History of Conflict

By the mid 1970s Guatemala had become relatively quiescent, the State’s uninhibited use of extra-legal violence and human rights abuses having effectively in crippled the PGT and FAR, pre-empted other organized opposition and terrorized the general population. During the second half of the decade, however, the opposition gradually strengthened again, triggering a corresponding escalation in State-sponsored violence, which erupted into unprecented waves of torture and killing in the first years of the 1980s.

What were the key factors in rised of violence starting in the late 1970s? No doubt the events in nearby Nicaragua both inspired the opposition and frightened the government, as the Sandinista coalition of urban activists and rural peasants gained strength, finally triumphing in July 1979. In Guatemala, for example , the November 1977 "Glorious March of the Miners of Ixtahuacán" from Huehuetenango in the north to the capital city signalled a striking new phenomenon: city and countryside, Ladinos and Maya, now united in a common struggle. A successful strike against bus fare increases in the autumn of 1978 bolstered the confidence of the opposition. Faced with these challenges, the death squads increased their activity, now also targeting peasants, workers and residents of poor urban neighborhoods.

At the same time, the guerrilla armies were gaining strength and confidence. Whereas in the 1960s, the FAR guerrillas had operated in the eastern, mainly Ladino, departments of Zacapa and Izabal, the new forces, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) and the Organización del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA), were active in Mayan communities of the western highlands.

A new popular, multi-ethnic, non-military organization had arisen in 1978 in the El Quiché department in western highlands. The Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC), proclaimed that it possessed "a clear head, a heart of solidarity, and a clenched fist.’’ Clearly the situation was reaching a crisis.

In January 1980 a group of Maya from El Quiché, backed by the CUC and radical university student groups, came down to the capital to denounce the killing of nine campesinos. After their legal adviser was assassinated outside of police headquarters, the protesters occupied the Spanish Embassy. The police then atttacked with incendiary devices, blocked the doors, and barred firefighters from intervening, resulting in the deaths of 39 protesters and hostages.

Over the next few months the State mounted a major assault on anyone else who continued to participate in the mass opposition movement. People were kidnapped on the city’s streets with alarming frequency. After May Day demonstrations, for example, 31 protesters were picked up and either killed or disappeared. As State violence escalated in the cities, activists either withdrew from political life, went into exile, fled to the countryside, or joined the guerrilla armies.

As the guerrillas expanded their presence in the countryside, the army pursued them, building military bases, and occupying churches and public buildings in hundreds of rural communities. The army had large regular forces, strategic mobile forces, plus a network of police, paramilitary squads, military commissioners, and civil defense patrols made up of campesinos forced to help the army carry out rural assaults.

Perhaps encouraged by guerrilla advances in Nicaragua , the EGP may have moved too quickly, when in early 1981, it launched a series of offensives, aided by civilian supporters. When the army counter-attacked, the guerrillas lacked the strength to defend the civilian population.

The army and its allies committed massacres and razed villages, forcing survivors to flee to the mountains. They had opted to defeat the insurgency by terrorizing, or even eliminating, the civilian population, or, as President Rios Montt put it, "draining the sea that the fish swim in." Their main "scorched earth" campaign, which they themselves called Operación Ceniza (Ashes), running from November 1981 to the autumn of 1982, swept through El Quiché, Huehuetenango, then Alta Verapaz and other Mayan departments.

Just when the rural violence turned massive and indiscriminate, press coverage of political violence in Guatemala almost completely ceased, allowing the State to commit its terror in silence.

By late 1982, the insurgency had been effectively defeated, the countryside had been pacified, and the violence settled back to the “normal” level of the 1970s, where it remained until the formal end of the insurgency in the mid 1990s.

The rural communities the Tula Foundation supports were deeply scarred by the violence, particular the spike of rural violence that was seen during the early 1980s.


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Health & Equity Guatemala Overview History of Armed Conflict Recent History Society Health System Alta Verapaz Health Projects Social Justice	History of Conflict in Guatemala References: AAAS Overview: American Association for the Advancement of Science UN Commission for Historical Clarification Overview Here is an extended quote from the prologue of the UN Commission for Historical Clarification: "The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) concludes that the structure and nature of economic, cultural and social relations in Guatemala are marked by profound exclusion, antagonism and conflict – a reflection of its colonial history. The proclamation of independence in 1821, an event prompted by the country’s elite, saw the creation of an authoritarian State which excluded the majority of the population, was racist in its precepts and practises, and served to protect the economic interests of the privileged minority. The evidence for this, throughout Guatemala’s history, but particularly so during the armed confrontation, lies in the fact that the violence was fundamentally directed by the State against the excluded, the poor and above all, the Mayan people, as well as against those who fought for justice and greater social equality. "The anti-democratic nature of the Guatemalan political tradition has its roots in an economic structure, which is marked by the concentration of productive wealth in the hands of a minority. This established the foundations of a system of multiple exclusions, including elements of racism, which is, in turn, the most profound manifestation of a violent and dehumanising social system. The State gradually evolved as an instrument for the protection of this structure, guaranteeing the continuation of exclusion and injustice. "The absence of an effective state social policy, with the exception of the period from 1944 to 1954, accentuated this historical dynamic of exclusion. In many cases, more recent State policy has produced inequality, or, at the very least, endemic institutional weaknesses have accentuated it. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that, during the twenty years of Guatemala ’s most rapid economic growth (1960-1980), state social spending and taxation were the lowest in Central America . "Due to its exclusionary nature, the State was incapable of achieving social consensus around a national project able to unite the whole population. Concomitantly, it abandoned its role as mediator between divergent social and economic interests, thus creating a gulf which made direct confrontation between them more likely. Of particular concern for the CEH, was the way in which successive constitutions of the Republic, and the human and civil rights guarantees set forth in them, became formal instruments violated by the various structures of the State itself. "The legislative branch and the participating political parties also contributed at various times to the increasing polarisation and exclusion, establishing legal norms which legitimised regimes of exception and the suppression of civil and political rights, as well as hindering or obstructing any process of change. Appropriate institutional mechanisms for channelling concerns, claims and proposals from different sectors of society were lacking. This deficit of channels for constructively directing dissent through mediation, typical of democratic systems, further consolidated a political culture of confrontation and intolerance and provoked almost uninterrupted instability, permeating the whole social order. "Thus a vicious circle was created in which social injustice led to protest and subsequently political instability, to which there were always only two responses: repression or military coups. Faced with movements proposing economic, political, social or cultural change, the State increasingly resorted to violence and terror in order to maintain social control. Political violence was thus a direct expression of structural violence." The Armed Conflict and its Suppression There are many excellent online accounts and analyses of the Guatemalan civil war, including in particular the quantitative analysis (Link) provided by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), so we will give only a brief synopsis drawn from the AAAS report here. Following the coup of 1954 opposition gradually strengthened, no doubt in part inspired by the successful revolution in Cuba in 1959. Popular street demonstrations in the early 1960s were violently suppressed, driving the opposition underground, where it crystalized around the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (FAR) guerrillas who were allied with the communist Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT). In March 1966 the newly-elected President Méndez Montenegro struck an agreement with the army, giving the security forces a free hand to pursue leftists by whatever means they saw fit. The week of the election, the security forces detained and “disappeared” many members of the PGT, the first of many such episodes to follow. For the remainder of the conflict, as chronicled in mind-numbing detail by the Commission for Historical Clarification, the military, police, paramilitary and civilian “death squads” systematically eliminated the political opposition. During the 1960s and 1970s the activity was concentrated in urban areas, and the targets were mainly politicians, students, university teachers, labor leaders and community organizers.	By the mid 1970s Guatemala had become relatively quiescent, the State’s uninhibited use of extra-legal violence and human rights abuses having effectively in crippled the PGT and FAR, pre-empted other organized opposition and terrorized the general population. During the second half of the decade, however, the opposition gradually strengthened again, triggering a corresponding escalation in State-sponsored violence, which erupted into unprecented waves of torture and killing in the first years of the 1980s. What were the key factors in rised of violence starting in the late 1970s? No doubt the events in nearby Nicaragua both inspired the opposition and frightened the government, as the Sandinista coalition of urban activists and rural peasants gained strength, finally triumphing in July 1979. In Guatemala, for example , the November 1977 "Glorious March of the Miners of Ixtahuacán" from Huehuetenango in the north to the capital city signalled a striking new phenomenon: city and countryside, Ladinos and Maya, now united in a common struggle. A successful strike against bus fare increases in the autumn of 1978 bolstered the confidence of the opposition. Faced with these challenges, the death squads increased their activity, now also targeting peasants, workers and residents of poor urban neighborhoods. At the same time, the guerrilla armies were gaining strength and confidence. Whereas in the 1960s, the FAR guerrillas had operated in the eastern, mainly Ladino, departments of Zacapa and Izabal, the new forces, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) and the Organización del Pueblo en Armas (ORPA), were active in Mayan communities of the western highlands. A new popular, multi-ethnic, non-military organization had arisen in 1978 in the El Quiché department in western highlands. The Comité de Unidad Campesina (CUC), proclaimed that it possessed "a clear head, a heart of solidarity, and a clenched fist.’’ Clearly the situation was reaching a crisis. In January 1980 a group of Maya from El Quiché, backed by the CUC and radical university student groups, came down to the capital to denounce the killing of nine campesinos. After their legal adviser was assassinated outside of police headquarters, the protesters occupied the Spanish Embassy. The police then atttacked with incendiary devices, blocked the doors, and barred firefighters from intervening, resulting in the deaths of 39 protesters and hostages. Over the next few months the State mounted a major assault on anyone else who continued to participate in the mass opposition movement. People were kidnapped on the city’s streets with alarming frequency. After May Day demonstrations, for example, 31 protesters were picked up and either killed or disappeared. As State violence escalated in the cities, activists either withdrew from political life, went into exile, fled to the countryside, or joined the guerrilla armies. As the guerrillas expanded their presence in the countryside, the army pursued them, building military bases, and occupying churches and public buildings in hundreds of rural communities. The army had large regular forces, strategic mobile forces, plus a network of police, paramilitary squads, military commissioners, and civil defense patrols made up of campesinos forced to help the army carry out rural assaults. Perhaps encouraged by guerrilla advances in Nicaragua , the EGP may have moved too quickly, when in early 1981, it launched a series of offensives, aided by civilian supporters. When the army counter-attacked, the guerrillas lacked the strength to defend the civilian population. The army and its allies committed massacres and razed villages, forcing survivors to flee to the mountains. They had opted to defeat the insurgency by terrorizing, or even eliminating, the civilian population, or, as President Rios Montt put it, "draining the sea that the fish swim in." Their main "scorched earth" campaign, which they themselves called Operación Ceniza (Ashes), running from November 1981 to the autumn of 1982, swept through El Quiché, Huehuetenango, then Alta Verapaz and other Mayan departments. Just when the rural violence turned massive and indiscriminate, press coverage of political violence in Guatemala almost completely ceased, allowing the State to commit its terror in silence. By late 1982, the insurgency had been effectively defeated, the countryside had been pacified, and the violence settled back to the “normal” level of the 1970s, where it remained until the formal end of the insurgency in the mid 1990s. The rural communities the Tula Foundation supports were deeply scarred by the violence, particular the spike of rural violence that was seen during the early 1980s.