The Guatemalan Genocide

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Genocide in general is a very serious matter all over the globe, from a few victims to a whole ethnicity, genocide is genocide and it’s inhumane. Genocide is when a specific ethnic group or nation are being killed intentionally. It doesn’t matter what ethnicity you are or where you live, anyone, anywhere is capable of being a victim of genocide. It is a major problem in many areas in the world including: Rwanda, Mongolia, Croatia, Bangladesh, Iraq and many more. You might be thinking, “How come no one stops this from happening once it starts to take action?” Well, genocide is mostly well thought out so that the public will think that what is happening is “justice” although the negative things said about the victims are completely untrue or …show more content…
The army lead on to using a war method called “scorched earth” where they aimed to destroy the cultural and social parts of Mayan communities; leaving the Mayans with barely anything to fight with. Throughout the period of the genocide, the U.S. provided military support to the Guatemalan government; mainly in the form of arms and equipment. (“Guatemalan Mayan Genocide”) The U.S. was also supporting Guatemala with training and finances simply because they were asking for it. In 1982 Jose Efrain Rios Montt, a dictator, took control of Guatemala and made the problems between the government and Mayans even worse. That was when 500,000 to 1.5 million Mayan civilians fled to other regions within the country or became refugees abroad to try to avoid the violence the Guatemalan army was causing. (“Guatemalan Mayan Genocide”) For the people who were forced to stay where they were, many inhumane things happened to the native Mayans such as: their villages were completely destroyed, guerrilla forces were killed on the spot, woman were routinely raped and tortured, the wombs of pregnant women were cut open, children were often beat against walls or thrown into pits of bodies, others were doused and set alight maybe even disemboweled. (“Guatemala 1982”) As you can see, the conditions that the Mayans …show more content…
People tried to bring complete peace into Guatemala but made very little progress. An estimated 200,00 people were killed between 1966 and 1990, including people who had disappeared during the genocide. It was claimed that the Guatemalan army had destroyed at least 626 native villages (“Genocide in Guatemala”) The total number of massacres that the army had caused in just one small region called the Ixil region was seventy-seven; all together, 83% of the victims killed were Mayan and the other 17% were ladino. Montt was tried in a Guatemalan court for genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the campaign, his punishment was 80 years in prison; the landmark was overturned shortly thereafter. (“Guatemala 1982”) Montt is set for a retrial in January 2016. In 1999 a commission released an extremely detailed report that stated that military and state-supported militias were for 93% of the killings in Guatemala. To this day, many people still grieve for their missing loved ones, most bodies have not been found, and all the families were left with, were
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