 8% between 2001 and 2006, the rate of homicides against women rose by over 117%.2 Overall in the last three years 2,000 women were killed, but there were only 43 convictions for these murders; only 2% of womens murders led to a sentence, so that the measure of impunity for such crimes stands at 98%.3
Handling and analysis of evidence

A. E. Maldonado Guevara has concluded that the victims and survivors of feminicide are subject to re-victimization by the Guatemalan government because it invariably treats those who seek justice with indifference, cruelty, stigmatization and there is a lack of political will to solve these cases.4 The Ministerio Pblico (MP; the public prosecutor) does its best to ignore the demands of families and dissuade them from seeking justice. For example, in every meeting with Mr. Velsquez, father of Claudina Isabel, that the prosecutor attended, he got extremely and visibly annoyed when Mr. Velsquez asked about progress in the investigation of his daughters case. Invariably the prosecutor would begin by saying: If there are problems in resolving this case, it is because you made the evidence public via the BBC and all you have achieved is to jeopardize the case. Then, inexplicably, he added impulsively: The coroners report indicates that your daughter was not a virgin. There are also interviews with her friends indicating that she drank beer and had perhaps experimented with cocaine.
1

* Dr. Victoria Sanford is Professor of Anthropology at Lehman College and the Graduate Center of City University of New York. Internationally recognized as an expert
on genocide, feminicide, historical memory, human rights, peace processes and transitional justice, she is author of La Masacre de Panzs: Etnicidad, tierra y violencia en Guatemala (2009), Guatemala: Del Genocidio al Feminicidio (2008), Violencia y Genocidio en Guatemala (2003), and Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (2003). Acknowledgments: I would like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and Lehman College for the support that made possible my investigation of the phenomenon of feminicide in Guatemala. My greatest debt is to Jorge Velsquez for asking me to accompany him and for entrusting me with his daughters story.

Procudara de Derechos Humanos (2006). Informe de las caractersticas de las muertes violentas en el pas (Guatemala City: PDH). Phillip Alston (2007). Civil and Political Rights, Including the Questions of Disappearances and Summary Executions. Mission to Guatemala. 19 February. (United Nations: Human Rights Council, 2007). A/HRC/4/20/Add.2,11. Hereafter CPR in text. Carlos Castresana (2009). Report of International Commission against Corruption and Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG).

C Jean-Marie Simon/2010

Las mujeres como objetivo In a meeting with the prosecutor, Mr. Duran, and the Ministerio Pblico team in charge of investigating the murder of Claudina Isabel, the chief investigator told Mr. Velsquez: I lost my aunt. They killed her. But the truth is that these cases are very complicated and I have to accept that this case is not going to be solved. The MP was informing the victims father that he and the BBC were to blame for the fact that the murder had not been brought to justice; furthermore, that his daughter was to blame for having been murdered and then that, if he were a more reasonable person, he would resign himselfas the lead investigator of the MP hadto the fact that his daughters case would never be solved! Mr. Velsquez, always calm, replied: If this case is lost, it will be because the MP has not done its job. Im not saying my daughter was an angel, but young people should not pay with their life for making a mistake or for experimenting. These slanders about the behavior of the dead man or woman mean that many families do not insist on the investigation of the murders of their loved ones. Others fear reprisals from the perpetrators and do not trust the MP to ensure their safety if they pursue justice. As Mills has stated in her work on intimate femicide in South Africa, the criminal justice system not only fails to protect women, it is also inextricably tied to the unfair treatment of women in violent situations through the gender bias and sexist attitudes that inform judges decisions and through the content of the law itself.5 Mills also notes that the victims of intimate femicide are constantly being blamed for their own murder and that the judge takes the perpetrators side in the argument according to which he was provoked and it is therefore his deceased wifes fault that he killed her. Similarly, in Guatemala Yakin Ertrk, the UN Rapporteur, has stressed that there is a lack of respect for the dignity of the survivors of violence and for their families seeking justice, because the system, instead of bringing justice to victims and their families merely revictimized the women; she also adds that blaming the victims and the flippant response to acts of violence against women exacerbates the suffering of victims and their families, besides legitimizing use of violence and rewarding the aggressor.7 A year later, in another report submitted to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Ertrk concluded that the major problem facing the State is its inability to provide women with legal, judicial and institutional protection against violence.8 What is more, until 2006, the Penal Code exonerated rapists if they married their victim, provided she was over 12. The Constitutional Court of Guatemala annulled this antiquated law that sentenced the victim of sexual abuse to a life of punishment with her assailant. The Womens Office at the MP and the special service of the National Civil Police (PNC), both responsible for combating violence against women, openly admitted to the UN Rapporteur that 40%
4

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She sometimes feels... She sometimes feels like something forgotten in a dark corner of the house like fruit eaten inside by birds of prey, like a shadow, faceless and weightless. Her presence is barely slight vibration in the still air. She feels that looks pass through her and that she becomes fog between the clumsy arms that try to clasp her. She would like to be at least a juicy orange in the hand of a child not empty peel an image that shines in the mirror not a shadow that vanishes and a clear voice not heavy silence listened to for once. AlAde FoppA
(Guatemalan poet)

of cases are filed and never investigated (DDS 16). Indeed, the investigation, when it happens, usually treats the murdered woman as a suspect, following the old and discredited school of criminal investigation known as cases provoked by the victim.9 This approach seeks to find what about the victims themselves might have caused their victimization, rather than drawing up the perpetrators profile. The MP has a miserable rate of convictions: in late 2005, when a total of 5,338 murders of men and women had been recorded, there were only 8 sentences. As the exasperated UN Rapporteur, Philip Alston, concluded in his report on Guatemala in February 2007: With a criminal justice system incapable of achieving a conviction rate above a single digit, the State is responsible under human rights law for the many people who have been killed by other citizens (CPR 2).
Why Feminicide?

responsible not only the male perpetrators but also the state and judicial structures that normalize misogyny. Impunity, silence and indifference each play a role in feminicide. Impunity increases citizens insecurity, fosters fear and reduces trust in the state. The concept of feminicide helps to disarticulate the belief systems that place violence based on gender inequality within the private sphere,12 and reveals the societal nature of the killing of women as a product of relations of power between men and women. It also allows for an interrogation of legal, political and cultural analyses and societal responses to the phenomena. In Guatemala, feminicide exists because neither womens rights nor their lives are protected. In Guatemala impunity leads to more killings of women. When an informant was asked if he was worried about the safety of his adult sister in Guatemala City, he answered: She doesnt go out to the store without permission. We will not let anything happen to her. While the brother was proud of the way in which he was protecting his sister from an attacker, this attitude is the product of patriarchy and misogyny. The Special Rapporteur of the UN on violence against women, Yakin Ertrk, noted that it is paradoxical that a mans honor is intrinsically associated with his ability to protect the sexuality of women associated with him; the violation of womens sexuality, as in the case of sexual abuse, is a manifestation of the way in which male power establishes domination over women (DDS 16). The Guatemalan State has failed to create social and legal conditions to ensure the safety of female members of society. As Amnesty International has noted: The official classification of causes of death in the homicide statistics hides the gender-based brutality and sexual nature of many of these crimes.13 Ertrk also noted that the intersection of systems of inequality with hierarchies of gender creates layers of discrimination and exclusion for different groups of women in Guatemala, and that womens exposure to violence is related to their position within these exclusionary systems that converge (RSR 8). In this article, I use the concept of feminicide to deal with the murder of women in Guatemala. Feminicide connotes not only the murder of females by males because they are females, but indicates the responsibility of the State, whether by the commission of the murders themselves, toleration of the perpetrators violence, or by not fulfilling its obligation to ensure its citizens safety.
The historical role of the State and impunity

6 7

A. E. Maldonado Guevara (2005). Feminicidio en Guatemala: Crimines Contra La Humanidad. Investigacion Preliminar. November. p. 97. Available online at: http://www.congreso.gob.gt/uploadimg/documentos/n1652.pdf [30 June 2006]. Shereen Winifred Mills (2001). Intimate Femicide and Abused Women Who Kill: A Feminist Legal Perspective in ed. Diana Russell and Roberta Harmes (2001), Femicide in Global Perspective (New York: Teachers College Columbia University. Ibid., pp. 7677. Yakin Ertrk (2005). Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective: Violence Against Women. Report of the Special Rapporteur on her Mission to Guatemala. February 914, 2004. (United Nations: Commission on Human Rights, 10 February 2005), E/CN.4/2005/72/Add.3. Hereafter RSR in text.

If more men than women are murdered every year in Guatemala, then why categorize the killing of women as feminicide? If Claudina Isabel was murdered by someone who knew her, why classify her murder as feminicide? What is feminicide and how does it help to explain the phenomenon? The concept of feminicide is based on the term femicide, which refers to the murder of women in criminology literature and also refers to hate crimes against women in the feminist literature about the murder of women.10 Insisting that the killing of women must be problematized within larger structures of patriarchy and misogyny, Russell defines femicide not simply as the murder of females but rather as the killing of females by males because they are female.11 Feminicide is a political term. Conceptually, it encompasses more than femicide because it holds

During the eighties, thousands of women were victims of sexual violence and torture before being killed by state agents. What is more, the report of
8

10

11

12

13

14

Ertrk (2006). Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective: Violence Against Women. The Due Diligence Standard as a Tool for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. January 20, 2006. United Nations: Commission on Human Rights. E/ CN.4/2006/61. Hereafter DDS in text. See Marvin E. Wolfgang, Patterns in Criminal Homicide (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1958) Diana Russell and Roberta Harmes, eds. (2001). Femicide in Global Perspective (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University Press). Diana Russell, The Politics of Femicide, in Femicide in Global Perspective, p. 3. See A. E. Maldonado Guevara, Feminicidio en Guatemala: Crimines Contra La Humanidad. Amnesty International (2005). Guatemala: No Protection, No Justice: Killings of Women and GirlsFacts and Figures. Available online at: http://web.amnesty.org/library/print/ENGANR340252005. Consorcio Actoras de Cambio, (2006). Rompiendo el silencio (Guatemala City: Consorcio Actoras de Cambio y El Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales), p. 32.

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Vigil. San Miguel Acatn, Huehuetenango. Chimban Case. Massacre. Army of Guatemala. August 1982. Victims: 11 people, buried by order of the soldiers initially in a mass grave and exhumed the next day by family and placed in individual graves.

Violence against women is met with impunity as authorities fail to investigate cases, and prosecute and punish perpetrators.
Conclusin

the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH Comisin para el Esclarecemiento Histrico) confirmed that the State trained soldiers and other armed officers to violate, mutilate, kill and terrorize women. During the war, soldiers and other security agents were responsible for 99% of the acts sexual violence against women. These crimes of the state and its agents have never been brought to justice and have remained unpunished. These murderers and rapists walk free. If the state continues to shield these murderers and rapists with impunity, then why hope that they would seek out the murderers of Claudina Isabel or any other murdered woman? In writing about the effects of war in the eighties on the women of El Salvador and Guatemala, the UN Rapporteur, Yakin Ertrk, observed the need to recognize the seriousness of sexual violence as a weapon of war during the conflicts and the need for justice for victims and survivors (DDS 2). By connecting the violence of the past with the current feminicide, she considers it imperative to bring to justice the perpetrators of violent crimes against women as an important step in the fight against impunity, not only because the perpetrators will be tried, but because of the effect of deterrence against future crimes (DDS 2). It is paradoxical that more than a decade after the signing of the Peace Accords, the National Civil Police is nowadays considered the main source of human rights violations in Guatemala (DDS 16). Rapporteur Ertrk concluded in her report on Guatemala: Violence against women is met with impunity as authorities fail to investigate cases, and prosecute and punish perpetrators. In this regard, the absence of a rule of law fosters a continuum of violent acts against women, including murder, rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment and commercial sexual exploitation. Security and justice institutions have not responded adequately, particularly by failing to solve a recent series of brutal murders of women (RSR 2).

Intimate violence, femicide and even feminicide are predictable crimes with patterns that can be deciphered through a basic forensic investigation. Feminicide is not inevitable or inherent in Guatemala, or any other country. The thousands of unsolved murders of women in Guatemala make it impossible to determine whether the perpetrator is a womans partner or a stranger, an individual or an institution; whatever the case, the Guatemalan state and its agents carry most of the responsibility. We can establish connections between the practices and discourses of violence in the past and those of the present. Indeed, there is a particular lexicon that we can trace from the eighties to the present. In the eighties, the military regimes blamed the victims by calling them subversives, threatened anyone who opposed the repression, claimed amnesty for any crimes committed by the Army, blamed the guerrillas for the killings or disappearances, and pled ignorance about the violence that was engulfing the country. In the nineties, the Army blamed the massacre victims for causing the massacres, claimed the victims and survivors were subversives, threatened anyone who sought exhumations, claimed amnesty for any crimes committed, blamed the guerrillas for all violence, and pled ignorance for obvious Army violence. After the Spanish Court issued its arrest warrant, the generals claimed the Spanish judge was an ETA terrorist, threatened witnesses, claimed amnesty for any crimes committed, blamed the guerrillas for the killings, and pled ignorance. In the contemporary cases of feminicide and social cleansing, the judicial system in general and the prosecutors office in particular have dismissed the victims as less than worthy by labeling them gangmembers, blamed the gangs for all the violence, claimed that social cleansing does not exist, claimed witnesses will not come forward, and continued to plead ignorance about all aspects of violence. It is impunity that ties the genocide of the eighties, and

the Spanish Courts international arrest warrant for the genocides, together with the murder of women and the murder of Claudina Isabel. Impunity is the violation of the law by those charged with upholding it. Philip Alston, the UN Rapporteur, concluded in his special report on extrajudicial killings in Guatemala that the grisly murder rate is the result of the lack of political will. Alston stated: There are 5,000 or more killings per year, and the responsibility for this must rest with the state. Guatemala is not a failed State, nor a particularly poor State (CPR 2). The Rapporteur also provides legal guidelines by which he finds the state guilty. Under International Human Rights Law: The failure to establish individual responsibility under domestic criminal law does not absolve the States responsibility ... Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the State has legal obligations both to respect and to guarantee the right to life (CPR 6). While Alston notes that, as a rule, the state is not responsible for ordinary murders committed by citizens, he also calls attention that it is the States duty: to exercise due diligence in preventing such crimes. Once a pattern becomes clear in which the response of the Government is clearly inadequate, its responsibility under international human rights law becomes applicable (CPR 6). This responsibility means that, for the State to fulfill its international obligations, it must investigate, prosecute and punish the perpetrators effectively; if this is omitted the State fails in its obligations under international human rights law (CPR 67). Alston also stated that the Guatemalan governments responsibility under international human rights law is greater than under its own internal legal system (CPR 7). Solving the murder of Claudina would certainly be an important step in the restoration of justice. The international community can play a positive role in ending impunity in Guatemala by supporting womens human rights groups, the Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH Procuradera de los Derechos Humanos), and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG Comisin Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala), which is a formal commission established jointly by the United Nations and the Guatemalan Government to investigate and dismantle clandestine organizations and parallel powers. Diplomatic missions, citizens concerned about the problem and international aid groups can support the work of the CICIG by making the ending of impunity a condition for receiving international assistance. The international community can put pressure on prosecutors to take a step forward against feminicide, social cleansing and other cases of homicide; put pressure on the National Civil Police to conduct investigations without prejudice; put pressure on the judiciary and new National Forensic Science Institute (INACIF) to apply a single forensic protocol to all murder victims regardless of their appearance and to include sexual assault as a standard protocol in the investigation of murders; put pressure on the Guatemalan government to cooperate with the Spanish courts and to cooperate in the extradition of the generals to be tried in Spain and also move forward in processing the hundreds of cases of human rights violations that are stalled in the courts; and support the dismantling of impunity with full investigations and disclosure of the role of the States parallel powers, accompanied by a legal trial of those responsible.

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5.5% of children between 7 and 12 years today are not enrolled in primary educationthat is more than 117,000 boys and girls. Most rural, indigenous families live on less than two dollars a day and many of them on less than one dollar.

Javier Lzaro *

reedom of association and repression have been inextricably and invariably linked in the recent history of Guatemala. In the period between January 2007 and March 2010 alone, 47 trade unionists were killed and an undetermined number suffered bombings, kidnappings/ disappearance, threats, intimidationincluding to their familiesall of which recall the worst episodes of repression during the armed conflict that ravaged Guatemala between 1960 and 1996. All these murders and attacks on union freedom were committed in the context of labor disputes, involving both the public and private sectors. When he arrived in power in 1954, Carlos Castillo Armas issued a series of decrees aimed at eradicating the trade union movement in Guatemala, by means of which he canceled the registration of trade union leaders, curtailed the exercise of the right of workers to free association and banned the union movement. These decrees marked the beginning of a process that has aimed to eliminate social protest and trade unionism as a social partner within Guatemalan society. In these moves, Castillo Armas could rely on the invaluable cooperation of Washington, which not only installed the new military government and armed it, but also provided a list of people that had to be eliminated immediately. The workers union at United Fruit (a company that promoted the U.S. intervention) and another 532 unions across the whole country were banned by the new government, which included the death sentence for strike organizers in the penal code. Thus began one of the darkest periods in the history of Guatemala since colonial times, a period which, unfortunately and along with other schemes, continues to this day.
* Director of Fundacin Paz y Solidaridad in Aragon.

Risks to union activism in Guatemala

87% of the working population lives on a wage that is lower than the cost of the basic basket of goods, as does 88.2% of the female population and 95% of the indigenous population. 81.8% of workers have no social security.
With the onset of the armed conflict in 1960, repression intensified and began a new stage: stigmatizing the exercise of union freedom, physical violence, and violation of the rights to life, to physical integrity and to personal freedom. These factors have become a constant in daily life and have persisted to a greater or lesser extent up to the present day. Although it might be assumed that these violations would diminish with the signing of the Peace Accords of 1996, lack of political will to implement and enforce the Accords has meant that this violence has not only increased but taken on new patterns of expression. At the end of conflict, new, more elaborate means were added to traditional forms of repression. These new kinds of violence against human rights included the weakening of protections for labor. In effect, the violence carried out by the State during previous years has given way to another kind of violence, which in practice achieves the same purpose: perpetuating conditions of poverty and dependence for more than 80% of the Guatemalan population. This is done with the connivance or complicity of the major economic, social and political groups in Guatemala, whose interests coincide with those of the local oligarchy and the multinationals present in the country, who have started a new process of wealth accumulation, plundering natural resources and destroying the environmentthe consequences of which are only beginning to be evaluatedand threatening the lives and livelihoods of millions of Guatemalans. This has come together with the consequences of a process of economic globalization of a neoliberal cast that has ruined the Guatemalan economyin particular the aspects affecting the most vulnerable classesthat has met with hardly any opposition because, among other reasons, opposition had already been virtually eradicated from the political and social scene. This social vacuum led to even higher rates of institutional corruption and created the ideal framework for Guatemala to become one of the most violent, backward and unequal countries in all of Latin America, with all the corollary injustice that this implies. The government of Alvaro Arz (19962000) passed laws and created a judicial framework that considerably weakened protection against dismissal and facilitated illegal hiring arrangements. The practice of temporary hiring started to be applied in a systematic way, creating the effect of tying workers into a state of permanent job insecurity and consequently into conditions unfavorable for the exercise of unionism. Simultaneously, the institutions for the administration of justice faced a process of politicization, weakening the rule of law itself, so that the people came to distrust the judicial system completely.

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During this period, the labor movement began to restrict its fights to battles that were clearly union matters while instituting or increasing the dues for representing workers in different areas, meaning that their interests were separate from the collective struggle. In 2004, the government of Guatemala informed the Committee on Freedom of Association at the International Labour Organization (ILO) that the membership of trade unions stood at barely 0.49% of the economically active population. With the loss of socio-political vision from the union movement in favor of an essentially professional trade-union position, the movement shifted its focus from organized struggle in favor of promoting important structural changes to advance the elimination of the system of exclusion that has prevailed in Guatemalan society since colonial times. The collectivism of the trade union movement was viewed simply as an interim or circumstantial strategy, responding to changes that might negatively affect professional interests; the social struggle, as such, was scattered and the emphasis was on sectional interests. Faced with increasing violence that aimed to destroy trade unionism as a social agent, the main measure taken by the Guatemalan government has been to weaken the institutions responsible for criminal prosecution. I refer to the removal of the Fiscala (public prosecution service) from involvement in crimes against trade unionists and journalists; this change took place on March 9, 2005, by general agreement of the Council of the Ministerio Pblico (the public prosecutors Office). Parallel to the removal of the Fiscala, the government created a human rights section within the Fiscala General, charged with the role of investigating and prosecuting those charged with criminal acts committed against journalists, trade unionists, those in the judiciary and human rights activists, and all acts affecting collective interestsespecially those arising from action carried out by the National Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH)crimes committed by illegal bodies and clandestine structures, and others. The elimination of the Fiscala from crimes against trade unionists and journalists, and the creation of a section charged with investigating a range of crimes, including those committed against trade unionists, in practice reduces the importance of such investigation, cuts the budget targeted for the investigation of these crimes and removes technical staff who would take care of the investigation. Currently, the unit for crimes against trade unionists has only one reporter and one officer, neither of them specialists, who must deal with cases throughout the country, giving a clear indication of how sensitive and interested the government is in ending the current anti-union climate of terror. However, in an act of hypocrisy to the international community, before the supervisory bodies of the ILO itself, the Government of Guatemala has presented the creation and operation of this supposed Fiscala for crimes against trade unionists and journalists as a advance in curbing acts of violence against unionists. In this context, it should be noted that whenever the Government of Guatemala has been singled out by the supervisory bodies of the ILO for

The Army continues to intervene to silence the peoples voices raised against injustice, labor exploitation, plunder of natural resources and environmental destruction.

C Jean-Marie Simon/2010

State repression during the years of armed conflict has given way to another kind of violence that also aims to perpetuate conditions of poverty and dependence for more than 80% of the Guatemalan population.
tion of American States and United Nations. Treaties and trade agreements have been another instance where the government has ratified its eternal good intentions to comply with the rights related to freedom of association, such as, for example, the white paper titled The Labor Dimension in Central America and the Dominican Republic: Building on Progress: Strengthening implementation and enhancing capabilities; the Ministerial Declaration adopted during the first ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (Singapore, 913 December 1996); the Fourth Ministerial Conference (Doha, 914 November 2001); Chapter XVI of CAFTA; the GSP Plus between Guatemala and the European Union; and many others, no less significant. To date, the situation has worsened primarily with respect to the issue of violence, as is evidenced by observations from the supervisory bodies of the ILO. The Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations (CEACR)the ILOs regulatory control bodyhas made representations to the State of Guatemala over 17 years for serious violations of Convention 87. These observations were continuous from 1999 to 2009. During all these years, the government has also expressed the political will to solve the serious violations of freedom of association. However, concerned about the serious impunity and increasing anti-union violence, the main trade union organizations asked the Ministerio Pblico for a status report on investigations into those cases involving crimes against trade unionists, particularly the cases involving complaints filed by these organizations. The answer given by the ministry was disconcerting: on October 29, 2009, the Ministerio Pblico reported that it did not keep a register of the cases of crimes against trade unionists!

tolerating or carrying out acts of violence against trade unions, it has responded strategically, informing them each time that it has created the Fiscala for crimes against unionists and journalists. This was what happened in the Conference Committee on the Application of Standards of International Labour Organization in 2009, where the Government argued that a specialized Fiscala has been created to investigate acts of violence against trade unionists within the office of the Fiscala General. The non-existence of the Fiscala was personally ascertained by the ILO High Level Mission that visited the country in February 2009. As noted by the ILO, the existence of an environment conducive to freedom of association and collective bargaining requires the implementation of legislation and best practice, as well as effective institutions, including frameworks for the resolution of conflicts. Political will is essential to enact adequate legislation and to achieve effective enforcement. The State of Guatemala ratified the ILO Convention 87 in 1952, 58 years ago, and freedom of association has been recognized in its law since 1947, 63 years ago. Between then and now, the State of Guatemala has signed and ratified numberless instruments related to its willingness to validate trade union rights before various international bodies, including the ILO, the Organiza-

Risks to union activism in Guatemala To the increasing incidents of violence, stigmatization processes, smear campaigns, impunity, and all the ways that express how Guatemalan men and women are deprived of the conditions necessary for the exercise of freedom of association, under the current administration, a new and more dangerous form has been added, which involves the use of exceptional mechanisms designed to conserve public order as tools to silence social protest. Since 1986the date when Guatemala formally returned to democracyuntil 2007, there has not been a single government that has not made use of the States of Alert or Emergency provided for by the Public Order Act to break up struggles within society. During the Government of Colom alone, Public Order Act mechanisms for the exceptional suspension of normal rule were used on 57 occasions to limit constitutional guarantees and going as far as to legitimate the militarys involvement in acts of repression against the organized people. In the case of the strike by heavy vehicle drivers, their struggle for basic labor claims was thwarted by a State of Alert declared by the President of the Republic. In this case, the Army intervened against civil society. The struggle of the people of San Juan Sacatepquez against the installation of a cement quarry without proper consultation with the community in the municipality was also suppressed by a State of Alert proclaimed by the President of the Republic of Guatemala. In this case also, the Army intervened against civil society. In the municipality of Coatepeque in Quetzaltenango region, a State of Alert was declared in order to suppress a protest by members of the Union of Independent Traders of Coatepeque against the looting of their goods, their being moved to a place that did not meet the conditions necessary for them to do their work and the murders of many of the members of their Executive Committee and even the organizations advisor. In the region of San Marcos, where there was a fight against abuses by the electricity distribution companies linked to the multinational Unin Fenosa, two States of Alert were declaredone of which is still in force at the time of writingduring which, eight community leaders have been killed and numerous search warrants issued against members of both popular and trade union organizations. This new pattern of repression is more worrying inasmuch as it is expressed through the abuse of rules provided under State Law, justifying the silencing of social protest, legitimizing the use of excessive force within a legalformal framework, revealing the governments refusal to solve social problems by way of dialogue. And more worrying still is the request made by the Association of Binational Chambers of Commerce of Guatemala, which includes that of Spain, to declare a State of Alert throughout the country based on the climate of widespread violence, in what appears to be a suspicious agreement of opinion with the Guatemalan Government. It should be noted that these mechanisms have been used in four out of five cases to suppress actions headed by union-based organizations.

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Weaving the Rainbow Hear the embarrassing silence of its voice the scream sigh of its dream in the echo voice of its key the marimba gathers in music The notes of blood of the slaughtered people. Maybe you are evil or unconscious /barbarians who kill your brothers in cold blood? Is it perhaps the core That isnt human Oh marimba! Keep playing the tunes that vibrate to /infinity. To the blue sky of spring Oh Guatemala! Never surrender ever Or kneel to violence so your cloths of a thousand colors keep weaving in the rainbow of peace of /your earth. So never may the girl from Guatemala Ever lose her green north Oh Guatemala! your dead leaders live in the roots of /your world tree* its fruits have never have dried Guatemala never again. CopAviC *Ceiba: the Mayan world tree and the national tree of Guatemala

C Jean-Marie Simon/2010

Photographs of people disappeared during the armed conflict..

In conclusion, we can state: That acts of violence and other human rights violations related to the exercise of freedom of association have shown an alarming increase since 2007, an increase that has coincided with moves to form a Trade Union Confederation of a socio-political nature as the united effort of various union and indigenous organizations in Guatemala. That violence and other human rights violations related to the exercise of freedom of association in the period from 2007 to January 2010 have impacted almost exclusivelyover 90%on organizations that make up part of this emerging united front. That, at the date of this writing, in none of the cases involving anti-union violence have the actual perpetrators or the real planners been convicted and sentenced, which means that 100% of the cases can be said to have gone unpunished. That this increase in the number of attacks on trade unionists and the impunity that surrounds them have been accompanied by the exclusion of trade unions from positions of representation of working men and women in forums for social dialogue, and also by the refusal of the Guatemalan government to reply to questions about these violations put before the regulatory bodies of the International Labour Organization, a refusal that is based on arguments identical with those put forward in the campaigns to smear and stigmatize trade unions that do not support the government. That the significant concentration of acts of violence makes it highly unlikely that these are the result of a random phenomenon, as would be the case in a climate of generalized violence. That the acts of violence, discrimination, stigmatization and other forms of trade union repression at play in both the public and the private sectors, are evidence of the implementation of a strategy to prevent the exercise of union rights, a situation that is extremely dangerous in a country with a weak democracy like Guatemala. Finally, and as a corollary accompanying the points above, we must draw attention to the complicity of certain international actors. Before signing the recent partnership agreement reached between Central America and the European Union, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) proposed a series of recommendations to the negotiators, in order to include issues relating to antiunion violence in countries like Guatemala, at the stage of deciding that agreements terms. None of these recommendations was taken into account, and priority was given to economic issues over social and political ones. The agreement managed to consolidate and improve access to many products, such as bananas, sugar, meat, textiles, tuna and rice. Within these products value chain, however, what we do not know is what price has truly been placed on the lives of trade unionists and trade union freedom.

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Exhumation in San Martin Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango. Case Pachay Las Lomas. Execution of sisters Mara Elena and Mara Natalia lvarez Ajbal by the Guatemalan Army, August 20, 1981.

Miguel ngel Morales Reyes *

The truth underground

The exhumations in Guatemala, the first step to acknowledging the truth
At the official start of Victoria 82, in June 1982, 5,000 Army troops swept the municipalities of Barillas, San Mateo Ixtatn, Nentn, San Miguel Acatn and Jacaltenango in the department of Huehuetenango. In only eight days, between 12 and 19 July of that year, the Guatemalan Army executed more than 1,200 people in accordance with its mission to destroy the communities that it passed through completely and systematically, leaving Sebep, Xequel, Yolcultac, Petanac, Bulej, Yalambojoch, San Francisco and Yaltoya in ashes. The scorched earth operation inflicted on these communities in the Guatemalan highlands caused the maximum human damage possible and left behind a string of unmarked graves, many of them now exhumed. The strategy was to spread terror and destroy communities.
The fear continues

Exhuming the remains of victims of armed conflicts and locating secret and hidden burial sites, wherever they are, is an act of justice and reparation in itself and an important step on the path of reconciliation.1

etween 1960 and 1996, Guatemala experienced an internal armed conflict that affected the vast majority of its population. Large numbers of civilians, counted in their thousands, were killed, disappeared and displaced from their birthplace, forced to live through one of the countrys most repressive periods of living memory. In 1982 the Army implemented the plan called Victoria 82, Annex H of which says: Subversion exists because a small group of people support it and a large number of people tolerate it, either through fear or because there are causes that generate fear. The war must be fought in all fields ... The peoples minds are the main objective.2 Ros Montts military plans filled Guatemala with secret cemeteries and made 1982 the bloodiest year in the armed conflict. As a result of the implementation of Victoria 82, all the communities that were within the scope of operation of guerrilla groups were punished by the Guatemalan Army by means of selective murder or complete extermination, even though in most instances they had no relation with the guerrillas.
* Forensic anthropologist.

Paul Kobrak details the following: on 13 July [1982] about 250 troops passed through the hamlet of Xequel, San Mateo Ixtatn. They took the inhabitants to a meeting in the nearby village of Sebep ... [The captain] brought out a masked guerrilla ... who passed through the crowd and pointed: that one yes, that one no. Then the captain

selected another fifteen. With these latter, the captain created the Community Civil Self-Defense Patrol (PAC). Then he asked whether they knew how to kill people? how to deal with machetes? After that, he forced them to kill the ones previously selected by the guerrilla, under threat and with the aim of ridding the community of the taint of communism.3 The victims, 17 men, were relatives, friends and/or neighbors of those forced to commit these acts. The testimonials collected from exhumed victims relatives have shown that in at least 20% of these occurrences, the PACs were involved in killing people, either together with elements from National Army or on their own. Many of those patrolmen even continue living alongside the families of the victims, meaning that the families fear persists and the power of the perpetrators is reinforced. The Armys strategy was to instill terror among the communities, forcing the inhabitants to inform on probable collaborators with or without foundation; they also prevented the guerrilla forces from growing with the help of those who survived these acts. This strategy
1 2 3

Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH). Cited Schirmer, Guatemalas Military Project, 35-63. Paul Kobrak, Huehuetenango: Historia de una Guerra (Guatemala City: CEDFOG, 2003), 82.

C Rodrigo Abd, AP photographer.

THE TRUTH UNDERGROUND

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X-X No, No, thats not him. Yes, yes, it is. No, thats not him. It isnt possible that this could be him. Look at the vaccination scar. No, thats not him. Look at the crown on the tooth that Miguel put in six months ago. No, thats not him. I think that it is him. This time it is. No, thats not him. How could it be him, if he has /no eyes. How could it be him, if he does not /have his workers hands. How could it be him, if they have cut /off his seeds of manhood. How could it be him, without his /guitar and his song, without that hard scowl in the face /of danger, without that smile while at work without his voice expressing /the thought, without his foolish obsession /about giving me flowers. How could it be him. Its not him. I tell you, it isnt him. I do not want it to be him. Manuel Jos arce
(Guatemalan poet)

Exhumation at San Mateo Ixtatn, Huehuetenango. Case Sebep, 37 people dead, July 12, 1982.

generated a wave of unprecedented violence and a large number of fatalities, turning the land of Guatemalan into a field full of secret graves. The methods of killing used by the Army and the PACs varied but are at the same time identifiable. Analyzing the bones recovered, the majority of cases where the PAC patrolmen are identified as the victimizers involved blunt trauma or blunt-force incisions, people with features of asphyxia by hanging or stoning. Cases where witnesses identified the authors as personnel from the National Army showed, in addition to the above features, victims wounded by the impact of projectiles from a firearm, usually associated with skull and thorax, signs of cremation and/ or contusion wounds associated with the action of explosive devices. Forensic anthropology teams began working at the request of victim organizations and the families of the victims. In the early 90s, groups that had arisen to combat violence and impunity (CONAVIGUA, CERJ, GAM, among others) initiated a series of calls for the investigation of the secret cemeteries created during the internal armed conflict, with the aim of finding their missing relatives. Some of these cases were dealt with by forensic doctors from the judiciary, but there was not the necessary follow up. In 1992 they managed to contact Dr. Clyde Snow, who, through the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), came to Guatemala with an international team composed of members of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF) and Fo-

With hundreds of graves still unopened, the exhumations performed not only confirm the reports published by the Archdiocese Human Rights Office (REMHI) and the United Nations (CEH), but go beyond the information they contain.
rensic Anthropology Group of Chile (GAF). The first exhumations were carried out and a group of Guatemalan archaeologists and anthropologists was trained and at that time organized into the Forensic Anthropology Team of Guatemala (EAFG), going on to become the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) in 1997. In the same year the Exhumation Team of the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala was founded EAF/ODHAG which carried out numerous forensic-anthropological investigations up to 2000. In that year it suspended its activities, resuming them in 2002 and closing again in 2008. Between 1998 and 2001 in the area called Ixil, in the north of El Quich department, the Exhumation Team of the Diocese of El Quich was at work, focusing its activities in this area and performing over 100 exhumations. In 1999 the Center for Forensic Analysis and Applied Sciences, CAFCA, was founded; the team has been working steadily since then and has so far carried out a total of 167 exhumations. Together, all teams that have worked in Guatemala up to the present day have managed to recover, and return to their families, the remains of more than 5,000 victims, who were killed by a variety of causes during the political

violence that afflicted the country, with more than 80% of these deaths being referred to the early years of the 80s, the most violent year being 1982. The data collected in forensic anthropological investigations not only corroborate the reports of the CEH and REMHI, but goes beyond the information contained in them. For example, out of the cases exhumed in Guatemala, only about 45% were mentioned in any of these reports, which significantly raises the official figures for the number of acts and victims. The agents of the Guatemalan State used violence indiscriminately. This is reflected in the results of these investigations, which show that, for example, with regard to the sex of the victims, at least 40% were female and, with respect to age, 35% were in the age groups 0 to 15 and over 60. In summary, the victims of the violence belonged to groups of the population that were definitely civilian and non-combatant. In this respect the CEH states that: ... arbitrary executions affected both men and women. About a fifth of the victims were women. A significant percentage compared to the percentages of women commonly victims in this type of conflict.

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Over 90% of people whom the Army killed in the Ixil area were non-combatant indigenous people. The data obtained from a forensic team working in the area indicate that of the 291 victims exhumed by them, 202 died from violent causes and 74 by accident, disease or starvation. Responsibility for the violent deaths was attributed, from witnesses accounts, to the Army in 92.08% of cases. In the four hardest years of conflict (19811984), according to the investigations of 34 cases that took place in this period and according to testimony, the Guatemalan Army killed 186 people in the Ixil area, only 15 of whom were members of the guerrilla forces, which leaves 171 who were non-combatants, including women, the elderly, boys and girls, so that over 90% of the victims were non-combatant civilians. On the other hand, 90% of those exhumed came from places with high indigenous populations, making them one of the most affected groups: El Quich, Ixil, Canjobal, Chuj and also Cakchiquel, Mam, and others, thus confirming a similar trend reflected in the data presented by the CEH and REMHI. During the conflict the Ixil area was the hardest hit by Army violence. The persecution subjected communities to inhumane living conditions that led to death. From studies we know that nationally the Ixil area had the highest proportion of violent deaths in the armed conflict, with about 33% of all victims having been killed in an identifiably violent context and in association with evidence that supports this conclusion, such as metal artifacts (firearm projectiles), remains of sharp artifacts (knives and machetes) or devices used as ligatures (ropes and cords). Another important fact is that in this area, for the total remainder of victims whose cause of death cannot be established, ante mortem data recovered show that at least 17% of them died in conditions of persecution. This indicates not only the intention to cause the physical extinction of the victims found at the scene, but also that survivors were persecuted for the purpose of extermination. The context in which these victims died is of particular importance, since, as reported in various instances, these deaths were due to displacement from their communities into inhospitable areas where they had restricted access to food and basic health services, owing to the harassment that the State forces inflicted on them. By having escaped, many people died of hunger. According to information obtained, the leading cause of non-violent death during the period 1981 to 1984 in the Ixil area was starvation, accounting for about 67% of cases. By linking these data with those of the three areas most affected by the conflict, we can conclude that most of the people who died of starvation in Guatemala between 1982 and 1984 were in the Ixil area.

If families want the exhumations done, it will be necessary to follow them closely, allowing for collective reflection on the part of the people themselves, with the rituals of their family or community.
The exhumations have become a necessity for a Guatemala that is seeking truth and compensation to achieve reconciliation. The exhumations carried out have given substance to the testimonies offered by survivors, both in the official reports of the CEH and REMHI, and also those compiled by various institutions that have been working together with the communities since the signing of the Peace Accords. The testimonies give the location of secret gravesites, place and form of burial, number of victims and their distribution with respect to sex and age, style and manner of death, thereby giving legal certainty to the facts as told. After more than 15 years of work, the exhumations in Guatemala are still going on and continue to show that the nation needs this, before there can be reconciliation and healing for the families of those victims who, in most cases, took no direct part in the conflict. Currently, of the more than 1,500 cases investigated, only two have come to public trial and, of these, only one has received sentence, leaving the rest shelved and lost within the various offices of the national Ministerio Pblico (public prosecutor). In none of the cases has the staff of the Ministerio Pblico or of the Guatemalan courts asked for any further information or confirmation concerning any of the reports submitted by the various experts working in Guatemala.

Burial, Chajul, El Quich. Return of remains exhumed from nine cases in the municipality; deaths took place in 1982, in all cases by action of the Guatemalan Army. Total number of victims: 23.

Indeed, as the CEH says, The forensic anthropological investigation in the postwar context cannot be merely an administrative formality, but must be a part of efforts to solve a crime against life, be linked with very deep human feelings and with cultural and religious values. For this reason the exhumations in Guatemala have been carried out along with the offer of psycho-social care for the victims families, so that the exhumation in and of itself may become the beginning of a healing process for families. Finally, it is necessary to note that acknowledging the truth about the events that occurred during the internal armed conflict has gained more importance in recent years. The exhumations carried out and the declassification of official documents, both nationally and internationally, have revealed the truth lying underground and the truth on paper. In the wake of lawsuits filed in different courts across the world with respect to human rights violations in Guatemala during that period, and following social pressure on the whereabouts of thousands of disappeared people, the Government has been forced to take certain steps to compensate for acts committed during the conflict. However, there is still much to do. Thousands of victims are still buried in mass graves and their families are crying out to know the truth of what happened. The recovery of their remains and subsequent reburial in a dignified and appropriate place are the first steps toward being able to speak of peace in Guatemala.

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C Jean-Marie Simon/2010.

The prosecution of criminals can restore the idea of justice and open up a collective hope that other logics of power are possible.

Miryam Rivera HolgunI, Pau Prez-SalesII, Nieves GmezIII, Susana NavarroIV

The pain of impunity

A psycho-social look at impunity Operation Sofia in Guatemala
break the social fabric of communities through the militarization of everyday life, through the strategic selection of individuals both as victims and victimizers, through techniques for creating co-responsibility and collective guilt through personal betrayal, through forcing neighbors to destroy their neighbors crops and houses, etc. These are some examples of methods of fragmenting communities, used as counter-insurgency strategy and social control, that have left serious damage and consequences that help to explain the high rates of violence in Guatemala today. They should also make us aware of the still open wounds of the Mayan communities of the Ixil area. The lack of healing comes from the impunity with which the crimes were inflicted and the impunity that followed them how can principles of balance and reciprocity within communities be maintained if there is no kind of justice for past crimes and this lingers in peoples (trans-)generational memory?
1

ocieties that must confront political violence cannot escape the political decision of whether or not to apply sanctions against the perpetrators of crimes against humanity as indicated by international law.1 In 2005 the United Nations system established that it was the inescapable duty of States to fight against impunity,2 rejecting the idea that political considerations of a supposed good of greater order (social, political or economic stability) could, under any circumstances, be accepted as justification for the absence of justice in crimes against humanity. In psycho-social terms, the issue of impunity has been studied in depth and from multiple perspectives. We do not want to reiterate issues already treated extensively elsewhere, in contexts as diverse as Argentina, Chile, South Africa or Brazil.3 The search for truth and justice makes sense by opening up the possibility of mending fractures in countries with fragmented social bodies and allows victims to validate their pain and their history. Justice favors processes for group cohesion, validation and sharing of history, for having a more critical view of the world and giving the possibility of claims for reparation.4 Operation Sofia is a clear example of this, and some aspects of it have been sifted elsewhere in these pages. For example, the issues of how it took the approach of a dirty warwith training and consultancy from experts in psychological operations at the School of the Americas5 and the intelligence services of Israel and other countriesand aimed to
*
Universidad Catlica, Peru. Masters in Community Psychology and Community Action Group; IICommunity Action Group; III y IVCommunity Studies and Psycho-social Action Team (ECAP).
I Pontificia

Such a situation is exacerbated when impunity becomes the hallmark of post-conflict regimes, where many of those responsible for human rights atrocities have entered the political arena and been elected to public office.6 Thus, a report presented to the Inter-American Court on Human Rights on the psycho-social effects of the non-application of justice in the case of the massacre at the village of Las Dos Erres, La Libertad, Petn, showed that the survivors of the massacre have feelings of fury, rage, anger, sadness, insecurity and depression related to the lack of investigation and of sanctions against the guilty parties.7 These feelings, family members say, derive from the perpetrators impunity and the lack of justice, as well as the presence in positions of power of people accused of serious human rights violations. They state that the absence

See R. I. Rotberg & D. Thompson (2000). Truth versus Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press); M. S. Weissmark (2004). Justice Matters (Oxford: Oxford University Press); C. Hesse and R. Post (1999). Human Rights in Political Transitions: Gettysburg to Bosnia (Cambridge, MA: Zone Books). Defined as the impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims, in Updated Set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity, United Nation, 2005: E/CN.4/2005/102/Add.1, available online at http://derechos.org/nizkor/impu/principles.html.

4 5 6 7

See D. Kordon, L. Edelman, D. Lagos, D. Kersner (2005): Efectos psicolgicos y psicosociales de la represin poltica y la impunidad. De la dictadura a la actualidad (Buenos Aires: Ed. Madres de la Plaza de Mayo); B. Loveman and E. Lira (2002): El espejismo de la reconciliacin poltica. Chile 1990-2002 (Santiago de Chile: Ed. LOM); R. A. Wilson (2001): The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa. Legitimizing the post-apartheid State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); C. Rauter et al. (2002): Clinico e Politica: Subjetividade e violaao dos direitos humanos (Rio de Janeiro: Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais). N. Gmez (2009). Peritaje psicosocial por violaciones a derechos humanos (Guatemala City: ECAP and F. & G. Editores). See http://www.viejoblues.com/escuelamericas.htm; www.psicosocial.net (Centro Documentacin: Control Social). C. Menjvar and N. Rodrguez (2005). When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror (Austin: University of Texas Press). Gmez, Peritaje psicosocial por violaciones a derechos humanos.

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operaTion Sofia
C Jean-Marie Simon/2010.

of justice has led to loss of opportunities for victims, survivors and families, going beyond the impact of the massacre, ruining all their life plans, and that impunity prevents these consequences from being dealt with directly. Elements such as fear, mistrust, stigmatization, discrimination, lack of social and political participation, as well as exclusion, breakdown of forms of citizen participation, the collapse of community, social and cultural support mechanisms, are all factors that mark the life of these communities,8 and that is precisely what is currently seen in the entire Ixil population who suffered violence. These multiple forms and sideeffects of violence still determine daily life in Guatemala and show systematic patterns that, furthermore, differentially affect men and women in situations of discrimination.9 The first way to come closer to the idea of justice for the whole of society is openly to ask those who constitute it: What should be done with the perpetrators of gross violations of human rights? In a review of sociological studies in over 40 countries from different parts of the world, it was possible to see that the answers in every country were based on four groups of factors: (a) to what extent the population viewed it as genuinely feasible for prosecutions to be brought and conducted under the current government; (b) the confidence they had in the impartiality of the judiciary of the country at the time; (c) the perception of whether this process might involve risks of reawakening the conflict; and (d) the perception of risks to personal safety of a hypothetical complainant victim.10 International data show how, in spite of different factors, between 48% and 75% of the population in countries as different as Bosnia, Chile, South Africa, Ghana or Uganda supported bringing the perpetrators to justice. In other words, in those societies affected by political violence, the majority of society aspires to justice. Guatemala is no exception: in 2009, ECAP and GAC published a sociological study on perceptions of truth, justice and reparation in Guatemala viewed through individual interviews with more than 1,200 people in 20 regions around the country. 72.8% of Guatemalans felt that there had to be punitive justice against the perpetrators. Only 10.7% of Guatemalans believe it is better to do nothing, resign themselves, forgive and forget, and 7.7% proposed imposing moral punishment or letting time or God be their judge. There is a majority desire for justice, but not without skepticism. Thus, for example, comments included: But the law doesnt work (male, 18, Huehuetenango); Justice is only for the rich, I dont believe in the justice system (female, 36, San Marcos); Punish them but nothing is done, the law is for those with money (male, 51, El Progreso, rural area); It would help those who suffered as well as those who didnt; we would end up with violence if we imposed justice (man, Maya speaker, 40, Alta Verapaz); If we imposed justice, those responsible wont do the same
8 9

72.8% of Guatemalans believe the perpetrators of crimes during the conflict should be brought to justice.
again, but that doesnt happen in Guatemala (female, 30, Guatemala City); There can be no peace if the Accords are not honored. If justice is fulfilled, it will help us to live better later on. It will happen if the past is known (man, Maya speaker, 38, El Quich). In this study data were broken down separately for direct victims (those who had a disappeared family member, who had been suffered prison, torture or displacement). These victims were more moderate when it came to considering the desire for justice and expressed greater fear and distrust. The fact is that fewer than one percent of the more than one thousand massacres unearthed so far in Guatemala have led to trials in the pursuit of justice. While from outside there is a clear message that that justice should be attained, the reality is that the Guatemalan State and the Ministerio Pblico (public prosecutor) have so far failed to fulfill the legal principle of performing their office and have left the burden of investigation and bringing cases to the victims own families, in contravention of international laws and obligations signed by the country. However, there are countries such as Argentina and Chile where the judicial route is open, and others like Peru and Colombia where they are starting to open, albeit with limitations. In Guatemala, justice is the major unresolved issue. And the victims are perfectly aware of it.
Why, after the exhumations, are the trials not starting in Guatemala?

Police officers taking away students from San Carlos University who were protesting against state violence. Guatemala City, 1985.

10

11

I. Martn Bar (1990). Psicologa social de la guerra: Trauma y terapia (El Salvador: UCA). C. Menjvar (2008). Violence and womens lives in eastern Guatemala: A conceptual framework. Women and International Development (Michigan State University, Working Paper 290). Available online at: http://www.wid.msu.edu/resources/papers/pdf/WP290.pdf P Prez-Sales (2009). Estudios sociolgicos sobre Verdad, Justicia y . Reparacin en el contexto de violencia poltica. Circunstancias sociopolticas, iniciativas y resultados, in ECAP/GAC, Exhumaciones, verdad, justicia y reparacin en Guatemala. Estudio de opinin (Guatemala City: F&G Editores). S. Navarro and P Prez-Sales (2007). Por qu las exhumaciones no . conducen a procesos de justicia en Guatemala? Cejil, magazine. No. 3, Argentina.

The Team for Community Studies and Psycho-social Action (ECAP) and the Community Action Group (GAC) carried out a study in Rabinal as part of the same research project, which analyzed the reasons why processes of exhumation almost never led to a subsequent prosecution, using focus groups. These threw up three groups of reasons why families did not ini-

tiate proceedings: (1) Personal reasons related to fear, feeling alone, fear of retaliation from the perpetrators and the political framework, the need to act collectively and not as individual victims and to feel support from the authorities; (2) Reasons linked to social and political context, related to the confusion over whether to report the actual person who murdered or disappeared the family member or the commanders who gave the orders; (3) Reasons related to perceiving some social and media pressure toward reconciliation, the dissuasive role of religion; (4) Reasons related to having little knowledge of positive experiences of using the judicial system such as the case of the massacre caused by the Snchez plan or other cases where the victims had achieved justice; (5) Reasons related to the complexity of the judicial process itself in Guatemala including ignorance of how to go about it, lack of practical access for people living in rural areas, in a precarious economic situation and unable to bear the costs, lack of confidence in the judge, and skepticism that after years, threats and efforts, the results would probably be only minimally positive or lead to a new form of harm.11 Not surprisingly, therefore, the study shows that while the majority of the population (particularly people in the capital, who have not been victims, Spanish-speaking, educated and young people) believe that truth, justice and reparation must happen at the same time and together, there is a group of people (including most of the victims interviewed) which was in favor of finding out the truth and of reparation to victims, but considered that trials could not or should not be initiated with a view to obtaining justice. In Guatemala, the data indicate that the victims view justice as something so unattainable that they do not even envision it as a possibility. And this perception is not a result of damage caused by the victimization itself, it is, as we have seen, the reality in the country as shown by the data. It is interesting to observe that among the reasons referred to by people in Guatemala for supporting the exhumations as part of the sear-

THE PAIN OF IMPUNITY

C Jean-Marie Simon/2010.

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Presidential Sermon The Army passed and in the pretty little town that used to be a tourist attraction on the multicolored postcards, no wall still stood or anyone to tell of it: the bodies of pregnant girls were found with the fetus peering from the belly wound. Boys of five years old and less were found hanging from their guts on the branches of a tree. The village elders, Venerable, were beheaded in the square opposite the church. Not a single one was left to tell the tale. Not even dogs. And today, Monday, the press, radio and television repeated the Sunday sermon by the President general and evangelical pastor who started, saying: God is Love, brothers ... Manuel Jos arce
(Guatemalan poet)

Fleeing in terror, the people left the streets of Nebaj empty.

ch for truth, there is no mention of reconciliation, a word that crops up so often in political discourse. Despite great pressure from the media, politicians, and the Church, the discourse of reconciliation does not permeate society as might be hoped in the visions of politicians. Perhaps one reason is that experience has shown victims that the association of pardon/amnesty reconciliation is a huge fraud. Here are just two examples: Brian Loveman and Elizabeth Lira showed, in a comprehensive and minutely documented study, how in Chile the many successive processes of amnesty and impunity that took place between 1814 and 1994 not did not serve to achieve that abstract and indefinite ideal of reconciliation, but were actually the cause of cycles of violence-amnesty-impunity-violence that have dominated Chiles history since its foundation, which created a collective social concept of amnesty for soldiers and perpetrators as the logical route to reconciliation.12 Secondly, a recent study published in Colombia analyzes the repentant confessions of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity from Argentina, Chile, Brazil and South Africa; the impact of the confessions on the victims and relatives; and the consequences of the trials in
12 13

the medium and long term.13 Its subtitle sums up the findings in a single phrase: neither truth nor reconciliation in confessions of state violence. Both this study and some originating from the Commission in South Africa14 point to the danger and damage in terms of victims mental health caused by the absence of Justice, and that Truth not only does not replace Justice, but that it can worsen the consequences of impunity.15 And this is something that many of the victims live with in Colombia today when, in public hearings, they hear that the perpetrators are availing themselves of Law 970, called the Justice and Peace Law, which provides for maximum sentences of up to 3 years for the perpetrators of crimes against humanity if they confess the crimes committed; so far and despite the hundreds of hearings where victims had to testify and listen, these hearings have still not produced a single effective case of conviction.
Living with impunity

14 15 16

B. Loveman and E. Lira (2000). Las suaves cenizas del olvido, Vol I: 1814-1932; Vol. II: 1932-1994. Leigh Payne (2009). Testimonios perturbadores: ni verdad ni reconciliacin en las confesiones de violencia de estado (Bogot: Universidad de los Andes, CESO). George Bizos (1998). No one to blame? In pursuit of justice in South Africa (Cape Town: David Philip). B. Flanigan (1992). Forgiving the Unforgivable (New York: Macmillan). Jean Amry (1966). Jenseits von Schuld und Shne; trans. Sidney and Stella P Rosenfeld, At the Minds Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on . Auschwitz and Its Realities (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).

Beyond opinions, the data show that the possibility of access to finding out the facts and who planned them brings to light the social fractures (crevasses) and that after revealing them it is essential for the social body to be able to address what has come to light. When the social body is not ready or willing, revealing such evidence often strikes and hurts those who were already wounded. Living with shameful impunity makes people who have been sinned against relive their pain and heightens it and even in some cases makes it feel like a mockery. This has been raised by victims within the context of the work of the Commission of Truth and Reconciliation in Peru, and similar views are expressed in the forums where victims have been able to speak in Guatemala (ODHAG, 1998). In several cases, even the victims own family or community assume that the complaint and the search for justice have been in vain and they express it openly, further wounding and often isolating the person who was and still is a victim. Thus impunity not only presents itself as the absence of access to justice but it also hurts and it harms the possibility of initiating future trials to search for truth, sets the stage for future violence, and conduces to climates and contexts which foster violence and transgression. Jean Amry, a German concentration camp survivor, recalled that, faced with an attitude of resignation and looking away on the part of most people in post-war Germany in the interests of pragmatism, he claimed

the right of victims to resentment as something legitimate. Resentment toward the perpetrators, but also toward a society that accepted looking the other way and knew that there were torturers still holding responsible positions in politics and business.16 Cases of criminal prosecution (Pinochet in Chile, Fujimori in Peru or the trials of the military junta in Argentina) do, however, allow for the consolidation of a social concept which restores the idea of seeking justice, participation, institutions, security and creation of democratic spaces, and thus opens up some collective hope that there may be other logics of power. Finally, from a psycho-social point of view it is necessary to propose a self-critical perspective of the human rights movements work to promote no to impunity, which often presents a logic of pushing cases toward the clarification of truth and the pursuit of justice, including in this mechanism encouragement or acceleration of the victims own process of moving toward complaint. When, in contexts such as Guatemala and Peru, the right conditions are not present, this may entail a revictimization of those affected. This means that it is necessary to provide interdisciplinary backup that is closely tied to the victims needs. The long road between the complaint and the trial itself and the subsequent imposition of the sentence (over)exposes the person, not only in terms of security, but also through reliving harmful experiences, bringing the past to mind, and questioning his or her behavior at the time of the aggression, calling up difficult situations in a context that may be new (new partner, new children, new job, new community), etc. It is therefore necessary, in contexts of impunity as complex as those in Guatemala, to maintain a psycho-judicial approach to supporting the cases. And to remember that the search for justice is not the victims task. Impunity (close companion of indifference) is not only shelving the case, but is also what many citizens do today: not listening, not paying attention, not reporting, not considering that the issues of transgression and violation of human rights are part of a shared agenda. This subject is not only the province of judges and prosecutors, it is also part of everyday life. Impunity not only attacks the victims, it affects all citizens, indeed the very notion of being part of a group and therefore being part of a national project. Amry spoke of this 50 years ago in post-Hitler Germany and it should be remembered today in post-Ros-Montt Guatemala when reading the documents of Operation Sofia.

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Land distribution in Guatemala is one of the most unjust in the continent. Only 23.6% of farms are in the hands of indigenous people, who are the majority of the population, and about 6.5% of plots are controlled by women. A few families, headed by non-indigenous men, own 70% of the land.

Pablo Ceto *

A New Dawn
The plural Guatemala of the Peace Accords against the States current racism and weakness
Reflections on the recent past and immediate future of Guatemala
November 13, 1960, the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala initiated the revolutionary armed struggle. This became the continuation of their centuries-long resistance, accelerated their political consciousness of the need for a new country, made up of Indian and ladino, men and women, and enabled them to go about creating their own role. They played a part that contributed decisively here and also elsewhere, winning important recognition such as the creation of the Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala. This meant that the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala became new political actors in the country, within a context of social and political dynamics of large movements, of intense political activity in different regions of the country to assert their rights, of an upward and generalized revolutionary guerrilla struggle. In an international situation conducive to peace and respect for human rights, the movement 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance, held its Second Continental Meeting in Quetzaltenango on October 12, 1991. It is this historical, social, political and indigenous peoples force that has made viable dialogue and negotiation between four successive governments of Guatemala and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG - Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca). It obliged the state to accept the recognition of the existence of the Mayan, Garifuna and the Xinka Peoples in the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples of March 31, 1995, and, 10 years later, to sign the Agreement on a Firm and Lasting Peace of December 29, 1996, approving the Framework Law of Peace Agreements (Decree 52-2005). However, 14 years on from that historic date, the hoped-for changes have not yet arrived.
What has turned Guatemalan peace into a wilted plant?

The signing of the peace in 1996 stands as a historic date between the exclusive colonial past and the inclusive and plural future

t is very important to talk about the Guatemala Peace Accords, signed on December 29, 1996, because they closed 36 years of internal armed conflict, ushering in a process of great transformations as part of a project shared between Guatemalan societys social, economic and political forces and state. They also laid the groundwork for continuing to bring an end 500 years of dispossession, exclusion and exploitation of indigenous peoples, and to move toward the construction of a new country with rights for all men and women. In the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, signed on March 31, 1995, the Guatemalan State is obliged, for the first time since 1524, to recognize the existence of the Mayan, Garifuna and Xinca Peoples and to sit with their representatives to address issues of vital importance for the future of the country. This is a historic victory, the fruit of 500 years of indigenous resistance on one side and, on the other, the efforts of progressive sections of society and the revolutionary movement that, since 1960, has sought to resume the advances of the democratic decade, which began with the fall of Jorge Ubicos dictatorship in 1944 and was interrupted by the American intervention in 1954. Following the nationalist military officers uprising against President Idgoras Fuentes on
* Pablo Ceto. Ixil Mayan. Agronomist. General Coordinator of the Mayan foundation, FUNDAMAYA. Former congressman in Guatemalas Congress (2000-2004) for the URNG party.

In trying to ascertain why the Guatemalan State has failed to honor the Peace Accords over the past 14 years, we should start by saying that, as surely occurs in all processes of civil war, some forces were in favor of its ending while others were not. While the URNG opened the way to dialogue and negotiation, the economic, political and military sectors were at odds among themselves over the business that would result from the peace. Some were in favor of peace and others against it, all for the benefits they would obtain or would stop obtaining, but they did not debate the causes of armed conflict of course. This contradictionadded to the fact that the Guatemalan Army had nothing more to show for its huge mobilization of troops and military equi-

C Lorena Pajares

A NEW DAWN
C copy right de CAFCA

33

pment than the genocide committed against the indigenous communities and not defeat of the revolutionary guerrilla rankspartly explains why the peace was not signed until 1996, nine years after the first meetings between the URNG and the government of Vinicio Cerezo in 1987. A rapid review of the Governments that have been in power during these years of peace shows how these and other elements explain the failure of the Peace Accords. Peace was signed in 1996 with the government of lvaro Arz who won the presidency in the general elections in November 1995. Joint commissions were established for the Agreement on Identity and Rights of Indigenous Peoples and others for the implementation of Peace Accords. However, in 1999, mistakes on the part of the trade union, campesino and popular movement, of social and political organizations and the lack of a clear endorsement from the incumbent government, meant that the Peace Accords constitutional reforms were not approved in the referendum of May of that year. In the next government, 2000-2004, Alfonso Portillo tried to implement tax reforms, closing loopholes and removing tax privileges, but businesss controlling interests ended up imposing a rise of 10 to 12% in the value-added sales tax. He also attempted some measures against certain monopolies in the countrys economic sectors, but finally his FRG government sank in corruption. As for the Guatemalan Congress, on issues related to the contents of the Peace Accords: it adopted the definition of ethnic discrimination in a reform to Article 202 of the Penal Code (Decree No. 17-73); it also achieved some improvements in the decentralization laws, which incorporated recognition of the countrys multicultural reality and of institutions such as the Indigenous Authorities and approval of the National Language Act. Oscar Berger, representing the countrys cane and sugar sector, began his term of office in 2004. It is hard to record any acts by that government that related to compliance with the Peace Accords. It initiated some mega-projects, such as the road to the Northern Transversal Strip. Peoples insecurity grew significantly in all corners of the country. In 2008 the government of lvaro Colom, the current President, took over, after winning the 2007 general election with a majority of the vote from the indigenous, peasant and rural population, probably in response to his electoral pledges to benefit the most vulnerable sectors and deal with problems of lack of security, facing off against a military opponent with firm hand policies. At the beginning of his term in January 2008, he declared a social democratic government and offered a government with a Mayan face. Two aspects of the current government are positive: on the one hand, there is support for the most dispossessed sections of society, with programs of social cohesion, and, on the other, it has made an effort to declassify information about the Army from during the internal armed conflict, such as the 1982 Operation Sofa in the Ixil region, where the Army committed more than 58 massacres. However, weighing against it are its policy of Zero Information and Zero Consultation with the Indigenous Peoples in relation to the exploi-

The conservative and racist mentality of the Guatemalan state and society toward indigenous peoples make it more difficult and complex to build a plural and inclusive Guatemala.
tation of natural resources in indigenous territories, where it is favoring multinational companies. There is a total of more than 400 licenses, clearly endorsed or promoted by the previous and the current governments. This is a violation of the rights of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala by the state and multinational companies. The situation has been highlighted by a variety of international organizations, which have also asked for the suspension of licenses for exploration and exploitation of mines and of water resources for the construction of hydroelectric installations. President lvaro Colom continues to disregard popular demonstrations in Guatemala, international complaints and petitions, as well as ignoring the most recent demands of the global celebration of Mother Earth day and the summit in Bolivia of indigenous peoples to defend Mother Nature. For example, he has extended the operating license to the oil company Perenco in the Protected Area Laguna del Tigre, in the Petn Region, despite the resignation of his Minister of Environment and Natural Resources, precisely because of his opposition to this extension. This company, like other multinational companies, grants the State of Guatemala just 1% in royalties from the profits they declare, without any form of compensation for the substantial environmental, social and cultural damage that they cause. It is clear that in these years of peace building, the Guatemalan State, far from being strengthened to ensure the common good that the Political Constitution sets out, has been weakening: tied to various powers, impunity and corruption are daily eating away at it, it is more and more subject

Burial of the 80 victims massacred by the Army in April 1981 in Cocop, Nebaj, El Quich.

to the interests of multinational corporations and has abandoned its commitments in the Peace Accords. In the case of the Indigenous Accord, out of 51 commitments, only 14% have been fulfilled to a significant extent, 34% have been partially fulfilled and 49% unfulfilled. State agencies over the years have suffered deterioration in their function, rather than being strengthened and expanded with the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. In other words, since the signing of the peace in 1996 to date, neither the traditional economic sectors nor the military counter-insurgency have addressed the substance of the Accords, and they have been repositioning themselves over the past years within state structures, with their intelligence networks, paramilitary arms and various business interests started during the internal armed conflict, as is evidenced by the most recent denunciations of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). Neither have the new economic groups that support the current government, or are benefiting from it, taken on board the goals of the Peace Accords. This situation, along with the conservative and racist mentality of the Guatemalan state and society toward the indigenous peoples, makes it more difficult and complex to build a plural and inclusive Guatemala. Faced with this political situation, there is still no popular, social force, nor is there a political organization with the ability to counter the political inertia of the Guatemalan state in short order. Fortunately there is a growing indigenous peasant movement, as well as numerous womens and youth organizations, which exert a wider and more diverse social supervision and monitoring of the state. More than 40 municipalities have conducted community consultations in good faith, within the framework of the application of ILO Convention 169 and the recent United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, where they have rejected mining and hydroelectric projects.

34

operaTion Sofia
C Jean-Marie Simon/2010

Im alive like ripe fruit ... Im alive like ripe fruit mistress, now, of winters and summers, grandmother of birds, weaver of the sailing wind. My heart has not yet been educated, and, a girl, I tremble at nightfall, I am dazzled by green, marimbas and the noise of the rain matched with my wet belly when everything is softer and brighter. I grow and do not learn to grow, I am not disillusioned, Nor do I come back a woman wrapped /in veils, disbelieving everything, bewailing her lot. No. Each day, my eyes are born anew /with wonder, birthed by the earth, the singing of the villages, the arms of the worker building, the storekeeper with her bunch of children, the happy kids walking toward school. Yes. It is true that sometimes Im sad and go out to the roads, as loose as my hair, and cry for sweeter and more tender /things and cherish memories sprouting between my bones and I am an endless spiral that twists between moons and suns, moving by day, unrolling time with fear or impudence, unsheathing stars to climb higher, farther up, giving chase to the air, rejoicing in the being that sustains me, in the eternal tide of ebbs and flows that moves the universe and that drives earths round whirls. Im the woman who thinks. Someday my eyes will light fireflies. Gioconda Belli
(Nicaraguan poet)

Military control of daily life.

nant economic sector during the internal armed conflict. In summary, we can say that, despite all the obstacles, in recent years the social, trade union, campesino, popular and community movement has been experiencing a process of revival, re-articulation, revitalization, which is the strategic force for redirecting course to build a new Guatemala. Important efforts in restructuring and unifying democratic, progressive and revolutionary political forces are opening new prospects and expectations. The Guatemalan indigenous movement, before and after the signing of the peace The Guatemalan indigenous movement had one of its periods of greatest growth and militancy during the 1990s, when there was a coming together of dialogue and negotiation between the Government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), along with the favorable climate created by the campaign 500 Years of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance (500 Aos de Resistencia Indigena, Negra y Popular). However, the indigenous movement in its many and diverse manifestations did not manage to marshal either sufficient organization or mobilization to extend these and make more gains in the negotiations opened up by the joint committees of the Indigenous Accord. After a low in organization, mobilization and proposals, in recent years there has been abundant growth in the community and local organization of Indigenous Peoples. There are new initiatives all the time: Followup to initiatives in the law concerning the rights of indigenous peoples in Guatemalas Congress has opened up a space for the recognition of Mayan law in the judicial system and, although it is only a start, this is significant. There is also an attempt to organize a political party with predominantly indigenous membership. Other communities and organizations are struggling for access to Mother Earth; for higher wages and better working conditions on farms; for technical, commercial and credit assistance to improve their crops and products; and to give greater momentum to awareness in the countrys indigenous communities and in important

On the other hand, the psychological warfare has been prolonged, as has the persistent alienation of the population with respect to the changes necessary for Guatemala. They are still burdened with the effects of the terror, the forced disappearances of leading men and women, and the dismantling of social and community organizations conducted by the Army and the domi-

progressive sections of society of the need to defend Mother Natures rich biological diversity and goods. There is also a political scheme of indigenous revolutionary militants around the 13 Baktun Political Council, which seeks to recapture the revolutionary aspirations that inspired the revolutionary insurgency in the middle of the last century and the heroic indigenous resistance during the colonial period and to date. It claims the right of indigenous peoples to participate with their own identity in the great changes that Guatemala needs, taking as a starting point the content and goals of the Peace Accords. We may conclude that there are many initiatives, a lot of organization in all parts of the country, despite the reactivation of civil patrols by the Portillo and Ros Montt governments that carries on, despite the repression against campesinos and communities struggling to defend their rights and natural resources and to oppose the imposition of multinational companies mega-projects, as recently happened in San Juan Sacatepequez, Izabal and San Marcos. Some see this situation of organizational growth in the indigenous communities as a major fragmentation of the indigenous movement, while others feel that the most important thing is to have as many seeds as possible germinating and shoots sprouting after the terror imposed by the 600 massacres, the 440 missing villages, and the 200,000 Guatemalans disappeared by the Guatemalan Army during the recent internal armed conflict. Perhaps one of the most important lessons that we are learning, in addition to the social and political organizational renewal is that, as in former times our ancestors fought, it is now our turn to follow the path started with the Mayan, Xinca, Garifuna and Popular resistance, together with whole range of progressive, democratic and revolutionary sections of society and organizations. We must carry on building up our energy and strength on the way to transformation of the colonial, exclusionary and racist State, aware that there are no single roads, single organizations or institutions. There is seed, much seed sown in the fields, regions and municipalities, there are more and more green shoots and construction of the future is under way.

Seeds against forgetting

There is seed, plenty of seed sown in the fields and regions of Guatemala. There are more and more green shoots and building the future is under way.
Fundacin Madrid Paz y Solidaridad

C Jean-Marie Simon/2010

35

fter analyzing the documents that make up the plans for Operation Sofa, we can draw a series of conclusions that are hard to express but cannot remain unsaid. What the plans behind Operation Sofa show is that the crimes committed in Guatemala between July and August 1982 in the Ixil area were not the result of the excesses of some military or paramilitary personnel with a particular animus against the indigenous people, or the result of isolated acts committed by an unscrupulous minority in the Army who were exceptional in torturing or raping girls. What is clear from the plans is that the genocide of the Mayan people was the result of a military campaign designed coldly and in detail in the offices of the military administration of General Efran Ros Montt. The mother of the military plans designed at national level by the Presidents advisers was called the National Plan of Campaign Victoria 82 (Victory 82) and her favorite daughter for the Ixil area, the plan for Operation Plan Sofa. It is painful to admit that those involved in Operation Sofa gained promotions for their cruelty, which that the Army turned into valor; that they were honored for hands bloody from the killing of defenseless civilians, women, girls and boys turned into enemies of the nation because they said so; that they were supported in their torture, titled in the military plans themselves tactical interrogation and that usually led to death; that they were trained in rape and sexual violation committed systematically on the bodies of women, who were transformed by the School of Military Bibliography:

Studies and the Victoria 82 Campaign Plan itself into objects of entertainment for the troops and the most vulnerable battlefield on which to attack the enemy and destroy them. In order to perform such violent practices it seems essential to create the idea that we are confronting them, who are different and inferior. We can only wonder when the Mayan concept of Inlakeshyou are me, I am youwas banished from Tierra de rboles? It is impossible to hide the fact that those who drew up the plans received international support to annihilate the friends of Nicaragua and Cuba. Everything was thought out in advance so that the international crimes planned and executed faithfully by an Army without moral inhibitions, would be glossed over with the excuse that they were dealing a brutal and decisive blow to the guerrillas, and in order to satisfy the countrys exploitative oligarchy and states who had exported the ideology, the methods of torture, the resources and weaponsnotably the United States and Israelwith the defeat of international communism. And in any case, everyone involved in the government crimes was very proud of the successes achieved on the bodies and in the minds of defenseless Guatemalan men and women in erasing the mark of Indian or, at least, of the benefits for those who aimed to whiten the race. The persistence of racism, exclusion and structural injustice that prevents the majority of the population not only from gaining access to and control of resources, but also from defending their fundamental rights;

the growing violence against women, attacks against human-rights defenders, trade unionists and peasant leaders; and the devastating effects of businesses neoliberal policies (mega-projects): all of these underscore the need for research into what happened in Guatemala during the armed conflict in connection with what is happening now. Has the armed conflict in Guatemala really ended? Why is the reporting of injustices still being criminalized? Who today defines the interests of Guatemala? Are we still seeing the same methods of repression used during the conflict to silence those who want to change the unjust status quo for the vast majority? Who made sure at any cost that the freedom to plunder and loot was preserved? In whose interest is it that Guatemala carries on being an impoverished country? What today is forcing the indigenous peasant population to become displaced? Could it be that Guatemala is a setting that sometimes changes owners but always seeks to control and drive out the same people? It is possible that at present a second part of those military plans is being implemented in a land already burned by order of the Army and now pock-marked by the dynamite used to extract mineral resources without the consent of the people. Just as most of the international community looked the other way as 200,000 innocent people were killed, it is silent today in the face of this second stage of the plundering of resources and lives. Surely greed has limits? There have been no limits for the criminals, since none of those in positions of command who planned and gave the orders for genocide has been brought to trial, and only a single soldier has been convicted of just eight of the 45,000 disappearances. The situation challenges us and reminds us of all the innocent people killed in Guatemala when, in the words of Guatemalan poet Otto Ren Castillo, they just wanted to live life and not die it. His poems, along with those of other poetsmany of them killed or exiledaccompany the articles here along with the magnificent pictures that Jean-Marie Simon took during the armed conflict. There are thousands of seeds sown in the fields of Guatemala that remind us what happenedso that it is not forgotten, so that there is justice, so that it is not repeated. Genocide, never again!

ALSTON, Phillip (2007). Civil and Political Rights, Including the Questions of Disappearances and Summary Executions. Mission to Guatemala. 19 February. United Nations: Human Rights Council. A/HRC/4/20/Add.2,11. AMERy, J. (1980) At the Minds Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. AMNESTy INTERNATIONAL (2005). Guatemala: No Protection, No Justice: Killings of Women and Girls- Facts and Figures. [Online]. Disponible: http://web.amnesty.org/library/ print/ENGAMR340252005 [30 June 2006]. CASAS, Marta (2008). Genocidio. La mxima expresin del racismo en Guatemala?, F&G, Ciudad de Guatemala. CASTAEDA, Csar (1998). Lucha por la tierra, retornados y medio ambiente en Huehuetenango. Facultad Latinoamricana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO). Guatemala. CEH (Comisin para el Esclarecimiento Histrico de las Naciones Unidas sobre Guatemala) (1999). Guatemala: memoria del silencio, doce tomos, Oficina de Servicios para proyectos de las Naciones Unidas (UNOPS), Ciudad de Guatemala. CONSORCIO ACTORAS DE CAMBIO (2006). Rompiendo el Silencio. Guatemala City: Consorcio Actoras de Cambio y El Instituto de Estudios Comparados en Ciencias Penales. ECAP/GAC (2009). Exhumaciones, verdad, justicia y reparacin en Guatemala. Estudio de opinin. F&G Editores. ERTRK, yakin (2005). Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective: Violence Against Women. Mission to Guatemala. February 10. United Nations: Commission on Human Rights. E/CN.4/2005/72/Add.3. FLANIGAN, B (1992). Forgiving the unforgivable. New york. McMillan. GARCA, Prudencio (2205). El genocidio de Guatemala a la luz de la Sociologa Militar, Madrid, Sepha. GMEz, N. (2009). Peritaje psicosocial por violaciones a derechos humanos. Guatemala, ECAP & F&G Editores. HESSE C & R. POST (1999). Human Rights in Political Transitions: Gettysburg to Bosnia. zone Books. KOBRAK, Paul (2003). Huehuetenango: Historia de Una Guerra. Centro de Estudios y documentacin de la Frontera Occidental de Guatemala. CEDFOG. Guatemala. LOVEMAN B, LIRA (2000). Las suaves cenizas del olvido. Va chilena de reconciliacin poltica. Vol 1 (1814-1932). Vol 2 (1932-1994) LOVEMAN B, E. Lira. (2002). El espejismo de la reconciliacin poltica. Chile 1990-2002. Ed LOM. Santiago de Chile. MALDONADO GUEVARA, Alba Estela (2005). Feminicidio en Guatemala: Crimines Contra La Humanidad. Investigacion Preliminar. November. [Online].Available: http://www.congreso.gob.gt/uploadimg/documentos/n1652.pdf [30 June 2006]. MARTN BAR, I. (1990). Psicologa social de la guerra. Trauma y terapia. UCA, El Salvador.

MENJVAR, C. (2008). Violence and womens lives in eastern Guatemala: A conceptual framework. Women and International Development, Michigan State University (Working Paper 290). http://www.wid.msu.edu/resources/papers/pdf/WP290.pdf MILLS, Shereen Winifred (2001). Intimate Femicide and Abused Women Who Kill: A Feminist Legal Perspective in Russell, Diana and Roberta Harmes, Eds. 2001. Femicide in Global Perspective. New york: Teachers College Columbia University Press, pp. 71-88. MORALES, Miguel. (2008). Resultados de las Investigaciones Antropolgico Forenses Realizadas por el Centro de Anlisis Forense y Ciencias Aplicadas (CAFCA). Memorias del IV Congreso de la Asociacin Latinoamericana de Antropologa Forense, Lima, Per. NAIRN, Allan. The Guns of Guatemala: The merciless mission of Ros Montts army, New Republic, April 11, 1983, pp. 1722. NAVARRO, S.; PREz-SALES, P. (2007a). Por qu las exhumaciones no conducen a procesos de justicia en Guatemala? Revista Cejil. Nmero 3, Argentina. ODHAG (Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala) (1998). Informe Proyecto Interdiocesano de Recuperacin de la Memoria Histrica, (REMHI), Guatemala Nunca Ms, four vols, Guatemala City. PREz-SALES, P. (2009). Estudios sociolgicos sobre Verdad, Justicia y Reparacin en el contexto de violencia poltica. Circunstancias sociopolticas, iniciativas y resultados. En ECAP/GAC. Exhumaciones, verdad, justicia y reparacin en Guatemala. Estudio de opinin. F&G Editores PROCURADURIA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS (2006a). Informe de las caractersticas de las muertes violentas en el pas. Guatemala City: PDH. PROCURADURIA DE DERECHOS HUMANOS (2006b). Informe de verificacion sobre la investigacin criminal, caso Claudina Isabel Velasquez Paiz. Guatemala City: PDH. RAUTER, C. et al. (2002). Clinica e Politica: subjetividade e violaao dos direitos humanos. Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais. Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. RUSSELL, Diana & HARMES, Roberta, ed. (2001). Femicide in Global Perspective. New york: Teachers College Columbia University Press. SANFORD, Victoria (2003a). Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. (New york: Palgrave Macmillan). (2003b) Violencia y Genocidio en Guatemala (Guatemala City: F&G Editores). SCHIRMER, Jennifer (1998). The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. NATIONAL SECURITy ARCHIVE (2000). The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal, vol. 2. Available online at: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB32/vol2.html

Testimony from participants at the First Meeting Genocide, the ultimate expression of racism, Guatemala, 2004.
Let us unite to demand Justice.

Let us know our past to punish all this countrys genocides.

I dont feel well, there is a lot of pain in my heart.

No more hatred between brothers and sisters, may peace and justice rise for all.

No more genocide or racism!

We want Peace first, so that our rights are not violated.

Community Mural done by women at El Incienso, Guatemala City, coordinated by the artist A. C. G. Cabezas.

Hope never ends.

No more massacres. No more violence against women. No more women raped. They were taken away alive, we want them alive.

The consequences of rape last until death. Rape is a crime against humanity.

May Guatemala and every citizen rise, may nobody be left behind. Let us as citizens reclaim our rights to freedom and peace. United we shall conquer!

The victims will rest in peace if we give them justice and demand the peace that never came.

I have lived through horrors. It makes me sad that as fellow citizens we, the children of this country, live like stepchildren experiencing daily cruelty, caught up in poverty, forgotten, relegated to exclusion.

They were killed for their ideals, we will continue fighting to achieve them.

Let us not forget, let us not be silent, let us talk, say and hear, so that what happened in Guatemala is not repeated anywhere in the world, ever again.

How sad that we kill our brothers and sisters, people like us who were born in this land blessed by God. We are human beings, this history must never be repeated again. The debt to the indigenous peoples goes beyond our imagination. Remembering the horror of our brothers, as the Guatemalans we are, the color of our skin must never again be the reason for us to fight, let alone for us to kill. May God forgive us and make us wiser so that we do not repeat the past in any way.

Peace is achieved in a society that is fair for all, not by killing its people. Occasionally I walk backwards: its my way of remembering. If I only walked forward, I could tell you What forgetting is like. Humberto AkAbAl
(Poeta maya)

Not so long ago someone spoke of a solidarity among human beings, natural to each and every one of us, making us responsible for all the sufferings and sorrows of the world, and meaning that if I dont do what I can to prevent these, Im just as responsible each person who does nothing is responsible. In Guatemala, those responsible have not paid for their faults, let alone done so publicly. When that happens there will be peace, not before! Courage!

Freedom for the Indians wherever they are in the Americas and in the world, because, while they live, there lives a gleam of hope and an original way of thinking about Life! rigobertA mencH,
Premio Nobel de la Paz.