Montt was the first former head of state to be tried for genocide by his own country's judicial system he was found guilty and sentenced to 80 years in prison. The Commission concluded that the government could have committed genocide in Quiché between 19. The charges of genocide were based on the "Memoria del Silencio" report – prepared by the UN-appointed Commission for Historical Clarification. In 2013, the government conducted a trial of former president Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide for the killing and disappearances of more than 1,700 indigenous Ixil Maya during his 1982–83 rule. In 2009, Guatemalan courts sentenced former military commissioner Felipe Cusanero, the first person to be convicted of the crime of ordering forced disappearances. ![]() The "Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico" has estimated that government forces committed 93% of human right abuses in the conflict, with 3% committed by the guerrillas. Other victims of the repression included activists, suspected government opponents, returning refugees, critical academics, students, left-leaning politicians, trade unionists, religious workers, journalists, and street children. In the early 1980s, the widespread killing of the Mayan people was considered a genocide. These took place first in the departments of Izabal and Zacapa (1966–68), and in the predominantly Mayan western highlands from 1978 onward. In rural areas, where the insurgency maintained its strongholds, the government repression led to large massacres of the peasantry, including entire villages. The military intelligence services coordinated killings and "disappearances" of opponents of the state. While fighting took place between government forces and rebel groups, much of the violence was a large coordinated campaign of one-sided violence by the Guatemalan state against the civilian population from the mid-1960s onward. It is estimated that 140,000 to 200,000 people were killed or forcefully "disappeared" during the conflict, including 40,000 to 50,000 disappearances. In the final stage of the civil war, the military developed a parallel, semi-visible, low profile but high-effect, control of Guatemala's national life. ĭuring the 1980s, the Guatemalan military assured almost absolute government power for five years it had successfully infiltrated and eliminated enemies in every socio-political institution of the nation, including the political, social, and intellectual classes. Many organized into insurgent groups and began to resist the government forces. In the 1970s social discontent continued among the large populations of indigenous people and peasants. The PID lost its grip on Guatemalan politics when General Efraín Ríos Montt, together with a group of junior army officers, seized power in a military coup on 23 March 1982. ![]() The PID dominated Guatemalan politics for twelve years through electoral frauds favoring two of Colonel Carlos Arana's protégés (General Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García in 1974 and General Romeo Lucas García in 1978). In 1970, Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio became the first of a series of military dictators representing the Institutional Democratic Party or PID. The surviving officers created a rebel movement known as MR-13. The Civil War started on 13 November 1960, when a group of left-wing junior military officers led a failed revolt against the government of General Ydigoras Fuentes. A United States-backed coup d'état in 1954 installed the military regime of Carlos Castillo Armas to prevent reform, who was followed by a series of right-wing military dictators. Wealthy Guatemalans, mainly European-descended, and foreign companies such as the American United Fruit Company had dominated control over much of the land, and paid almost zero taxes in return – leading to conflicts with the rural indigenous poor who worked the land under miserable terms.ĭemocratic elections during the Guatemalan Revolution in 19 had brought popular leftist governments to power, who sought to ameliorate working conditions and implement land distribution. ![]() The context of the struggle was based on longstanding issues of unfair land distribution. The government forces have been condemned for committing genocide against the Maya population of Guatemala during the civil war and for widespread human rights violations against civilians. The Guatemalan Civil War was a civil war in Guatemala fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various leftist rebel groups.
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