RETHINKING

POLITICAL
VIOLENCE

THE ORIGINS AND

DYNAMICS OF GENOCIDE
Political Violence in Guatemala

Roddy Brett
 Rethinking Political Violence

Series Editor
Roger Mac Ginty
Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies
University of Manchester, UK
This series provides a new space in which to interrogate and challenge
much of the conventional wisdom of political violence. International
and multidisciplinary in scope, this series explores the causes, types and
effects of contemporary violence connecting key debates on terrorism,
insurgency, civil war and peace-making. The timely Rethinking Political
Violence offers a sustained and refreshing analysis reappraising some of the
fundamental questions facing societies in conflict today and understanding
attempts to ameliorate the effects of political violence.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14499
 Roddy Brett

The Origins and

Dynamics of
Genocide
Political Violence in Guatemala
Roddy Brett
University of St Andrews
Fife, United Kingdom

Rethinking Political Violence

ISBN 978-1-137-39766-9 ISBN 978-1-137-39767-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6

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For La Asociación de Justicia y Reconciliación, the witnesses, the survivors
and the victims.

‘It will have blood, they say. Blood will have blood.
Stones have been known to move, and trees to speak.
Augurs and understood relations have
By magot pies and choughs and rooks brought forth
The secret’st man of blood’.
William Shakespeare. Macbeth.

‘It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished, unless they kill
in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets’.
Voltaire.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the outcome of the exceptional kindness and insight shared
with me by friends and colleagues across continents and over decades, and
I am indebted to them all.
The idea for the book emerged initially from the work I carried out as part of
the original team that prepared the evidence against former President General
Romeo Lucas García and de facto president General Efraín Ríos Montt and
their military high commands for genocide and crimes against humanity with
the Centre for Human Rights legal Action (CALDH) in Guatemala. Juan
Francisco Soto accompanied me across the regions of Guatemala as we gath-
ered testimonies from survivors of Guatemala’s genocidal counterinsurgency
campaign in indigenous and peasant communities. His clarity, wit and deter-
mination helped to drive my ideas forward; I am profoundly grateful to him.
Fundamentally, I would not have been able to carry out this research without
the extraordinary support, trust and humanity of the members of the survi-
vor communities in the Ixil and the Ixcán regions of Guatemala and in other
regions of the country, and of the Association for Justice and Reconciliation,
who shared their homes with me over the years and whose testimonies and
lived experiences represent the heart of this book. The book does very lit-
tle justice to their courage, experience and humanity, but it is hoped it may
contribute to the etching of their history. It is to these courageous individuals
and communities that this book is dedicated and addressed.
Former colleagues at CALDH, Paul Seils and Susie Kemp, were instru-
mental in shaping the research, and I am profoundly grateful to them for
their insight. I would also like to thank Edda Gaviola and Fernando López
at CALDH, who gave me their trust and support.

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A major part of this book was developed as a result of the financial

support of the World Peace Foundation, Tufts University. Whilst the
World Peace Foundation’s financial assistance was key in supporting
recent research in Guatemala and for permitting my attendance at relevant
conferences, processes that contributed to the overall development of the
research, it was, in particular, the unremitting intellectual support and
comparative and theoretical insights of Bridget Conley and Alex De Waal
that, in many senses, made this book what it is. Of course, whilst I am
solely responsible for the numerous errors herein encountered, I am pro-
foundly grateful to Bridget Conley and Alex De Waal and to the World
Peace Foundation for their generosity in helping to forge the contours
and content of this book. Their support was indispensable.
The book was principally written during my time as permanent faculty
member at the University of St. Andrews. In this respect, I have a series
of important debts to acknowledge. The specific support of my friend and
colleague Richard English, and more generally of the Handa Centre for the
Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, has been central to the elabora-
tion of the book, the refinement of the empirical research and the clarifi-
cation of my arguments. Insightful observations and comments on drafts
and chapters made by Richard English were imperative in improving the
quality of the research, and his support of the overall project was cardinal
to the book. My deep gratitude also goes to Tim Wilson for his constantly
brilliant observations on chapters, and his enthusiastic support of the proj-
ect. I would also like to thank Patrick Hayden for his intellectual rigour
and insight on early drafts, in particular with regard to the theoretical and
conceptual arguments around genocide. My colleagues at St. Andrews, in
particular Ryan Beasley and Nick Rengger, made the arduous and lonely
task of putting the book together more than bearable, and I thank them for
their support.
I have also been fortunate in having received extraordinary sup-
port from exceptional undergraduate and postgraduate students at the
University of St. Andrews. As excellent research assistants, I would like
to thank Christiana Spens, Andrés Zambrano-Bravo, Hannah Gracher,
Clara Voyvodic-Casabo, Emma Sawatzky, Lena Cohrs, Benjamin Zeibig
and Candice McKechnie, whose assistance with transcriptions and bibliog-
raphies was crucial. I would also like to thank Olga Burkhardt-Vetter for
helping to shape the ideas in the research.
I express my deep gratitude to Roger Mac Ginty, whose initial support
of this book transformed into an ongoing interest in Latin America, in a
world where few now venture curiosity over a region generally margin-
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix

alised within British academia. The initial book project has led to broader
academic collaborations and to an excellent friendship, not least one that
allows us to share our war stories about being fathers.
The writing process of the book was also greatly shaped during my ten-
ure as Visiting Research Associate at the Latin American Centre, University
of Oxford. In particular, I would like to thank Leigh Payne for her robust
intellectual engagement, friendship and support during the writing process.
In Guatemala, Colombia, Spain and the USA, more people than I
could possibly acknowledge here contributed to my research in both for-
mal and informal settings, engaging with and enriching my arguments and
assisting in mapping out the trajectory for the book. I would like to single
out a few of these exceptional individuals: Kimberly Theidon, Victoria
Sanford, Marta Casaús, Daniel Rothenberg, Cath Collins, Javier Ciurlizza,
Francisco Cali, Juan León, Anders Kompass, Carlos Luarca, Lars Fure,
Andrea Bolaños, Karin Slowing, Andrés Sánchez, Mercedes Hernández
and Antonio Delgado. Raúl Figueroa assisted me in a first attempt to
bring the research together, facilitating the publication of Una Guerra sin
Batallas, with F&G Editores. I would also like to express my deep grati-
tude to Isabel Negreira, who battled with long and arduous translations. I
would like to thank Jonathan Moller who, as ever, has provided a brilliant
and expedient photograph for the book cover.
The book would also not have been possible without the robust intel-
lectual insight and extraordinary support of my friend and colleague
Edelberto Torres-Rivas, to whom I am deeply indebted. Many other
friends also assisted me during the writing of this book, both by offering
trenchant observations over its content, and support during the times of
crisis. In particular, I would like to thank Pablo Rueda, Alessandro Preti,
Ben Joliffe and Sean Corbett.
This book grew out of more than a decade living in the UK, Latin
America and North America. There is one person who is now no lon-
ger with us, but who accompanied me throughout the entire project. My
mother, Andrea Brett, remains a fundamental inspiration in the search for
justice and knowledge, and her contribution to this book was invaluable.
Last, and of course, by no means least, I would like to express my profound
and unconditional love and gratitude to Lina Malagón and Federico Brett,
whose love, support, patience and belief in me forged the path that led to
my being able finally to write these words: Eso, tu ya lo sabes.

Oxford
November 2015.
 CONTENTS

1 Introduction 1

2 Understanding the Violence 33

3 Civilian Experience of Violence in Civil War and 

Armed Conflict 71

4 The EGP: Insurgent Strategies in the Ixcán and the Ixil 91

5 Brutality Unhinged: The Counterinsurgent Response 119

6 War in the Rebel Heartlands 147

7 Displacement and Exile 195

8 Conclusions: And History Shall Not Be Unwritten 213

Bibliography 237

Index 241

xi
 LIST OF MAP

Map 1 of Guatemala xiv

Map 2 of El Quiché xv

xiii
Map 1 of Guatemala
Map 2 El Quiché
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

TIBURCIO
The Ixil morning was dry, breathless. The sun burnt shadows onto the
scorched ground, shadows that seemed to pursue human and animal alike.
Her body was surrounded by ebullient flowers, although, by now, the
rituals had ceased, and a profound tranquillity had enveloped the heat of
the early morning. Tiburcio Utuy’s aunt had died the night before, and
he had slept for no more than an hour, as his family and community col-
lectively mourned their dead.
Death was nothing new to the residents of Xix, a small rural hamlet in
the Ixil region of northern El Quiché, a principally indigenous depart-
ment in Guatemala’s highlands; in fact, its shadow had unremittingly
stalked the Ixil and other indigenous groups for decades. In spite of the
odds stacked against them, Tiburcio and his aunt, and others from their
community, had survived the protracted episodes of egregious counter-
insurgency violence executed by military and paramilitary forces during
the 1970s and early 1980s that sought to eliminate the guerrilla threat.
They had escaped the massacres carried out in Xix, and endured their
prolonged displacement in the mountains. However, like many indige-
nous Guatemalans, they had been affected irreversibly by the violence.
The military’s ‘scorched earth’ campaign, carried out between 1981 and
1983, under then President General Romeo Lucas García and de facto
president, General Efraín Ríos Montt, had changed the terms of history

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_1
2 R. BRETT

for indigenous Guatemalans. The genocidal strategy had transformed the

fundamental structure of indigenous life as it sought to exterminate the
guerrilla’s support base, allegedly situated within indigenous and peasant
communities, whilst simultaneously seeking to annihilate all vestiges of
indigenous selfhood.
Maria Utuy, however, had died of natural causes. Her funeral took place
almost uneventfully in April of 2002, six years after Guatemala’s inter-
nal armed conflict had been brought to a formal end through the peace
accords negotiated between successive Guatemalan governments and
the guerrilla army, the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca
(National Guatemalan Revolutionary Unity—URNG). Nevertheless,
the performance of mourning rituals, the burial of their dead, remained
far from uneventful for the residents of Xix, who had been subject to
the Guatemalan military’s systematic killing campaign only two decades
before, whose hamlet had been victim to three massacres and for many of
whom protracted, internal displacement in the mountains and jungle had
been the only means of survival.
Along with other indigenous regions in the country, the department
of El Quiché had borne the brunt of the campaign of massacres, homi-
cides, disappearances and torture that had represented the central tenet
of counterinsurgency operations. The ferocity of the military’s strategy
had allowed little opportunity for traditional rituals; survivors struggled
to inhume their dead amidst the chaos of war and the appalling condi-
tions of violence to which they were continually subjected. In fact, many
indigenous actively sought to mask their identity out of fear of being
targeted by the military. Concealment of indigenous rituals and identity
yielded little success: the onslaught of brutal counterinsurgent violence
continued regardless. At the same time, the widespread operationalisation
of disappearance as a military tactic to terrorise, punish and silence the
civilian population obliterated physical presence, making burial in many
cases impossible. Counterinsurgency violence wielded an impact beyond
the material, corporeal realm, and hostilities would immediately affect
the capacity of indigenous communities to reproduce their culture. The
reinstatement of committal rituals in post-conflict Xix then went beyond
a mundane occurrence; rather, it evidenced the persistence of a resilient
social and cultural order, of a community of survivors recovering from
genocide and seeking to repudiate its legacy.
According to Guatemala: Memory of Silence, the final report of
Guatemala’s UN-sponsored truth commission, the so-called Historical
 INTRODUCTION 3

Clarification Commission (CEH), within the framework of its counter-

insurgency campaign, the Guatemalan state committed ‘acts of geno-
cide’ in four regions of the country, including in the departments of
Huehuetenango, El Quiché and Baja Verapaz between 1981 and 1983
(CEH, Conclusions and Recommendations 1999a: 19). The ‘acts of geno-
cide’ were perpetrated against five ethnic groups, including the Ixil.1
Tiburcio Utuy had been marked by this brutal violence, its cruelty
sculpted indelibly upon his body. Under the shade of his roof, as we talked
that morning in the immediate wake of his aunt’s funeral, Don Tiburcio—a
title conferred in Latin American cultures to designate respect—narrated
how he and his community had gradually become implicated in the armed
conflict and thereafter become victims of the political violence that tore
Guatemala apart during Latin America’s ‘long cold war’, as Joseph and
Grandin (2010) have defined it. His story goes beyond disquieting, evi-
dencing survival in the face of grotesque violence.

I was accused of being a guerrilla. They tied my feet and hands behind me,
and pulled my head back, leaving my stomach exposed, like a round ball.
When I felt I could no longer breathe, they brought the fire, setting it upon
me, upon my stomach, my neck, my eyes. My intestines started to fall out,
forming a pile on the floor, and I managed to reach out, and push them back
in again. Look, these are the scars where the military burnt me.2

Tiburcio Utuy had lived in death’s shadow since the counterinsurgency

campaign had decimated his community in 1982, imposing scores of kill-
ings and precipitating mass internal displacement. Soon after he and his
community had fled collectively from the violence, he had been kidnapped
by the military whilst searching for food in the mountains. During his
prolonged detention, which continued for almost a year, Tiburcio was
repeatedly tortured, beaten, electrocuted, water-boarded and burnt. On
two occasions, he ‘narrowly escaped death’: ‘The soldiers realised that
they couldn’t kill me, not with knives, not with bullets, no matter how
hard they tried; this scared them, made them concerned. And then in time
I finally escaped them.’3
As Tiburcio narrated his experience of the armed conflict, its accom-
panying violence and his resistance to it, he did so with a voice that was
not that of a passive victim, of a man paralysed and subsumed by death’s
shadow. Rather, what emerged was the figure of a man familiar with loss,
with cruelty, with bereavement, but yet capable of outrunning its shadow,
4 R. BRETT

of resisting its lure; a man dispossessed of neither his dignity nor his self-
hood, as counterinsurgency operations had intended. As we reconstructed
the episodes of brutality that had shaped his life two decades before, Don
Tiburcio’s resilience, and later that of other indigenous survivors with
whom I shared a roof and a fire during years of research, would provoke the
question as to whether it had, after all, been death’s shadow that had pur-
sued him all these years. Despite having been besieged by death, Tiburcio
had remained peripheral to it, had ultimately resisted and successfully
struggled against it and its legacy. Perhaps it would be pertinent to rethink
the metaphor; in short, was the shadow pursuing Don Tiburcio, in fact,
something other than that of the genocide, his annihilation and that of the
Ixil? As the seventeenth-century English poet John Gay eloquently stated,
‘Shadow owes its birth to light.’ The fire set upon indigenous communities
would indeed exterminate the guerrilla threat. However, the objective of
annihilating indigenous culture, of eliminating indigenous dignity, would
be less than conclusive. Resistance would emerge in the aftermath of death
and forge light and hope for survivors of the genocide. As indigenous sur-
vivors mobilised over time, arising from the pulp of the murdered, as the
poet Anna Kamieńska has defined it, they would eventually emerge from
their anonymity to challenge their invisibility and put a name to the crimes
to which they had been subjected. With names came light.

THE GENERAL
Auden’s brilliant depiction of the dictator in his poem Epitaph on a Tyrant
is poignantly intimate, and disturbing in its proximity to Guatemala’s
Cold War reality: ‘When he laughed, respectable senators burst with
laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets’. As de
facto president, and as Commander-in-Chief of the Guatemalan Armed
Forces, General Efraín Ríos Montt had commanded Campaign Victory
82, part of the final operational stages of the counterinsurgency strategy
in the country’s indigenous highlands, a strategy that led to the slaugh-
ter of thousands of non-combatants, including women and children, in
massacres and bombing campaigns and their subsequent confinement in
concentration camps. Defiant, devout and compelled by hubris, Montt
assumed power after initially leading a military junta that had deposed
Lucas García, on 23 March 1982. In his nationally broadcast speech on
the day of the coup, dressed in combat uniform, and with his charac-
teristically zealous inflection, Montt contumaciously spewed forth his
 INTRODUCTION 5

warning to the insurgents and their supporters alike. The General warned
that those who were to take up arms against the institution would be
killed. He stressed they would be killed in combat, rather than being mur-
dered, a difference Montt believed to be critical.4 In the following weeks,
whilst urban violence diminished, rural killing escalated, targeting indig-
enous communities and those civilians that fled the violence, such as Don
Tiburcio, his family and his neighbours. As Montt scorched indigenous
lands with ‘justice’, so Don Tiburcio’s life, and the life of the General,
would cross for the first time.
Shortly after his assumption as de facto president in 1982, Montt was
interviewed by North American journalist Pamela Yates and her team.
The journalists questioned Montt with respect to the accusation that the
military was perpetrating massacres against rural indigenous communities.
Montt’s piety was ardent, as he denied that the army was carrying out
repression against peasants in rural Guatemala. The General, moreover,
referred to the importance of his own control over the army, and empha-
sised how the institution possessed a capacity to respond to the chain of
command. In what would become a well-known episode in Montt’s own
history, and subsequently a part of the body of evidence gathered against
Montt, the General stated vehemently on camera that if he himself wasn’t
in control of the army, then what was it that he was doing there?5
On 3 April 2013, twenty years after the massacre campaign had extin-
guished Guatemala’s revolutionary hopes, and a little over a decade after
our conversation in the heat of that Ixil morning, I encountered Don
Tiburcio once more. Tiburcio sat before General Efraín Ríos Montt in
the courtroom designated to hear the case against the former dictator
and his former Chief of Intelligence, General José Mauricio Rodriguez
Sánchez, brought within the High Impact Tribunal established in the
aftermath of the country’s armed conflict. On 19 March 2013, Montt
and Rodriguez Sánchez had gone on trial for genocide and crimes against
humanity committed in the Ixil region between 1982 and 1983. The
prosecution was not an isolated case, but arguably formed part of the
‘justice cascade’,6 characterised in the region by wide-ranging domestic
prosecutions for international crimes against former Heads of State and
lower-level military officials and truth-telling initiatives that would shed
light upon Latin America’s years of darkness.7 In the case of Guatemala, as
elsewhere, at least initially, the push to investigate past crimes was not state
driven; civil society organisations had filed legal cases for human rights
violations in Guatemala, as well as in Spain and Belgium, under the prin-
6 R. BRETT

ciple of universal jurisdiction. Given the absence of state-led initiatives and

the fragility of state institutions, human rights and victims’ organisations
assumed the central role in ‘building criminal cases and providing services
and security for victims’.8
Don Tiburcio presented his testimony assertively during the hearing,
directing his words towards Montt, who from the moment the trial had
begun, had sat apparently unmoved by the harrowing testimonies pre-
sented by Ixil men and women, many simultaneously translated from their
own language, the direct victims of the counterinsurgency. Their lives
had crossed once more; this time, however, it was Don Tiburcio who
had assumed the role of indicter. Tiburcio narrated the events he had
shared with me in Xix a decade before, but something had changed in the
interim. As he accused Montt and Rodriguez Sánchez, Don Tiburcio’s
words wielded a yet more profound force, resounding with robust legiti-
macy, his words named what had hitherto been shrouded in silence:

This is why I am telling this to the eyes and ears of the world, this is the suf-
fering we felt. They [the military] shut me up in a room larger than this one.
This room was full of blood… The shoes, the belts, were piled two meters
high and wide, you could see the traces of people who had been killed there.
They tied me up and left me sitting in the blood… This pain, this suffering,
I was there in the blood of my dear brothers and sisters who had been killed.

After the declarations of the witnesses called by the defence and the
prosecution had been given, Montt presented his closing declaration. At
times, the General’s voice appeared to waver, his ‘elderly rubbish’, as the
poet W.H. Auden described the dictator’s discourse in his poem Another
Time in 1939, evidencing a temporary fissure in his imperious, impenitent
persona. As he asked the presiding judge for permission to drink from
a plastic bottle of water, the image of the former dictator momentarily
assumed a pathetic fragility. Nevertheless, the General was unrepentant,
obdurate in his refutation of the charges of genocide and crimes against
humanity. In what came to be central to the trajectory of the trial, Montt’s
declaration now deviated from the admission of command responsibility
that he had so unequivocally offered to Yates as Commander-in-Chief of
the Armed Forces three decades earlier. Referring to the military campaign
document of Plan Victory 82, Montt argued that no evidence existed that
proved his participation in the crimes for which he was on trial. Rather,
the accused stated to the trial judges that he had never authorised, signed,
proposed or ordered an attack against a race, ethnic group or religion.
 INTRODUCTION 7

Astonishingly, Montt’s declaration appeared to write out of history his

admission of command responsibility within the framework of the military
chain of command that he had given on camera three decades before.9

THE GENOCIDE
After fifty-three days of trial proceedings, on 10 May, Rodriguez Sánchez
was found innocent of all charges. Montt, however, was sentenced by a
panel of three judges presided over by Judge Jazmin Barrios to serve eighty
years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity. The verdict was
historic: Montt’s indictment represented the first occasion where a former
head of state had been found guilty of genocide by a domestic court in
Latin America. The verdict, moreover, dramatically breached Guatemala’s
historical wall of entrenched impunity.
The trial proceedings pushed back the shadow of the country’s dic-
tatorship that, since the end of the armed conflict in 1996, had contin-
ued to assert its legacy within the political, legal, economic, social and
cultural spheres, as McAllister and Nelson (2013) have comprehensively
documented. Along with other victims of the genocide, Don Tiburcio
had been instrumental in pushing the case forward, ultimately towards the
guilty verdict. Tiburcio was part of a mobilisation of over one hundred
indigenous survivors of the genocide organised through the Association
for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) to formulate and present the evidence
that would eventually represent the cornerstone of the Montt indictment.
The AJR was established in 2000 by survivors to represent twenty-two
communities from five regions of the country, and, together with the
Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH), a human rights organ-
isation formed in 1994 and based in Guatemala City,10 led the genocide
investigation as querellantes adhesivos (partie civil in civil law systems).
The indictment and the very process of mobilisation around the case at
national and international levels that culminated in the trial brought with
it a significant transformation for the victims themselves: a shifting path
that consolidated their collective empowerment and politicisation, that
gave voice to the nameless. Survivors of the genocide gradually came to
acknowledge their history, constructing a collective memory bank under-
girded by the experience of diverse communities during the counterin-
surgency. The memory bank became the foundations for the evidence
that would be offered against, and ultimately bring the indictment of the
accused. At the same time, collective mobilisation within the context of
8 R. BRETT

the genocide investigation supported by AJR and CALDH taught com-

munities their rights, as they garnered direct experience in designing and
implementing legal and political strategies focused upon the themes of
impunity and justice for past human rights violations. The process of pre-
paring the evidence for the trial consolidated a common struggle based
upon shared indigenous identity and recognised and legitimate claims to
entitlement consecrated within national and international human rights
frameworks. The process evidenced, moreover, an emboldened domes-
tic justice system, which, under the direction of then presiding Attorney
General, Dr Claudia Paz y Paz, and the force of presiding Judge Barrios,
had demonstrated both its independence and its capacity to prosecute grave
human rights crimes. For Don Tiburcio, as well as the other witnesses, the
indictment represented an extraordinary victory, a victory that vindicated
decades of struggle for justice for the crimes of the past and, which, by
fracturing impunity and genocide denial, had finally brought indigenous
histories out of the darkness. The verdict brought the acknowledgment
of the suffering of indigenous victims and recognised their legitimacy as
subjects of rights. As Molyneux (2001) has argued, successful mobilisation
signified how indigenous Guatemalans had become ‘participants and not
only bystanders in the events of history’. In Tiburcio’s words, ‘The trial
verdict filled us with profound happiness; we proved that there had been
genocide in Guatemala. We changed history’.11
The reaction of the far right to Montt’s sentencing was severe and unani-
mous. The verdict would neither be tolerated nor sustained. Spearheading
the opposition to the indictment was the Committee of Agricultural,
Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations (CACIF), a powerful
coalition of ultra-conservative elite economic actors that, since the mid-
twentieth century, had made or broken governments and presidencies.12
CACIF announced that it would remain in permanent assembly, a highly
public expression of dissent that it had rarely utilised, until the verdict or
trial were overturned, whilst directly pressuring the Constitutional Court
to respond to the alleged violations of due process committed during
the trial. On 21 May 2013, only days after Montt had been sentenced,
under the unrelenting pressure of economic, political and military elites,
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court annulled the trial on grounds of viola-
tion of due process, supporting claims by Montt’s defence team that he
had been left temporarily without legal defence during the initial stages of
the trial. The trial was consequently returned to a prior phase and Montt’s
sentence overturned. In an extraordinary turn of events, the dictator, and
 INTRODUCTION 9

Guatemala’s dark past, had once again prevailed. Elites in Guatemala were
unwilling to assume the basic condition of democracy: acceptance of the
rules of the institutional game.
Tiburcio Utuy, like many other indigenous Guatemalans, had survived
the political violence that had blighted his country’s history; the scars on
his body attest to his experience, tracing their decipherable, fractured nar-
rative. Over the course of three decades, his life had shifted; after return-
ing to Xix from his displacement in the mountains, he joined the AJR,
mobilising with over one hundred other indigenous victims to prepare
the evidence against the military for genocide and crimes against human-
ity. On the strength of that evidence, former de facto president, General
Ríos Montt, had been indicted, only to be liberated by the Constitutional
Court days later. Over three decades, Tiburcio Utuy’s life had been shaped
by the genocide and political violence to which his ethnic group, and
many others, had been victim, and by the peace process that sought to put
an end to and establish legal mechanisms to prevent the reoccurrence of
such violence. It is precisely an understanding of the nature of the political
violence that shook Guatemala during the Cold War and how we might
comprehend its impact that represents the central dilemma of this book,
and to which we now turn.

THE BOOK
My interest in Guatemala began over two decades ago, whilst carrying
out postgraduate research into ethnic conflict in 1993 at the University
of Cambridge. I had been sent the manifesto of the Campaña de los
Quinientos Años de Resistencia (the Five Hundred Years of Resistance
Campaign), a coalition of Latin American indigenous, women’s, Afro,
peasants’ and popular organisations established to protest against the cel-
ebrations of the so-called discovery of the Americas in 1992 by Christopher
Columbus. The manifesto described the ethnic violence in Guatemala,
presenting testimonial evidence and academic analysis that defined the
violence as genocide, a silent, invisible genocide.
I first travelled to Guatemala a year later, in 1994, travelling north
from Guatemala City into the Ixil region by bus, winding up through
the Cuchumatanes Mountains and arriving in Nebaj, the regional county
town, in the late afternoon. The military presence in Nebaj was palpable,
the church still bearing the signs of military occupation. Soldiers were
stationed on every corner, military vehicles wound through the streets and
10 R. BRETT

traversed the central plaza. Direct peace negotiations between the govern-
ment and the URNG had only recently begun, and the country remained
acutely unstable and under military control, despite the façade of electoral
politics imposed almost eight years before with the election of Vinicio
Cerezo to the presidency. During my visit to the Ixil, I travelled to Acul,
one of the first of the region’s ‘model villages’, concentration camps where
displaced populations that had been ‘pacified’ by the military’s ‘scorched
earth’ counterinsurgency campaign were confined. The model villages
were repopulated zones, liberated from guerrilla threat and controlled by
the military, where indigenous populations were to be reprogrammed,
indoctrinated, and provided with housing, water, electricity, and health-
care. Signs of what the state had called ‘integral development’ were long
gone, if, indeed, they had ever been present. Acul’s empty streets and the
occasional burnt out houses and buildings generated an eerie calmness, a
decade after the worst of the violence had ended. During my first stay in
the Ixil in 1994, I could little imagine that I would spend the following
two decades researching the political violence and genocide in Guatemala,
and, ultimately, participate as part of a team of lawyers and social scientists
in the preparation of the evidence for the investigation against the military
for the crimes it had perpetrated there. ‘History doesn’t repeat itself’,
Mark Twain observed, ‘but it rhymes’.
Eight years later then, I returned to Nebaj this time as investigator for
CALDH, to conduct the research for a Special Witness Report to be sub-
mitted to the Guatemalan State Prosecutor’s Office as contextual evidence
in the investigation led by CALDH and AJR into genocide, crimes against
humanity and war crimes. The report was to document the evolution of
the violence in the Ixil region within the broader framework of the national
counterinsurgency strategy, and analyse the forms through which the civil-
ian population there had been implicated in and affected by the violence, in
particular by the massacres perpetrated by the military.13 Over the follow-
ing three years, I conducted the research for the report, and for a further
Special Witness Report concerning the Ixcán, a jungle region also in the
department of El Quiché, colonised by peasant farmers in the 1960s, where
counterinsurgency forces had also carried out egregious human rights vio-
lations. During this time, I lived for protracted periods in the villages and
hamlets that had been the central focus of the military’s killing campaign in
the Ixil, including in Nebaj, Vivitz and San Francisco Javier, and, to a lesser
extent, in Playa Grande, the county town of the Ixcán region.
This book emerges then out of the research that I carried out for
CALDH and the AJR between 2002 and 2005, and my subsequent role
 INTRODUCTION 11

as Director of the Department of Justice and Reconciliation (DEJURE)

at CALDH, investigating the patterns of political violence in the Ixil and
Ixcán as part of the original team that prepared the evidence against the
military. Some of the research presented here was itself was part of a short
book entitled Una Guerra sin Batallas, published in Spanish with F&G
Editoriales in 2007. However, unlike the earlier publication, the qualita-
tive research presented in this book seeks to understand the political vio-
lence in both regions from theoretical and comparative perspective.
Fundamentally, the book is about the changing nature of political vio-
lence and how and under which conditions political violence ultimately
culminates in genocide. The book then narrates the evolution and impact
of political violence upon indigenous and peasant victims and the strate-
gies that they elaborated in the face of such horrific violence. The book
explores the experiences of political violence principally from the perspec-
tive of its survivors, although, of course, these perspectives are comple-
mented by a broad range of interviews with other relevant actors. The
principal questions that shape the research pertain to these issues. Why did
the political violence occur and what were its characteristics? What factors
account for the decision taken by the Guatemalan military to perpetrate
genocide? What strategies did non-combatants assume in the context of
armed conflict and genocide?
The book is concerned with the evolution of the dynamics of politi-
cal violence and its impact upon the civilian population during a short
period of time, principally between 1975 and 1983. The chapters address
the dynamics of political violence carried out by Guatemala’s guerrilla
forces, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, URNG, focus-
ing on one single faction of the URNG, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor,
Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), and by the Guatemalan military
within the framework of its counterinsurgency campaign. The research
plots patterns and processes at the national level and then focuses upon
the department of El Quiché, where empirical research details two specific
case study regions, the Ixcán and the Ixil. El Quiché represented a key
strategic zone during the armed conflict and, accordingly, the department
experienced severe levels of violence, as counterinsurgent forces battled
the rebels and their alleged social base. As would be the case in other
departments, the violence perpetrated by the military in El Quiché was,
however, focused intimately upon the civilian population: military strat-
egy had identified the indigenous and peasant non-combatant population
as the internal enemy and would subsequently unleash its wrath upon
these communities (ODHAG 1998; CEH 1999; Moser and McIlwaine
12 R. BRETT

2001). As we shall see, the violence to which non-combatants were sub-

jected included massacres,14 homicides, the rape of women and girls, acts
of forced cannibalism, slavery, the burning of homes, animals and pos-
sessions, and psychological and physical torture. Political violence in El
Quiché shares some characteristics with patterns of violence observed in
other regions and departments of the country, for example, Alta and Baja
Verapaz, Chimaltengo and Huehuetenango. However, at the local level,
whilst they were linked to the broader national conflict, patterns of politi-
cal violence were shaped intimately by demographic, structural, historical,
cultural and socio-political factors.
Intriguingly, until the trial of Montt briefly echoed across news channels
throughout the world in April and May 2013, only to disappear as quickly
as it had materialised, Guatemala’s genocide had been so hidden that few
academics whose focus lay outside of Latin America had even bothered to
refer to or to research it. Concerningly, in fact, its invisibility within the
practitioner sphere remains obstinate and disquieting; even in the aftermath
of the Montt indictment, of the genocides identified by the British charity
the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust on its webpage, for example, Guatemala
receives no mention.15 Nevertheless, Guatemala’s genocide represented a
traumatic moment in the country’s history, and a key, and decisive episode
during its internal armed conflict that spilled onto the region between 1960
and 1996. At the core of this book then is an exploration of that war and
its accompanying violence, in this case genocidal violence, comprehended
here as ‘a rational instrument of national policy—a military means to a
political end’, in the words of historian Richard English in his reference to
Clausewitz (2013: 15). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Guatemala’s internal armed
conflict was a messy, complex affair. Whilst the vast majority of the politi-
cal violence was unilateral—83 % of the victims of the conflict were indig-
enous non-combatants (CEH 1999)—on the ground, its baneful brutality
ultimately signified that the civilian population was implicated in all aspects
of hostilities. Indigenous Guatemalans bore the brunt of the violence as its
victims, as the state deliberately targeted its own civilians.16 However, mili-
tary strategy also obliged indigenous people to become perpetrators, either
conscripted as soldiers or forcibly recruited as members of the notorious
paramilitary civil patrols, or Civil Defence Patrols (PACs). Moreover, peas-
ants, indigenous and ladino, also collaborated with the guerrilla throughout
the highlands, principally in their capacity as the rebels’ widespread support
base, but also, and not insignificantly, by volunteering as combatants in the
insurgency. The onset of the armed conflict then and what it would come
 INTRODUCTION 13

to mean years later differ to an important degree. Whilst the encounter

began as a typical Cold War conflict waged by disaffected and disgruntled
military officers in the face of an oligarchic state increasingly subject to US
control, it would gradually mutate into something quite different, into a
conflict shaped by acute ethnic dimensions and, ultimately, characterised
by genocide. Nevertheless, neither was Guatemala’s war a conventional
ethnic conflict, if any such thing may remotely exist: there was little mobil-
isation along strictly ethnic lines by clearly demarcated groups wielding
demands shaped by their ethnic ascription. Rather, certain factions of the
guerrilla eventually became characterised by high levels of indigenous par-
ticipation that complemented non-indigenous, or ladino, combatants; at
the same time, on the ground, diverse ethnic groups were conscripted and
fought as soldiers.
Perhaps, given such complexity, it would be best to define the conflict as
a manifestation of what English cogently defines as ‘modern war’: ‘hetero-
geneous, organised, mutual enmity and violence between armed groups,
on more than a minor scale, carried out with political objectives, pos-
sessing socio-political dynamics, and focused on the exerting of power in
order to compel opponents’ (2013: 16). However, Guatemala’s ‘modern
war’ was also shaped by extraordinary acts of state terror, as elites sought
to forge a new nation-state out of fire and blood. As they sought to build
their nation-states, Latin American elites, in general, and Guatemalan
elites, in particular, played a pioneering role in the institutionalisation of
modern state terrorism, one of the ‘modern state’s constitutive modes of
operation’ (Wilson 2012: 15). In this respect, at play during the govern-
ment of Lucas García and the de facto presidency of Ríos Montt, was what
Woolfe has defined as ‘political evil’, in short, ‘the wilful, malevolent and
gratuitous death, destruction and suffering inflicted upon innocent people
by the leaders of movements and states in their strategic efforts to achieve
realizable objectives’ (cited in English 2003: 43).

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Across Latin America, violence has historically been instrumental as a
mechanism through which to consolidate power between social groups
(Kruijt and Koonings 1999). Kruijt and Koonings typify violence in the
region into three separate cycles: violence related to the maintenance of
the traditional rural oligarchic order (1870–1930); violence related to the
direct challenges to the oligarchic order, state modernisation and the incor-
14 R. BRETT

poration of the masses into politics (1930s to 1970s); and post-conflict

and post-authoritarian violence (1980s to present day). The authors’ tem-
poral classification remains somewhat problematic—Guatemala, amongst
other cases, experienced a longer ‘second phase’ of violence that, in
itself, merged with and precipitated other types of conflict and violence.
However, what can be taken from this framework is the proposition that
political violence has shaped politics in the region for over a century, lead-
ing to the embedding of political violence in everyday life and social and
political transactions. Politics and violence have been intimately related.
Across the region, from the middle of the twentieth century, it was the
military, a ‘group of anonymous Latin American meat packing glitterati’,
as Pink Floyd portrayed them in their 1982 song The Fletcher Memorial
Home, that stepped up as the arbiter of national order, stability and prog-
ress. Militaries closed ranks to defend the interests of the region’s oli-
garchies (Kruijt 1999). According to Azpuru (2012), during the Cold
War, Latin America experienced protracted periods of both conflict and
authoritarianism.17 However, cycles of violence stretched back to and were
rooted in the nineteenth century; social and political violence was endemic
in Latin America since the aftermath of independence. Within this longer-
term perspective, it was from the 1960s that, according to Grandin (2010;
5), ‘the terms of history had changed’ for Latin Americans, given the scale,
breadth and sheer egregiousness of the violence they faced at local and
national levels in the context of expanding Cold War state terror financed,
principally, by the USA.
Since the Cold War, the region’s darkest period in its modern history,
a broad scholarship on political violence, armed conflict, authoritarianism
and civil war in Latin America has emerged, focusing as it has upon the
nature, dynamics and impact of political violence (Stern 1998; Scheper-
Hughes 2003; Schlesinger et  al. 2005; Robben 2007; Feitlowitz 2011;
Degregori 2012). Initially, scholarship focused primarily upon state-
sponsored violence, and to a lesser extent upon violence executed by other
armed actors, including guerrilla and paramilitary groups, perhaps given
the ubiquity and peculiarly ritualistic and systematic brutality of state vio-
lence in Latin America. Another strand of the literature simultaneously
began to examine more closely patterns of violence asserted by other
armed actors, such as insurgents and militia or paramilitaries (Stoll 1993;
Romero 2003; Mazzei 2009; Leech 2011). Scholarship that has focused
upon the dynamics of insurgent revolutions has tended to document the
heroism or, on the contrary, the misguided strategies that revolutionaries
 INTRODUCTION 15

executed (Moyano 1995; Lewis 2001; Brittain 2009). Above all, research
on violence in the region has tended to address elite-led processes and acts
of violence, emphasising less the micro-dynamics of violence across the
region, a focus of this current book.
In their recent co-edited volume, Joseph and Grandin (2010) seek to
redress the over-emphasis of scholarship on top-down processes of vio-
lence. Their volume introduces rigorous research from a diverse array of
case studies that move away from what had been envisioned previously as
the paralysing effects of political violence (Koonings and Kruijt 1999),
with the aim of identifying the role of agency, be it of armed or unarmed
actors, in contexts of revolution and counterrevolution. Grandin empha-
sises the importance of acknowledging the ‘exhilaration’ that peasants and
revolutionaries felt as they engaged in uprisings against old orders per-
ceived irreversibly as unjust, a reflection that shares the important insight
of both Elisabeth Wood (2003) and Dirk Kruijt (2008) on why peasants
joined revolutionary movements in Central America. Wood, Kruijt and
Grandin together evidence how history was not inevitable, but how, dur-
ing Latin America’s long Cold War, was there to be contested and won.
Their scholarship begins to elucidate how, during revolution and armed
conflict, state-led violence remains a single aspect of the logics and dynam-
ics of political violence: the reality on the ground is far more complex
and ultimately shaped by diverse and composite contingent considerations
determined by historical, structural and perceptual factors. History is not
inevitable; political violence is shaped by the confluence between contin-
gent possibilities, structural formations and actors’ strategic decisions.
With some notable exceptions then (Tate 2007; Gould and Lauria-
Santiago 2008; Joseph and Grandin [eds.] 2010), scholarship on politi-
cal violence in Latin America has often forged a sweeping narrative that
mass violence is terminal and petrifying, and thus accordingly closes down
spaces for agency, resistance and resilience. As Grandin argues:

Scholars do not necessarily dispute the function or instrumentality of vio-

lence, which is often taken as a symbolic enactment of power or an essential
element in creating fractured, wounded subjectivities that correspond to the
rules of domination, particularly along gender, race or ethnic lines. Yet they
often do so in a flat, historically static manner, which, for all the celebration
of contingency, ambiguity, and rupture, results in a leaden account of social
power. Gone are the attempts to examine the relational forms of political
subjectivity (2010: 7; emphasis added).
16 R. BRETT

Scholarship that has sought to rescue the agency of non-combatant

Latin American populations in contexts where their states had transformed
into ‘omnipresent counterinsurgency structures’ and in which ‘political
violence and terror were the stuff of everyday existence’ (Grandin 2010:
4), focused less upon the violence itself, and more upon social movement
actors. In the 1980s and 1990s, a diverse array of scholarship emerged
analysing sustained processes of resistance by and mobilisation of civil
society actors in contexts of armed conflict and authoritarianism. Research
focused upon how mobilisations by women’s, youth and peasant move-
ments and indigenous and Afro-Latin peoples had asserted unprecedented
influence over the shape of institutional arrangements, legislation, public
policy and political culture, whilst, in many cases, shaping transition.18
At the same time, other research within the disciplines of sociology and
political science similarly sought to understand the emotional, strategic
and ideological factors shaping rebellion (Wood 2003; Weinstein 2011).
In a similar vein, Kaplan (2013) has examined the role of norms in shap-
ing the interaction between civilians and armed actors, and subsequently,
how community histories and institutions may explain and limit levels of
violence. For Kaplan, there is indeed space for agency to be asserted by
unarmed actors in contexts of armed conflict. Nevertheless, in spite of the
aforementioned exceptions, and notwithstanding key contributions within
the discipline of Social Anthropology, scholarship seeking to understand
the micro-dynamics of social relations and violence at community level
during the region’s Cold War is notoriously scarce. This book seeks to act
as a corrective to this absence within the disciplines of comparative politics
and international relations.
Building on the ambitious, yet urgent undertaking proposed by Joseph
and Grandin, this book also seeks to forge a unique contribution to
scholarship with the explicit aim of enunciating the historical meaning of
political violence and its impact upon the non-combatant population in
Guatemala, and to comprehend its social, political and cultural function
beyond that of a top-down, elite-orchestrated phenomenon. The book
seeks to elucidate how violence is not beyond comprehension and mean-
ing, is far from unspeakable, as Grandin (2010) has argued. In this respect,
the book also hopes to contribute to the important scholarship by Kalyvas
et  al. (2010), which endeavours to dispel the myth that violence lacks
function and order. On the contrary, the argument that will be suggested
is that in the context of the political polarisation of the Cold War, as state
terror intensified against insurgents and their sympathisers in Guatemala,
 INTRODUCTION 17

so counterrevolutionary violence did, in fact, speak volumes, imposing

and following an evident, uncompromising logic that assumed an order-
ing function in the pursuit of two objectives: containment and change, as
Grandin argues (2010).
Drawing on literature from genocide studies, comparative politics,
anthropology, history and peace and conflict studies, this book approaches
its subject matter through an empirically driven study based upon deep
primary-source immersion that seeks to speak to broader, more general
hypotheses and theoretical enquiries, ‘balancing the unique and contin-
gent with wider questions of family resemblance between cases’ (English
2003: 3). Building upon a synthesis of case study and conceptual material
then, the research engages with a series of key debates in academic scholar-
ship. The book addresses and seeks to contribute to the growing number
of critical reappraisals on the nature and meaning of genocide (Valentino
et  al. 2004; Moses 2005; Straus 2015). In this regard, the book shares
the perspective of recent second-generation genocide scholarship that a
concern with structural conditions may help to elucidate why and under
which circumstances political violence may transform into genocide; in
short, why and in which conditions elites may opt for genocide over and
above other forms of violence. In this regard, the book engages with the
propositions posited within more recent genocide studies literature, in
particular the work of Straus (2015), Midlarsky (2005) and Valentino
et al. (2004), by seeking to understand how the context of armed conflict
and counterinsurgency and the historically constructed ‘indian’ and sub-
versive threats therein increased the possibilities for the commissioning
of mass atrocities. It was, ultimately, the state’s response to the armed
struggle waged against it, rather than the armed struggle itself, which
most decisively changed Guatemalan history, as English has argued for the
broader case of terrorism (2013: 38).
This book will argue that state-led political violence sought both to
eliminate the insurgent threat (containment), whilst forging a new society
(change), purified of potential subversion. In fact, in this context, where
threat from subversion was merged with an historic threat constructed
through ethnic difference, what we will define as the ‘indian-subversive’,
the strategic response elaborated by the Guatemalan military, it will be
argued here, was genocide: present and future-oriented, group-selective
and group-destructive violence, as Straus (2015) has defined it. The geno-
cide was facilitated by the weight of the past, by a history of racism against
and slaughter of indigenous peoples, and by the absence of consequences
18 R. BRETT

for those that had hitherto perpetrated this violence, what Midlarsky
(2010) terms ‘validation’. Guatemala’s genocide then was not only the
consequence of a systematic and organised counterinsurgency policy that
sought to defeat the rebels; it was a response wrought from contingent
possibility that sought to build nation and state, as Tilly has indicated
for the case of Europe. State-sponsored political violence represented a
rational, logical and strategic response to those that strove to overturn
the existing political, social and economic order. In what was a period
of heightened contestation and mobilisation, both armed and unarmed,
state-orchestrated genocide assumed an ordering function; violence and
its impact was far from banal or trivial, as other authors have prescribed
(Pecault 1999; Torres-Rivas 1999). Political violence in Guatemala then,
as it was in Latin America more broadly, was profoundly meaningful.
Whilst at the core of the research is an analysis of the nature and impact
of state-sponsored violence and, specifically, genocide, and its impact upon
non-combatants, much of the current book is driven by concerns over
political violence more generally. Consequently, the chapters seek also to
understand the role that insurgent violence played in the armed conflict
and to elucidate the impact of patterns of violence perpetrated by non-state
actors upon the civilian population at the local level. Insurgencies in Latin
America had been the product of closure in the political system and, in the
case of the Southern Cone, the consolidation of bureaucratic authoritarian
states. Within this context, whilst the region’s conflicts were diverse, shaped
by social and structural formations, historical processes and demographic
peculiarities, across the region, patterns of socio-economic exclusion and
the absence of a legal order and effective public services pushed actors
towards seeking more radical solutions, ultimately through armed struggle.
Insurgent violence and the state’s response to it in Latin America were
nurtured by historical patterns of social, political and economic exclusion.
Analyses of the causes of political violence and the emergence of insur-
gent groups have proliferated in academic scholarship and it is not the
purpose of this discussion to engage protractedly with said literature.
Earlier scholarship, much of which was focused upon Africa, concluded
that rebellion and armed conflict arose due to grievances, economic or
otherwise, and ethnic antagonisms, and were sustained due to ‘greed’
(Collier and Hoeffler 2001, 2004; Elbadawi and Sambanis 2000) or that
violence was tied intimately to the security dilemma or the role of insur-
gencies in providing goods not received from the state. In response to the
previous generation of scholarship, more recent literature has posited that,
 INTRODUCTION 19

whilst grievances abound, political violence and armed rebellion do not.

Consequently, scholars have since sought to comprehend the trajectory
of armed struggle as the consequence of a more complex set of factors,
including the role of the state in shaping rebellion and the micropolitics of
rebellion—understood as the strategic choices made by insurgent leaders
and the structural factors and opportunities determining said decisions, in
particular with regard to the interactions insurgencies develop with their
social base (Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011).
The approach adopted in this book is to argue that, at the macro-
level, a series of factors accounted for the emergence of armed groups in
Guatemala, including institutional closure and social, political and eco-
nomic exclusion. Whilst, as we shall see, perceived and articulated griev-
ances played a role in pushing individuals and groups towards armed
struggle in the first place, this argument is insufficient grounds upon
which to justify the development and evolution of political violence in
Guatemala and the particular trajectory that it took. As insurgents and
indigenous populations in Guatemala encountered convergence in their
worldviews and recognition of their shared suffering, and as their ideolo-
gies merged and subsequently clashed with those of the primary political
community, as Straus (2015) has defined it, so violence seeped into every
space, controlled every aspect of daily life. It would not be long before
hitherto stable and relatively isolated indigenous and peasant communities
across the country would experience the weight and bear the brunt of the
inter-ethnic killing campaign, which reigned down chaos upon the Ixcán
and the Ixil, and other communities throughout the highlands. Yet the
violence would be complex, and indigenous actors would assume diverse
roles as they sought to find their way through and to survive the dynamics
of state-orchestrated murder and insurgent killings.
The research presented here grapples then with the scholarship that
addresses insurgent mobilisation and civil war, engaging with the puzzle of
why and in what way individuals and communities participate in rebellion
(Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011). Weinstein has eloquently
addressed the question of how the organisational nature of insurgencies
may determine the extent and level of political violence that is employed
(Weinstein 2011), and it is not in the scope of the current book to engage
directly with said research. By documenting the experiences and strategies
developed within indigenous communities during the armed conflict, the
empirical research presented here evidences the impact of political vio-
lence on civilian populations and the forms through which they survived
20 R. BRETT

and adapted to both armed conflict and genocide. In this respect, the book
hopes to offer critical reappraisal of the nature and meaning of violence in
civil wars and internal armed conflict, contributing clear insight concern-
ing its multidimensional nature, whilst meaningfully addressing debates
concerning the motivations behind and nature of civilian collaboration
with counterinsurgent, insurgent and paramilitary forces.
The book hopes to contribute then to the scholarship on civil war,
insurgency and political violence, addressing a central debate in this regard:
why and in what ways did the civilian population support the parties to
the conflict at local level during the armed conflict and its genocidal espi-
sode? Research seeks to explain the impact of the increasingly complex role
that civilian populations were forced to assume during the armed conflict
upon the trajectory of hostilities, in particular regarding civilians’ eventual
involvement in political violence and hostilities, either in their capacity as
rebel support base, or as violent actors themselves. Reflecting the insight of
Wood (2003), the book will explore how, in the Guatemalan case, whilst
it was not the only relevant factor, ideology resonated and mattered to
indigenous communities as much as the violent expression of disputes for
local political power and the search for protection, economic benefit and
influence. The comparative perspective will analyse in which ways and for
what reasons individuals and communities in two demographically dif-
ferent regions (one almost exclusively indigenous—the Ixil—the other
mixed indigenous and ladino—the Ixcán) came to participate in hostilities.
Significantly, the book will address these questions from a unique perspec-
tive: a conflict where genocide ultimately melded with everyday forms of
political violence exercised within the context of internal armed conflict.

METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH AND CASE SELECTION

Methodology
As Wood (2003) indicates, conducting research in conflict and post-
conflict scenarios is a highly complex endeavour; in fact, an increasingly
diverse literature has emerged that addresses this process, including the
work of Lekha Sriram and King (2009) and Nordstrom (1996). To under-
stand the nature, trajectory and impact of the political violence, genocidal
or otherwise, upon the non-combatant population, my primary research
strategy was to carry out semi-structured interviews with indigenous and
non-indigenous survivors of the violence, focusing on a series of questions
 INTRODUCTION 21

relating to how they and their communities became implicated in the vio-
lence, what the impact of the violence was, whether they supported one
armed actor over another, and how, if at all, they came to collaborate with
said actor. Given that the initial research was carried out for the specific
legal investigation relating to charges of genocide, crimes against humanity
and war crimes against the military led by CALDH and the AJR, it would
be germane to highlight a series of key issues.
Firstly, the research was principally shaped by the perspectives of peasants,
indigenous or otherwise, who survived the genocide. Research involved a
series of prolonged open-ended interviews with approximately twenty-five
individuals in each region during a period of several years. Interviewees
were both male and female campesinos; interviews had the objective of
mapping the oral histories of each individual and of their community. The
interviews were carried out in the regions, with some exceptions, where
they took place in Guatemala City. Access to survivor communities was
unconditional, given that the research was supported by both querellantes
adhesivos. Consequently, I was able to stay in the homes of witnesses and
survivors of the massacres during a protracted period of time, an eventual-
ity which generated a robust sense of responsibility towards and solidarity
with these individuals and their communities. Research involved listening to
their narratives, documenting their experiences and, over time, triangulating
responses as a means of developing the most accurate history possible of the
communities and the context of the political violence. Of course, the expe-
rience for interviewees was highly complex and, on many occasions, trau-
matic, as they recounted their experiences of the massacres, the execution
of family members, disappearance, mass rape, torture, forced cannibalism,
displacement and exile. CALDH and AJR had provided important psycho-
logical support for the witnesses. From the perspective of the researcher,
exposure to such narratives and constant hospitality from their narrators
signified an inevitable involvement in and affectation by the experience of
research. Moreover, given that the central objective of the research was to
prepare evidence for a legal case, a question inevitably arose as regards the
capacity of the research to maintain objectivity. Is it possible for a researcher
to remain objective hearing these stories? Is objectivity within this context a
fiction? Is it even desirable? The personal, the human condition, to a degree,
conflicts with the necessary self-imposed isolation of the objective researcher,
as our social science methodology classes have drummed into us.
Within this context, in detailing individual and community oral his-
tories in both regions, complex moments arose, where uncomfort-
22 R. BRETT

able truths emerged that appeared to contradict the goals of the legal
research whilst, at the same time, representing meaningful narratives and
life-defining moments for the interviewees. Oral histories illustrated how
certain individuals had collaborated with the guerrilla, preparing food,
providing logistical support for rebel operations, sharing information,
amongst other things. Given that these forms of participation had been
used by the military to justify the scorched earth campaign, a degree of
tension arose as regards whether such experiences should be included in
a report that sought to document state-sponsored atrocities. Of course,
the Geneva Conventions are unequivocal in this respect: those who sup-
ported the rebels in this way remained non-combatants, and the response
of the military had regardless contravened international humanitarian and
human rights law. Enunciating and articulating interviewees’ narratives on
their collaboration, on those numerous occasions when individuals explic-
itly asked me to do so, giving voice to these actions, would not legally
implicate the communities or, significantly, exonerate the state from legal
responsibility for the atrocities it committed. On the contrary, interview-
ees strongly felt reference to collaboration with the guerrilla was a means
through which to rescue their agency and position themselves within a
key historical narrative. Consequently, the empirical chapters document
distinct incidence of civilian support for the insurgency. Nevertheless, col-
laboration in both regions also resulted from coercion by the guerrilla;
acts of insurgent violence, whilst less in scale, proportion and sheer bru-
tality, did shape the trajectory of the armed conflict, despite what former
members of the guerrilla groups have stated. In this regard, the book also
documents those occasions of coercion, with the aim of presenting a more
complex, composite understanding of patterns of political violence.
The interviews carried out in both regions were complemented by
interviews with former guerrillas, former paramilitaries, human rights
defenders, members of the Catholic church and state officials within both
case study regions, in Guatemala City and in Mexico. Responsibility to the
interviewees who shared their stories has signified that, throughout this
book, with the exception of the first references to Don Tiburcio, who has
agreed otherwise, all other interviews remain anonymous.
One final aspect of the interview process is important to make explicit.
Interviews were carried out two decades after the original experiences had
taken place, experiences that, in themselves, had been profoundly trau-
matic. In her important monograph on peasant rebellion in El Salvador,
Elisabeth Wood discusses the potential problems caused by accuracy and
intensity of a respondent’s memory, the reshaping of said memory over
 INTRODUCTION 23

time, and the interviewee’s individual objectives within the context of

the interview. According to Wood, ‘images and events that rank as highly
intense (in a variety of cognitive and biological measures) tend to be bet-
ter remembered in both the short and the long term than less intense
images and events’ (2003: 33). Basing her assertion on laboratory stud-
ies, Wood discards the potential for the interruption of memory that may
be caused by the passage of time. However, the potential interference to
‘truth’ caused by the possible reshaping of memories, either as a conse-
quence of social, political and cultural processes, or, to a degree, the spe-
cific objectives of the interviewee, may be more significant. With respect
to individual participation in insurgency, Wood indicates that ‘Motivations
claimed in interviews may be ex-post rationales for participation, whose
real reasons lie elsewhere’ (2003: 39). In this regard, and bearing in mind
the potential for interference, I sought to triangulate interviews as far as
possible, whilst complementing the material from respondents with archi-
val research of both primary and secondary sources. Perhaps, as Wood
suggests, what the researcher can only finally do is to ‘recount truthfully
what was so recounted’. This book has indeed sought to do that.

Case Studies
The World Bank classifies Guatemala as a lower-middle-income economy,
and, excluding Haiti, as the country with the highest poverty indices in
Latin America (World Bank 2014).19 According to the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP), ethnicity heavily determines distribu-
tion of wealth, level of human development and levels of social exclusion.20
The departments in the western and northwestern highlands, including
Alta Verapaz, Sololá, Huehuetenango and El Quiché, which are home to
the largest indigenous populations in Guatemala outside of Guatemala
City, are also the poorest regions of the country, with higher levels of social
exclusion and land-related conflict. During the armed conflict, these depart-
ments bore the brunt of the military’s counterinsurgency campaign, and
the repercussions of the violence are still acute, whilst polarisation sculpted
by the conflict still shapes daily life. In El Quiché and Huehuetenango,
for example, levels of inequality are higher than in the rest of the coun-
try, whilst levels of human development remain dramatically lower (PNUD
2014: 42). In terms of educational development, the country’s illiteracy
rate in El Quiché is higher than in other rural and urban areas.
The case studies selected for this book were done so for a series of
related reasons. Firstly, both the Ixcán and the Ixil represented key strate-
24 R. BRETT

gic zones for the insurgent organisation at the centre of this monograph,
the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) EGP. The former represents the
first zone into which the EGP crossed, when it traversed the Mexico–
Guatemala border in 1972. The Ixcán, an inaccessible jungle region
provided key cover for the EGP, as it sought to construct its social base
amongst the region’s cooperatives, established as they had been in the
1960s, a strategic decision that was not unintentional. The guerrilla
believed the cooperatives, where indigenous and non-indigenous peasants
resided, to be prime material for insurrection, a relative miscalculation, as
will be argued in this book. The Ixil was a historically indigenous region,
mountainous and inaccessible that the guerrilla, believed would also be
central to its strategy of elaborating a robust, loyal and responsive social
base. Consequently, the EGP chose to carry out its first public action in
the region. As we shall see, local context profoundly shaped the nature,
evolution and impact of the armed conflict in both regions.
Whilst important similarities existed, the demographic, structural and
historical formations in these zones obliged the EGP to adapt its dis-
courses and the actions it would carry out vis-á-vis the civilian popula-
tion. An understanding of the socio-economic and political conditions
and the origins of the insurgency in each region then provides important
contextual background which permits us to understand how and why the
conflict evolved there as it did. Significantly, despite these differences, the
most egregious act of political violence, the genocide, was perpetrated in
both regions, however, a question to which we shall subsequently return.
In the regions where research was carried out, everyday experiences
were determined decisively by systematic grievances. Poverty, racism and
exclusion represented general patterns suffered by most indigenous peo-
ple and peasants. However, not all individuals and communities mobilised
with the rebels within these regions. Discourses focusing upon emancipa-
tion articulated by the rebels to their potential social base, to a degree,
played a role in attracting or dissuading potential members from inte-
grating into their ranks. This dynamic played a key role in particular in
the Ixil region, a region characterised by high levels of poverty, exclusion
and racism. However, the capacity of the rebels to offer more immedi-
ate benefits to their social base and the buy-in of communities to said
benefits only became clear, as we shall see, once the military began to
attack indigenous communities, and, even then, the military capacity of
the insurgents to protect those integrating into their ranks was, at best,
weak, and, at worst, non-existent. The regions analysed in the case study
chapters evidence then how complex and multidimensional factors shaped
 INTRODUCTION 25

the nature of state-led violence and collaboration with the guerrilla: no

single factor, understandably, explains how, why, and at which moment
the non-combatant population decided to support the insurgency.
In this respect, it was perceived as germane to select the two regions
included in this book, as regions within the same department, both bor-
dering on Mexico, yet with historical, structural and demographic differ-
ences that shaped the trajectory of the armed conflict and accompanying
political violence, whilst not altering dramatically its outcome.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK
The book begins by addressing the scholarship from genocide studies. The
second chapter, Understanding the Violence, opens with a discussion of the
highly contested concept of genocide with the aim of developing a work-
able definition that will subsequently undergird the current research. The
chapter then turns to an analysis of the context in which collective violence
is perpetrated against non-combatants. Second-generation genocide stud-
ies scholars have recently focused upon the importance of the structural
conditions in which genocide is perpetrated as representing a key aspect of
its enabling environment. Scholars have highlighted how historical context
shapes the political opportunities afforded to elites, thus moulding the con-
ditions in which they take strategic decisions that lead or do not lead to the
perpetration of genocide. The chapter seeks to understand the importance
of context as an enabling condition for genocide from two perspectives:
firstly, the manner in which contexts of armed conflict and war may facili-
tate mass killing, and secondly, the manner in which the construction of
threat plays a role in the perpetration of genocide. The chapter closes with
a discussion of the role of ideology in the commission of genocide, given
that, in the Guatemala case, it will be argued in the book that racism rep-
resented a key enabling factor that became manifest in the mobilisation of
an ideology of ethnic hatred and the dehumanisation of indigenous actors.
The third chapter, Civilian Experience of Violence in Civil War and Armed
Conflict, will be principally conceptual, and draw upon the increasingly con-
solidated scholarship dedicated to the comprehension of the logic of coun-
terinsurgent, insurgent and paramilitary violence and the strategies that
non-combatants formulate during armed conflict. The chapter sets out the
definitional parameters that will frame the research and subsequently explores
the debates regarding how and why individuals collaborate with armed actors
in contexts of irregular warfare. The chapter then turns briefly to a discussion
of the points of connection and disconnection between ideological and every-
26 R. BRETT

day motivations for violent acts. The chapter explains conventional framings
of violence in civil war and armed conflict and moves on to study important
critiques presented by scholars such as Kalyvas. The argument that will be
presented is that, in the case of Guatemala, diverse and interconnected factors
explain the motivations behind individual and collective collaboration with
the insurgency. Whilst ideology mattered, other aspects were also crucial in
shaping individuals’ decisions to take up arms or to collaborate with the reb-
els: in short, not all violence was necessarily political.
Chapter 4, The EGP: Insurgent Strategies in the Ixcán and the Ixil, builds
on the theoretical framework presented in the previous chapter. The chap-
ter introduces the case studies that will represent the core of the book,
turning to an analysis of the original empirical research on political violence
in Guatemala. This chapter begins by detailing the two case study regions
from the department of El Quiché, the Ixcán and the Ixil, documenting the
demographic and historical conditions that shaped political mobilisation
and violence in these regions. The discussion then analyses the origins of
the revolutionary movement in the Ixcán and the Ixil, exploring the strate-
gies that the rebels implemented through which to construct their social
base. The historical, socio-political, economic and demographic conditions
differed in the Ixcán and the Ixil, elements that, in turn, shaped the trajec-
tory of the armed conflict and the responses of the civilian population to
armed actors. Nevertheless, the final and most egregious act of the political
violence, the genocide, was carried out in both regions, despite these dif-
ferences, a question to which we shall subsequently return.
In Chap.5, Brutality Unhinged: The Counterinsurgent Response, we
examine the evolution of the counterinsurgency strategy aimed at defeat-
ing the guerrilla during the government of General Romeo Lucas García
(1978–1982) and the de facto presidency of General Efraín Ríos Montt
(1982–1983). As we shall see, over time, the counterinsurgency strategy
evolved from low-intensity repression, including intimidation, kidnapping
and selective killings, to the massacres that represented the blunt instru-
ment of the genocide. In the aftermath of the massacres, elaborate insti-
tutional frameworks were adopted to subject the population to military
control, frameworks that reinforced the impact of the massacres. In this
regard, military strategy gradually assumed a dual logic characterised by
direct confrontation with the guerrilla and the destruction of the rebel’s
social base through a campaign of mass, organised killing. The chapter
plots the evolution of the counterinsurgency within an historical frame-
work, detailing how the political and economic context, the emerging
 INTRODUCTION 27

guerrilla threat and the increasing protagonism of indigenous and peasant

populations shaped the military’s response.
Chapter 6, War in the Rebel Heartlands, is based upon extensive fieldwork
carried out in the Ixcán and the Ixil. The chapter details the evolution of
the armed conflict and the accomnpanying political violence in the two case
study regions of the Ixcán and the Ixil, respectively, during the Lucas and
Montt years. The discussion details the specific development of counterin-
surgency strategy in the regions, focusing, in particular, upon the changing
nature of political violence and the forms through which the civilian popula-
tion became increasingly implicated in the violence and subject to military
control. The discussion of each respective region will close with a detailed
description of a single specific massacre perpetrated there, as a means of evi-
dencing the systematic nature of the operative mechanisms of the genocide.
In Chap. 7, Displacement and Exile, we document the process of mass
displacement and refuge as thousands fled from the political violence under
both Lucas and Montt. The research presented in this chapter draws on
extensive interviews with refugees, former displaced persons, public offi-
cials and members of diverse institutions in Mexico and Guatemala. The
discussion centres around two diverse processes of genocide rescue: inter-
nal displacement through the Communities of Population in Resistance
(CPRs) and the search for refuge and exile in Chiapas, southern Mexico,
on the Mexico–Guatemala border. Significantly, this chapter evidences the
process through which, in the immediate aftermath of the violence, com-
munities and individuals sought to repudiate the impact and legacy of
genocide, and to rebuild their lives.
The book’s ends with a chapter of Conclusions, emerging out of
the narrative and drawing together the insight that the Guatemala case
evidences with regards to political violence and the strategies that non-
combatants assume in its midst. It is hoped that the insight presented in
the conclusions will be relevant to the broader debates on armed conflict,
insurgency, counterinsurgency and political violence from theoretical and
comparative perspective and thus talk to other regions and disciplines.

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28 R. BRETT

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NOTES
1. Of a population of approximately 14,250,000, estimates vary as to the eth-
nic constituency of the Guatemalan population. More conservative figures
estimate that the indigenous population amounts to approximately 40 % of
the population, whilst non-indigenous or ladinos represent 60 %. These lat-
ter groups include indigenous people that no longer practice indigenous
customs, or speak indigenous languages. Other figures posit that Guatemala’s
indigenous peoples constitute the majority of the population. The country’s
indigenous population is made up of Maya, Garífuna and Xinca peoples, the
latter two groups populating the Caribbean and Eastern parts of Guatemala
respectively, and the Maya concentrated in the highland regions and now in
urban areas of the country, due to the rural exile initiated in the 1980s. The
indigenous Maya population itself includes twenty-two ethnic groups and
constitutes over 90 % of the indigenous population, while it is estimated that
only approximately seventy people speak Xinca The twenty-two Mayan lan-
guages and groups are the following: Chuj, Akateko, Jakalteko, Q’anjob’al,
Ixil, Uspanteko, Tektiteko, Awakateko, Sipakapense, Takaneko, Mam,
Tzutujil, Kaqchiqel, Sakapulteko, Q’eqchi, Achi, Poqomchi’, Pokoman,
K’iche’, Itza, Chortí and Maya-Mopan.
2. Interview, Tiburcio Utuyy, Xix, Guatemala, April 2002.
3. Interview, Tiburcio Utuyy, Xix, Guatemala, April 2002.
4. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI95aYW62R4 (Accessed
5/10/2015).
5. Yates’ documentary Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, into which this inter-
view is incorporated, was utilised as evidence in the trial against Montt. See
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT2tYCvIgUI (Accessed 5/10/2015).
 INTRODUCTION 31

6. See Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions
Are Changing World Politics (Norton & Company, 2011).
7. See Naomi Roht-Arriaza,‘Prosecutions of Heads of State in Latin America’,
in E.L. Lutz and C. Reiger (Editors), Prosecuting Heads of State (Cambridge
University Press, 2009), Cath Collins Post-Transitional Justice: Human
Rights Trials in Chile and El Salvador (Penn State University Press, 2010),
Cath Collins, K.  Hite and A.  Joignant, The Politics of Memory in Chile:
From Pinochet to Bachelet (Lynne Rienner, 2013) and Susan Kemp,
‘Guatemala Prosecutes former President Ríos Montt: New Perspectives on
Genocide and Domestic Criminal Justice’, Journal of International
Criminal Justice, Vol. 12, 2014, pp. 133–156.
8. See Kemp (2014: 154).
9. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWoshdpl8K4 (Accessed
4/10/2015).
10. AJR–CALDH initially presented two cases for genocide, crimes against
humanity and war crimes. The first case against former President Romeo
Lucas García and his military high command was presented in 2000, with
the case against Ríos Montt and his high command subsequently presented
in 2001. See Roddy Brett (2016) ‘Peace without social reconciliation:
indigenous struggles and the politics of validation in the wake of the
Guatemalan Genocide’, in Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 18, No.2.
11. Interview, Nebaj, Quiché, July 2015.
12. See Rachel McCleary (1999) for a discussion on the role of CACIF and
the private sector during the country’s peace process.
13. The civilian population is defined by article 3.1 of the Fourth Geneva
Convention (1949), which relates to the obligatory protection of civilians
in times of war and states persons taking no active part in the hostilities,
including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and
those placed outside of combat by sickness, wounds, detention or any
other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any
adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or
wealth or any other similar criteria. Article 4.1 of the Additional Protocols
relating to the protection of victims of non-international armed conflicts
(Protocol II), 8 June 1977 prohibits orders that there shall be no survi-
vors. Moreover, Article 4.2 states that ‘Without prejudice to the generality
of the foregoing, the following acts against the persons referred to in para-
graph 1 are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place: (a)
violations against the life, health and physical or mental well-being of per-
sons, in particular murder as well as cruel treatment such as torture, muti-
lation or any form of corporal punishment; (b) collective punishments; (c)
taking of hostages; (d) acts of terrorism; (e) outrages against personal dig-
nity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment, rape, enforced
32 R. BRETT

prostitution and any form of indecent assault; (f) slavery and the slave trade
in all their forms; (g) pillage; (h) threats to commit any of the foregoing
acts’. This book defines the civilian population negatively, that is, as non-
combatant, based on the definitions and concepts of the Four Geneva
Conventions. This conceptual, legal framework allows us to define com-
batants as: Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well
as members of militias and other voluntary corps, forming part of such
armed forces; Members of other militias and members of other volunteer
corps, including those of organised resistance movements, belonging to a
Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even
if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps,
including such organised resistance movements, fulfil the following condi-
tions: (i) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subor-
dinates, (ii) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognisable at a distance,
(iii) that of carrying arms openly and (iv) that of conducting their opera-
tions in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
14. The CEH report registers 626 massacres, of which 50 % were committed
between 1981 and 1983 (CEH 1999). According to the REMHI
(Recovery of Historical Memory) report, published in 1998, the army was
implicated in 90.52 % of the registered massacres, acting without extra-
institutional support in 55 % of these massacres, and with PACs in the
remaining 45 % of massacres. According to REMHI, the guerrilla commit-
ted 3.79 % of the registered massacres.
15. See http://hmd.org.uk/page/holocaust-genocides (Accessed 4/10/2015).
The charity refers to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia and Dafur.
16. Richard English has correctly observed that ‘the deliberate targeting of
civilians’ is not new in warfare, but rather, ‘has formed a major aspect of
the experience’ (2013: 62).
17. Azpuru (2012) argues that Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti,
Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru have experienced armed conflict, whilst
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Honduras,
Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay experienced authoritarianism.
18. For example, see Escobar and Alvarez (1992), Brysk (1994), Van Cott
(1994), Foweraker (1995), Dagnino et al. (1998), Craske and Molyneux
(2002), Brett (2008).
19. See http://povertydata.worldbank.org/poverty/region/LAC (Accessed
27/08/2014).
20. Through the poverty headcount at both $2.50 and $4.00 per day. According
to the UNDP’s multidimensional poverty index, for 2013, indigenous and
non-indigenous poverty were 83 % and 49.0 % respectively, whilst the mul-
tidimensional extreme poverty index was at 47.2 % and 18.2 % for indige-
nous and non-indigenous populations, respectively. See http://www.
desarrollohumano.org.gt/sites/default/files/sinopsis_desarrollo_
humano.pdf (Accessed 28/08/2015).
 CHAPTER 2

Understanding the Violence

Political violence perpetrated by state and non-state forces during

Guatemala’s internal armed conflict was complex and multidimensional,
and, not illogically, evolved significantly over the long thirty-six years dur-
ing which time hostilities were waged. Beginning in 1962 as a guerrilla
uprising fought by a handful of relatively poorly armed insurgents led
by former military officials against an oligarchic, exclusionary state, the
conflict was framed within and shaped decisively by the military, ideo-
logical and political logic of the hemisphere’s Cold War. However, the
Guatemalan conflict assumed its own logic and dynamics that responded
to historical social formations and structures determined by patterns of
class, racial and ethnic exclusion. As Grandin (2010) has observed for
other Latin American cases, whilst the USA, as the hemispheric hege-
mon, decisively influenced the region’s experience of the Cold War, Latin
American regimes and their militaries moulded it to their own will and
provided the ‘animal instinct’. States committed acts of brutality with the
aim of turning back the democratic gains achieved in the aftermath of the
Second World War, a phenomenon, which, perhaps, explains the popu-
larity of the regimes with many of those embedded within the political
establishment and economic elites in the region.
As Guatemala’s confrontation transformed, what had begun as a class-
based, armed rebellion with little, if any, ethnically driven dynamics, would
gradually mutate into a conflict with profound ethnic dimensions, waged
between a formidable counterinsurgency state and rebel forces embedded

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 33

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_2
34 R. BRETT

within and, to differing degrees, supported by indigenous communities prin-

cipally situated in the country’s highlands. It was during the latter stages of
hostilities, after the military’s initial strategies failed to win indigenous hearts
and minds that, during the government of General Romeo Lucas García
(1978–1982) and the de facto presidency of General Efraín Ríos Montt
(1982–1983), a sequence of strategic decisions was taken at the highest lev-
els of the Guatemalan state and military that would lead to the elaboration
and subsequent execution of a series of military campaigns whose central
objective was the mass killing of indigenous civilians. The scorched earth
campaign, executed under Lucas García, and Montt’s Campaign Victory
82, would represent the institutional framework within which genocide was
perpetrated against the indigenous Maya population, a strategy that ulti-
mately led to the strategic defeat of the guerrilla force by 1984.
The second wave of guerrilla forces led by the EGP that crossed into
northern Guatemala from Mexico in 1972 had sought to construe its
logistical support base within indigenous and peasant communities in
the mountainous and jungle regions of the country. A principal factor
driving the political violence that culminated in mass atrocities executed
against indigenous non-combatants was the counterinsurgency objective
of draining the sea to kill the fish, as scholars such as Schirmer (1998)
and Sanford (2003) have correctly observed. The Guatemala case, in this
regard, reflects the insight of scholars such as Shaw (2003), Valentino
(2004), Midlarsky (2005) and Straus (2015), who have argued convinc-
ingly that mass categorical violence has recurrently been perpetrated
within contexts of war and counterinsurgency operations. It is argued in
this book, however, that counterinsurgency logic only partially explains
the strategic objectives and rationale behind the perpetration of genocidal
mass atrocities in Guatemala and that this account is conspicuously inca-
pable of elucidating a clear and persuasive explanation of the motivations
behind the profoundly brutal and ritualistic nature of the accompanying
violence.
The purpose of this chapter is to develop insights that contribute to the
construction of a coherent framework through which to comprehend the
political violence perpetrated during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict,
with particular reference to the episodes of mass categorical violence and
genocide perpetrated during the 1980s. The chapter begins with a discus-
sion of the highly contested concept of genocide, and works towards the
definition of the concept that will be utilised to undergird the current
research. The chapter then turns to an analysis of the environment in
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 35

which collective violence was perpetrated in Guatemala. Scholarship on

political violence and genocide has consistently signalled how context
may shape the political opportunities and strategic decisions that may
lead to the commissioning of mass atrocities; conditions of armed con-
flict and war, it is argued, are permissive for the execution of such vio-
lence (Valentino et  al. 2004). The scholarship that addresses insurgent
mobilisation and civil war has engaged with the puzzle of why and in what
way individuals and communities participate in rebellions (Wood 2003;
Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011) and how the organisational nature of such
insurgencies may determine the extent and level of the political violence
that is employed (Weinstein 2011), discussions that will be the subject of
the following chapter. The Guatemala case offers insight into both litera-
tures and, to a certain extent, seeks to bridge them, an aspect of this book
which is uniquely illuminating. By documenting the strategies developed
within indigenous communities at the centre of the killing campaign and
analysing their experience of the violence, the empirical research presented
in this book evidences the impact of mass violence on civilian popula-
tions and the forms through which they survived and adapted to both
armed conflict and genocide. It is in this regard that the book seeks to
forge new ground, analysing the strategies of non-combatants within a
context where genocide converges with and is an integral component of
armed conflict and vice versa. A further element central to the discussion
of the environment in which mass violence was perpetrated relates to the
question of when and under what conditions mass atrocities and genocide
may take place. Midlarsky (2005) and Straus (2015) have argued that the
construction of threat and, in the case of Straus, the strategic responses
of elites to that threat, play a central role in legitimating extreme vio-
lence committed by state authorities. In the case of Guatemala, at the
beginning of the 1980s, elites perceived an imminent insurgent threat that
wielded the potential to destroy the existing social order, as it had argu-
ably done in Nicaragua several years earlier when the Sandinista guerrilla’s
revolutionary uprising overthrew the dictatorship of the Somoza family.
Guatemala’s insurgent menace was fused with a historically constructed
threat articulated through the framework of race. Since independence in
1821, the country’s primary political community, as Straus (2015) has
termed it, its national imagined community, in Anderson’s words (1993),
had been constructed around ladino identity and values; indigenous or
indian identity had been excluded from this narrative and, historically,
constructed to represent an existential threat to the primary political com-
36 R. BRETT

munity. Referring to more recent genocide studies scholarship, the chap-

ter will develop a framework through to understand how the insurgent
strategy of forging its social base principally within indigenous communi-
ties generated the conditions through which the Guatemalan state and
economic elites were able to sculpt the image of an imminent, pernicious
and hybrid threat to the existence of the primary political community,
based upon their two most acute fears: communism and indigeneity. The
construction of the indigenous or indian-subversive merged racial and class
narratives, ultimately forging the image of ominous threat from a seditious
and insubordinate demon that had to be defeated at all costs. The chap-
ter closes with a discussion regarding the nature of the violence wielded
against said demon, engaging with a central debate in the scholarship on
mass killing, specifically, the role of ideology in the commission of geno-
cide. In the Guatemala case, we will focus upon how racism, manifest
through the mobilisation of an ideology of ethnic hatred and the dehu-
manisation of indigenous actors, played a key role in the generation of
conditions conducive to intra-ethnic violence.

DEFINING GENOCIDE
On 10 May 2013, Ríos Montt was indicted. The judges ruled that genocide
and crimes against humanity had been perpetrated within the institutional
framework of a series of military plans (Victory 82, Firmness 83, Operation
Plan Sofia), concluding that their content evidenced planning involving
the military chain of command, of which Montt was Commander-in-
Chief. The Court identified a wide range of acts perpetrated within the
framework of the crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity, the
sheer extent of which is devastating. The judges concluded that, during a
period of seventeen months, military operations under Montt in the Ixil
region alone had caused the death of 1771 civilians, the forced displace-
ment of 29,000 people, 41 rapes, the torture of 163 people, the bombing
of 15 communities and the forced concentration of 1383 people.1
As is widely known, the sentence held for ten days, until it was annulled
by the country’s Constitutional Court. What is conspicuous in the
Guatemalan case is that, at least provisionally, a single episode of the broad
range of political violence perpetrated by the military within the wider
framework of the thirty-six-year internal armed conflict was categorically
defined, from the legal perspective, as genocide. Nevertheless, the legal
categorisation of the Guatemalan experience as genocide discloses only a
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 37

partial truth, and is ultimately limited in what it is able to elucidate regard-

ing the motivations behind and the nature and impact of the violence.
This insight is ever more compelling given that the legal categorisation of
the Guatemalan experience as genocide was indeed only temporary. Legal
truth then remains a single aspect of a broader, multidimensional experi-
ence of genocide and political violence.
In the early 2000s, when, as part of the investigatory team led by
CALDH and the AJR, I was gathering evidence for the case against
Montt and other military officials within indigenous communities in the
Ixil region, there was little scope regarding or discussion of how we were
to define genocide. In developing the body of proof for the case, our
work seemed both geographically and intellectually far removed from the
academic debates taking place in universities and the practitioner sphere
around the definition of the concept. The mandate of CALDH’s investi-
gators and lawyers working on the case was logically situated within the
international and national normative framework relative to the crime of
genocide, typified as a crime in December 1948, through the United
Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, itself ratified by the Guatemalan state in 1953 and subsequently
enshrined in Article 376 of the Guatemalan Penal Code.2 The objective
was to prove genocide had taken place in Guatemala within the narrow
operational framework of national and international law. The Convention
had established genocide as an international crime, obliging signatory
nations, including Guatemala, to undertake to prevent and punish the
crime. As is now amply understood, although widely contested in aca-
demic, legal and practitioner spheres, in its legal manifestation, genocide
is defined as

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or

in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing
members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to mem-
bers of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of
life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e)
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Given that the typification of genocide as a crime only took place in the
mid-twentieth century, the legal history of the concept is relatively recent
(Schabas 2009), as are the academic debates that have engaged with it,
38 R. BRETT

although practices of mass categorical violence are, of course, far from

recent. Whilst the legal definition of genocide established the precedent
through which to circumscribe and measure the concept, the parameters
through which to comprehend genocide have subsequently become the
subject of focused debate, and particularly so over the past two decades.
Abundant and, oftentimes, rigorous scholarship has addressed and effec-
tively moved forward the debate around the definition of the phenom-
enon, and it is not within the scope of this discussion to replicate them.3
Rather, this section will develop a working definition relevant to the
research presented in the book.
Of course, writing a book that focuses on genocide as a central theme
occasions a series of challenges, not least that of developing a working,
operational definition of the concept, which differentiates genocide from
other forms of political violence. As the empirical research in this book
proposes, however, genocide is often accompanied by or may precipitate
other forms of political violence, evidencing key and multiple points of
articulation and dislocation between genocide and other expressions of
violence, political or otherwise. Whilst the research presented in this book
assumes the legal definition of genocide to represent an important point
of departure for its analysis, and concurs with the justification for and rea-
soning behind Montt’s indictment, it does not presume the legal charac-
terisation of genocide to represent an immutable and conclusive definition
of the phenomenon, as the following discussion will elucidate. Rather,
as scholars from within the ‘second generation’ of genocide literature
have argued, it is ‘in straying from the original definition and understand-
ing of genocide’ that the phenomenon can be better understood (Straus
2007; Card 2003; Moses 2012). As Straus (2007, 2015) has convinc-
ingly evidenced, whilst accepting the legal framework that conceptualises
genocide indeed remains a key starting point then, it is critical to move
beyond legalistic perspectives and interpretations and, moreover, compare
and contrast genocide with other forms of political violence; the current
research seeks to move the debate forward in this regard.
From the perspective of Schneiderhan (2013), ‘Genocide is a com-
plex, multi-faceted social phenomenon that defies simplistic, reductionist
accounts.’ Similarly, Straus has posited that genocide is

‘a complex, confusing, multidimensional, multiplicit concept’… ‘From its

inception… genocide has been an empirical, moral, legal, and political con-
cept. To one person, “genocide” means evil and demands preventive or
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 39

punitive action by a government; to another, “genocide” carries a circum-

scribed juridical meaning, while to still others it designates a specific type of
mass violence’ (2001: 359).

Consensus amongst later scholars appears to have been reached then that
the concept is empirically ambiguous and inherently problematic. Given
the extraordinarily diverse factors shaping specific cases of genocide, ‘the
no-variance, case-country approach works well for theory development but
less well for explicit theory testing’ (Straus 2007: 479). Definitions include
explaining genocide as ‘eliminationist ideology’ (Goldhagen 1997, 2009),
as collective, dehumanising framing (Hagan and Rymond-Richmond
2008). Campbell (2009) focuses on the notion of social control, posit-
ing that genocide occurs because of a desire to ‘purify’ a society by eradi-
cating a group or groups perceived as immoral or inferior. Mann (2005)
and Bauman (2000) articulate genocide with modernity. Mann argues that
genocide occurs when democratic ideals are perverted in combination with
ideals of nationalist or ethnic superiority, leading to conditions in which
‘democracy’ can be instrumentalised in order to crush the minority group.
For Mann, then, it would appear that genocide represents an inherent
systemic fault, as much as being the consequence of the actions of spe-
cific elites or individuals. As scholarship has evolved, so the complexity of
the phenomenon as seen through the literature has been increasingly evi-
denced and acknowledged, leading to more multifaceted readings of what
is, at best, a convoluted and oftentimes oversimplified concept.
According to Straus, the so-called ‘first generation’ of comparative
research on genocide posited a series of arguments framed through the
Holocaust as the ‘analytic centre of gravity’ (2012: 546). Whilst the ‘core
conceptualisation’ of first-generation definitions remained deliberate
(intentional) destruction of an identified group, the analytical scholar-
ship focused principally upon apparent isolated structural causes of mass
violence, characterised by social stress and upheaval and deep social divi-
sions. Factors such as ideology, intergroup racism and discrimination, sys-
tematic exclusion and dehumanisation and the nature of the state were
variously recognised as the key mechanism leading to genocide.4 Similarly,
whilst important exceptions have been notable, according to Straus, early
theorists focused upon how the concentration of power in authoritar-
ian regimes, group domination and scapegoating could be central causes
that would precipitate mass violence, arguments discarded in more recent
scholarship (2007: 480–481).
40 R. BRETT

‘Second generation’ scholarship has tended to move away from single-

cause analyses of genocide, identifying the complexities behind and inter-
relationship between the factors shaping mass violence. This generation of
scholarship acknowledges, moreover, and seeks to move beyond a series
of limitations embedded in the legal definition of the concept, limitations
inherent in the first-generation scholarship, itself so contingent upon the
legal definition. In this regard, second-generation scholars are gener-
ally defined by their criticism of the original scholarship, which several
authors consider flawed or misleading in its apparent simplicity (Straus
2006, 2007; Weitz 2003; Valentino 2004; Mann 2005; Midlarsky 2005;
Sémelin 2007).
In his seminal article, Second Generation Research on Genocide, Straus
(2007) plots the evolution of the genocide scholarship from the first gen-
eration to the most recent emerging literature. Developing an ‘archaeol-
ogy’ of genocide scholarship, Straus evidences significant transformations
in methodological and analytical approaches, citing and engaging with
the key pioneering authors in this regard. Perhaps the common thread
in this literature is a shift away from signalling single causes of geno-
cide, towards a more complex understanding of the multiple and often
interrelated factors that shape and precipitate mass killing. The dialogue
that Straus develops with other second-generation scholars is framed
through the proposition that genocide is neither ubiquitous nor recur-
rent, despite the fact that those causes identified in the first-generation
literature, such as deep social fissures and diverse forms of discrimination,
are indeed so. As Straus argues, ‘many societies are fractured ethnically,
racially, culturally, and religiously, but only in a few does genocide mate-
rialise… divisions, prejudice, and discrimination do not necessarily pre-
date the violence’ (2007: 481). Emerging second-generation scholarship
evidences then a series of critical weaknesses in the earlier literature, and
identifies three key areas where analysis may more fruitfully focus: who is
the actor that carries out the process of annihilation; who or what consti-
tutes a group and whether group identification should remain bound to
national, religious, ethnic or racial groups, as the legal definition specifies;
and how is annihilation of the respective group carried out? In short, are
the modes of annihilation that are required for genocide to take place
limited to (mass) killing, or can they incorporate other forms of elimina-
tion, such as cultural repression and starvation? What follows is a brief
explanation of each theme, as understood with relation to its relevance to
the Guatemala case.
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 41

Which Actor Perpetrates Genocide?

Debate over the identity of the actor responsible for perpetrating genocide
relates principally to the degree to which the state is perceived as neces-
sary and instrumental for the execution of a mass and systematic killing
campaign. As Midlarsky (2005) and Straus (2001, 2015) have eloquently
evidenced, the perpetration of a campaign of sustained, widespread and
coordinated violence, such as that which would characterise the genocides
in Cambodia, Rwanda and Guatemala, is likely to require the implementa-
tion of strategies designed and led from within the state. State participa-
tion is likely then to be a central facet here, particularly given the resources
and intelligence necessary for carrying out the sustained, systematic elimi-
nation of a selected group. The commissioning of mass killing against
civilians will face serious obstacles if the process lacks a broad institutional
framework, staffed by somewhat willing and loyal individuals possessing
the material and financial resources necessary for mass violence and who
perceive themselves to form part of a hierarchical chain of command, in all
likelihood to be sanctioned if they do not follow orders (Straus 2015). As
Straus argues, ‘It is hard to imagine a modern annihilation campaign that
could occur without state involvement. Systematic annihilation requires
coordinated planning and massive resources, which would most likely
emanate from a state. However, no prima facie reason exists for why the
state must be the agent committing genocide’ (2001: 365).
In the case of Guatemala, the state was central to the killing strategy,
having been instrumental in its conceptual design and, subsequently,
through the mobilisation of the military’s institutional framework in order
to execute the elimination campaign. Lucas García as President, and Montt
as Commander-in-Chief, had the capacity to provide strategic instruction
to mobilised forces through the delegated commanders who carried out
the military plans designed by strategic high command. In the case of the
latter, according to Kemp, ‘the Tribunal concluded that General Ríos par-
ticipated in the design, orientation, execution and supervision of military
policy, strategy and plans that categorised the civilian population as the
internal enemy.’ Montt, the judges ruled, had known about the actions
and omissions of his subordinates and was, therefore, liable within the
framework of national and international law, given that said plans had as
their objective the ‘partial destruction of the Ixil group’ (2014: 142–143).
In this regard, moreover, the mass violence wielded during the military
campaigns under both Lucas García and Montt during the early 1980s
42 R. BRETT

emanated out of strategic policy decisions taken at the highest level of

military command, with the specific objective of protecting the primary polit-
ical community from the imminent subversive/‘indian’ threat. However, as
Straus (2015) has argued, threats against which genocide is operationalised
as a practicable option tend to be perceived by the elite not only as pres-
ent, but, significantly, as ‘future dangers’. The Guatemala case was not an
exception in this respect; the very existence of indigenous communities was
perceived as menacing, given their alleged propensity to oppose the values
and practices of the dominant political community and thus their innate
capacity to mobilise as subversives to overthrow it. To a certain degree,
the construction of indigenous communities as a ‘future’ threat leads us
towards a rational comprehension of certain tendencies within the coun-
terinsurgency violence, as we shall discuss later. Acts such as the killing of
pregnant women, the destruction of foetuses and the execution of children
were justified as destroying the seeds that would permit the reproduction of
the indigenous race, acts that are intended to bring the physical elimination
of the group, as the legal definition makes abundantly clear.
Whilst the participation of the state is then a likely enabling condi-
tion for the commission of genocide, Straus (2015) further argues that
mass violence is unlikely to be carried out successfully without the active
‘endowment’ of local actors who, due to the information they possess
and the social relationships they embody, are able ‘to identify and sort
target populations’ (2015: 7). Local populations oil the wheels of the
state machinery, providing key logistical support, including contributing
towards effective group selection, identifying key individuals and commu-
nities on the ground where targeted collective violence is perpetrated. In
the Guatemalan case, the figure of Military Commissioner, the civilian link
between the military and rural and urban communities, played a key role in
this respect, as we shall see. Scholars have engaged comprehensively with
the question of why individuals participate in the commission of atrocities,
citing such motivations as intergroup antagonism, frustration–aggression,
obedience, opportunism, careerism, coercion, fear, personal connections,
cultural frameworks of meaning and psychological disposition (Waller
2007: 135–141; Straus 2015). Indeed, individuals, Straus posits, are likely
to possess multiple motivations as the trajectory of the violence moves
forward and, in some cases, evolves, motivations which themselves may
change over time. As we shall see in the case study chapters, the motiva-
tions of local actors for perpetrating violence were not exclusively politi-
cal or ideological, reflecting important insight from broader scholarship
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 43

(Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011). Moreover, and significantly,

mass violence in the Guatemalan case relied perhaps to a lesser extent
on local actors than it may have done in the cases referred to by Straus.
External military brigades and battalions, initially constituted by non-
indigenous soldiers, whose strategy had been formulated previously by
the military high command, perpetrated massacres against non-combatant
indigenous communities. With some albeit important exceptions analysed
in later chapters, local actors did not mobilise as material authors in mas-
sacres that culminated in genocide. Nevertheless, local actors did play a
key role in denouncing their neighbours and friends to the armed actors
engaged in hostilities, precipitating a high degree of killings, as Kalyvas
(2006) has argued elsewhere.

How Is the Group Constituted?

The concept of ‘group’ remains at the core of the crime of genocide, argu-
ably differentiating it from other forms of mass violence and international
crimes against civilians, such as crimes against humanity. For Lemkin, the
original proponent of the crime of genocide to the international system in
the aftermath of the Holocaust, genocide was ‘a coordinated plan of differ-
ent actions aiming at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life
of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups completely’ (cited
in Straus 2001: 360; emphasis in the original). The core idea in Lemkin’s
concept of genocide, which persists as a central tenet in both first- and
second-generation scholarship today, can thus be identified as intentional
group annihilation; the objective of permanently crippling the group.
A central point of contention since the 1940s has been how ‘groups’
are defined. The legal definition identifies four groups: national, ethni-
cal, racial or religious. At the time of the crime’s typification, ‘political’
group was excluded, allegedly due to pressure from the permanent mem-
bers of the Security Council. Scholarship has since vociferously contested
whether the original categorisation, limited as it is to these four specific
groups, is adequate, or rather should be extended to include other groups.
Feierstein (2014), for example, has framed the mass killings perpetrated
in the 1980s during the dictatorship in Argentina as political genocide.
Similarly, Gómez-Suarez (2015), amongst others, has defined the elimi-
nation of the political party the Patriotic Union (UP), which took place
in Colombia during the 1980s, as genocide perpetrated against a politi-
cal group. The case of Guatemala is less controversial in this respect: the
44 R. BRETT

identified group was an ethnic group, the indigenous Maya, as has been
previously indicated.
Rather than targeting individual combatants or non-combatants then,
genocidal violence targets the group or collectivity as a whole; violence is
aggregate against said group, as individuals or collectivities are selected
precisely because they identify with or belong to the group. At the same
time, the central objective of said violence is the intent to destroy the iden-
tified group, in whole or partially; it is thus, as Straus (2001) has termed it,
simultaneously group-selective and group-destructive. Significantly, given its
group-selective nature, genocidal violence is not indiscriminate violence;
on the contrary, it is unequivocally discriminate, categorical violence,
aimed directly at the destruction of specific categories or groups, distin-
guished as they are from potential targets on the strength of group identity
and belonging (Straus 2015). Consequently, genocide ultimately repre-
sents coordinated, large-scale, systematic and sustained violence against
a particular, differentiated category of non-combatants. In this respect,
genocide shares a series of characteristics with what Goodwin has defined
as categorical terrorism: ‘the deliberate use of violence against, or the
infliction of extreme physical suffering upon, civilians or non-combatants
who belong to a specific ethnic group, nationality, social class or some
other collectivity, without regard to their individual identities or roles, in
order to pressure or influence other civilians and, thereby, governments or
armed rebels’ (2006: 2031). Whilst both Straus and Goodwin identify col-
lective, categorical violence as inherently discriminate, they diverge with
regard to what the objective of said violence might be. Goodwin’s work
engages with the theoretical frameworks of terrorism. As a consequence,
and reflecting the historically contentious debate regarding the definition
of terrorism, a central element of categorical terrorism is communicative:
it is a form of political communication or leverage, which seeks to pressure
or influence other actors by exerting violence against a specific group or
category (English 2009).5 For Straus, however, genocide seeks the imme-
diate destruction of the group that represents the imminent threat, whilst
aiming to prevent its subsequent reproduction. Genocidal violence is thus
‘terminal… It does not seek containment, bargaining or deterrence – its
logic is to change permanently the population balance… to prevent any
sharing of space or territory’ (2015). The distinction herein is not insig-
nificant: the premise of genocide is neither of communication nor of the
alteration of behaviour, but rather to destroy the group and its potential
interaction with others (2015).
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 45

In the case of Guatemala, as will be evidenced in the case study chapters,

the relationship between the perpetration by the state of both genocide
and categorical terrorism was complex and, at times, mutually reinforc-
ing. Whilst the strategy of deliberately and carefully planned massacres
possessed a repetitive, ‘terminal’ function, as Straus terms it, there also
appears, at times, to have been a communicative message in the mass vio-
lence perpetrated against indigenous non-combatants. In certain cases,
massacres carried out by the military sought to prevent, to deter commu-
nities from collaborating with the insurgency; violence aimed to punish
and make examples of those communities that were suspected of col-
laboration with the guerrilla, and to communicate this message to other
nearby villages and hamlets. At the same time, the Guatemala case study
may, in fact, provide insight into the assertion by Straus that containment
is unequivocally not an objective of genocide. In the aftermath of the mas-
sacres in those zones of the highlands suspected of profound collaboration
with the insurgency, the military constructed concentration camps, model
villages, in which survivors were confined and contained. As we shall see,
the strategic impact of the model villages was to contribute further to the
elimination of indigenous culture. In this respect, containment became
a strategic option adopted by the military to consolidate the genocidal
impact of the previous killing campaign. In this regard, the Guatemala
case evidences a more nuanced relationship between genocide and con-
tainment than perhaps previously analysed.
In their concluding remarks in the sentence against Montt emitted in
May 2013, the judges stated, ‘We are totally convinced of the intention
to produce the physical destruction of the Ixil group.’6 This argument
is repeated throughout the sentence, the evidence presented having,
from the judges’ perspective, proven the specific intent to eliminate
the Ixil, an objective borne out by ‘the repetition, scale and nature
of the constituent acts’ and the ‘same pattern of conduct across the
region’ (Kemp 2014). In this context, the objective of military opera-
tions under Montt was both to defeat the guerrilla, by eliminating its
social base of support, and to consolidate a new nationality, by ‘cleans-
ing’ the country, as the judges argued, of its subversive elements, a
strategic intention shared by the Argentinian dictatorship (Moyano
1997). Consequently, and as later chapters evidence, the military effec-
tively identified the indigenous population as a specific group, as the
internal enemy, adopting the language and strategy manifest within the
National Security Doctrine.
46 R. BRETT

Second-generation scholarship on genocide has provided insight relat-

ing to how perpetrator perceptions of group identity are critical in the def-
inition of group membership (Midlarsky 2005; Straus 2007, 2015; Moses
2010). It is argued that the genocide agent more categorically defines
group membership than does the victim of collective violence. Crucial
in this regard is that the perpetrator identifies a bounded group, accord-
ingly constructs the essential properties that define said group and subse-
quently seeks to bring about its destruction. Perhaps less significant then
are the perceptions of individuals regarding whether they do or do not
belong to the targeted group; its boundaries and limits are set, imposed
and enforced by the genocide agent. In this respect, Straus has coher-
ently argued that ‘genocide might be redefined as an organised attempt to
annihilate a group that a perpetrator constitutes as an organic collectivity’
(2001: 367; emphasis added).
In interviewees from both case study regions, and the Ixil witnesses that
presented testimonies to the Tribunal during the genocide trial, a recur-
rent statement that emerged was They killed us because we were indigenous,
but many of us only realised we were indigenous when the violence began.
The Guatemala case illustrates the complex factors shaping the process
whereby violence may be constitutive in the construction of identity and
relations of power, as Taussig (1987) and Wilson (1995) have observed
for the cases of Colombia and Guatemala, respectively. Consequently, as
we shall observe for the case of Guatemala, the collective response to mass
atrocities perpetrated against a population itself defined by the genocide
agent, in the long-term, may ultimately precipitate processes within said
group that consolidate its identity.

How Is Genocide Constituted?

Scholarship has grappled with how the customary constitutive acts of
genocide may be delineated and limited; in short, whether killing should
represent the principal effective means through which genocide may be
perpetrated. Central to much of the literature has been an acknowledge-
ment that the act of killing assumes centre stage in the orchestration and
execution of the crime. Given that the core characteristic of genocidal
violence is, as we understand it, group-selective and group-destructive, an
attribute that distinguishes it from other similar crimes, then, from this
perspective, the mass murder of non-combatants would likely become the
key instrumental means through which elimination is to be assured and
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 47

future reproduction of the group precluded. According to Straus, ‘As a

campaign of annihilation, genocide is an attempt to wipe out a present
and future threat. As such, genocide is not just an attempt to destroy a
group’s living members, but also to destroy their purported reproductive
capacity. Biology is therefore crucial’ (2001: 366).
As Kemp has indicated, in its conclusions relative to Montt’s responsi-
bility, the Tribunal which indicted him ‘held that four of the five constitu-
ent acts of the crime of genocide had been perpetrated against members
of the Ixil group, as well as inhuman acts against civilians in contravention
of humanitarian law’ (2014: 138). In this regard, and significantly, Montt
was found responsible for killing members of the group, causing serious
bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruc-
tion in whole or in part and forcibly transferring children of the group to
another group (2014: 138–141).
With regard to acts that directly caused death of members of the Ixil
group and thus fall within the aforementioned categories, the Tribunal
specified that the military had perpetrated selective executions, massacres,
the destruction and burning of villages, the bombing of communities and
areas where civilians sought shelter, including sacred places, and forced
disappearance. Nevertheless, the Tribunal extended its remarks, conclud-
ing that Montt had also been responsible for further acts of violence that
were constitutive of genocide, including sexual violence; concentration of
civilians in camps to undergo a process of conversion of their identity and
way of life to fit the regime’s nationalist model; control operations to pre-
vent access to food and medicine; and the transfer of children to military
bases or urban centres where their names were changed and they could
not speak their native language (Kemp 2014: 138).7 The sentence, in this
regard, adopts a perspective that, whilst being undergirded by the precise
legal interpretation of genocide based upon the constitutive act of killing,
evidences a perception that goes beyond identifying killing as the exclusive
operative mechanisms through which to destroy the selected group. In
short, acts such as identity conversion and the transfer of children rep-
resent mechanisms driven by the objective of destroying the group and
preventing its reproduction.
The legal ruling in the Guatemalan case provides important insight
concerning how we might circumscribe the constitutive means through
which genocide may be perpetrated, a component of relevance to the con-
struction of the definition of the concept. The acts of violence executed
48 R. BRETT

between 1981 and 1983 went beyond the immediate physical destruction
of the selected group, as we shall see in further chapters, suggesting that,
whilst killing is indeed crucial, other social and cultural processes may rep-
resent key, albeit indirect factors that contribute to the perpetration of the
crime. In this respect, Fein’s sociological definition of genocide is helpful:
‘sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectiv-
ity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social
reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or
lack of threat offered by the victim’ (1990: 24; emphasis added).
A distinct tendency in the literature has pursued the argument that
genocide does not exclusively imply or dictate killing per se, but rather,
that other acts (cultural, social, eugenic), which may accompany or indeed
precede the killing, should be incorporated in a comprehensive defini-
tion of the phenomenon (Morsink 1999; Card 2003; Davidson 2012). In
this regard, for example, in his discussion of cultural genocide, Davidson
(2012) refers to the loss of the material, cultural and intellectual means
through which a society or culture is reproduced, arguing that cultural
genocide remains highly significant in itself, whilst also potentially signal-
ling or being constitutive of potential physical genocide. Moses and Stone
(2007) eloquently discuss cultural genocide in the context of colonialism,
arguing that cultural annihilation is central to genocide, referring back to
the root of genocide in European colonialism and the undergirding narra-
tives of racial superiority and dominance.
In an approach that supports broader conceptualisations of the consti-
tutive operational means of genocide, Lemkin originally described geno-
cide as the intent to annihilate a group’s national patterns and impose
the oppressor’s patterns upon said group. He identified two processes
of genocide, ‘one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed
group; the other the imposition of the national pattern of the oppres-
sor’ (1944: 79). Within this framework, diverse measures of oppression
may be employed to achieve these ends, of which killing remains only
one: the primary objective is to eliminate a group’s social power, cultural
capacity and symbolic or physical presence. As Shaw has observed, while
physical and biological extermination represents a central aspect of geno-
cide, the phenomenon incorporates a further dimension based upon social
and cultural destruction, as ‘embodied in (a group’s) ownership of land…
(their) religious institutions, cultural and political organisation, and all the
other ways in which their presence in given social spaces and territories is
manifested’ (2007: 34).
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 49

Similarly, Card elaborates a perspective relevant for the Guatemala

case, developing the concept of ‘social death’ with respect to the opera-
tive constitutive means through which the crime is perpetrated, and the
subsequent impact of genocide. Reflecting other scholarship, Card distin-
guishes genocide from other forms of mass killing. However, for Card,
the distinguishing trait of genocide from other crimes is ‘social death’, the
annihilation of social identity of a group’s members. From this perspective,
the author introduces an important distinction as regards the objective
and impact of genocidal violence; group destruction is not understood as
a wholly and necessarily physical end, but rather, may imply the disappear-
ance of the group as a social entity. Killing, for Card, is not the primary
means of genocide: ‘Seeing social death at the centre of genocide takes our
focus off body counts and loss of individual talents, directing us instead to
mourn losses of relationships that create community and give meaning to
the development of talents’ (2003: 63; emphasis added). In short, geno-
cide may come to mean the loss of heritage or identity of a group.
For the case of Guatemala, the social identity of indigenous individuals
and communities remains today under acute threat and subject to con-
testation: the formal end to the genocide in 1984 has not guaranteed
the unthreatened perpetuation of indigenous peoples in the country, a
point to which we shall return later. Poverty and extreme poverty, regional
famines, maternal mortality and chronic infant malnutrition, all of which
affect principally the indigenous population, have escalated since the end
of the armed conflict, as has resource extraction in indigenous commu-
nities. Said conditions represent the systematic violation of indigenous
peoples’ economic and social rights and the violation of their right to
autonomy. Within this context, the annulment of the trial against Montt
demonstrated yet further the challenges indigenous peoples continue to
face as they seek to prevent the annihilation of their social identity and
write themselves into history and memory. It is precisely in this context
that Card’s concept of ‘social death’ is germane, indeed permitting us
to take the ‘focus off body counts’ and placing it onto less evidently vis-
ible processes, such as the impact of structural violence and neoliberal
development models upon the social identity of a group. Arguably, said
violence remains permissive because, as Patrick Hayden (2013) has stated,
‘rights claims remain politically irrelevant or ineffective if they are unheard
and unseen by others who do not recognise the claimant as sufficiently
human.’ In this regard, the basic condition of the recognition of indig-
enous peoples as human beings in Guatemala has not yet been achieved.
50 R. BRETT

As Guelke (2010) has convincingly argued for cases elsewhere, Guatemala

remains a deeply divided society, fragmented along lines of race and eth-
nic identity, where the primary political community continues to perceive
indigenous Guatemalans as an existential threat. In Card’s words, ‘the
special evil of genocide lies in its infliction of not just physical death (when
it does that), but social death, producing a consequent meaninglessness of
one’s life and even of its termination’ (2003: 73).

A Working Definition
Building on the above discussion of the concept of genocide, and in par-
ticular upon the work of second-generation scholarship, this research
assumes a definition that would seek to provide a stronger analytical and
more comprehensive framework than does the 1948 legal definition of
genocide. Genocide is defined here as a distinctive form of political vio-
lence based upon group-selective and group-destructive violence, usually
perpetrated as the result of strategic policy decisions emanating from and
with the direct participation of the state, that attempts to inflict maximum
damage upon civilian, non-combatant populations, thus differentiating it
from the logic and operational objectives of armed conflict ‘in which the
violence is directed against an opponent’s war-making capacity’ (Straus
2015: 9). As we have previously argued, the concept of genocide would
also diverge from terrorism, be that state-sponsored or otherwise, given
that its overall logic is not one of communication but one of elimination
and destruction, even despite those contexts in which the violence that
constitutes an integral component of the genocide may at times seek to
intimate and communicate a message to a broader audience, as we shall
observe in the Guatemalan case. The conceptual approach assumed here,
moreover, reflects the insight of Lemkin and subsequent scholars, assum-
ing that, whilst killing remains a core constituent element of genocide, the
objective of intentional group destruction is not solely contingent upon
body count, but rather may be achieved through the ‘imposition of the
national pattern of the oppressor’ upon the group, or through diverse
other measures, be they overtly violent or otherwise. Given, as Lemkin
stated, that ‘the primary objective is to eliminate a group’s social power,
cultural capacity, and symbolic or physical presence’, genocide is not
uniquely driven by the strategic objective of eliminating a present, immi-
nent threat, but rather is crafted through ‘future-oriented, anticipatory
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 51

violence’ that seeks to sculpt a future in which a specific social category

is absent from the imagined community and founding narrative (Straus
2015: 54).8

THE CONTEXT OF THE CONFLICT

The remainder of this chapter will return to the analysis of those factors
that may shape how and for what reasons mass violence is perpetrated. In
the case of Guatemala, the context was shaped principally by two mutually
reinforcing logics: that of the region’s Cold War, waged on diverse fronts
by counterinsurgency states in increasingly militarised societies; and the
longer-term logic of embedded racism that had served as the primordial
narrative upon which to construct and justify Guatemala’s primary politi-
cal community. The underlying question here is why the Guatemalan state
opted to implement a policy of genocidal violence against those indig-
enous communities that represented the guerrilla’s rural logistical support
base, rather than a distinct military strategy. In this respect, the research
builds upon the insight of scholars who have argued that attention should
be paid to the structural and contextual aspects of genocide (Midlarsky
2005; Shaw 2007; Straus 2007; Campbel 2009).
Straus (2015) and Campbell (2009) have analysed genocide compara-
tively in the context of other forms of political violence. Campbell focuses
upon the undergirding reasons shaping the decisions that lead to the per-
petration of genocide in a given context. Of significance here is Campbell’s
enquiry into why a state opts for genocide, in contexts where other solu-
tions and strategic options may exist, be they ‘ethnocide, expulsion, seg-
regation, lynching, or some combination of these’. For Campbell, ‘How
a conflict is handled depends on its social geometry’ (2009: 167, 2015):
the principal compelling force that leads to genocide is the imposition of
social control over the perceived deviant behaviour of the victims. Three
factors remain of particular relevance for Campbell: diversity, inequality
and intimacy. Genocide, as opposed to other forms of conflict or violence,
emerges in contexts determined by shifts in diversity and inequality, such
as when contact takes place between previously separated ethnic groups,
or challenges to the dominant ethnic group from an historically subordi-
nate group arise. Whilst this latter framework is not particularly useful for
understanding the Guatemalan case, Campbell’s insight into the impor-
tance of social control over deviant behaviour and the proposition that
52 R. BRETT

social distance and inequality increase the likelihood of genocide represent

interesting lines of enquiry to which we shall later refer. Moreover, by
suggesting that the propensity to use genocide increases in contexts where
aggressors and victims cannot be easily separated, Campbell’s work sheds
some light upon the Guatemala case—a context of counterinsurgency,
where rebels were embedded in communities of perceived ‘deviant’ actors,
as we shall see: the threat was invisible.
Guelke seeks to comprehend the factors that shape and sustain deeply
divided societies, scholarship of significant importance given its identifica-
tion of a series of structural factors that may act as potential triggers to
genocide. The author signals several factors that reflect the conclusions of
earlier genocide studies scholars, such as Midlarsky, including an insecure
dominant community; the lack of constraints on the dominant commu-
nity’s use of violence; a vulnerable target group that falls outside the uni-
verse of moral obligation of the dominant community; and external threats
beyond the capacity of the dominant community to overcome (2012: 48).
However, it is Midlarsky’s scholarship that is perhaps of central relevance
for the Guatemalan case. In his seminal study The Killing Trap, the author
argues that genocides tend to occur during war and conflict and that it is
within this context that the perceptions and narratives of ‘threat’, whether
real or perceived, and ‘vulnerability’ are increased (2010: 4). In contexts
of threat and vulnerability, genocide emerges ‘as a radical solution to the
perception of un unacceptable, indeed intolerable, historical circumstance’
(2005: 7).
The concepts of threat and vulnerability are of central importance to
Midlarsky’s work, representing necessary conditions for the occurrence of
genocide. In this regard, the targeted population needs to be perceived by
the state as threatening to it, or at the very least, to have a tenuous con-
nection to external threatening agents. At the same time, and significantly,
whilst the targeted population must be ‘vulnerable to mass murder’, the
potential perpetrators, in this case the state, must experience or perceive
a degree of vulnerability to generate their ‘real or fantasised images’ of a
threatening civilian population (2005: 4; 14–15). The victim population
(social group) must literally be vulnerable to genocide and the state must
perceive itself as under threat from said social group—what Straus terms
the domination–vulnerability paradox (2015: 56)—a condition that was
crucial to the perpetration of the crime in the Guatemalan context, as we
shall detail below. As Midlarsky argues, ‘Any process that simultaneously
increases both threat to the state and its vulnerability, as well as vulner-
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 53

ability of a targeted civilian population, also increases the probability of

genocide’ (2005: 4).
Reflecting scholarship of other second-generation scholars, Midlarsky
argues that genocide is contingent. It is an event that is shaped by the
past and made more probable by ‘earlier experiences of loss and its con-
sequences’ (2005: 14–19). Whilst Straus (2015) emphasises the weight
of the founding national narrative and the correlative construction of
threat by elites as central to the historicised and contextualised frame that
compels actors towards mass violence, Midlarsky signals the significance
of prior experiences of mass killing and their after-effects. For Midlarsky,
both the degree to which potential perpetrators may identify with the aims
and mindset of previous perpetrators, and the legal, political and cultural
consequences that previous episodes and acts of killing have or have not
encountered are critical in creating the conditions in which genocide may
be perpetrated. In the latter case, ‘validation’, as Midlarsky terms it—‘the
absence of serious consequences for perpetrators’—plays a central role in
facilitating the possibility of genocide (2005: 43). In particular, and of sig-
nificant relevance for the Guatemala case, for Midlarsky, ‘Validation occurs
when morally repugnant and heinous behaviour results in few, if any nega-
tive consequences for the perpetrators’ (2005: 62). In cases where the
precedent of impunity has been established, the weight of the past makes
the use of genocidal violence both more probable and more legitimate:
the precedent of impunity signifies the validation of mass murder, decreas-
ing the risks for its repeated perpetration, generating pre-genocide condi-
tions and thus raising the probability for future mass violence (2005: 84).
As Feierstein (2012) has observed for the region of Latin America,
the extermination of indigenous peoples has been continuous since the
Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century; this systematic and continued
extermination has been met with little legal, political, economic and cul-
tural consequences. Elimination processes continued in the nineteenth
century as Latin American nation-states, in this case Chile and Argentina,
were founded upon narratives that excluded indigenous communities. The
annihilation of indigenous populations has been repeatedly imposed upon
the region, signalling a ‘history of mass state-led atrocities’ (2013: 490)
that have been constitutive of state-building, as Tilly has observed for
the case of Europe. In the case of Argentina and Chile, cases that closely
resemble the Guatemalan case, in the 1970s and 1980s, ‘extermination
was carried out in the framework of the National Security Doctrine’
(2013: 491). In this respect, the perpetration of mass atrocities during
54 R. BRETT

Latin America’s Cold War was instrumentalised directly through state pol-
icy, with the support of the USA as the key external actor, and embedded
within military strategy as a means of defeating subversive groups and,
arguably, refounding the nation. Within these contexts, civilian popula-
tions bore the brunt of the violence.
Given the context in which violence was perpetrated, as previously sug-
gested, Guatemala, in particular, and other Latin American cases, more
generally, would appear to reflect the theory that the perpetration of mass
killing is related intimately to the implementation of counterinsurgency
logic in contexts of conflict and war and to regime type. Draining the sea
in this context required the immutable commitment to the execution of
civilians perceived as collaborating with insurgent groups or, at the very
least, possessing the potential to do so. As Valentino et  al. have stated,
‘mass killing occurs when powerful groups come to believe that it is the
best available means to accomplish certain radical goals, counter specific
types of threat, or solve difficult military problems’ (2004: 66). As we
shall argue for the case of Guatemala, mass killing of indigenous and non-
indigenous, or ladino, non-combatants was facilitated by the validation
of past killings—by a history of slaughter—and the construction of an
imminent existential threat sculpted onto an historical menace threatening
to obliterate the primary political community. The objective was counter-
insurgent; however, mass murder also represented order disguised: it was
the instrument through which to consolidate a new nation-state.
In understanding the context in which genocide was perpetrated in
Guatemala then, a key element pertains to the fact that it took place within
‘a calculated military strategy used … to defeat major guerrilla insurgen-
cies’. In this regard, and as second-generation scholarship has evidenced,
‘the likelihood of mass killing among guerrilla conflicts is greatly increased
when the guerrillas receive high levels of support from the local popula-
tion or when the insurgency poses a major military threat to the regime’
(Valentino et al. 2004: 1). Counterinsurgent logic, in part, explains the
propensity and capacity of states for mass killing. However, in isolation,
and without taking broader, structural and historical factors into account,
this argument is unable to account for why a sustained mass killing cam-
paign may transform, ultimately, into genocide, as Straus (2015) has
observed. Straus has also criticised the proposition that mass killing may
be part of a cycle of past, unsuccessful violence aimed at rectifying an
historical problem, that violence will be scaled up in order to reach a final
solution. For Straus, killing will likely only be intensified when a target
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 55

population is perceived of as ‘unwinnable’, uncontainable and ‘inherently

dangerous’, reflecting the threat–vulnerability nexus.
The counterinsurgency argument then is unable to elucidate effec-
tively the reasons why and the context in which mass killing transforms
into genocide, and, similarly, provides an inadequate explanation of
why, in some contexts, political violence may be particularly ritualistic
and egregious. As the Guatemala case also perhaps uniquely evidences,
counterinsurgency logic may fall short in providing a meaningful under-
standing of why, when and how mass atrocities and genocide end, an
argument to which we shall return later. In this respect, in order to
understand more comprehensively why state and military elites in
Guatemala turned to genocide as the optimal strategy for their military,
political, economic, social and cultural salvation, we return to the ques-
tion of threat, as discussed in the previous section. Proposing a ‘synthesis
between strategic and ideological arguments’ (2015: 11), Straus argues
that threat construction is central to facilitating the forging of condi-
tions under which genocide may be perpetrated. Straus coincides with
Midlarsky, arguing that genocide is likely to take place where elites con-
struct ‘grave, imminent and irreversible danger’. Threats, however, are
not based exclusively upon military capability, perceived or otherwise,
Straus argues. Rather, in contexts where the primary political commu-
nity perceives itself to be under threat, and where ‘a pre-crisis founding
narrative based upon exclusion of one social group’ predominates, threat
construction forges the prime conditions within which to define specific
social groups as inherently dangerous and unwinnable (2015: 57–58).
It is in this context that genocide may be more likely to occur. In this
respect, Straus cogently identifies a link between ideology, security and
mass violence: ‘The risk of genocide increases when state leaders associ-
ate a significant material threat, generally a military one, with a category
of people that differs from the primary political community. In such
situations, state leaders are more likely to define the enemy as a social
category and victory over the enemy as destruction of that social category’
(2015: 3; emphasis added).
Straus’ analysis, based as it is upon a synthesis of ideology and security
propositions, is more convincing than those analyses framed through the
sole argument of counterinsurgency logic, and more so when comple-
mented by the insights relating to historical and structural factors offered
by Midlarsky. Moreover, together said approaches permit us to under-
stand the key driving force behind the transformation of mass violence
56 R. BRETT

into genocide in a context where the power of the state is under contesta-
tion: a profound compulsion to obliterate the threat posed by the social
group both in the present and in the future. Where the target population
is perceived as both vulnerable and irredeemable and, accordingly, poses
a permanent, systematic threat, and in a context where existing social,
cultural, economic and political restraining factors may be overcome,9
conditions are conducive for genocide. Ultimately, where the social group
cannot be won back, large numbers of civilians must be killed because a
change in their behaviour will only be achieved through a high level of
violence (2015: 27).
Political violence in Guatemala was moulded and sustained in a context
of unequivocal bias in the control of economic and political resources in
the hands of a racist non-indigenous, Spanish-descended oligarchy (Casaús
Arzú 2010). Since the professionalisation of the military in the nine-
teenth century in the wake of independence, this caste system of privilege
was protected by the country’s security forces and managed by a closed
lineage-based political and economic elite. In the aftermath of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)-orchestrated coup in 1954 against reformist
President Jacopo Arbenz, and as US pressure and influence spiralled once
more in the country, the closure of the political system to oppositional
actors, and mounting repression against them, pushed a group of mili-
tary officers to take up arms in the east of the country. The first guerrilla
insurgency incorporated no indigenous rhetoric or political dimensions;
rebels were ladino military officers. The military, financed and trained by
the USA, easily put down the rebellion. The survivors fled into Mexico,
and in 1972, the EGP crossed the border into Guatemala, locating itself
in indigenous communities in the mountainous and jungle regions of the
country. The guerrilla gradually assumed a politico-military strategy that
challenged the racist oligarchy on class terms, as it sought to incorporate
the indigenous population into its ranks en masse throughout the high-
land and jungle regions of the country.
Between 1972 and 1975, the EGP visited poor and excluded com-
munities, isolated from the rest of the country, and enjoying little, if any,
infrastructure. The insurgents sought to construe their logistical support
base within said communities, wielding a discourse that sought to appeal
to the inhabitants’ conditions of poverty and exclusion and focused upon
class and/or racial grievances according to the specific context. The EGP’s
strategy shifted away from the foquismo of Che Guevara. The insurgents
declared a Prolonged Popular War, requiring the preparation of their
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 57

social base in indigenous communities and the combatants themselves

during a period of three to five years. The military initially responded to
the emerging guerrilla threat by situating itself within indigenous commu-
nities, gathering intelligence and seeking to win indigenous hearts, minds
and physical support by implementing a series of civil programmes. The
failure of these programmes to precipitate a swift military victory pushed
state, political and economic elites to come to perceive the indigenous-
supported EGP and other guerrilla groups as a direct threat to the sover-
eignty of the country; the indigenous population was finally perceived of
as irredeemable. The strategic decision assumed was that radical, effective
action was necessary against the subversives and the indigenous commu-
nities that had come to support them. The following chapters detail the
process whereby, with the support of the USA, Argentina, Chile, Israel
and Taiwan, and within the framework of the National Security Doctrine,
in the regions of the Ixil and the Ixcán, the indigenous population was
classified as the internal enemy. Under President Lucas García and de facto
president Ríos Montt, between 1981 and 1983, a campaign of extraordi-
nary brutality was waged, including the scorching of entire communities,
systematic massacres against indigenous populations allegedly suspected
of collaborating with the guerrilla, homicides, torture, mass public rape
and forced sterilisation, the burning of crops and the killing of animals
to ‘starve out’ the insurgents. The campaign included over one thousand
massacres following the same pattern; in the Ixil alone, the population was
reduced by 26 % through killings, exiles and internal displacement (Brett
2007). What had started as a conflict with little ethnic dimensions, culmi-
nated in genocide, where 82 % of the approximately 200,000 victims were
indigenous (CEH 1999).
The core, founding narrative of the Guatemalan nation-state, as Straus
has termed it, was framed in no uncertain terms: the state belonged to
ladinos, not to ‘indians’. Racism had been at the heart of the colonial
experience and racist discourse had emerged out of the birth pangs of a
new, independent Guatemala. As the violence against indigenous non-
combatants spiralled, little resistance was mobilised against it: from the
perspective of most ladinos, ‘indians’ were a primitive, sub-human species.
Consequently, few restraints needed to be overcome; building elite con-
sensus around the strategy of mass killing was not insurmountable. On
the contrary, the economic elite was desperate to rid the country of the
guerrilla, and, driven by their racism, elites were not shy in unleashing
their devils, many supported the war effort by permitting the construction
58 R. BRETT

of military bases on their land, from where operations would be com-

manded. There were few impediments to the violence at the international
level: the regional Cold War was raging, and mass violence not only was
deemed permissible but also, as we shall later detail, was financed by the
hemispheric hegemon.
The violence took place in an historical context where the indigenous
population was perceived of as both backward and a systematic threat to
the lifestyle of the primary political community. Consider the following
statements:

The indian is a pariah, stretched out in his hammock and drunk on chicha
(a locally-brewed alcohol), his natural beverage. His house is a pig-sty; a
ragged wife and six more children live beneath a ceiling grimy with the
smoke of a fire, which burns night and day in the middle of the floor….Yet,
in this state, the ‘indian’ is happy and desires nothing more.10
To strengthen the ‘indian’ culture, is to condemn our country to eternal
weakness, a perpetual cultural dualism, to be always a nation of irredeem-
able indians without a continental personality. Because of this, our indians
must be westernised or destroyed; but we should not keep them in their
entrenched static state because we will then be only a country for tourism a
kind of zoo for the entertainment of tourists; but never a nation.11

Both citations appeared as editorials in important national newspapers

published in 1892 and 1945, respectively, and testify to a predominant
socio-political and ideological climate, structured and undergirded by rac-
ist, anti-‘indian’ sentiment. The statements evidence the Guatemalan elite’s
fear of the ‘indian’ population; a fear borne out in demographic terms—
the indigenous population has, until marginally recently, represented the
majority of the country’s population. The editorial in El Diario de Centro
America was written in the aftermath of a series of dramatic liberal reforms
carried out in the 1870s. The reforms had, to a degree, precipitated the
disarticulation of social relations and patterns of paternalism and conserva-
tive protectionism and, by 1892, said patterns had been replaced almost
entirely by unconstrained capitalist incursion and coercion of labour in the
country, including in indigenous zones. In this context, the lifestyle of the
‘indian’ was scorned, condemned: according to political and economic
elites, the population’s patterns of land use were unbeneficial to Guatemala
as a whole. Consequently, the ‘indian’ population, at this time the over-
riding majority of the country, was constructed through the predominant
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 59

narrative as the unproductive vagabond, an outcast, not a citizen: the solu-

tion was to enforce conditions of cheap labour upon the indigenous popu-
lation, conditions akin to modern slavery (Smith 1990).
The second editorial was written in 1945, at the beginning of the
ten-year period of liberal reforms, termed by Gleijeses ‘the Ten Years of
Spring’ (1991). During this period, President Jacopo Arbenz, elected in
1950, under guidance from the Guatemalan Communist Party (PGT),
led the country away from foreign investment by nationalising indus-
tries and introducing a radical programme of land reform. By the early
1950s, the programme, implemented through Decree 900, expropriated
land from large international, mainly North American, corporations (such
as the United Fruit Company) and returned it to the rural population.
Significantly, the indigenous population at this time was estimated to rep-
resent 50 % of the Guatemalan population (Gleijeises 1991). The editorial
should be read within this context. The ‘indian’ population, an integral
source of cheap labour since the reforms of the 1870s, was potentially at
the point of being afforded economic and political rights by the reformist,
left-wing administration in a context shaped by the growing fears accom-
panying the incipient Cold War. Fear of loss of land and capital to indians
and poor ladinos facilitated by the reforms proposed by Arbenz, inspired
terror in the urban and rural political and economic elites and the USA,
precipitating the subsequent coup against Arbenz. The racial narrative was
also unequivocal: ‘indians’ were represented in the national imaginary by
the primary political community and, emphatically, by politicians and land-
owners opposed to the reforms, as a ‘low, lazy, indolent, filthy…licentious
and ignorant race of animalistic half-humans’ (Smith 1990: 151), who, at
any opportunity, would bring ruin upon the country.
In and of itself, the racially motivated discourse of the indigenous pop-
ulation as filthy and lazy, as primitive, was not adequate to represent the
mainstay of a sustainable, imminent threat to the primary political com-
munity: indolence, lascivity and drunkenness were an unlikely source of
violent rebellion. Consequently, from the nineteenth century, to accom-
pany this narrative, elite ladinos constructed a yet more pernicious dis-
course articulating the ‘indian’ as an imminent and systematic ‘threat’ to
the primary political community. The discourse always remained latent,
but surfaced particularly in times of crisis or possible social transformation
(Smith 1990). The construction and dissemination of the ‘indian threat’
reinforced the perception of the indigenous population as sub-human,
positing that an ‘indian’ takeover of the country was imminent and would
60 R. BRETT

be hastened if they were permitted to enjoy economic and political oppor-

tunities. The discourse is neither new, nor old: visions of marauding
immigrants, violent African Americans, heretic Argentinian communists,
lazy aborigines, taking our jobs, raping our spouses, destroying Christian
civilization, represent the lifeblood of exclusionary political projects rang-
ing from the dictatorships of the past to Conservative-led Britain in the
middle of the second decade of the 2000s. In the case of Guatemala, such
discourse worked to unify the diverse and, in themselves highly strati-
fied, non-indigenous social classes,12 in the face of possible loss, real or
imagined, of their socio-economic interests and political dominance. As
we shall see in the following chapters, the perceived threat from and the
effective vulnerability of the rural indigenous population became height-
ened during Guatemala’s internal armed conflict, as guerrilla incursions
into indigenous communities provided the primary political community
with the justification for genocide, a genocide that had been a long time
in the making.
In the aftermath of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, as war
came to the indigenous highlands, the enemy, a hybrid of communist and
‘indian’, was perceived to be at the door of the national palace, stamping
its dirty boots on the watered flower gardens of the capital city. The his-
torical ‘indian threat’ had finally been consummated: armed, furious and
with a ruthless desire to take back his country, the ‘indian’ was coming
down from the mountains. As Straus has argued, the mobilisation of the
founding narrative is ‘forged at critical junctures’ and acts as a ‘legitimat-
ing framework’ for winning support for extreme actions. The threat was
there. One final piece of the puzzle was necessary in order to facilitate the
genocide: ideology.

RACISM AND THE ACT OF KILLING

In his insightful article, Rethinking the Role of Ideology in Mass Atrocities,
Leader Maynard addresses the importance of the role of ideology in
mass killing, building upon the work of authors such as Valentino and
Straus. Leader Maynard concludes that ‘ideology matters’ for the per-
petration of mass violence (2014: 821). The article advances what is
an already extensive scholarship, yet makes an important contribution
by proposing six ‘justificatory mechanisms’ that describe how ideology
might shape and ‘feed into perpetrators’ willingness to kill’ (2014: 829).
Leader Maynard distinguishes between mechanisms that are victim-
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 61

focused (dehumanisation; guilt-attribution; threat) and mechanisms

that are perpetrator-focused (deagentification; virtuetalk; future-bias). Of
interest to the research presented here are victim-focused mechanisms:
in the previous section we analysed the concept of threat construction;
of relevance to the current section are the concepts of dehumanisation
and guilt-attribution.
Ideology13 was at the heart of colonialism and imperialism, processes
that were, in many cases, imposed through and intimately entwined with
mass atrocities, cultural annihilation and racism (Moses and Stone 2007).
Moses (2008), in fact, argues that the logics of colonialism and imperial-
ism have been a precondition of most genocides. Latin America was no
exception: racism was central to colonial rule, and, in many countries,
including Guatemala, colonial narratives of racial superiority were initially
sculpted through violence and subsequently, through institutional state
mechanisms (Brett 2012). In the case of Guatemala, the mobilisation of
a racist ideology that sought to generate ethnic hatred and to dehuma-
nise the indigenous Maya was fundamental to the establishment of the
conditions for and the orchestration of the genocide. Ideology, then, may
provide some insight into the nature of the violence in a context where
imminent threat had been configured and weaved through the experi-
ences and founding ideologies of the past.
‘Atrocity-justifying ideologies’ have been the subject of extensive
scholarship on political violence and ethnic conflict (Harff and Gurr
1994; Livingston 1994; Goldhagen 1997; Ignatieff 2001; Mann 2005;
Semelin 2007; Jones 2010; Leader Maynard 2014). The literature has
tended to document and analyse how victims are represented, principally
by perpetrators, in contexts of mass atrocity and how narratives and dis-
courses of dehumanisation have fed into and shaped acts of killing and
violence. Scholarship has focused upon how framing victims as inhuman,
sub-human or inferior to perpetrators, facilitates and encourages the kill-
ing. Killing may be legitimated as victims are constructed as external to
the moral universe of obligations regulating perpetrators (Waller 2007;
Leader Maynard 2014) and both foreign to and a threat against the values
of the primary political community, requiring their extermination in order
to purify and cleanse the community (Semelin 2007). Dehumanisation
works to justify the violence, often accompanied by the intentional articu-
lation of an ideology of racial hatred against the victim group, in many
senses aimed at facilitating the killing by obliterating the moral obligations
of the perpetrator.
62 R. BRETT

Central to the process of dehumanisation is what scholars refer to as

othering (Semelin 2007) or, in the case of Waller, the psychological con-
struction of the ‘other’. The process of othering, according to Waller,
constructs the victim as the object of perpetrators’ actions, as a result of
‘us-them thinking, moral disengagement, and blaming the victims’ (2007:
160). In contexts where ideologies such as racism have shaped the tex-
ture of daily life, othering processes would be likely to face lower levels
of social restraint and control, leading more effectively to the construc-
tion of in-group and out-group membership. In these contexts, as we
shall see for the case of Guatemala, the out-group is often blamed for
the crises affecting the broader national entity; a dangerous pariah likely
perceived as subversive or animalistic. In this context, authorities may play
an important role in generating ‘Rumours, unsubstantiated assertions…
and incessant repetitions of anecdotal cases’ (Leader Maynard 2014: 830).
For Waller, the consolidation of in- and out-group framings signifies that
‘a line is crossed that more easily enables “us” to perpetrate extraordinary
evil against “them”’ (Waller 2007: 220). The mobilisation of a narrative
of ethnic hatred within this framework facilitates the stigmatisation of
minor differences, whilst reaffirming the identity of the dominant group
(Semelin 2007). Semelin acknowledges the role of these social dynamics,
framing them in the context of political opportunism on the part of pow-
erful regime leaders; in short, leaders mobilise said discourses in order to
facilitate killing and to bring about political change. It is the political will
to exploit said divisions and thus to encourage and facilitate violence that
represents the central precondition to genocide in this respect.
Campbell’s approach to dehumanisation focuses principally on the
question of moral deviance, wherein genocide is generally a moralistic
phenomenon; violence is asserted as social control, as a ‘struggle against
the perceived deviance of the “other” through the instrumentalisation of
constructed moral grievances against the targeted group’ (Campbel 2009:
155). In this respect, ‘social control of deviancy’ represents a central char-
acterisation of genocide, as a process that consolidates group superiority
and generates the perception that some are more ‘human’ than others.
In Campbell’s words, ‘While genocide typically is condemned by others,
it occurs not when moral evaluations are disregarded by its perpetrators,
but when they are present and applied. Genocide is moralistic, then, and
can be explained with a theory of social control’ (Campbel 2009: 151).
Campbell’s analysis of the Holocaust is illustrative for the Guatemala case.
In the run-up to the Holocaust, the Jews were perceived as ‘greedy, dis-
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 63

honest, and striving for power and success’ (ibid). Similar characterisations
of indigenous Guatemalans had been constructed in the country since
independence, and were constantly cited in the run-up to and during the
massacres against indigenous communities, as we shall see.
In the case of Guatemala, the ideology of racism and its manifestation
in the institutional, structural and interpersonal spheres played a profound
role in establishing the preconditions for the genocide and in facilitating
its perpetration. Racism is understood in this research from a functional
perspective, that is to say, analysis is anchored within the socio-political
and economic functions of racism. However, its manifestations, in short,
its expression evidenced through the attitudes, prejudices and identifica-
tory racist characteristics, will change according to historical context, the
needs of the group that seeks to instrumentalise it, and the nature of the
aggression (Casaús Arzú 2002: 21–32). In the words of Casaús Arzú, rac-
ism can be understood as:

The definite and generalized valuing of certain differences, be they biologi-

cal or cultural, real or imaginary, in benefit of one group and to the detri-
ment of the Other, with the end objective of justifying an aggression or a
system of domination. Such attitudes can be expressed as conducts, either
imaginary or real, racist practices or ideologies that, as such, extend to all
social fields and, as a result, form part of the collective imagination. They
can originate from within a social class, an ethnic group, or a community
movement; however, such attitudes may also come directly from the institu-
tions of the state, in which case, we should talk of state racism….which in
itself functions as a mechanism to legitimate the dominant class (Casaús Arzú
2002: 29–138; emphasis added).

During the armed conflict, racism was manifest within a series of

spheres. Structurally and historically, the indigenous population had been
marginalised from the state system, both in terms of their lack of access
to its institutional framework and through their exclusion from any state
services or public policy. Such conditions were augmented by the lack
of infrastructure in the indigenous highlands, isolating the violence from
public view and knowledge. Within this context, counterinsurgency oper-
ations were shaped by instrumentalist violence; the scorched earth policy
was carried out against the guerrilla and its social base, with the principal
military objective of defeating the guerrilla by draining the sea to kill the
fish. The violence was, however, simultaneously essentialist/essentialising:
military forces explicitly targeted and sought to exterminate subversive
64 R. BRETT

indigenous communities, actions deemed necessary to purify and consoli-

date a threatened, whitened and homogeneous nation-state; to renovate,
in fact to guarantee the survival of, the primary political community. In
this regard, whilst the genocide was indeed shaped and facilitated by the
threat–vulnerability nexus exacerbated within the context of the armed
conflict, at the same time it represented the extension of a hitherto unsuc-
cessful nation-building project that had failed to eliminate, assimilate or
integrate the indigenous other. Integral to the violence was the dehu-
manisation of the indigenous community, a process consolidated through
the intentional generation and repeated operationalisation of a narrative
expressing the belief in its natural and immutable inferiority; the creation
of an ethnic hierarchy based upon invented criteria of biological, cultural
and moral differences; and the attribution of responsibility to the indig-
enous for the crisis that the country was facing. In short, across the media
and within military doctrine, the narrative communicated how indians are,
and always have been, sub-human, untrustworthy, gullible, stupid and envi-
ous. All indigenous are guerrillas, the internal enemy, and thus all of them
must be annihilated, men, women and children alike. The military thus
justified and facilitated the brutal aggression perpetrated initially by non-
indigenous troops who believed their enemy was, effectively, sub-human.
In this regard, interviewees stated how, during operations, massacres and
torture, soldiers accused the indigenous of being inherently gullible and
subversive, naturally untrustworthy. In the words of Casaús Arzú, the
entire indigenous population was stigmatised as ‘communists, infidels,
idolaters and sinners, as irrational and oppositional’ to facilitate the inter-
ethnic violence (2002: 21–24). According to a survivor of the massacres
in the department of El Quiché, ‘The soldiers screamed at us that we were
only indians, that we were nothing, that we were only animals, that we
didn’t deserve the respect of a human being, that the violence was all our
fault. By being indigenous, we were guilty.’
Compounding this, indigenous culture was intentionally used against
the population with the objective of emptying it of its prior cultural sig-
nificance, whilst inspiring fear and terror. Indigenous culture then became
a means for its own destruction. Within the counterinsurgency policy, in
general, and during the massacres, in particular, the military systemati-
cally and intentionally utilised fire, of utmost symbolic importance within
Mayan cosmology, whilst at the same time using names and symbols of cul-
tural significance to the indigenous population. Military operations in El
Quiché were named ‘Operation Xibalbá’, which in K’iché signifies ‘hell’.
 UNDERSTANDING THE VIOLENCE 65

The Kaibiles, the country’s brutal special forces, adopted a name derived
from the indigenous leader Kaibil Balam. In this regard then, whilst overt
racism facilitated the brutal violence perpetrated against the indigenous
population, indigenous culture was instrumentalised as a means of rein-
forcing the psychological impact of the violence carried out against indig-
enous communities. At the same time, the Gumarcaj Task Force, utilised
during scorched earth operations in El Quiché, was composed principally
of ladinos, in an attempt to ensure maximum distancing of the troops dur-
ing the inter-ethnic violence that they would perpetrate and, according to
interviewees, because the High Command had no confidence that indig-
enous soldiers would be able to perpetrate such acts against other indige-
nous communities. In addition, it was deemed risky to assemble and arm a
large group of indigenous adult men in the context of the guerrilla threat,
given ladino suspicions that said population was inherently subversive in
the first place. Nevertheless, as we will later explore, in many cases, indig-
enous males participated in massacres against their ethnic group, especially
as members of the Civil Patrols (PAC).

CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has grappled with the puzzle of how genocide is defined and
under which conditions the crime may be likely to be perpetrated, seeking to
construct a framework of relevance for our comprehension of mass violence
in Guatemala, and in other comparable contexts elsewhere. The approach
adopted in this book shares the perspectives of the second-generation geno-
cide scholarship, and builds upon this literature, proposing that genocide
is not precipitated by a single cause, but rather results from the interac-
tion between multiple processes and that it emerges within a conjuncture
shaped by threat and vulnerability, where experiences of past, validated mass
violence weigh heavy upon the decision-making processes of elites, and ulti-
mately legitimate extreme actions. Within this context, threat to the state by
a vulnerable group, in particular a pariah group historically envisioned and
treated as external to the dominant political community, may precipitate
unhinged brutality against it. Whilst recognising the importance and utility
of the legal definition of genocide, the research here adopts a broader ana-
lytical framework than does the 1948 legal definition. Genocide is defined
here as a distinctive form of political violence based upon group-selective
and group-destructive violence, usually perpetrated as the result of strategic
policy decisions emanating from and with the direct participation of the
66 R. BRETT

state. Genocidal violence attempts to inflict maximum damage upon civil-

ian, non-combatant populations, thus differentiating it from the logic and
operational objectives of armed conflict, within the framework of which it
has regularly taken place. Genocide pursues the ultimate objective of elimi-
nating a group’s social power, cultural capacity and symbolic or physical
presence, both as a threat in the present and as an anticipated, future threat.
The chapter has also sought briefly to elucidate the nature of the
violence in Guatemala, weaving insight from the empirical case study
representing the core of the book into the conceptual framework. The
proposition has been that genocide in Guatemala took place within a con-
text of armed conflict, but that this context only partially explains why
the violence developed as it did. Counterinsurgent operations transformed
into genocide in a context in which elite perceptions of the historically
constructed ‘indian threat’ against the primary political community were
acutely heightened as a consequence of the dynamics of armed conflict
and rebellion: racist ideology and beliefs did the rest. The following chap-
ter turns specifically to the question of rebellion and analyses the strategies
that individuals and communities may adopt in contexts of irregular war-
fare: how do individuals survive, what are the strategies available to them,
how do they interact with armed actors?

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NOTES
1. Judgement Against Ríos Montt (2013: folios 115–140; 698–699; 703–
704), cited in Kemp (2014).
2. See United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide.
3. See amongst others, Straus (2001, 2012, 2015), Midlarsky (2005),
Bloxham and Moses (2010), Schabas (2009), Jones (2010).
4. For example, Harff and Gurr (2009) have argued that the factors that may
precipitate genocide could include persisting cleavages amongst ethnic
groups; history of use of repression to maintain power; elites’ differential
rewards to groups for loyalty; recent political upheaval (revolution, war);
and exclusionary ideologies.
5. For example, Richard English defines terrorism as ‘heterogeneous violence
used or threatened with a political aim; it can involve a variety of acts, of
targets and of actors; it possesses an important psychological dimension,
producing terror or fear among a directly threatened group and also a
wider implied audience in the hope of maximising political communication
and achievement; it embodies the exerting and implementing of power,
and the attempted redressing of power relations; it represents a subspecies
of warfare, and as such it can form part of a wider campaign of violent and
non-violent attempts at political leverage’.
6. See Part X folio 699.
7. With regard to crimes against humanity, Montt was found guilty of sanction-
ing the interrogation of detainees under torture; looting of civilian property;
persecution of displaced persons; sweep operations to capture civilians; ser-
vitude and forced labour, amongst other acts (Kemp 2014: 138).
70 R. BRETT

8. According to Straus, ‘founding narratives are “Ideologies that identify a

specific category of people as the main population whose interests the state
promotes are the ideologies that are most prone to genocide… they tell a
fundamental story about the character and purpose of a state’ (2015: 2).
9. For a discussion on genocide restraints, see Straus (2015: 58–64).
10. Marco Aurelio Soto, “El Diario de Centro America”, 19 April 1892,
quoted in J.Dunkerley, Power in the Isthmus, Verso, 1988.
11. Editorial from La Hora, 19 February 1945, cited in C. Smith (1990).
Guatemalan Indians and the Nation State, 1540–1988. Austin: University
of Texas Press, page 151.
12. During the colonial period, ladinos were Mayan in biological heritage
(being of mixed Spanish and ‘indian’ blood), but were distinct from ‘indi-
ans’, who paid taxes (or tribute) to the Guatemalan state, were ‘wards of
the state’ and hence owed obligation to it (Smith 1990: 74). Ladinos were
not under any such obligation. Hence, whilst both ‘indians’ and ladinos
shared the same, or at least, a very similar economic and social status dur-
ing the colonial period, what made the ladino different was that not owing
obligations to the state, speaking Spanish and that not residing in ‘indian’
communities (ibid.). Smith clarifies her analysis, stating that there were, in
colonial Guatemala, two distinct types of ladino: the ‘peninsulares’ and the
‘creole’. Both groups shared Spanish descent; however, the peninsulares
were of direct Spanish descent, or those born in Spain, who held positions
in the colonial system. Creoles were those of mostly Spanish descent, born
in the Americas who lacked positions in the colonial system, but held local
power through a variety of mechanisms. Consequently, although both
groups were ‘United mainly by race, racial ideology and their shared rights
to “indian” labour, creoles and peninsulares were divided by the fact that
the latter held ultimate authority in the colony’ (Smith 1990: 75).
13. The research utilises Leader Maynard’s broad definition of ideology as ‘a
distinctive system of normative, semantic, and/or reputedly factual ideas,
typically shared by members of groups or societies, which underpins their
understandings of their political world and shapes their political behaviour’
(2014: 824).
 CHAPTER 3

Civilian Experience of Violence

in Civil War and Armed Conflict

This book focuses on the nature of political violence. However, of central

interest to the research presented here is the development of a framework
through which to understand the strategies that individuals and commu-
nities adopt in contexts of irregular warfare and genocide. In particular,
the central questions we seek to comprehend are how individuals survive,
what strategies are available to them in contexts of systematic political vio-
lence and how they interact with armed actors. Considerable scholarship
has been dedicated to understanding both the logic of counterinsurgent,
insurgent and paramilitary violence and the strategies that non-combat-
ants elaborate during civil war and armed conflict (Petersen 2001; Wood
2003; Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011). This chapter will be principally
conceptual, drawing on this scholarship in order to explore the debates
relative to how and why individuals collaborate with armed actors in con-
texts of irregular warfare and civil war, and engaging with the discussion
concerning the points of connection and disconnection between ideologi-
cal and everyday motivations for violent acts, what Kalyvas has referred to
as macro- and micro-levels of violence. Furthermore, as we know, the reb-
els were not the only armed actor operating in the indigenous highlands
with the aim of winning the hearts, minds and, ultimately, allegiance of the
indigenous population. The military did not unleash the genocide imme-
diately in the highlands, but had initially sought to gain civilian support
through diverse civil programmes, and comparatively low levels of selective
violence. When this strategy failed to work, the military began gradually to

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 71

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_3
72 R. BRETT

intensify the violence against indigenous communities, which culminated

in its mass killing campaign. A further integral component of the strategy
adopted by the military was the utilisation of paramilitaries (the so-called
PACs) throughout the highlands, particularly after 1981. Consequently,
in the Guatemala case, three military actors co-existed in the highlands,
and the indigenous population remained at the centre and bore the brunt
of the dynamics of violence that each actor orchestrated and that shaped
the relationship between them. Whilst the literature on the dynamics of
civil war/internal armed conflict offers important insight with respect to
the interaction between armed groups and the civilian population, it per-
haps falls short in one, evident way. Options for non-combatants in con-
texts of mass atrocity are not limited to the decision to collaborate with
one armed group or another, a discussion not abundantly evident within
this literature. It may indeed be the case that the options available to civil-
ians transform in contexts where a decision has been taken by the state or
another party to perpetrate genocide, and therefore where the objective of
an armed group is to eliminate the selected group rather than to win over
or prevent the defection of non-combatants to their adversary. Civilian
populations are not resigned exclusively to adopting the role of victim
or perpetrator, however. On the contrary, and as we shall see for the case
of Guatemala in later chapters, actors may also exercise their agency by
mobilising through networks in order to escape the violence, processes
that have been documented in other cases of mass atrocity and genocide,
such as the holocaust (Thalhammer et al. 2007; Andrieu et al. 2011) or
through co-existing strategically with violent actors (Kaplan 2013; Idler
and Forest 2015), a dynamic of less relevance for the Guatemala case.
Whilst focusing on the nature of elite-led inter-ethnic political violence
in Guatemala during the latter stages of the country’s internal armed con-
flict then, this book will document the role of non-combatants at com-
munity level in the Ixil and the Ixcán regions, the choices they made and
the strategies that they adopted, and how said dynamics shifted over time
and according to place. The chapter begins with an analysis of the logic of
violence and non-combatant strategies within the context of civil wars and
armed conflict. Initially we define our terms, leading to a discussion of the
problem of recruitment faced by insurgencies in contexts of rebellion. The
chapter then engages briefly with the debates relating to why and under
what conditions individuals choose to participate in and collaborate with
armed actors, a discussion of key relevance for the Guatemala case. The
chapter closes with a discussion of the dynamics of insurgent and counter-
insurgent violence, and its impact upon non-combatants.
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 73

UNDERSTANDING LOGICS OF VIOLENCE

Fearon defines civil war as ‘a violent conflict within a country fought by
organised groups that aim to take power at the centre or in a region, or
to change government policies’ (2005). For Kalyvas, ‘the conflicts that
are constitutive of civil wars can best be described as those related to the
effective breakdown of the monopoly of violence by way of an armed,
internal challenge. The armed contestation of sovereignty entails mutually
exclusive claims to authority that produce a situation of divided or dual
sovereignty’ (2006: 18; emphasis in the original). Hironaka (2005) would
add that, in a civil war, one of the contesting sides would be the state. Civil
war is a conflict between two sides, including state and non-state agents,
within the boundaries of a sovereign entity (Weinstein 2011: 16).
Kalyvas’ insight on the character of civil war is relevant for understand-
ing the nature of the political violence executed during Guatemala’s inter-
nal armed conflict. Kalyvas argues that civil wars manifest a series of key
features that distinguish them from other forms of political violence and
war. Civil wars are shaped by barbarism and intimacy, characteristics clearly
attributable to the Guatemala case, as we shall see. Political violence as it
is perpetrated within this context is particularly ‘atrocious or barbaric’,
reflecting the ‘disproportionate victimisation’ of and between civilians
who, in many cases, previously enjoyed closeness and proximity (2006:
11). Violence becomes brutal as a result of progressive social breakdown
that, in contexts of impunity, leads to a spiral of retaliation. In turn, break-
down imposes systematic exposure to violence, eliminates social control
and inhibitors and lowers the cost of violent acts. In this context, the com-
missioning of violence becomes increasingly more likely, and, significantly,
brings with it the ‘unlearning of peaceful skills and learning of violence’.
Finally, the cycle is reinforced as the perpetration of violence creates spoil-
ing actors interested in its perpetuation (2006: 55). Violence may be fur-
ther facilitated where projects of dehumanisation exist.
A further characteristic of civil wars is their ‘joint character’; relation-
ships defining such wars are complex and multidimensional. Interactions
typically take place between actors at national and local levels, and between
combatants and civilian populations. In particular, dynamics of asymmet-
ric information and local rivalries precipitate systematic and predictable
patterns of violence (2006: 11–24). Local politics, rivalries and political
economies play a crucial role in shaping political violence at local level,
evidencing a productive relationship between macro- and micro-level
violence, leading to ‘cumulative radicalisation’ (Kalyvas 2006; Finkel and
74 R. BRETT

Strauss 2012). As the research in the case study chapters evidences, as the
dynamics and logics of violence in Guatemala evolved, macro-level, inter-
ethnic killing orchestrated by the military precipitated micro-level, intra-
ethnic violence within indigenous communities. In turn, local-level politics
moulded the trajectory of the counterinsurgency. Not all community-level
violence was political, a point to which we shall subsequently return.
Interestingly, within the international normative framework, the term
‘civil war’ has no legal significance, as such, although it has generally
been adopted in practitioner, academic and media spheres to refer to
what is defined in Article 3, common to the Geneva Conventions as non-
international armed conflict, or internal armed conflict. The International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sees little or no difference between
these phenomena, and generally avoids using the term ‘civil war’, referring
instead to ‘conflicts of a non-international character’ or ‘internal’ armed
conflicts, mirroring the terms used in Common Article 3. The research
presented in this book will utilise the term internal armed conflict when
referring to the Guatemalan case, although the discussion developed
throughout the book refers to much of the literature on civil war and civil
war violence.
According to the ICRC, ‘Non-international armed conflicts are pro-
tracted armed confrontations occurring between governmental armed
forces and the forces of one or more armed groups, or between such groups
arising on the territory of a State [party to the Geneva Conventions].
The armed confrontation must reach a minimum level of intensity and
the parties involved in the conflict must show a minimum of organisation’
(2008: 5; emphasis added).1 The ICRC definition then reflects the vari-
able criteria set out in International Humanitarian Law that establishes
minimum conditions for a non-international or internal conflict (a civil
war, as Fearon would define it): the level of intensity of the conflict and
the level of organisation of the participating armed actors. As regards the
first variable, intensity of violence will be determined by and measured
through a series of agreed-upon indicators. Fearon, in referring to civil
war, for example, proposes that there must be at least 1000 deaths during
a period of ten years, and a minimum of 100 deaths on each opposing
side. The Correlates of War data set classifies civil wars as having over
1000 war-related casualties per year of conflict. In terms of the level of
organisation of the armed groups engaged in hostilities, this variable is
assessed by analysing factors including the existence of a chain of com-
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 75

mand, the capacity to transmit and enforce orders, the ability strategically
to plan and execute coordinated military operations, and the capacity to
recruit, train and equip fighters.
In the case of this research, as had been the case across Latin America,
during the internal armed conflict, the Guatemalan state clashed with
belligerents that, in 1982, became centrally organised with the estab-
lishment of the URNG.  Guatemala’s insurgent forces displayed charac-
teristics typical of guerrilla organisations elsewhere: the use of irregular
warfare by small, highly mobile units; tactics of assassination and sabotage,
rather than systematic direct confrontation with state forces; and, signifi-
cantly, the use of non-combatant civilian populations for support, includ-
ing material resources, shelter, supplies, intelligence and so on. (Moyano
1995; Weinstein 2011: 29). Whilst the tactics of the guerrilla evolved over
time as it became increasingly militarised, insight evidenced by Moyano
for the case of Argentina’s insurgency, of central strategic importance for
the EGP’s Prolonged Popular War was its indigenous social base. In this
respect, and as scholarship has evidenced for cases elsewhere (Wood 2003;
Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011), the civilian, indigenous population was
intrinsic to the trajectory followed by guerrilla warfare in Guatemala: to
its emergence, its consolidation and its brutal and abrupt cessation. The
civilian population represented the battleground upon which the conflict
was waged.

GUERRILLA ORGANISATIONS AND THE CHALLENGE

OF RECRUITMENT

The research presented in this book seeks to understand how patterns

of genocidal violence orchestrated within the context of internal armed
conflict affected the civilian population in two regions of Guatemala and
to analyse the strategies that the non-combatant population implemented
within this context. The question of how insurgent organisations recruit
civilian actors is not a question central to the book, nor was it addressed
closely during fieldwork, and has, moreover, been developed elsewhere
with the utmost rigour (Wood 2003; Weinstein 2011). Nevertheless,
given that the principal rationale undergirding the military’s decision to
execute its mass killing campaign was that indigenous support to the reb-
els was generalised throughout the highlands, an understanding of the
relationship between the guerrilla and its support base is indeed germane
76 R. BRETT

to the analysis of the instigation and subsequent evolution of the political

violence, as will become evident in the empirical chapters. In this respect,
what is central to the research is an analysis of the reasons why and the
conditions under which non-combatants decided to collaborate with the
rebels, when indeed they did so. The following section will briefly outline
some of the main lines of enquiry relative to the question of how rebel
organisations recruit their social base, before turning to the debate regard-
ing why and how civilians choose to collaborate with insurgencies.2
Weinstein has proposed that guerrilla organisations, in general, face five
principal challenges to their sustainability in relation to their civilian social
base: how to recruit new combatants; how to control/discipline combat-
ants; how to govern civilians; how to use violence effectively against them,
if at all; and how to demonstrate resilience in shifting circumstances such
that they are able to sustain a loyal support base. Weinstein correctly iden-
tifies the issue of recruitment as a key first step in the development and
subsequent potential consolidation of an insurgent group, a proposition
shared by other scholars who have sought to understand the puzzle of
recruitment. The fundamental question that has been addressed is how
recruits can effectively be attracted to take part in high-risk collective
action when the benefits of doing so are neither necessarily immediate nor
obvious (Popkin 1995; Wood 2003; Weinstein 2011).
According to Weinstein, a first strategy that may be operationalised is
that a guerrilla organisation offer selective incentives, at both communal
and individual level.3 In contexts where immediate economic benefits
to be offered to the civilian population are lacking, participation is thus
exchanged for the promise of benefits that would ameliorate the griev-
ances that the insurgency perceives the civilian population to be suffering,
or that the population has articulated as central to its daily experience.
Where an economic endowment does not exist then, or is indeed scarce,
social endowments become critical: ‘promises must substitute for immedi-
ate payoffs as rebel leaders anticipate the private rewards they will be able
to deliver at later points in the conflict. Such promises put a premium
on the credibility of the rebel leadership, and it is the presence of social
endowments that make rebel leaders’ promises of future rewards credible’
(2011: 101; emphasis added). In this regard, incentives will be future-
oriented, in that they will be fulfilled if and when the rebel group captures
power: public policies are promised for redressing injustices related to land
issues, equality, political participation, education, healthcare and so on. As
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 77

Weinstein argues, ‘rebellion offers potential recruits a pathway to a differ-

ent, and perhaps better, future’ (2011: 97).
However, two problems appear inherent herein. Firstly, rebel groups
may offer incentives based upon their perceptions of the grievances that the
civilian population suffers, a reading based, in turn, upon the insurgents’
own analysis of the objective conditions in which the population lives.
Insurgents will, of course, gather intelligence from and concerning the
populations they seek to incorporate into their ranks. However, given the,
at times, historical hubris and the self-justifying narratives through which
guerrilla organisations carry out their actions, accurate intelligence may
not guarantee restraint in those cases where the perceptions of the civil-
ian population differ to those of the rebels. As we shall see for the case of
Guatemala, in one of the regions where fieldwork was carried out, in the
Ixcán, the rebels’ reading of the objective conditions in which peasant
communities lived did not coincide with the civilian population’s own
perceptions of the conditions in which it lived. There was an information
and perception gap between the insurgents’ beliefs and the lived experi-
ences of and the perspectives expressed by the civilian population with
respect to their supposed grievances and suffering. In short, the guerrilla
got it wrong; the majority of the population of the Ixcán was far from
experiencing pre-revolutionary conditions. Consequently, the reception
from local communities that the EGP received as it sought to construe its
social base in the Ixcán was, at best, one of indifference, and, at worst, of
hostility. As we shall see, the initial rejection of the EGP by many Ixcán
communities led to a shift in strategy by the insurgency and an eventual,
although albeit temporary escalation in the violent acts to which it sub-
jected the non-combatant population as it sought to win its allegiance.
Secondly, and significantly, future-oriented incentives require the build-
ing of trust and confidence between civilians and rebels, to the degree to
which non-combatants come to believe that their initial, immediate sacri-
fice is likely, or at the very least offers a possibility to lead to longer-term
change. Insurgent groups would be liable to refrain from utilising violence
against non-combatants under these conditions, whilst simultaneously
elaborating strategies to maintain the confidence of their social base dur-
ing those critical moments when their military and political strength and
effectiveness would be likely to be severely weakened (Weinstein 2011).
Rebels will need to find some way of binding the relationship that they
enjoy with their social base such that, when they suffer strategic or military
defeats, or subject the population to acts of violence, their social base does
78 R. BRETT

not abandon them. For example, Wood (2003) and Weinstein (2011)
identify how, under these conditions, insurgent groups may strengthen
and guarantee incentives and trust through cooperation, shared expecta-
tions and beliefs and repeated interaction.
Weinstein (2011: 98–99) identifies what he sees as a second strategy of
guerrilla recruitment addressed in the scholarship as being the capacity of
insurgent leaders to activate and appeal to the beliefs and identities sus-
tained by non-combatant populations, be they ethnic, religious, cultural,
ideological or otherwise. Significantly, appeals to identity and beliefs may
ground the rebel group firmly within the ‘common practices, understand-
ings, and reference points… pre-existing networks or formal associations’
that bind communities together through the existing ‘cultural stuff’ that
acts to consolidate collective identity, as Clifford Geertz (1973) defined it.
Whilst appeals to identity were indeed central in the case of Guatemala—
the guerrilla’s social base was, after all, principally indigenous—the fact
that, at least initially, the insurgents were not indigenous in itself precip-
itated a series of challenges, as we shall see. Insurgents were perceived,
at least in the early stages of the uprising, as outsiders that did not share
the same cultural vision and historical experience as communities in the
Ixil and the Ixcán; moreover, outsiders were profoundly distrusted. These
factors pushed the guerrilla towards adopting a specific set of strategies
and discourses in order to gain the confidence and guarantee the participa-
tion of indigenous communities, which had differing effects according to
the region in which they were implemented.
Resource availability was restricted in the Guatemalan context—the
insurgents did not engage in the illegal drugs market or enjoy access to
the conflict minerals economy, as rebels have done in Colombia or Sierra
Leone, for example. Consequently, the EGP was unable to offer immedi-
ate economic benefits to its potential social base and thus saw itself obliged
to appeal to longer-term social endowments, and construct effective,
meaningful relationships and networks with and within indigenous com-
munities. Weinstein has argued that it is in such context, where participa-
tion is risky and immediate benefit scarce, that only profoundly committed
individuals (activist investors), as opposed to opportunists (consumers),
will participate directly in rebel politics (2011: 98–101). It is precisely
within this context that Weinstein identifies a potential third strategy of
rebel recruitment. This third strategy is one of emphasising that the act of
participation in the insurgency represents a reward in itself, an insight that
reflects Elizabeth Wood’s (2003) conclusion that, in El Salvador, many
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 79

individuals participated in the guerrilla because they felt it was the ‘right
thing to do’.
After this brief reflection upon the recruitment strategies of insurgent
groups, we now turn to the perspective of the civilian populations them-
selves, in short, we explore why it is that non-combatants collaborate with
insurgencies.

CIVILIAN COLLABORATION WITH INSURGENCIES:

SOME REFLECTIONS
Scholarship has documented the reasons why and the strategies through
which individuals and communities mobilise in support of insurgencies in
adverse and dangerous conditions, and, in particular, why civilian popula-
tions do so in those contexts where they have previously been quiescent
(Wood 2003; Weinstein 2011). Wood’s impressive volume, for example,
analyses how rural populations supported the FMLN in El Salvador, in a
context in which ‘Few of them had ever engaged in politics of any kind.
Just a decade earlier, the idea that they would write a chapter in the history
of their country would have seemed a cruel joke’ (2003: 5). Civilian popu-
lations, in general, and peasant populations, in particular, have been iden-
tified as instrumental to the survival of rebel insurgencies. This assertion
is of particular resonance to the case of the irregular wars waged in Latin
America, where ‘the lack of front lines’ systematically implicated both
rural and urban populations in armed conflict and violence, and made the
assertion of neutrality problematic, if not impossible. Civilian support has
also been acknowledged as crucial for the victory of incumbents (Kalyvas
2006: 87–92), signifying that non-combatant populations remain central
to the political and military strategies wielded by both state and non-state
armed organisations alike. In short, victory likely hinges upon the roles
that civilians ultimately adopt.
The nature of civilian participation is highly complex and context-
specific, characterised as it is by a series of diverse and, oftentimes, mutually
reinforcing roles: sympathising with insurgents; the provision of logisti-
cal and material support to rebels; active political support and militancy;
and direct participation in hostilities (Weinstein 2011: 97). Moreover, at
the core of our understanding of how and why civilians collaborate is the
question of whether, and if so, to what degree, participation is voluntary,
or rather, whether it is coerced, a point to which we shall subsequently
80 R. BRETT

return in the case studies. Petersen (2001: 8–9) has identified three levels
of support for insurgent forces: unarmed and unorganised opposition to
the regime; direct support for or participation in a local armed group;
and membership in a mobile, armed organisation.4 However, according
to Kalyvas, it is only a small minority of civilians that, in the final instance,
demonstrate profound commitment to insurgent organisations, whilst the
majority engages in ‘complex, ambiguous and shifting’ behaviour, moving
between toleration of, support for and resistance to armed actors (2006:
87).
Whilst the nature of collaboration, of the roles that individuals and
communities assume during armed conflict, is often multifaceted, the fac-
tors that motivate participation are similarly complex and heterogeneous.
Recent scholarship has distinguished between attitudinal support (prefer-
ences) and behavioural support (actions) (Kalyvas 2006: 87), a cogent
approach to the issue. Scholars have tended to identify multiple reasons
shaping motivation that may be categorised within this framework, includ-
ing from the perceptual perspective (preferences over outcomes, beliefs
about outcomes, the behaviour of others); the structural perspective (net-
works into which people are embedded, shared identity and values emanat-
ing from social identities and networks, security considerations); and the
emotional perspective (responses to anger, moral outrage and humiliation;
pleasure from participation; the acquisition of a new and more rewarding
individual identity). Individual gain and collective benefits are also sig-
nalled as key driving forces behind participation in armed groups, be they
access to public goods, access to material goods (e.g., land), protection
against violent acts perpetrated by either belligerent group, acquisition of
higher status and purely criminal motives, including sexual benefits and
illicit gains. The recruitment strategies of armed organisations may inten-
tionally seek to attract their target civilian populations with these goals in
mind; in short, armed groups may articulate said components as direct
incentives to participation (Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011).
Whilst scholars have been correct in identifying composite and diverse
factors as key drivers of civilian support for insurgency, the tendency
in much of the literature, for example, in Kalyvas, Stoll and Weinstein,
amongst others, to minimise the role of ideology as a motivating factor
for individuals and communities is perhaps, at best, overemphatic, and, at
worst, problematic. From the perspective of Kalyvas, the consolidation of
an insurgent group is determined less by ideology, and more intimately
linked to the dynamics of the conflict itself, as armed actors begin to assert
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 81

control over particular conflict zones and collaboration with them thus
becomes a credible option for civilians. Recruitment is often successful
after indiscriminate violence is carried out against civilians and/or success-
ful insurgent operations have been executed, a matter we shall discuss in
the empirical chapters (2006: 127). In this regard, Wood’s detailed volume
represents a necessary and welcome corrective. Wood argues that structural
preconditions are decisive for the emergence of collective and individual
mobilisation; in short, that local histories are conducive to mobilisation,
in so far as there is a history of violence perpetrated by state forces and,
historically, communities have experienced the presence of or proximity to
insurgency. Where said conditions were fulfilled, even in spite of high risk,
peasants participated in armed struggle for three principal reasons. Firstly,
participation was valued in itself, bringing with it a new sense of hope and
dignity. Secondly, peasants participated out of defiance, in particular, due
to the outrage they felt at government-sponsored violence: peasants had
thus encountered a sense of refusal to acquiesce and aspirations for a more
just order. Finally, peasants participated in the FMLN out of their pleasure
in expressing individual and collective agency. In this respect, mobilisation
brought with it ‘the experience of redrawing the boundaries and reshaping
history by subordinate people’ (2004: 211–213). All three of these factors
came as the consequence of the conflict itself; they were ‘endogenous to
the process of the civil war’, developing as the conflict set in (2004: 240).
The gradual emergence of a common set of beliefs and objectives shared
between the FMLN and its social base reflects at least the initial experience
of mobilisation in the Guatemala case, as McAllister (2010) has docu-
mented it, and as we shall see in the case study chapters. In both cases,
in the context of armed conflict, civilians became increasingly ascribed to
revolutionary ideology as a consequence of both the violence to which
they were subjected by the military, and, significantly, their increasingly
being convinced that the rebels best represented their short- and long-
term interests of survival and social transformation, respectively. As the
violence spiralled and the dynamics of conflict expanded, individuals and
communities found increasingly meaningful motivations for their partici-
pation in the conflict and consequently forged important links with guer-
rilla organisations. Of course, the violence wielded by belligerent groups
upon the social base of the opposing hostile group is likely to play a con-
siderable role in pushing civilians towards an armed actor, as both Kalyvas
(2006) and Stoll (1993) have evidenced. Guatemala was, in this regard,
not an exception. However, the observation that collaboration only
82 R. BRETT

emerges as a survival strategy or as a result of coercion, and has little rela-

tionship to the assertion of agency or popular sovereignty by subordinate
populations as they struggle to fulfil their aspirations—in short, that ideol-
ogy contributes nothing to mobilisation—should be treated with caution.
Moreover, acts of violence in themselves push civilians to reframe prefer-
ences and worldviews, in short, to assume or reject ideology. As Wood has
convincingly argued for the case of El Salvador, violence itself ‘allowed the
insurgency to frame the government as unjust, legitimating the choice to
rebel against the state … most civilian insurgents appeared to support the
guerrilla forces not out of an illusory desire for protection but out of their
deepening conviction that the government no longer merited their loyalty
or acquiescence’ (2003: 116–120; emphasis added). In this respect, and as
we shall see for the case of indigenous and non-indigenous peasants in the
Ixil and Ixcán regions of Guatemala, preferences and forms of collabora-
tion with armed groups may change over time as the conflict evolves and
as the perspectives of collaborators shift strategically. Motivations that had
little to do with ideological positions may transform, as conditions push
peasants towards wanting to be ‘part of the making of history’ (Wood
2003: 19); and, on the contrary, individuals who were once motivated by
ideological positions may alter their opinions, as the violence begins to
develop its own trajectory and weigh heavy upon human life.
The Guatemalan rebels did not wield an economic endowment
through which to attract their supporters. On the contrary, they were
obliged to develop a social endowment shaped by future-oriented poli-
cies and affective, meaningful strategies within indigenous and peasant
populations. Nevertheless, in general, the barriers to insurgent mobilisa-
tion across the country were low, and particularly so in the indigenous
highlands, characterised as they were by extreme poverty, socio-political
exclusion, an unresponsive and corrupt government, and the absence of
the rule of law and state control over vast swathes of territory. As Kalyvas
has proposed, it is under such conditions that the gradual consolidation of
insurgent control is likely to take place. Again, Guatemala, in this regard,
was not an exception (2006: 113). Within this context, and as the insur-
gency began to consolidate its social base, motivations for individual and
collective participation in the guerrilla evolved and transformed; ideology
took on meaning. The Guatemala case in this respect reflects the insight of
scholarship that posits that the reasons for collaboration with rebel groups
are likely to be multiple and to change over time (Wood 2003; Kalyvas
2006), processes that would impact upon rebel recruitment strategies.
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 83

Motivations for supporting, participating in and remaining part of armed

struggle evolve then, and will be endogenous to and profoundly shaped by
the violence itself: ‘Once the war is underway, war-related resources, such
as violence, tend to replace the provision of material and non-material
benefits, inducing individuals, for whom survival is important, to collabo-
rate less with the political actor they prefer and more with the political
actor they fear; in other words, the provision of benefits loses out gradu-
ally to the effective use of violence’ (2006: 114). The dynamics of violence
then forge new and reshape existing motivations for civilian participation
in armed groups, affecting the strategies that armed actors instrumentalise
and the benefits that they may be able to offer non-combatants, as we shall
see below. It is precisely to the question of violence that we now turn.

PATTERNS OF VIOLENCE
Political violence in Guatemala traversed four decades of armed conflict,
evolving as it did from a revolutionary uprising led by non-indigenous
military officers into genocide. Genocidal violence is group-selective and
group-destructive; its objective is to eliminate the identified group and
the threat that it allegedly represents to present and future generations.
Genocidal violence is thus both present- and future-oriented. However,
the genocide represented a single episode in the history of the country’s
armed conflict, albeit the gravest. Patterns of violence in Guatemala shifted
over time, and across geography, in their breadth, nature, target group
and intensity. Violent practices vary as the consequence of a series of fac-
tors, including the profile of political actors and their ideology, the organ-
isational structure of armed actors, the military culture that characterises
armed groups, the resources available to organisations, leadership strate-
gies, the challenges they face from armed adversaries and civilian actors,
the role of third parties, prevailing international norms, the availability of
military technology, geography and climate, the degree to which armed
groups receive support from civilians populations, and the dynamics of the
interactions between armed groups (Kalyvas 2006: 8).
The nature and actions of armed groups accordingly shift over time,
as Moyano has rigorously detailed for the case of Argentina’s guerrilla
after 1969. For Moyano, what began as a small, limited guerrilla force
gradually developed into a popular army of thousands, which itself became
increasingly militarised. As the guerrilla militarised, it increased the size of
its military units and introduced ranks, uniforms and a hierarchical struc-
84 R. BRETT

ture, at the same time as it transformed its military strategies, broadening

whom would be defined as the enemy, intensifying its use of violence and,
ultimately, glorifying armed struggle (1995: 2–7). In the first stages of
Argentina’s armed struggle, the guerrilla had carried out violent actions
against property and actions defined as a struggle for justice, what Moyano
defines as ‘Robin Hood’ tactics. However, it subsequently began to carry
out kidnappings for ransom, and ultimately diversified its violent activi-
ties, perpetrating assassinations and large-scale operations against military
bases. Consequently, as the military stepped up its campaign of violence
and repression, by the end of the 1970s political violence in Argentina
became widespread and systematic, utilised by a broad range of social
groups. At this stage, the previously sporadic and episodic violence trans-
formed into armed conflict, characterised by sustained campaigns of illegal
repression, ultimately culminating in dirty war (1995: 46–48).
As the guerrilla became increasingly militarised, it began to carry out
indiscriminate attacks against civilians and frontal attacks on the armed
forces. According to Moyano, the guerrilla’s intensification of its violent
campaigns and its disregard for public opinion transformed the relation-
ship that it had enjoyed with its support base. Consequently, individuals
and groups that had hitherto been profoundly sympathetic to the guer-
rilla began to denounce the violence and seek to distance themselves from
the insurgents, a process that also took place in Colombia with the shift
in strategies adopted by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC-EP) in the aftermath of the Cold War. Moyano argues that this
process was ‘partly responsible for the breakdown of democracy… pro-
voked and helped to legitimise extra-legal activity … and the establish-
ment of a highly repressive military regime that would become their
nemesis’ (1995: 3). This latter claim represents a somewhat sensitive
issue, given that it, in part, attributes responsibility for the state’s cam-
paign of terror to the insurgents. However, it is indeed a proposition of
relevance for the Guatemalan context, given that the guerrilla installed
itself in indigenous and peasant communities, which it was subsequently
unable to defend prior to and during the genocide, a theme that we shall
analyse in the case study chapters. Nevertheless, what is insightful about
Moyano’s conclusions is her recognition of how the dynamics of violence
shift during armed conflict and how the relationship that a guerrilla organ-
isation enjoys with the civilian population, elements of which may repre-
sent its support base, is itself subject to change as the dynamics of violence
transform. When a rebel group begins to subject civilians to violent acts,
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 85

implicates them in wider patterns of violence, or disregards their safety by

being unable or unwilling to protect them, its relationship with its support
base may indeed be affected, as we shall see for the case of Guatemala.
Weinstein has similarly indicated that a series of factors threaten the
structure, integrity and coherence of rebel groups, not least the shocks
and expectations that they must manage. In particular, an organisation will
have to learn to confront and respond effectively to loss or success in battle,
to challenges to or changes in their endowments, to changes in counter-
insurgency strategy and to the shifting nature of civilian support (2011:
262). The question of how a guerrilla organisation’s strategies shape its
relationship to its support base and how organisations respond to shift-
ing contexts, including changing counterinsurgency strategy and emerging
opportunity structures, is of central relevance to this study. In particular,
as Weinstein documents, what is critical to the relationship between rebels
and their support base is the degree to which rebels do or do not perpetrate
violence against civilians and the nature and impact of said violence. The
URNG was relatively restrained with respect to the subjection of its social
base or the civilian population more generally speaking to acts of violence.
From the perspective of Weinstein, the restrained levels of violence inher-
ent in the URNG’s strategies would be explained as a consequence of the
nature of the rebel group’s endowment and thus, accordingly, of its social
base. In the resource-poor environment of Guatemala, and with little out-
side support from third parties, the guerrilla was obliged to build social
endowments that, in turn, led to the construction of networks of high-
commitment activist participants, whilst developing internal mechanisms
of control to maintain the discipline of its combatants. Nevertheless, it is
probably also true that the relatively small guerrilla group had little military
capacity to carry out widespread attacks against civilian populations.
As Weinstein predicts, under these conditions, the Guatemalan rebels
employed ‘violence selectively and strategically’, perhaps to greater effect,
as we shall later discuss (2011: 6). Kalyvas engagingly addresses the ques-
tion of whether the use of selective violence is more effective than that
of indiscriminate violence during civil wars (2006: 145). Whilst indis-
criminate violence may be cheaper and require less information, selective
violence is ultimately more effective in civil wars, Kalyvas argues, where
territories are divided into zones where a group enjoys monopoly con-
trol of sovereignty (segmentation) and zones where sovereignty overlaps
(fragmentation). Key to the ability of an armed group to sustain control
within this context is its capacity to prevent individual- or community-level
86 R. BRETT

defections to its opponent. In those zones where groups possess incom-

plete control and thus contest sovereignty, zones which, according to
Kalyvas, are characterised by higher levels of political violence, the use of
selective violence will deter defections. In this regard, violence assumes a
function of control; again, and as Grandin (2010) argues, violence pos-
sesses a central function, is meaningful: ‘The prediction is that violence is
most likely to occur where one actor is near hegemonic, not where this
actor is in full control or is being contested’ (2006: 145). In such con-
texts, selective violence assumes profound relevance given that its effect is
likely ‘to convince a population that it is being monitored and sanctioned
effectively’ (2006: 190).
The nature of the violence in Guatemala was indeed highly complex. As
we shall see, the guerrilla principally employed selective violence against
informers and against those that refused to collaborate with it; violence
thus assumed the function of making examples of and punishing devi-
ant actors, whilst also seeking to deter others from collaborating with the
military. However, the violence employed by the military is far more com-
plex. The military initially instrumentalised low levels of selective violence.
When this did not yield results, and, on the contrary, it pushed individuals
towards the guerrilla, the military implemented collective violence, identi-
fying specific indigenous communities/populations as the internal enemy.
Military violence sought to destroy; yet it also sought to punish, to deter
and to terrorise. Violence was based upon extensive intelligence and was
planned, targeted and systematically orchestrated. Stoll (1993) has argued
that much of the counterinsurgency violence was indiscriminate. However,
even in those moments when entire villages were destroyed, it is likely that
military actions were based upon two mutually reinforcing propositions
framed through the threat–vulnerability nexus: inhabitants were indige-
nous and they were subversives. Massacres were principally perpetrated in
red zones, evidencing already a degree of selection.5 Whether this qualifies
as indiscriminate violence is indeed questionable. As Kalyvas has argued
for the case of ethnicity as a factor in civil war violence, ‘these identities
may convey (or be perceived as conveying) information about the likeli-
hood of one’s future behaviour… In such environments, no private infor-
mation is generally needed for violence to be selective’ (2006: 181).
A final issue of relevance to the empirical research presented in this
book relates to the dynamics of connection and disconnection between
micro-, local-level violence and macro-level violence perpetrated by exter-
nal actors in contexts of civil war. In his significant contribution to the
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 87

literature, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, Kalyvas (2006) marshals con-
siderable empirical data to support his argument that, as the dynamics of
civil war violence escalate, local conflicts become intrinsically linked to the
‘master cleavage’ of the civil war. As Kalyvas argues, ‘violence tends then
to be neither completely related to nor isolated from the main cause or
meta cause of the conflict… a mosaic of discrete miniwars… civil wars can
be understood as processes that provide a medium for a variety of griev-
ances to be realized within the space of the greater conflict, particularly
through violence’ (2006: 371). Within this framework, the violence per-
petrated during contexts of internal armed conflict is both driven by and
framed through the meta-cause of the conflict, as Fisas (2004) has defined
it, and yet isolated from it, as the violence is driven by locally and individu-
ally experienced grievances and issues. Local histories, social relations and
political dynamics matter and are thus key to the trajectory of armed con-
flict, as are local cleavages, be they ‘pre-existing’ or ‘war-induced’: ‘they
may align neatly with central cleavages, or subvert them’ (2006: 374).
For the case of Guatemala, as we shall see, in some instances, acts of
violence, in many cases precipitated by denunciations to armed actors by
local residents in the Ixil and the Ixcán, were caused by local grievances,
themselves articulated through the meta-cleavage of the war. The macro-
level, inter-ethnic political violence orchestrated by the military against
indigenous communities, the genocide, was accompanied and its impact
strengthened by micro-level, personally motivated acts of violence within
indigenous communities, as the broader conflict provided opportunities
for acts of personal benefit and revenge. The violence, in this regard, took
on a reciprocal character, as external actors used ‘civilians to collect infor-
mation and win the war’ and local actors used external actors ‘to settle
their own private conflicts’ (2006: 14). Whilst scholars have evidenced
this logic for the case of Guatemala (Warren 1998; Watanabe 1992), the
current research frames this dynamic within the context of the broader
process of genocide.

CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has sought to understand some of the key characteristics of
armed conflict, presenting a working definition of the term for the purpose
of this book. The chapter then addressed a series of issues central to the
logic of violence and non-combatant strategies within the context of armed
conflict with the aim of comprehending the strategic choices faced by civil-
88 R. BRETT

ian populations experiencing armed conflict. The chapter has argued that
insurgent groups face a series of key challenges in their recruitment of non-
combatants, and that the latter are likely to participate in insurgent politics
as the result of multiple motivating factors, as much linked to ideology as to
personal gain or self-preservation. The motivations of civilians for collabo-
rating with guerrilla groups or remaining within their ranks are also likely
to shift over time, as the conflict itself develops and hostilities escalate. The
chapter closed with a discussion concerning the dynamics of insurgent and
counterinsurgent violence. Referring to Kalyvas’ work, it is argued that the
violence that characterises internal armed conflict is executed to achieve
multiple goals and, significantly, is likely to be shaped by both the over-
arching, meta-cause of the conflict, and local grievances and conflicts. In
the Guatemala case, selective, future-oriented violence possessed a com-
municative function, seeking to terrorise, deter, punish and, ultimately, to
destroy. As we shall see, in the run-up to the genocide, in a context where
local communities were complex entities, not uniform and undifferenti-
ated, armed groups sought to persuade civilians to shift their support, to
accept their governance and sovereignty. However, in the latter stages of
the conflict, in light of its failure to win over the civilian population and
defeat the insurgency, the military assumed the strategic decision to elimi-
nate the civilian population, as it came to understand the wider implica-
tions of the perceived indigenous-subversive threat. Violence thus became
unilateral. In this perplexing and terrifying context, as political violence
became endemic and their communities were torn apart, the options for
non-combatant populations were acutely restricted. The logic of genocide
displaced the contestatory, mirroring dynamics of armed conflict.

REFERENCES
Andrieu, C., Gensburger, S., & Semelin, J. (2011). Resisting genocide: The multi-
ple forms of rescue. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kaplan, O., 2013. Nudging Armed Groups: How Civilians Transmit Norms of
Protection. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 2(3): 62.
Fearon, J. D. (2005). Primary commodity exports and civil war. Journal of Conflict
Resolution, 49(4), 483–507.
Finkel, E., & Straus, S. (2012). Macro, meso, and micro research on genocide:
Gains, shortcomings, and future areas of inquiry. Genocide Studies and
Prevention, 7(1), 56–67.
 CIVILIAN EXPERIENCE OF VIOLENCE IN CIVIL WAR AND ARMED CONFLICT 89

Fisas, V. (2004). Procesos de paz y negociación en conflictos armados. Barcelona:

Paidós.
Geertz, C. (1973). The ‘interpretation of Cultures’. New York: Perseus Books.
Goodwin, J., & Skocpol, T. (1989). Explaining revolutions in the contemporary
third world. Politics & Society, 17(4), 489–509.
Grandin, G. (2010). Muscling Latin America – The Pentagon has a new Monroe
Doctrine. The Nation.
Hironaka, A. (2005). Neverending wars: The international community, weak states,
and the perpetuation of civil war. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Idler, A., & Forest, J. (2015). Behavioral patterns among (violent) non-state
actors: A study of complementary governance. Stability: International Journal
of Security and Development, 4(1): 2, pp. 1–19.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). (2008). How is the term
“Armed Conflict” defined in international humanitarian law? Geneva:
International Committee of the Red Cross. https://www.icrc.org/eng/
assets/files/other/opinion-paper-armed-conflict.pdf. Accessed 21 Aug 2015.
Kalyvas, N. S. (2006). The logic of violence in civil war. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
McAllister, C. (2010). A headlong rush into the future: Violence and revolution
in a Guatemalan indigenous village. In G. Joseph & G. Grandin (Eds.), A cen-
tury of revolution: Insurgent and counterinsurgent violence during Latin
America’s long cold war. Durham: Duke University Press.
Moyano, M. J. (1995). Argentina’s lost patrol: Armed struggle, 1969–1979. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Petersen, R. (2001). Resistance and rebellion: Lessons from Eastern Europe.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Popkin, M.L., 1995. Civil Patrols and their Legacy: Overcoming Militarization
and Polarization in the Gutemalan Countryside. Washington DC: The Robert
F. Kennedy Centre for Human Rights.
Stoll, D. (1993). Between two armies: In the Ixil towns of Guatemala. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Thalhammer, K. E., O’Loughlin, P. L., Glazer, M. P., Glazer, P. M., McFarland,
S., Shepela, S., & Stoltzfus, N. (2007). Courageous resistance: The power of
ordinary people. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Watanabe, J.  M. (1992). Maya Saints and Souls in a changing world. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Weinstein, J. (2011). Inside rebellion: The politics of insurgent violence. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Wood, E.  J. (2003). Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
90 R. BRETT

NOTES
1. See https://www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/opinion-paper-armed-
conflict.pdf (Accessed 21/08/2015).
2. See Weinstein (2011) and Wood (2003) for a detailed analysis of the forms
through which insurgencies effect recruitment of civilian populations.
3. Citing Goodwin and Skocpol (1989), Weinstein argues that the selective
incentives thesis is now widely accepted, over and above ‘ideological conver-
sion in the abstract’ as the factor that plays the principal role in ‘solidifying
social support for guerrilla armies’ (2011: 97).
4. Cited in Weinstein (2011: 19).
5. Communities in Guatemala were classified as either: ‘Red’—those con-
trolled by the enemy; ‘Green’—those free of subversion; or ‘Pink’ and
‘Yellow’—those where an ambiguous degree of collaboration or control
existed. According to Kalyvas, the military committed most massacres in red
zones, where no distinction was made between the residents and the guer-
rillas: all those living in these zones were allegedly collaborators or
guerrillas.
 CHAPTER 4

The EGP: Insurgent Strategies

in the Ixcán and the Ixil

This chapter begins the analysis of the original empirical research on

political violence in Guatemala that represents the core of this book. The
chapter commences by introducing the two case study regions from the
department of El Quiché, the Ixcán and the Ixil, referring briefly to the
demographic and historical conditions that shaped political mobilisation
and violence in these regions. The discussion then turns to the origins
of the revolutionary movement in the Ixcán and the Ixil, presenting an
analysis of the strategies that the EGP implemented in order to construct
its support base. The chapter details how the EGP adapted the discourses
it articulated and the actions it carried out vis-á-vis the civilian popula-
tion according to each specific context. An understanding of the socio-
economic and political conditions and the origins of the insurgency in
each region, moreover, provides an important background context which
ultimately facilitates our comprehension of how and for which specific
reasons the conflict evolved as it did. Historical, socio-political, economic
and demographic conditions differed in the Ixcán and the Ixil, and these
elements in turn shaped the development of the armed conflict and the
responses of the civilian population to armed actors. However, as we shall
see, the final and most egregious act of the political violence, the geno-
cide, was carried out in both regions, despite these differences, a question
to which we shall subsequently return.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 91

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_4
92 R. BRETT

THE COLONISATION OF THE IXCÁN

I left my home in 1974 because of the injustices that we suffered where we
were living. In those days, when I was twelve years old, I worked a lot on the
estates on the southern coast… This was because my father didn’t have his
own land; so we had no choice but to work on the estates. My husband grew
up on the estate with his parents. We had our first child there, but when we
had our second child, we asked ourselves what we were doing on the estate;
we could see that all our work was for the benefit of the landowner, and we
had nothing left for ourselves.1

The above narrative is representative of the histories of many of the

current inhabitants of the Ixcán, a jungle region only populated during
the 1960s and 1970s. Internal migration towards the region, for example,
to Zona Reyna in the department of El Quiché, had begun at the begin-
ning of the twentieth century, and intensified when ethnic K’eqchís from
the department of Alta Verapaz gradually consolidated their presence in
the 1940s. Shortly afterwards, during the second half of the twentieth
century, due to a shortage of land and the failure of community proj-
ects across a wide spectrum of rural communities, both indigenous and
ladino, a wave of immigration to the Ixcán took place, specifically from
the departments of Huehuetenango and El Quiché, and some areas of the
Pacific coast. The colonisation of the Ixcán subsequently followed.
The Ixcán is in northern El Quiché, lying between the departments of
Alta Verapaz and the Petén to the east, divided by the Chixoy River, and
the department of Huehuetenango to the west, divided by the Ixcán River.
There were three main towns in the region before the current county town,
Playa Grande, was established in January 1985: Chajul and Uspantán to
the east (El Quiché), and Barillas to the west (Huehuetenango). To the
north is the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico, and to the south are
the mountain ranges of the Cuchumatanes and Chamá, at 3000 m above
sea level. As previously mentioned, prior to the 1970s there were no roads
to the Ixcán, making it one of the most inaccessible areas of Guatemala.
Today, the region is divided into two zones: between the rivers Ixcán
and Xalbal lies Ixcán Grande, which was populated towards the end of
the 1970s with the support of the Maryknoll Priests who arrived from
Huehuetenango. Between 1966 and 1969, Father Edward Doehny vis-
ited the Ixcán and in April 1966, accompanied by indigenous populations
from the Mam ethnic group (from Todos Santos), and a surveyor from
the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA). Subsequently
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 93

another group arrived from Ixtahuacán in Huehuetenango, and the first

communities were established, entitled Primer Centro and Segundo Centro
(First Centre and Second Centre). From 1966, members of the ethnic
groups Mam, Kanjob’al, Jakalteko and Chuj colonised plots of land with
an average size of 388 acres. Finally, cooperatives were created in the
area. Work was backbreaking, as populations cleared the jungle and made
the lands inhabitable. Between the Xalbal and Chixoy rivers lies the sec-
ond region, Ixcán Chiquito or Zona Reyna, which was populated dur-
ing the 1970s with the support of the Spanish Fathers from the diocese
of Santa Cruz del Quiché. In 1972, indigenous communities of K’iché
descent arrived in Zona Reyna, accompanied by the Spanish priest, Father
Luis Gurriarán from the parish of Santa Cruz del Quiché, where they
began to establish cooperatives. A North American priest, Father William
(Guillermo) Woods, accompanied campesinos during this period. Father
Woods possessed a Piper Cherokee aeroplane and a shortwave radio,
which helped to decrease the region’s isolation, particularly in emergency
situations, and would also subsequently facilitate the transportation of
agricultural products to the country’s internal markets. Cooperatives were
first set up in Primer and Segundo Centro, followed by Mayalán, Xalbal,
Pueblo Nuevo or Resurrección, Los Ángeles, Cuarto Pueblo and Santa
María Tzejá. Whilst each settlement had a town centre, with a marketplace
and the cooperative’s administrative offices, the inhabitants lived further
afield on their individual plots of land. Initially, only staple foods were
cultivated in the cooperatives, although subsequently, emphasis was placed
upon the commercialisation of agricultural products, such as coffee and
cardamom.
The campesinos received training in agriculture and healthcare, as
well in human rights and political and economic history. Furthermore,
the priests attempted to create a conceptual framework of shared values
within the communities, based on self-determination, social responsibility,
community cohesion and leadership. According to those who were inter-
viewed, a fundamental element of the priests’ work was to empower local
inhabitants to make their own decisions and define their own coopera-
tive policies. This process led to the consolidation of a shared worldview
and philosophy/political vision between inhabitants who were relatively
autonomous and economically stable. The level of politicisation and rela-
tive economic well-being of the peasants in the Ixcán subsequently influ-
enced the way in which they would receive the first groups of rebels that
arrived in the early 1970s, and experience the violence.
94 R. BRETT

The colonisation of the Ixcán coincided with the inauguration of a

state-led development plan, the Plan for the Northern Transversal Strip
Road, which began in 1970, during the government of General Carlos
Arana Osorio. The aim of the project was to connect the departments
of Izabal, Alta Verapaz, El Quiché and Huehuetenango along latitude
15′40° through the construction of a highway, the Northern Transversal
Strip (FTN), and an area of socio-economic development. The project’s
focal points were the exploitation of oil and the development of agribusi-
ness. The state’s strategic objective was to bring the northern region of
the country in line with the national economy, using a dependency-based
model of economic growth. At the same time, the INTA began to develop
agricultural projects within the FTN and sought to reorganise land dis-
tribution and the working patterns of campesinos. However, the colo-
nisation of the Ixcán was not contemplated as an integral component of
the development of the FTN and took place independently from it. Over
time, towards the mid-1970s, the INTA attempted to control the flow
and movement of migration towards the Ixcán by suspending the conces-
sion of land titles to campesinos through Decree 60–70.
The inauguration of the FTN project brought with it a process of
permanent militarisation in the Ixcán. During the first half of the 1970s
then, as the armed conflict commenced, the ever-increasing militarisation
of the area coincided with the colonisation process. Increasing military
presence and state intervention in the economy clashed with a population
seeking to consolidate a system of cooperatives, was structurally cohesive
and aware of its rights, and relatively economically independent and polit-
ically autonomous. The evident contradictions herein, to some extent,
increased tensions between the civilian population in the Ixcán and the
military. The escalation of the armed conflict after 1972 led to further
increased military presence through the imposition of a succession of
military detachments and bases, some of which were located within the
cooperatives themselves. Military Zone 22 was set up in Playa Grande in
1985, as well as the Development Centre of Playa Grande and a series of
‘model villages’.
Given its atypical history, the reaction of the Ixcán population to the
presence of armed actors differed to a degree from that in other parts of
the country. An important element of the Ixcan’s socio-political context
had been the population’s comparatively high level of political education
and its relative economic autonomy. Significantly, the farmers working
on the cooperatives had already developed a relatively higher standard of
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 95

living and previously severed ‘their dependency as migrant workers’ due

to the successful sale of their products (Manz 1989: 212). According to
Manz,

Politically, the cooperative organisation, which was later known as the fed-
eration of cooperatives, became an institution with independent power. The
combination of economic achievements and political unity gave them a new
insight into their own potential; however, this state of affairs was of particu-
lar concern to the national authorities (1989: 212).

The conditions enjoyed by campesinos in the Ixcán were highly idiosyn-

cratic. Due to the growth of local production, regional commercialisation
and the insertion of products grown in the cooperatives within the national
market—products were transported by Father Woods’ private aeroplane—
peasants were not obliged to work on the south coast as migrant workers,
as continued to occur in the Ixil region. Moreover, although a section of
the population was evangelist (which would increase in numbers during
the internal armed conflict), the majority of the colonists were Catholic,
and both indigenous and ladino peasants. The aforementioned factors
boosted social and economic mobilisation and political awareness within
the Ixcán and, as explained by Manz, precipitated a degree of distrust and
tension between cooperatives and religious leaders on the one hand, and
state authorities on the other.

THE IXIL REGION

The Ixil region is located in the north of El Quiché, a department in
the northwest of Guatemala, covering an area of 8.378  km2 and which
comprises twenty-one towns. Levels of socio-economic development in
El Quiché are acutely low; the towns and villages of the Ixil have histori-
cally been no exception to the severe poverty and underdevelopment in
the department. Furthermore, levels of public and private investment in
the area have historically been substantially inferior to national investment
levels, thus contributing to the problem of social-economic exclusion in
the region. The Ixil is situated to the northern most tip of the department,
between the Cuchumatanes Mountains and the Sierra de Chamá. The
region is bordered by three interconnected towns: Santa María Nebaj,
San Gaspar Chajul and San Juan Cotzal. The majority of the indigenous
population in the area belong to the Ixil ethnic group, which is part of the
96 R. BRETT

linguistic group ixil-awakateko-mam-tektiteko (Jiménez Ardón 1995: 4).

However, other ethnic groups also reside in the area, including predomi-
nantly the K’iché ethno-linguistic group; Q’eqchí and Q’anjob’al are also
spoken in the region.
As an intermediate region between the Petén, a vast jungle region, and
the highlands, the Ixil has historically been a key highland trading zone.
The region is of varied altitude and its diverse climate—warm, temperate,
mild, cold—has facilitated the production of a wide variety of crops. The
economy has been based historically on agriculture; ranchers and campesi-
nos (peasant farmers) mainly produce corn, kidney beans, pumpkin, cha-
yote and a variety of fruit. However, unequal land distribution has been
extremely severe in the Ixil; the majority of the land belongs to private
estates and there is not enough fertile land available to campesinos for
basic subsistence. As a result, most campesinos have been forced to supple-
ment their daily income by seasonally travelling to the southern (pacific)
coast to work on plantations. These demographic patterns were severely
affected by the internal armed conflict, which aggravated the economic
crisis that had already affected the country during the early 1970s. The
local population has also produced clothes, hats, rope, candles and tiles to
sell in local markets and to tourists who visit the region (IDIES 1999:10).
During interviews with local inhabitants, it emerged that many families
and communities had settled in the Ixil during the nineteenth century,
having arrived from other departments such as Tonicapán and Uspantán
in search of work and land. Other families arrived during the dictator-
ship of Jorge Ubico (1931–1944) and were forced to build roads and
infrastructure under forced labour laws. According to an inhabitant of
Vicalamá:

My family moved to the region in the 1930s. They had been forced to build
roads under the government of Jorge Ubico and after a few months they
hid in the mountains near Vicalamá, so that they would not be forced to
work for people who gave them nothing more than a little bit of food each
day. The women made cornbread for the men, but the truth is that there
was not much food to eat at all. And the work was backbreaking. A lot of
people decided to move to Salquil and when the women had babies, they
went alone to the town in order to register their births because if the men
went, they would be captured. That’s the reason why many people during
that time only had one surname. This is the sad story of our villages; a story
of the exploitation of the Ixil people.2
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 97

Between 1930 and 1960, rural areas of the country, including the Ixil,
were subject to an oppressive system of forced labour, initially enforced by
laws introduced under Ubico and administrated by a network of police and
local militias.3 After the fall of Ubico in 1944, the reformist governments
of Presidents Juan José Arévalo (1944–1952) and Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán
(1952–1954) implemented radical political and socio-economic reforms in
Guatemala, repealing the laws imposed under Ubico. Both administrations
implemented progressive reforms related to local governance, labour con-
ditions and agrarian issues. Furthermore, the government of Árbenz imple-
mented a programme of agrarian reform (Decree 900), which led to the
expropriation of land from the North American United Fruit Company,
amongst others, to be returned to indigenous and ladino peasant farmers
living in rural areas (Smith 1990: 264; Gleijeses 1991; Schlesinger et al.
2005). The reforms were short-lived and thus brought little structural relief
to the conditions of exclusion and extreme poverty suffered by Ixiles. In
1954, the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) orchestrated
a coup d’état to overthrow the democratically elected President Árbenz
and replace him with Guatemalan exile, Colonel Castillo Armas, who was
declared President of the Republic via a national referendum. Once the
counterrevolutionary, US-backed government came into power, the previ-
ous programmes of reform were overturned and reversed, and so-called
‘subversion’ was rooted out through government and military-led purges
that aimed to disarticulate the networks of support for Arbenz and the
reformists (Gleijeses 1991; Grandin 2004).
Over the next few years, the system of forced labour, which under-
girded the power and interests of largely ladino landowners and business-
men, was informally reinstated in the Ixil Region. As an ex-guerrilla in the
area explains,

Poor people, mainly the indigenous, were forced to work for the landowning
elites (patrones). First of all, the bosses paid them and said: ‘Hey, come and do
some work for me on my estate’ or ‘Help me out with this…’. These people had
no choice because even if they didn’t want to work for the patrones, they had
debts and if they didn’t pay them, they would be thrown out of their homes or
into jail. The patrones also gave them money to buy liquor and when they had
spent all the money, they would be at their service, indebted. We couldn’t live
that way forever because when people owed a lot of money, they had to leave
their land and entire families had nowhere to live. All this happened before the
revolutionary movement arrived and established conditions for it.4
98 R. BRETT

The Ixiles have been one of a wide range of ethno-linguistic groups

in Guatemala to maintain their customs and traditional beliefs in the face
of political and socio-economic pressures and violent oppression. Ixiles
have preserved their language, the use of traditional dress for men and
women, religious practices, important sacred areas, the administration of
their own justice system and the maintenance of separate socio-political
authorities (Colby and Van den Berghe 1969; Stoll 1993; IDIES 1999).
Nevertheless, although the interaction between ethnic groups (ladinos
and indigenous) was largely defined by relations of exploitation and socio-
economic and political exclusion, social relations within the Ixil region
prior to the internal armed conflict had been relatively harmonious, due
largely to the Ixiles’ ability to preserve their own culture (Colby and Van
den Berghe 1969; Stoll 1993). The political violence of the armed con-
flict, and fundamentally the genocide, however, acutely affected the status
quo within the Ixil region.
According to Le Bot (1997), an important characteristic of the 1960s
and 1970s had been the relatively high level of local development and edu-
cational mobilisation within the Ixil region, despite the aforementioned
socio-economic context. From the 1970s, the presence of the catechist
group, Catholic Action, in the area, and in other regions of El Quiché
and other rural departments more generally, contributed to widespread
religious conversion within the population, as well as to the introduction
of new socio-economic dynamics. Basing their teachings on liberation the-
ology, catechists also precipitated processes of political mobilisation that
accompanied the incipient educational development in the area, the build-
ing of infrastructure, an increase in local production and commercialisa-
tion and the creation of new local markets. The simultaneous development
of peasant movements and associations in the Ixil region, in particular,
and throughout the highlands, in general, strengthened this process. For
example, the establishment of the Committee of Peasant Unity (Comité
de Unidad Campesina, CUC) represented perhaps the most important
step in the process of peasant mobilisation and would gradually bring the
revolution to indigenous communities (McAllister 2010). The emergence
of markets, alongside a growth in educational development in the area,
precipitated a shift in indigenous consciousness that pushed communi-
ties to seek to break from existing social and labour relations (Le Bot
1997: 121–131). As McAllister has documented for the case of Chupol,
a strategically important town in the department of El Quiché, the 1970s
represented a key decade for indigenous mobilisation. In her words,
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 99

‘Green-revolution style agricultural cooperatives and associations, credit

and savings organisations, literacy initiatives, and programmes for training
community leaders, coupled with the Catholic Church’s renewed atten-
tion to its indigenous parishioners, had profoundly undermined the mate-
rial and symbolic bases of the quasi-caste system of racial stratification
previously operative in rural communities’ (2010: 279).
From the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, the ladino population con-
tinued to occupy and control positions of power in  local government.
An elite class of ladinos employed local militias to enforce exploitative
labour relations with the indigenous Ixil population. These conditions
were exacerbated by the systematic absence of the rule of the law. In fact,
with the exception of local authorities (mayors and deputy mayors), the
National Police Force and the Estate (Hacienda) Security Guards—who
were mainly employed to control the illegal production of alcohol—there
was very little state presence in the Ixil region during this period. In this
context, tensions within the population began to emerge due to the work
carried out by Catholic Action and peasant associations in the area that
had precipitated incipient socio-economic development and the begin-
nings of a process of politicisation, all of which partially threatened ladino
dominance in the area. In the words of a campesino from Nebaj:

Before the violence began, we didn’t see the armed forces here. We had
always seen the PMA [Mobile Military Police] but there was no army pres-
ence in the Ixil region. During the 1970s, after the guerrilla had carried
out its first political and military operations, the military began to arrive.
But at the time, we were totally confused. We didn’t know who they were,
whether they were the EGP or the National Army. It was only over time that
we began to distinguish between soldiers and guerrillas, depending on what
kind of boots they wore. We didn’t even know what kind of weapons the
soldiers and guerrillas had. We were shocked by these events; they shattered
the peace of our daily lives.5

Although the Ixil region was socially and economically linked to other
regions of the country prior to the 1970s, it was almost exclusively admin-
istrated by decentralised, local structures and authorities, thus remain-
ing relatively isolated from the rest of the country. Moreover, prior to
the armed conflict, as the citation illustrates, the state had enjoyed only
minimal presence in the area, through the PMA and the National Police
Force. The region’s historical isolation was irreversibly and brutally rup-
tured when the internal armed conflict broke out at the beginning of the
100 R. BRETT

1970s and particularly after the earthquake of 1976 (Le Bot 1997: 132).
An understanding of the Ixil’s political culture and local economy enables
us to contextualise some of the factors which contributed to the rapid
and brutal expansion of the armed conflict in the region, in contrast to
the process through which the conflict evolved in the Ixcán. Historically,
the Ixil had experienced low levels of socio-economic development and
high levels of embedded racism, juxtaposed to the indigenous popula-
tion’s strong sense of ethnic identity. Within this context, the 1960s and
1970s had seen an emergent level of political mobilisation, whilst the
social aspirations of the population were largely harnessed by the Catholic
Action movement and, subsequently, by the CUC.  The region repre-
sented, therefore, fertile ground for a revolutionary mass movement with
a Marxist–Leninist discourse, which would later incorporate a profoundly
ethnic dimension. Nevertheless, the trajectory of the internal armed con-
flict and its impact on the population can only fully be understood by ana-
lysing the political discourses and strategies of both the military and the
insurgents at national and regional level, in conjunction with an analysis of
the development of the armed conflict in the region, themes which will be
addressed in the subsequent chapters.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT

IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL

On 19 January 1972, the EGP crossed the border from México into the
jungle region of the Ixcán. The group’s leaders were survivors of the
armed uprising that had been defeated in eastern Guatemala in the 1960s,
and included Ricardo Ramírez (Rolando Morán) and Mario Payeras
(Benedicto). It was in the region of the Ixcán Grande cooperatives that the
insurgents aimed to establish themselves in order to carry out the initial
‘embedding’ or ‘insertion’ phase of their Prolonged Popular War. The
density and geography of this sparsely populated jungle, together with its
relative isolation from the rest of the country, offered natural protection
for the insurgents when they first crossed over into Guatemala (Payeras
1989: 259). During this period, the EGP focused its operations upon
the regions of the Ixcán and the Ixil, and subsequently the South Coast,
Guatemala City and Huehuetenango.
The EGP’s ideology and politico-military strategy differed from that of
previous revolutionary movements. The EGP strongly rejected foquismo,
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 101

a military and socio-political strategy adopted by Che Guevara, whose

failure had been brought to light by the Guatemalan guerrilla experience
of the 1960s. The EGP questioned the relevance of the previous opera-
tional revolutionary framework, particularly its dogmatic conception of
class, which had shaped the intellectual and political foundations of guer-
rilla groups such as the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) and the PGT. The EGP
increasingly observed that said groups had essentially isolated the indige-
nous population from their politico-military projects. In contrast, the EGP
regarded the inclusion and participation of the indigenous population as
a fundamental component of the popular struggle; the indigenous were
seen as a ‘special element’ and critical for the success of the revolution
(McAllister 2010). The movement thus sought to develop a new form of
armed struggle in which popular insurrection and mass indigenous par-
ticipation would play a key strategic role in the organisation and execution
of the armed uprising. The strategy of foquismo was therefore substituted
by the ‘Prolonged Popular War’ (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3, Chap. 4). It
was primarily for this reason that the EGP selected Guatemala’s western
highlands as the starting point for the revolutionary movement, a pre-
dominantly indigenous region that had historically been excluded from
the rest of the country. As McAllister documents for the strategic region
of Chupol, many indigenous populations initially organised through the
CUC would subsequently assume a vanguard position within the revo-
lutionary uprising. In this case, the EGP began effectively to address the
‘indian question’, building up a social endowment and establishing zones
of indigenous support, and ultimately convincing indigenous leaders that
the presence and momentum of the CUC within indigenous communi-
ties was systematic enough to evidence the population’s readiness for war
(2010: 280–283).
The EGP employed the Maoist concept of the ‘Prolonged Popular
War’ then, which required a prolonged period of preparation of the
masses, in this case, the indigenous population, in order to promote the
‘Generalisation of the Guerrilla War’. A key element of the EGP’s strategy
was the concept of ‘Frontism’, which included three phases of ‘Popular
War’:

1) The armed groups (clandestine squads) did not directly participate in

military actions; their role was to carry out reconnaissance missions in order
to assess the suitability of terrain and communities, and to guarantee the
guerrilla’s insertion into the area. 2) The main guerrilla groups were respon-
102 R. BRETT

sible for executing military and strategic operations. 3) The final phase, or
‘People’s War’, involved a popular uprising which would culminate in the
imposition of local authorities in liberated zones (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3).

The insurgency organised itself into fronts, regions, districts and locali-
ties, which were divided by a political and military structure. The fronts
were to be directed by the Front Leadership Structure and represented
gradually on a local level, for example, within a village or hamlet, by a
Clandestine Local Committee (CCL) and Local Irregular Forces (FIL).

THE EGP’S SUPPORT BASE

Prior to the initiation of the armed conflict, the guerrilla spent a signifi-
cant period of time preparing for combat, and, specifically, establishing its
support base. Although the guerrilla’s leaders and its intellectuals were
essentially middle-class ladinos, a fundamental aspect of their preparation
for war involved the incorporation of indigenous communities en masse
into the EGP’s ranks for the purpose of creating urban and rural fronts,
principally in the western and northwestern regions of the country. It was
perceived as strategically important that the EGP’s political cadres and
combatants serving in urban and rural fronts in the west and northwest of
the country were to be indigenous. As part of this strategy, the guerrilla
began clandestinely to visit villages, hamlets and towns in order to assess
whether the political, social and economic conditions were conducive to
the creation of a network of collaborators and the eventual formation
of political cadres within these communities. Understanding the socio-
political dynamics of each area, and gaining the trust of the local popula-
tion, was a complex task and, inevitably, a lengthy process.
Between 1972 and 1974 then, the EGP carried out systematic recon-
naissance in the highlands, including in the Ixcán and Ixil, with the objec-
tive of establishing a network of militants. During their initial tour of the
Ixil region, guerrillas arrived in San Juan Cotzal, where various sources
including Stoll (1993: 77) and the REMHI report (1998: 197–201) claim
that they were well received by the local population. Due to this positive
reception, the clandestine movement chose to construct a military camp
in the Xolchiché Mountains in 1973. However, it was considerably more
difficult for the guerrilla to gain the trust and support of the inhabitants of
Chajul and other communities in the vicinity. According to a former EGP
guerrilla from the region:
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 103

We began to visit the communities of the Ixil and Ixcán more frequently in
the mid-1970s. We didn’t visit all the villages, only those which were consid-
ered to be strategically important. Our visits were low-key, and initially we
just mingled with people. During the first few visits, we asked if it would be
possible to buy food, corn, tortillas. Sometimes they let us, and sometimes
they didn’t. We tried to build solid relationships with the local population,
to find trustworthy people and at the same time, to gain their trust. At first,
we didn’t talk about our work or the struggle.6

During this period, the military, all too aware of the guerrilla’s increas-
ing presence and capacity, began to patrol the area. Military patrols passed
through the communities, spreading word of the existence of a ‘guerrilla
movement’, although the majority of the population had little real idea of
what this meant. According to a campesino from Cuarto Pueblo:

During that time we didn’t receive visits from the guerrilla and we didn’t
know what the word ‘guerrilla’ meant. The army told us that the guerrilla
was on its way. The soldiers asked us if we were guerrillas, but we didn’t
understand the question. They said the guerrillas were going to kill us, steal
our meat and eat it. They asked us if we were communists, but we didn’t
know what ‘communist’ meant either. ‘They have bad ideas’, they told us.
But, as they arrived, we gradually realised that they weren’t bad ideas, in
fact, they were about defending our rights.7

The EGP continued to carry out considerable underground activity,

activity which varied in expression from village to village. Although the
guerrilla did not regularly visit these communities until the mid-1970s,
their initial presence created an atmosphere of fear and confusion amongst
the local population. The insurgents began to build camps in the jungle
area and to prepare their politico-military strategy, which included the
identification of ‘strategic’ villages. Consequently, in conjunction with
radio broadcasts, faint rumours and actual sightings of the insurgents, there
was an increasing awareness amongst the local populations of the presence
of ‘armed strangers’. A current resident of Pueblo Nuevo explained how:

The problems first began towards the end of 1972, on a Sunday, when we
left the house at five o’clock in the morning in order to get corn. I noticed
some unfamiliar people nearby, but I didn’t say anything. We saw strange
tracks on the path. We returned to the community the following day and
they told us that these people had come very close to the community, but
104 R. BRETT

without making a sound. We were scared, and immediately afterwards sol-

diers came to ask us about the strangers. But we didn’t know anything about
them at the time.

From the beginning of the 1970s, the military showed extreme distrust
towards peasant communities in those regions characterised by guerrilla
activity. Gradually, the military came to operate under the assumption
that all civilians were the natural allies of the insurrection, or at the very
least, that they represented fertile ground for insurgent ideology. During
the first few years of the 1970s, however, the army continually harassed
the inhabitants of Ixil and Ixcán, accusing them of collaborating with the
guerrilla. Nevertheless, with the exception of minor threats and harass-
ment, neither armed group carried out widespread violent actions against
the civilian population at this time. After 1973, guerrilla presence in the
region escalated, as the rebels began to consolidate their relationship with
the civilian population and visit their communities more often. According
to a former guerrilla from Nebaj, once the EGP had identified a series of
potential supporters, strategies would be intensified:

At first I approached friends or relatives. If they sympathised with what I

was saying, they would become trusted friends of mine. Then we would
speak to other people, and we would gradually gauge their reactions. We
would then chat with people in the town, and afterwards we would give
talks to the communities, knowing that we were planting the seed in fertile
ground. If a seed is planted in rich soil, it will grow well. But it takes time.
We lectured about poverty, hunger, and exploitation. We talked about sala-
ries, work, and people’s experiences. If people agreed with us, we would
then say, ‘look comrade, this is how things are; this is the only solution’.
Then people would start to hold meetings. They realised we were telling
the truth, they couldn’t deny it, and they understood what we were saying
because it reflected their own experiences.8

The EGP had several parallel objectives: to create a mass social base
within the indigenous population, to confront the army militarily, to con-
trol the region’s infrastructure and to destroy and control local political
authorities, reflecting the objectives of other guerrilla insurgencies else-
where (Moyano 1995; Weinstein 2011). The initial phase of the guerrilla’s
insurrection was focused on the realisation of its first objective and the
EGP only began to confront military and state authorities when its social
base was considered large enough to provide an effective level of logistical
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 105

support, and when it was considered that military operations of this kind
were sustainable. Within this framework, control of infrastructure played
an important role, as had been the case in Argentina. However, the devel-
opment of revolutionary, political cadres was central to the guerrilla’s strat-
egy of creating local political authorities, although this was also achieved
through acts of war. According to those interviewed, and to much of the
literature related to Guatemala’s armed conflict, the guerrilla frequently
sought to destroy local state authorities and impose its own leaders. This
was a long-term process as the EGP’s aim was to create local alternatives
to the Guatemalan state, particularly in communities where the insurgency
eventually enjoyed widespread support. However, during a first or second
visit to a community—as occurred in the villages of Vicalamá, Xix and
Ilom in the Ixil region—the guerrilla often burned prisons and deliber-
ately destroyed buildings belonging to local authorities. Symbolic acts of
this kind, which reaffirmed the weakness of local Guatemalan authorities,
were designed to gain sympathy and support for the guerrilla, although
the actual impact of the actions was often distinct, as we shall see.
Between 1974 and 1977, the EGP gradually consolidated its social
base, establishing a network of militants critical for its Prolonged Popular
War. In 1974, the guerrilla held its first conference in the region and the
revolutionary movement subsequently spread from the Ixcán to the Ixil
region, particularly to the towns of Nebaj and Chajul, where the guer-
rilla had initially experienced difficulties during its ‘insertion’ stage. As the
guerrilla’s clandestine force gradually increased in number, a support-base
and clandestine networks of militants were set up in town centres. During
this time, the EGP visited communities and cooperatives more frequently,
and intensified its anti-state discourse as a response to ever-increasing mili-
tary repression.
During the early years of the uprising, the insurgency’s raison d’être
was not fully understood by campesinos living in the Ixcán and the Ixil.
According to those interviewed, the sporadic visits of both armed groups
contributed to a generalised atmosphere of fear and confusion within the
villages. Whilst guerrilla groups demanded logistical support from the
local population and criticised the military, soldiers referred to guerrillas as
communists and cannibals, accusing civilians of belonging to the guerrilla
and supporting the insurrection—accusations which caused widespread
terror. However, central to the EGP’s strategy was the generation of trust
in the insurgency, a process that was not uncomplicated, particularly given
that many villagers felt coerced into attending meetings and feared the
106 R. BRETT

armed strangers. In this regard, the guerrilla sought to forge relationships

with and to build a social endowment within communities by expressing
ideas with which people could identify. The insurgents often asked to pur-
chase salt, tortillas, corn and occasionally livestock. These purchases both
ensured the guerrilla’s survival and served to win over the communities’
trust and lay the foundations for a sustained relationship with them. In fact,
it was often through the sale of local produce that the indigenous popula-
tion first encountered and communicated with the insurgency, exchanges
that came to represent the most common form of ‘collaboration’ during
the initial stages of the armed conflict. If the guerrilla received sufficient
support from individuals, families and occasionally entire communities,
they would gradually seek to establish more permanent structures within
the communities. In contrast, guerrillas did not prolong their stay in those
villages that were considered to be strategically unimportant.
It remains unclear the degree to which collaboration weighed more
heavily as forced or voluntary, a point to which we shall return later. Many
of those interviewed during research described how they initially attended
the guerrilla’s meetings out of fear or avoided them entirely because they
were scared of potential reprisals from the Armed Forces. A campesino
from Nebaj describes the dynamic:

In 1978 the guerrillas began to hold meetings against the people’s will in
our communities. Everyone was forced to attend the meetings and listen to
the guerrillas. The guerrillas said that they were fighting for a popular revo-
lutionary government that understood our hunger, suffering and exploita-
tion, and would bring about change. That’s why we had to join forces, the
guerrilla told us, in order to defeat the enemy. They said that for this reason
we needed leaders and support.9

Many inhabitants of the Ixcán chose similarly not to attend meetings

with the guerrilla, and lived in fear as a consequence. In many Ixcán vil-
lages, such as Pueblo Nuevo, collaboration with the guerrilla was obliga-
tory, at least up until 1978 and 1979. This dynamic gradually changed
as increasing levels of military violence forced the civilian population to
turn to the guerrilla for protection and support, as we shall see. Whilst
the guerrilla was relatively successful in recruiting civilians by appealing to
their basic needs and providing them with long-term incentives in the Ixil,
it would be the arbitrary and later systematic violence perpetrated by the
military that would serve to consolidate the EGP’s support base.
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 107

In many cases, the guerrilla remained at the periphery of communi-

ties, as observed in the case of the Ixcán. Rather than directly entering a
community and approaching its inhabitants, the guerrilla observed from a
distance before moving on. According to those interviewed, it was terrify-
ing to see armed strangers passing through their territory. However, on
occasion, the guerrilla chose to visit a given community in order to lecture
inhabitants publicly prior to the military’s arrival. The rebels would usu-
ally stay for an hour or so before returning to their encampments in the
mountains. These visits were designed to assess a community’s receptivity
to the insurgency, in order to determine whether it would be appropriate
to implement a long-term strategy within the community. According to a
campesino from the village of Xix:

At first no-one collaborated with the guerrilla. They did come by asking for
food, which they paid for. Sometimes we sold them hens. They always paid
us; we also sold them corn. That’s all there was to it. The army told us that
we were collaborating with the guerrilla, but you’ve got to ask what it means
to collaborate under these circumstances—we only sold them food because
we needed the money.10

According to those interviewed, the guerrilla earned a community’s

respect by paying for food; this was in marked contrast to soldiers, who
took food and livestock without permission and without offering any
money in return. In 1982, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor outlined its
strategy in the magazine Compañero:

If we only sent men to a town to buy goods, people didn’t trust us, but if
we went with women as well, they saw that women also played a role and
that they carried a weapons, just like men. We lectured the local population
about simple things, such as the way in which the organisation was expand-
ing and multiplying like corn. The women spoke to the women, and the
men spoke to the men (1982: 29).

The military, occasionally approached communities in both regions in

advance of the guerrilla, as occurred in Xix and San Francisco Javier in
the Ixil. Although the military accused these communities of belonging
to the guerrilla, most campesinos had little idea what this meant. Whilst
residents were aware of the role of the army, few had heard of the guer-
rilla, and, if so, usually only through radio broadcasts or word of mouth.
As confirmed by those interviewed, campesinos were generally confused
108 R. BRETT

by the army’s ubiquitous references to ‘communists’ and ‘guerrillas’. A

campesino from Xix explains:

We didn’t know what a guerrilla was, we had no idea. The first time the
army came here they asked us whether the guerrilla had passed through our
community. We told them that they hadn’t, and the army said, ‘They are
communists, they are going to steal your women, they are thieves’. They
scared us. Almost twenty days later, the guerrilla came through. They met
with all the members of the town administration and they wanted to know
what the army had told us. They said, ‘We’re not thieves, we’re not going
to steal your women, we are poor soldiers’. We thought that the army and
the government were exploiting people, and as workers, we understood the
reality of this because we went to work on the coast and they didn’t pay us.
So we knew that the guerrilla was telling the truth. But we didn’t side with
either the guerrilla or the army.11

CONTRASTS IN REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSE

The guerrilla took the strategic decision to initiate its armed struggle in
the cooperatives of the Ixcán due to the region’s perceived suitability for
the insertion stage of the revolutionary uprising. The Ixcán’s topography
was important given that the jungle provided natural cover and protection
for the insurgents. Poverty levels within the cooperatives of the Ixcán were
not as extreme or systematic as those in the Ixil and the population was
more ethnically diverse; whilst not all cooperative members were indig-
enous and, almost without exception, members enjoyed relative economic
stability, their relatives in other parts of the country remained extremely
poor. According to a former EGP combatant, ‘We assumed that the popu-
lation would be sympathetic to our ideology and objectives, given their
cooperative ethos. For this reason the strategy of insertion in the Ixcán
represented a key component for our military and political growth.’12
In theory, the cooperative ideology created fertile ground for the inser-
tion and acceptance of guerrilla groups in the Ixcán. However, the region’s
socio-economic development and its relative autonomy from the state
and conventional patterns of exploitative labour relations, combined with
the elevated level of politicisation and knowledge of human rights within
the cooperatives, were not conducive to mass collaboration. In this case, the
rebels were not able to base an effective recruitment strategy on discourses
that appealed to conditions of poverty, politico-ethnic marginalisation and
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 109

the exploitation of the population. The guerrilla consequently focused its

narrative on the historical marginalisation of the civilian population and the
weakness of the state, as opposed to issues of poverty and discrimination,
issues that would be well received in the Ixil given the structural conditions
of poverty and exclusion there. As a campesino from Santa Maria Tzejá,
Ixcán, explains it:

We had land, we had crops and life was not as hard as it had been. The truth
is that we were more comfortable than people living in other regions of the
country, including our own relatives. But the guerrilla told us that our rela-
tives no longer had any land. They told us that ‘the government is going
to take away your land, and you’ll lose everything you’ve worked for’. They
told us that the land belonged to us. They told us that although we had our
own land and produce, we should remember that we had worked on rich
people’s estates. And our families were still poor. The guerrilla told us that if
we joined them, things would be fairer, and that campesinos in other areas
would also be better off.13

The EGP’s political strategy in the Ixcán differed then from that employed
in the Ixil region, where poverty levels, socio-economic development and
demographic characteristics meant that the guerrilla’s discourse would fall
on more fertile ground. The rebels in the Ixil sought to win the population’s
sympathy and support by highlighting the economic and ethnic exploitation
of campesinos at the hands of local authorities, authorities that were racist
and treated the indigenous ‘as animals’. In the Ixil, initial conversations with
communities emphasised the insurgency’s imminent victorious revolution,
and the ways in which this would benefit the local population. According to
one campesino, the guerrilla told people, ‘We are going to liberate this coun-
try from the exploiters and make sure that everyone has land, clothes, homes,
electricity, running water and work.’ In an effort to build an enduring social
endowment, the insurgents claimed that the country’s liberation would
involve a short war, and that poor campesinos would be greatly rewarded:

They told us about the history of Nicaragua, about the war, and how the
rich people were always stealing from the poor, and how the guerrilla won
the war there. They told us that we had to learn to take care of ourselves,
and that they would help us. We began to trust them and we set up support
groups in our community. We learned on the job. And they said to us, ‘Look
guys, we have forces throughout Guatemala. We are going to win this war in
only 80 days because we are much bigger than the army. With your help, we
110 R. BRETT

can free this country and then we will give you helicopters and land. So you
have to organise your families, your neighbours’. And they taught us how
to use weapons and how to fight. They didn’t threaten us, and we weren’t
scared that the guerrilla would steal from us or kill us, whereas the army
always stole and killed people. So when the guerrilla told us that the soldiers
were ‘thieves and killed people’, we knew they were telling the truth. After
the massacres, people joined the guerrilla because of what the army had
done to them.14

As the conflict escalated and the military’s strategy evolved, turning

increasingly to more severe levels of repression, so the guerrilla adapted
its own political strategy, responding to escalating violence and massacres.
Increasing violence precipitated higher levels of recruitment into the guer-
rilla’s ranks or, at the very least, greater collaboration with the insurgency.
In this context, the discourse articulated in both regions became increas-
ingly similar. According to a campesino from the Ixcan:

In 1979 I saw the guerrilla on the borders of our community. It was around
this time that the guerrilla had begun to talk to us, although I wasn’t usually
there during community meetings. They told us that our only option was to
join their organisation. They spoke very respectfully to us, asking us to join
them. They told us that the military was killing and raping people, stealing
their homes and land, and it was true. That’s why they told us ‘you have to
organise yourselves, you must fight’. They said, ‘Remember what it was like
when you came here, there were no problems, but now look at the situation,
there are lots of problems—look at what the army is doing’. Some people
needed time to think, and the guerrilla said, ‘Think about it, and we’ll come
back another day, but at least we know each other now’.15

As the violence escalated, so support for the guerrilla increased.

According to a campesino from San José Río Negro, close to the town of
Cobán, Alta Verapaz:

The guerrillas were the first to arrive in our community, possibly in 1981.
They summoned us to a meeting in the community centre and told us that
we would soon be entering a period of violence. They told us to take care
of ourselves and to support them. They told us we would have little chance
of survival if we stayed in our communities. People were scared, and they
accepted what the guerrilla said. We all raised our hands in support because
we were terrified. Then the army came, and the soldiers knew that the guer-
rilla had visited our community. Nearly all the families left for San Marcos,
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 111

because they were very scared. The soldiers asked us what the guerrilla had
said and we told them that they had asked us for food. They asked us if
we were collaborating with the guerrilla and we said that we weren’t. The
soldiers told us not to give food to the guerrilla because it would put us in
danger. So after that, only a couple of families continued secretly to give
food to the guerrilla.16

After 1980, in the wake of several massacres, the guerrilla shifted its
discourse yet again, and sought directly to protect its support base. Rebels
advised people not to travel to town centres, explaining that in Nebaj, for
example, they would be killed by the Armed Forces. More often than not,
the guerrilla’s advice was correct: many males who travelled to Nebaj to
collect their obligatory military identification cards or run other errands
were either publicly executed or disappeared by the army, accused of being
guerrillas. Military strategy then created a catch-22 scenario: if the men
travelled to town, they risked execution, yet if they did not collect their
identification cards, they risked being identified and targeted as guerril-
las. As previously argued, it was virtually impossible to avoid being drawn
into the logic of war. Whilst meetings held by the guerrilla also placed the
civilian population at risk, interviewees stated how those who remained
in their villages were more likely to pledge their allegiance to the guerrilla
and shun any form of collaboration with the military. Whilst the guerrilla’s
advice did not represent a deliberate recruitment strategy, confinement
favoured the insurgents’ cause. According to one interviewee:

People were afraid of going to town and the guerrilla began to visit our
communities. The guerrilla told us, ‘The army committed a massacre in
Panzós, and in Cocop, so be very careful. If you go to town they will kill
you’. We didn’t know whether to stay or whether to go. We were in a really
difficult situation. The guerrilla also accused people of collaborating with
the army, so we were literally caught in the crossfire. Later on, in 1980, the
army began to cut down and burn our corn because they said that we were
allies of the guerrilla.17

THE CCL AND THE FIL

Guerrilla strategies led gradually to the consolidation of an extensive
network of support throughout the indigenous highlands. According to
those interviewed, from the end of the 1970s, approximately 40–50 % of
112 R. BRETT

the civilian population in the regions of the Ixil and the Ixcán collaborated
with the guerrilla. Dunkerley estimates that in 1979, the guerrilla itself
numbered between 6000 and 8000 combatants (1988: 483). According
to Schirmer, in the early 1980s, there were between 4000 and 6000 guer-
rilla combatants (1998; 41), while Black suggests that the number is lower;
approximately 3500 combatants during the same period (1984: 104). In
contrast, military sources present a higher number, between 6000 and
12,000 combatants (cited in Schirmer, ibid.).
Regardless of the specific numbers involved, the guerrilla’s strategy
of earning the trust of communities and consequently consolidating its
social endowment appeared to bring important results, results that were
heightened by the impact of military repression. The rebels consequently
embedded themselves in the Ixil and Ixcán, gradually increasing the size
of their social base dramatically. As the EGP’s political discourse evolved
in line with the intensification of the armed conflict, and as greater num-
bers of individuals and communities moved towards the rebels, so there
was a significant shift in the demands made upon the civilian population.
In addition to logistical support, the guerrilla began to demand informa-
tion regarding military logistical operations in the area. Providing such
intelligence inevitably placed the civilian population at a yet higher risk of
reprisals from the military. The guerrilla formalised its relationship with
communities, training civilians to form units to assist in the planning of
operations and surveillance activities, to develop early warning systems to
signal the army’s approach, to lay traps for soldiers and to prepare food for
the guerrilla when it carried out operations. Communities formed CCL
and FIL, institutions that played a key role in the insertion of alternative
power structures within peasant communities. Schirmer and Black sug-
gest that there were 10,000 FIL in the region, a figure shared by Gramajo
Morales (1995), although the REMHI report presents a lower figure—
approximately 6.000 FIL members (ODHAG, Vol. 3, 1998: 173). There
are, however, important differences in relation to the size of the EGP’s
estimated support base. Black states that in the Ixil region there were
almost 30,000 supporters of the EGP, while Schirmer suggests that 60,000
Ixiles supported the guerrilla. The reported breadth of the EGP’s social
base in Guatemala is indeed impressive: Gramajo Morales reports a total
of 260,000 EGP supporters across the country (1995: 154); REHMI sug-
gests that the number was closer to 276,000 people (Edición Internacional
1999: 172). The data provided by former members of the guerrilla inter-
viewed as part of this study is similar to that mentioned above: between
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 113

4000 and 6000 combatants; 10,000 members of the FIL in the Ixil region
alone, and a social base approximating 250,000 people.
In organisational terms, several CCLs formed a district, several dis-
tricts formed a region and several regions formed a guerrilla front. At its
peak, the EGP boasted a maximum of seven fronts. The CCL acted as the
guerrilla’s political cadres and were responsible for the communities’ and
the rebel’s ‘self-defence’. The CCL created a bridge between the civilian
population and the guerrilla’s armed forces. Each CCL was constituted
by approximately four people, all of whom were local community lead-
ers selected by the guerrilla. The CCL organised and trained the civilian
population and also recruited for the FIL. In addition, the CCL, together
with other collaborators within the community, provided guerrilla com-
batants with information regarding military operations in the area, repre-
senting a ubiquitous form of collaboration with the guerrilla. The CCL,
moreover, organised groups charged with searching for food and land
for the community and the guerrilla, particularly when hiding from the
Armed Forces in the mountains. According to Gramajo Morales, the CCL
formed part of a political, strategic and military structure designed to
undermine local authorities and local government, and to eliminate the
traditional hierarchy observed by the indigenous Maya (1995: 117–126).
Gramajo Morales claims that the CCL killed many people in both regions,
including campesinos and teachers, an assertion rejected by those inter-
viewed, who claimed ‘The CCL and FIL generally didn’t have weapons,
although during the most critical moments of the conflict, a few people
had very old and small weapons.’18
The FIL were constituted principally by unarmed campesinos and were
generally accountable to the CCL. The FIL were responsible for protect-
ing the community, tasked directly with sounding a horn to warn of the
army’s approach. After receiving basic training, the FIL laid traps for sol-
diers and made weapons out of wood. According to those interviewed, the
FIL were given basic military training by the guerrilla.19 Both the FIL and
CCL were responsible for defensive actions designed to hinder the army’s
activities, although, on occasion, they also played a more direct role in
hostilities. According to witnesses and to the CEH, the FIL participated
directly in certain guerrillas operations, although this was not their main
activity (CEH 1999a: Vol. 2: 1626). When this was the case, the FIL
accompanied the guerrilla in both local and wider operations, transport-
ing weapons, explosives and food, carrying out surveillance and reconnais-
sance to scope out the army’s presence and distributing EGP propaganda.
114 R. BRETT

Naturally, the level of collaboration with the guerrilla varied according to

community. For example, those interviewed in Xix, Nebaj, state that the
FIL were unarmed and did not usually participate in military operations,
whilst in Vicalamá, Nebaj, there was a period in which some FIL mem-
bers carried old shotguns. According to former soldiers and paramilitaries
who were interviewed, the FIL represented a serious threat to the Armed
Forces. Kobrak notes that the military perceived the FIL as ‘reserves’ or
‘replacements’ for the guerrilla (1990: 14). In the words of a campesino
from the Ixil:

The FIL supported the guerrilla, sometimes with weapons and certain activ-
ities. When a military operation took place, the FIL sometimes accompanied
the guerrilla. If someone was injured, the FIL took the person to some-
where where there was access to medicine. They also took weapons left by
the military to the guerrilla camps. The guerrilla trained the FIL to carry
out operations against the military, but not to kill soldiers. All the people
massacred in our town were civilians—elderly people, children, pregnant
women. Members of the FIL and CCL were also killed. They killed an
entire family belonging to the CCL, including women and children. They
killed people who gave and sold food, beans, corn and salt to the guerrilla.
All these people were unarmed.20

COLLABORATION: FORCED OR VOLUNTARY?

In some cases, interviewees were unequivocal that the guerrilla had forced
them to collaborate, especially during the first few years of the uprising,
when the insurgents were not yet embedded within communities and the
military had not yet begun the severe repression that ultimately pushed
non-combatants towards the guerrilla. As we shall see in the following
chapters, although the level of violence perpetrated by the rebels was rela-
tively restrained, the guerrilla resorted to threats, executions and assaults,
particularly against members of the civilian population accused of support-
ing the military or those that refused to collaborate.
Assuming that its ideology would resonate with the political vision of the
cooperatives, the EGP had calculated that it would be received openly in the
Ixcán. However, the cooperatives’ economic and political autonomy and
stability, and the power wielded by the Catholic Church in the Ixcán were
factors that generated an initial wall of contention around the possibility of
immediate collaboration. Within this context, the guerrilla was forced to
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 115

adapt its recruitment strategies. The rebels accordingly altered their discourse
and, most significantly, embarked upon a new course of action against the
civilian population, which included intimidation tactics and, in some cases,
acts of violence. Many of those interviewed in the Ixcán described how they
had lived under constant fear of the guerrilla. In fact, as we shall see in chap-
ter five, the civilian population in the Ixcán was subject to guerrilla violence
as early as 1975, in contrast to the Ixil. Whilst a high proportion of civilians
ultimately collaborated with the guerrilla in this region—perhaps more than
40 % of the population—it remains difficult to determine to what extent this
collaboration was voluntary. Whilst levels of support eventually increased,
perhaps the most important factor that ultimately pushed civilians towards
the guerrilla, however, was military violence.
Patterns of and motivations for collaboration with the guerrilla in the
Ixil differed to a certain degree: the general pattern appears to have been
more one of voluntary participation and receptivity to the guerrilla, given
the conditions that shaped daily life in the Ixil. However, some interview-
ees claimed that they constantly lived in fear of the guerrilla, particularly
once the violence began and the civilian self-defence patrols were formed.
Many of these individuals explained that they had had little choice but to
join the guerrilla because rumours had spread regarding how the insur-
gents had carried out massacres and reprisals against those who refused
to join its ranks. Another form of intimidation employed by the guerrilla
documented in the Ixil region was the manner in which the EGP forced
rural villages and hamlets to fly its flag. Although in some cases villagers
raised the flag voluntarily in order to demonstrate their strict allegiance to
the EGP, the rebels also raised their flag in specific villages against the will
of inhabitants, likely with the aim of instilling fear or to give the impression
that its support base was larger than it actually was. When local residents
removed the flag, they were subjected to physical violence and attacks. On
other occasions, the guerrilla would simply replace the flag. According
to Stoll, this activity evidences how the guerrilla played a ‘provocative
role’ in the Ixil, because, on various occasions, the military subsequently
attacked these villages and increased repressive measures against their resi-
dents (1994: 91). As more villagers collaborated, so military repression
was stepped up, pushing yet more indigenous communities towards the
EGP and precipitating the escalation of the cycle of political violence that
would have tragic consequences for the indigenous population. It is to the
strategic operational response of the military to the emerging insurgent
threat that we shall now turn.
116 R. BRETT

REFERENCES
Ball, P., P. Kobrak, and H. F. Spirer. (1999). State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–
1996: A Quantitative Assessment. American Association for the Advancement
of Science.
Black, G., Jamail, M., & Stoltz Chichilla, N. (1984). Garrison Guatemala.
New York: Monthly Review Press.
Colby, C., & Van Den Berghe, P. (1969). Ixil country. A plural society in highland
Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California.
Compañero. (1982). International magazine of Guatemala’s Guerrilla Army of
the Poor EGP. Solidarity Publications Magazine: GUATEMALA. p. 29.
Dunkerley, J. (1988). Power in the isthmus: A political history of modern Central
America. New York: Verso.
Gleijeses, P. (1991). Shattered hope: The Guatemalan revolution and the United
States, 1944–1954. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Gramajo Morales, H. A. (1995). De la Guerra a la Guerra: La Dificil Transición
Política en Guatemala. Guatemala: Fondo de Cultura Editorial.
Grandin, G. (2004). The last colonial massacre: Latin America in the Cold War.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Institutio de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales (IDIES). (1999). El system
juridico K’iche’: Una Aproximacion. Ed Juan de Dios Gonzalez. Guatemala:
Instituto de Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales.
Le Bot, Y. (1997). Subcomandant Marcos. El Sueno Zapatista. Barcelona: Plaza y
Janes.
Manz, B. (1989). Refugees of a hidden war: The aftermath of counterinsurgency in
Guatemala. Albany: SUNY Press.
McAllister, C. (2010). A headlong rush into the future: Violence and revolution
in a Guatemalan indigenous village. In G. Joseph & G. Grandin (Eds.), A cen-
tury of revolution: Insurgent and counterinsurgent violence during Latin
America’s long cold war. Durham: Duke University Press.
Moyano, M. J. (1995). Argentina’s lost patrol: Armed struggle, 1969–1979. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG).
(1998). Guatemala: Nunca Mas. Guatemala: ODHA.
Payeras, M. (1989). Los Dias de la Selva (8th ed.). Mexico City: Joan Boldoei
Climent Editores.
Schirmer, J. G. (1998). The Guatemalan military project: A violence called democ-
racy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Schlesinger, S., Kinzer, S., & Coatsworth, J.H. (2005). Bitter Fruit: The Story of
the American Coup in Guatemala, Revised and Expanded. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Stoll, D. (1993). Between two armies: In the Ixil towns of Guatemala. New York:
Columbia University Press.
 THE EGP: INSURGENT STRATEGIES IN THE IXCÁN AND THE IXIL 117

Smith, C.A. (1990). Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540-1988. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Weinstein, J. (2011). Inside rebellion: The politics of insurgent violence. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

NOTES
1. Interview with a campesino from Ixcán, September 2003.
2. Anonymous interview, April 2002, Nebaj, Quiché.
3. See Smith (1990) for a more detailed history of this period.
4. Anonymous interview, April 2002. Nebaj, Quiché.
5. Anonymous interview, May 2002.
6. Interview, Guatemala City, September 2003.
7. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
8. Anonymous interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
9. Interview, Guatemala City, October 2001.
10. Anonymous interview, Xix village, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
11. Anonymous interview, Xix village, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
12. Interview, Guatemala City, November 2003.
13. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
14. Anonymous interview, Vivitz, Chajul, Quiché, April 2002.
15. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, September 2003.
16. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
17. Anonymous interview. San Francisco Javier, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
18. Anonymous interview with an ex captain of the EGP in the Ixil Region,
Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
19. See also CEH (1999: Chapter II, paragraph 1622).
20. Anonymous interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
 CHAPTER 5

Brutality Unhinged:
The Counterinsurgent Response

Towards the end of the 1970s, the EGP had successfully begun to embed
itself within indigenous and peasant communities across the highland and
jungle regions of the country. The rebels had gradually construed their
social base through a combination of stealth tactics that forged shared ideo-
logical bonds and a collective identity of resistance, inadvertent providence
derived from the consequences of the military’s strategy of repression and
the guerrilla’s own consummate acts of violence that coerced campesinos
into collaborating. Despite its initial and unequivocally grave miscalculation
over the assumed innately insurrectional nature of the Ixcán cooperatives,
and its subsequent violent reaction to the civilian population’s reticence to
mobilise, the guerrilla went through a process of learning, in turn shifting
and adapting its discourse according to the diverse historical and contem-
poraneous conditions in which the non-combatant population lived. As a
consequence, at the turn of the decade, a robust bond developed between
the guerrilla and considerable elements of the civilian population across
the Ixcán and the Ixil, permitting the insurgency to generate an effective
social endowment through which to construct and sustain its long-term
support base. As the insurgents sculpted the conditions for their Prolonged
Popular War, and as Nicaragua fell to the Sandinista revolutionaries, so the
primary political community and its ever-loyal, yet increasingly uncontain-
able military guardian coincided in the perception that they were facing an
imminent threat from an insurgent-led peasant and indigenous rebellion.
Their worst fears appeared to have been realised: the demonic, ‘indian’

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 119

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_5
120 R. BRETT

subversive was emerging from the shadows of oppression to assume his

historical, revolutionary role within the guerrilla.1
The following chapter examines the evolution of the counterinsur-
gency strategy aimed at defeating the guerrilla during the government of
General Romeo Lucas García (1978–1982) and the de facto presidency
of General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983), a strategy that gradually
assumed a dual logic characterised by direct confrontation with the guer-
rilla and the destruction of the rebel’s social base through a campaign of
mass, organised killing.

THE CONTEXT
The guerrilla uprising in eastern Guatemala in the 1960s had failed to wield
significant immediate impact, and had been abruptly curtailed through
decisive and overwhelming military action, culminating in approximately
8000 deaths. Throughout the 1960s, as they gradually framed their poli-
cies within the National Security Doctrine (NSD), military governments
kept a strategic focus upon the east of the country as a means of preventing
further insurrection there. The operationalisation of the NSD contextual-
ised the struggle of the Guatemalan state within Latin America’s interna-
tionalised war against communism and provided the recognised discursive
rationale and juridical framework through which to eliminate legitimately
individuals and groups defined as the internal enemy. Bankrolled and con-
ceptualised by USA, the NSD was invoked to sanction military tactics,
including covert operations, assassinations of civilian politicians and dis-
appearances. From the mid-1960s, death squads emerged, for example,
the Mano Blanca, or the White Hand, operated as they were by extreme
right-wing politicians and military officials and financed by the private sec-
tor (Garrard-Brunett 2010).2
The military had begun its process of professionalisation in the decades
after independence, and had since become established as a key player in
maintaining the country’s political and economic status quo through its
defence of the oligarchic order, as had been the case in other Latin American
countries (Smith 1990; Koonings and Kruijt 1999). Nevertheless, as
Garrard-Burnett correctly asserts, in the context of increasing militarisa-
tion resulting from the armed conflict and as the FTN was implemented,
permitting a group of military officials to profit considerably from the
acquisition of land titles, the military consolidated itself institutionally
(2010: 44). Significantly, it was through this process that the military won
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 121

its relative political and economic autonomy from the landed oligarchy,
gradually transforming itself into a powerful economic and political actor
(Dunkerley 1988: 462; Dunkerley and Sieder 1996; Short 2007: 44).
Capital accumulation within the institution as a whole, and at the personal
level for high-ranking officials, was heightened through the establishment
of military-controlled enterprises, including the Banco del Ejército (Bank
of the Military) and in the real estate, insurance and manufacturing sec-
tors (Garrard-Brunett 2010: 43–45). Moreover, from the 1980s, the mili-
tary also profited through the illicit economy, principally drug-trafficking
linked to Colombian and Mexican cartels (Short 2007; López 2010).
Economic modernisation in Guatemala then was shaped not only by
emergent capital control by the militarised state within the context of the
FTN, but also, and significantly, by the increasingly intrusive role played
by the military. An insurgency that expressed its opposition to rapacious
capitalism through armed struggle, and indigenous and non-indigenous
peasant farmers alike, particularly those possessing the temerity to estab-
lish cooperatives or protest against the status quo, stood in the way of this
process.3 With the assumption to power of Lucas García, the stage was set
for the countdown to genocide.

THE FIRST COUNTERINSURGENCY

Following fraudulent elections, and with only 15 % of the registered vote,
General Romeo Lucas García came to power in 1978, amidst an acute eco-
nomic crisis. During the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, Central
America suffered a grave economic recession, characterised by capital
flight, spiralling inflation rates and other problems related to national
debt. In 1979, Guatemala experienced ‘the most severe economic and
political crisis’ of the century (Bulmer-Thomas 1995: 364; 372; 423).
The crisis was exacerbated by the lack of international support, and the
private sector’s lack of confidence in the country’s economy. As the guer-
rilla threat intensified and the rebels consolidated their social base, so
the Lucas government forged its poorly conceived strategy to define and
control the country’s ‘terms of history’, a struggle common across Latin
America. The counterrevolutionary struggle brought with it endemic vio-
lence aimed at consolidating state power, and integral to a nation and
state-building process (Koonings and Kruijt 1999).
From the beginning of his mandate, Lucas García faced a series of
simultaneous challenges, including the deepening economic crisis, relent-
122 R. BRETT

less political and military opponents from both extremes of the ideological
spectrum and the worsening security situation (Kemp, unpublished: 87;
Gramajo Morales 1995: 156). Despite the defeat of the first insurgency
in 1960, the revolutionary threat had been rekindled with the formation
of the EGP, and its subsequent increasingly public acts of defiance in the
indigenous highlands. With the establishment of the URNG in 1980,
and the consolidation of an insurgency with broader geographical reach,
pressure against the government intensified. Consequently, by the middle
of Lucas García’s term, the political crisis had escalated, in part due to
the government’s hapless counterinsurgency offensive between 1978 and
1980, which led many in the political establishment to question whether,
in fact, the URNG might possess the capacity to overthrow the state, as
the Sandinistas had done. A wave of mobilisation by trade union and peas-
ant movements throughout the country, the most visible face of which was
the CUC, increased the instability and the growing crisis in military rule
(Brett 2008). The increasingly effective insurrection deepened the state’s
vulnerability, in turn exacerbating the level of threat its elites perceived
themselves to be facing: the doomsday clock was ticking.
By the late 1970s, the EGP and another insurgent faction, the
Revolutionary Organisation of People in Arms (ORPA), had consolidated
their support bases within indigenous populations across the highland and
jungle regions. The rebels had claimed to represent these communities
politically, and to be acting militarily (and legitimately) on behalf of their
collective grievances and interests, as we have seen. As greater numbers of
indigenous communities came to support the guerrilla, so the insurgency
extended its social base. Civilian support represented the guerrilla’s greatest
strength, as communities served as a ‘protective screen’ for mobile guer-
rilla units, supplying them with food, shelter, intelligence and, at times,
logistical support during military operations (Valentino et al. 2004: 203).
However, this strength also represented the EGP’s most profound weak-
ness. Indigenous communities were isolated, ‘largely immobile and nearly
impossible to conceal’, permitting the military ‘easy access’ to them (2004:
198). Moreover, by implicating indigenous communities in the conflict,
and not possessing, at best, the military capacity or, at worst, the will to
defend them, the guerrilla would abandon the civilian population to the
mercy of the military’s ferocity. Within this context, and as urban areas
faced growing political mobilisation and increasing guerrilla presence, vio-
lence became ubiquitous; moving beyond a uniquely political phenom-
enon to affect all spheres of everyday life (Garrard-Brunett 2010: 85).
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 123

The country’s political crisis reached its peak as the military government
demonstrated itself to be incapable of elaborating and executing an effec-
tive counterinsurgency offensive. In the departments of El Quiché and
Huehuetenango, the guerrilla came to control entire zones. US diplomats
were ordered by their embassy not to travel further north along the Pan-
American Highway than the city of Antigua, Guatemala. Moreover, in this
context, the guerrilla soon came to achieve a series of important military
accomplishments, most notoriously the killing of fifty-seven military offi-
cers, including captains and lieutenants. As the political crisis worsened,
the Guatemalan military, political and business elite began to alienate the
Lucas administration, exacerbating the international isolation it was fac-
ing as a result of the condemnation by US President Carter’s government
of Guatemala’s human rights record.4 Increasingly, public violence and
urban terror, and the state’s disregard for international opinion, caused
Guatemala’s international image to deteriorate yet further, leading US
Congress to condition aid to the country on improvements in human
rights protection. The killings of high-profile politicians, such as Fuentes
Mohr and Colom Argueta, ‘decapitated’ the formal left-wing parties and
led to their radicalisation (Rosada-Granados 2011: 148).
Despite the private sector and landed oligarchy’s lack of confidence
in the Lucas regime, ‘a framework of structural dependence’ developed
between these sectors and the military (Rosada-Granados 2011: 147–
150). Within this context, the Lucas government scrambled desperately
to develop an effective response to the guerrilla and to win back legiti-
macy and political support from its national allies. A first tactic was to
extend the operational framework of the NSD, which had been applied in
the country since the early 1960s. The goal of this strategic shift was to
tighten control over civil and political society by imposing military ideol-
ogy and doctrine as the key organising principal of the state.5 The military
aimed to embed itself into the administrative, political and juridical foun-
dations of the state as the sole institution within the country (Schirmer
1998: 9), an objective that would ultimately be realised under the Montt
regime. Over the following years, a series of bureaucratic military struc-
tures were consolidated, serving key functions in the counterinsurgency,
including, specifically, the elimination of the guerrilla’s support base. The
Army Intelligence Directorate (D-2) and the Military Intelligence Section
(G-2) conducted extensive espionage operations and engaged directly in
the murder, torture and disappearance of ‘subversives’ (Schirmer 1998).
The Criminal Investigations Department, the PMA and, from 1982, the
124 R. BRETT

Army Section for Civilian Affairs (S-5) also assumed a central role in the
counterinsurgency.
The Lucas García regime represents one of the darkest chapters in
Guatemala’s history (Black et  al. 1984; Schirmer 1998; Sanford 2003).
Between 1979 and 1981, approximately 7000 murders, disappearances
and politically motivated kidnappings took place, as the national military
executed its counterinsurgency policy and death squads supported by
the private sector operated freely, particularly in urban areas. The mili-
tary deployed ferocious repression against all political opposition, includ-
ing political parties, social movements and trade unions, and focused its
bloody campaign unrelentingly against the CUC. State violence was most
visible in urban areas until, on 29 May 1978, the military perpetrated the
massacre of approximately 150 rural indigenous Maya K’ekchis in Panzós,
Alta Verapaz, in response to local political mobilisation.6 Whilst not form-
ing part of a centrally planned strategy, the Panzós massacre represented
the first instance of rural mass killing, a policy that would later become the
central tenet of the restructured counterinsurgency campaign.
With blatant disregard for national and international law, the Lucas
García government demonstrated the lengths to which it was willing to go
to silence opposition, when it stormed the Spanish Embassy on 31 January
1980, in the ‘defining event’ of the armed conflict (Arias 2007: 161). A
group of displaced K’iché’ and Ixil peasant farmers, some of whom had
links to the CUC, had occupied the embassy to protest against acts of vio-
lence carried out by the military in the department of El Quiché. Under
executive order, the armed forces attacked the Embassy, setting it on fire
and preventing those inside from exiting, an intentional act resulting in
the deaths of thirty-six people, including Embassy officials. According to
Guatemalan analyst and scholar Hector Rosada-Granados, the increasing
acts of state terror led to a clear dynamic, characterised by state repression,
precipitating radicalisation, which in turn would provoke further and yet
more brutal acts of state repression (2011: 144).

THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF MASS VIOLENCE

Until 1980, mass killings, homicides, disappearances and torture under
Lucas had principally represented a reactionary strategy. State terror served
a dual purpose ‘of physically eliminating some dissidents while dissuading
others from getting involved’ (Rothenberg 2012: 12). The Guatemala
case, as we have previously argued, evidences how state terrorism possesses
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 125

a productive and ordering function, as it seeks to dissuade, to spread fear

and to weaken, punish and eliminate enemies of the state. The Guatemala
case then contests the proposition that violence is irrational, lacks order,
rules and objectives.
In the months leading up to the summer of 1981, state-sponsored
political violence in urban areas spiralled out of control, as the regime fol-
lowed a kill strategy that sought to subject 100 % of political opponents
to fatal violence. In mid-1981, counterinsurgency operations intensified
during a six-week military campaign in Guatemala City, which precipitated
the escalation of violence in urban areas. In July and August, and with
the support of Argentine specialists in urban counterinsurgency strategy,
the Guatemalan military raided ‘safe houses’ belonging to the EGP and
ORPA in zones 15, 14 and 11 of Guatemala City. During the campaign,
the military killed fifty guerrillas and retrieved extensive intelligence on
guerrilla operations, as well as other war-related material including weap-
ons and ammunition. The campaign was directed by Benedicto Lucas
García, the President’s brother and Chief of the National Defence Staff
and General High Command (EMG) (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3, Chap. 3).
Intelligence gained during both the Guatemala City offensive and other
operations occurring simultaneously across the country led to a transfor-
mation in the dynamics of the counterinsurgency. Intelligence appeared
to evidence a massive level of support for the guerrilla in the indigenous
highlands, confirming the regime’s most acute fears. The military esti-
mated that the guerrilla was supported by between 100,000 and 250,000
individuals (Brett 2007). The guerrilla strategy of Prolonged Popular War
then had been effective across highland departments in constructing an
increasingly extensive and responsive social base. The EGP had generated
the political structures necessary for mass insurrection—the Clandestine
Local Committees (CCLs)—as well as armed local defence committees—
the FIL—and Mobile and Permanent Military Forces (UMP) (Dunkerley
1988; Brett 2007, Chap. 2). This state of affairs escalated the level of
threat perceived by the military, political and economic elites yet further,
and arguably pushed the military to reformulate its reactionary counter-
insurgency strategy into a policy of organised, mass killing. Facing the
escalating threat from the ‘indian-subversive’, the strategic decision taken
by the Lucas regime was to orchestrate genocide, to burn subversion out
of the highlands.
The organised killing campaign would be followed by the systematic
militarisation of the countryside principally through the imposition of
paramilitary civil defence patrols (PAC). In a decision that would have
126 R. BRETT

enormous consequences both for the trajectory of the violence and the
outcome of the armed conflict, the military operationalised and extended
yet further the framework of the NSD, identifying the indigenous popula-
tion as the internal enemy.7 According to Schirmer, ‘incapable of eradicat-
ing the root of the subversion, the military opted for acts of mass murder’
(1998: 41). As Garrard-Burnett observes, violence was perceived of as
offering a ‘final solution’: ‘The government’s repression of and intracta-
bility toward even the most modest challenges to the status quo pushed
moderate voices of reform from the political centre to the radical Left
by the mid-1970s. By the end of that decade, both the military and the
popular resistance, both armed and confident in the moral surety of their
respective causes, were poised for what both sides believed was a primal
battle for Guatemala’s political soul’ (2010: 24).
By September 1981, the guerrilla was at its zenith; present in sixteen
of the country’s then twenty-two departments and having attacked and
destroyed local buildings in fifty municipalities. Intelligence had allegedly
revealed that the guerrilla was on the point of declaring liberated territo-
ries in the departments of Huehuetenango and El Quiché and intended
to do the same in Chimaltenango, a highland department on the edge of
the capital city. Guerrilla strategy would then focus upon the southern
coast with the aim of and paralysing the agro-export industry and seek
to take the capital. The intensification of the guerrilla threat emerged at
a time when the Lucas regime appeared to be losing both its legitimacy
and its grip on political power. Within this context, the perception of an
increasingly possible guerrilla triumph over the state by a guerrilla sup-
ported widely by the indigenous population (the threat), increased the
likelihood that the state would resort to mass atrocities against (vulner-
able) indigenous communities: the threat-vulnerability nexus was in place.
Within this context, the escalation of state violence was justified as the
only means through which the primary political community could prevent
the toppling of yet another Central American domino: salvation would,
quite literally, be wrought through fire.

THE ‘SCORCHED EARTH’ STRATEGY

The large-scale rural military counteroffensive, the so-called ‘scorched
earth’ campaign, Operation Ashes, was officially launched on 1 October
1981 (Ball et al. 1999). The campaign was executed utilising a series of
mobile Task Forces, drawing strategically upon approximately 15,000
troops from broader military brigades. Publicly, of course, the logic of the
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 127

counterinsurgency was to save the country from communist threat. The

campaign was undergirded by a series of mutually reinforcing objectives:
to ‘separate and isolate the insurgents from the civilian population’; to
identify and subsequently pacify those zones of major guerrilla activity; to
prevent the development of subversion and to eliminate it where it already
existed. The military identified so-called Areas of Operation within which
Task Forces would operate, saturating the areas with ‘overwhelming
military force’ with the purpose of controlling the population (Schirmer
1998: 45–47).
Military actions aimed at ‘cleansing the areas of subversive activities’
were launched against military and non-military targets, ‘including the
guerrilla’s social base—indigenous communities’ (Kemp, pp.  86–89).
According to Taylor:

The scorched earth campaign was not the result of blind, impetuous rage,
but part of a calculated strategy pursued by the Armed Forces in order to
subjugate the civilian population […] the army’s subsequent destruction of
Guatemala’s social fabric was deliberate, systematic and ruthless. The aim was
to destroy the will or desire to resist, and to make a proud people manage-
able and submissive. (2002: 81–89; emphasis added)

The military urgently sought to regain those zones controlled by the

guerrilla in indigenous highland departments and to prevent further insur-
gent successes. Military strategy was undergirded by mass atrocities car-
ried out in rural communities aimed at eliminating the insurgency and
its supporters: ‘the army systematically attacked the civilian [indigenous]
population’ (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3, 201–211). According to Kemp, in
July 1981, some months before the killing campaign against the guerrilla
and its civilian support base began, President Lucas García stated, ‘When
we have exterminated this social stain, those criminals, we will be able to
advance more rapidly towards the collective common good.’8
The department of Chimaltenango, between Tecpán and Los
Encuentros, represented the starting point for the campaign executed ini-
tially by the Iximché Task Force, which was supervised directly by General
Benedicto Lucas García. With the objective of destroying the social base
of the Augusto César Sandino guerrilla front, which had been carrying
out operations in the area since July 1981, the Guatemalan Armed Forces
blockaded the Pan-American Highway and razed a series of nearby vil-
lages, where it carried out mass public killings and burned houses to the
ground. The FIL occasionally attempted to defend the civilian population,
128 R. BRETT

though it did so in neither a sustained nor coordinated manner. According

to the military, whilst plundering villages, it discovered traps laid for sol-
diers by the FIL and evidence of widespread collaboration between the
civilian population and the EGP.  From the perspective of the military,
these discoveries gave further impetus and legitimacy to the violence.
The severity and scale of massacres largely depended upon the extent
to which a given community was believed to be collaborating with the
insurgency. However, ample evidence exists to suggest that the armed
forces systematically destroyed communities and villages close to the Pan-
American Highway despite no provocation from the guerrilla or evidence
of its presence (Brett 2007). The Armed Forces deployed Task Forces and
five brigades, which brought together forces from the military zones of
Guatemala, Cobán, Salamá, Huehuetenango and army outposts in Santa
Cruz del Quiché and Santiago Atitlán (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3, Chap. 3).
The military offensive eventually covered an area of 4000  km2, affect-
ing thirty-six municipalities and three town centres in the departments of
Chimaltenango, Sololá and, subsequently, El Quiché and Sacatepéquez.
Given patterns of confrontation with the guerrilla and the nature of the
victims (predominantly indigenous civilians), it is clear that the military’s
strategic objective was to decimate the insurgency’s support base, the
internal enemy, rather than engage in a prolonged war against guerrilla
forces.9 According to the REMHI report:

Army incursions in the region increased and attacks were concentrated

against a defenceless population. Multiple witness accounts confirm that the
army showed no interest in pursuing or destroying what remained of the
guerrilla’s severely debilitated military forces, and indeed, hardly any con-
frontations took place. Instead, the army destroyed villages and crops, dis-
placing hundreds of thousands of campesinos, who were forced to struggle
for survival in the mountains. It was not long before the massacres began to
take place. (1998: Vol. 3, 111)

MILITARISATION
An integral component of the scorched earth campaign was to place the
population that survived the massacres under military control. The sheer
savagery of the counterinsurgency had enabled the Armed Forces to
gain control swiftly of targeted areas. Moreover, the sudden onslaught
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 129

of the violence had provoked widespread terror, and consequently the

populations of entire towns, villages and hamlets had been displaced to
the mountains. Given the conditions of overwhelming guerrilla presence
in many areas of the highlands, the military opted to reinforce its mass kill-
ing campaign with the establishment of an occupying army within its own
territory, aimed at preventing the surviving civilian population from sup-
porting the rebels (Rosada-Granados 2011: 160). The military thus took
the war to the rebels, mirroring the insurgency’s strategy to install itself
within civilian communities by creating a military infrastructure through-
out combat zones that sought to impede the expansion of subversive cells
and networks.
Within this context, after 1981, militarisation of the highland and jun-
gle regions was intensified. In order to achieve this goal, the regime com-
bined civic-military operations, reorganised special units and generated an
embedded institutional capacity for logistical and psychological response
to the guerrilla throughout the rural highlands (Rosada-Granados 2011:
160–163). The figure of the Military Commissioner was imposed through-
out the country, whilst Inter-Institutional Coordinators were appointed
to combat the impact of CCLs, working at community level to prevent
radicalisation. In an unprecedented and highly significant move, mirror-
ing the FILs, in 1980, the military established the first PAC, forcing all
surviving males between the ages of sixteen and sixty-five to participate.
PAC were designed to pacify and ‘protect’ indigenous communities from
the guerrilla, drawing the civilian population yet further into the conflict,
militarising rural communities and extending the reach of military intel-
ligence. At its zenith, over one million males participated in the PAC.
The imposition of the PAC meant that Guatemala’s conflict subse-
quently assumed a more complex, ‘multi-layered’ dimension, affecting
‘levels and patterns of violence against civilians’ and, arguably, the ‘duration
of the conflict … and the prospects for long-term post-conflict stability’
(Jentzsch et al. 2015: 756). To a certain degree, therefore, Guatemala’s
armed conflict reflects what Oppenheim, Steele, Vargas and Weintraub
define as a ‘multiparty’ conflict (2015: 795), as their emergence and con-
solidation transformed what had previously been the bilateral dynamic
between the state and the guerrilla, imposing a third, lethal actor at com-
munity level. Jentzsch et al. posit that paramilitaries may represent viable
and effectual counterinsurgency mechanisms given that they may provide
valuable local intelligence, can multiply the numbers of regular armed
forces and permit states to avoid being held accountable for human rights
130 R. BRETT

violations through ‘plausible deniability’ (2015: 759). However, in the

case of Guatemala, less than permitting the state to assume plausible deni-
ability—the government was unapologetic in its strategy of mass atrocities
under Lucas, and would be equally unrepentant under Montt—the PAC
were central in the strategy to control, militarise and divide indigenous
and peasant communities; to make patterns of violence ‘intimate’ and
implicate non-combatants irreversibly in the violence (Kalyvas 2006).
Occasionally armed with rifles, the PAC were forced to patrol daily in
search and destroy missions against guerrilla units. According to a former
PAC member,

At first, when we were out patrolling with the army, we walked ahead of
the soldiers in order to see if there were any guerrillas waiting in ambush.
But the guerrillas didn’t attack us because they knew that many of us were
collaborating with them, or that we were being forced to patrol. The army
realised what was going on and they changed the formation of the patrol.
Instead of patrolling in front of the soldiers, we had to walk in single file,
with one soldier followed by one patrol member and so on. In this way, we
were pure cannon fodder.10

PAC members were tasked with control and repression within their own
communities. Whilst the military claimed that participation was voluntary,
the majority of civilians were forcibly conscripted. Those that refused to
participate were accused of belonging to or collaborating with the guer-
rilla. Punishment for not patrolling ranged from threats and intimida-
tion of family members to extrajudicial execution (ODHAG 1998; CEH
1999). The presence of patrollers immediately exposed communities to
the violence of war and implicated them directly in atrocities, as members
were soon forced by the military to participate in massacres. The PAC
severely weakened a community’s social fabric, provoking ethnic, religious
and familial divisions and sowing seeds of distrust between and within
communities. In many cases, PAC commanders and members became
accustomed to their role, and began to abuse their position of power as
they sought material gain, political power and sexual gratification. PACs
began to play a central role in ‘the plundering of communities and … in
acts of destruction’ (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 2, 69). In certain cases then,
PACs evolved into brutal and well-oiled killing machines, perpetrating acts
of egregious intra-ethnic violence, as was the case in the massacre of Rio
Negro in 1982 and in several massacres in the Ixil region. The Guatemala
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 131

case evidences the proposition of Stathis Kalyvas that macro-level violence

plays into and shapes micro-level violence: ‘civil war violence often pri-
vatises politics. Insofar as it reflects local conflicts and personal disputes,
the intimate nature of violence in civil war can be seen as the dark face of
social capital’ (2006: 14). Not all violence perpetrated at community level
then was political or driven by ideological motivations, as individuals and
groups took advantage of the chaos of armed conflict to marshal material
benefits. Local cleavages soon came to shape and map onto the macro-
cleavage of the conflict.

THE IMPACT OF COUNTERINSURGENCY

STRATEGY UNDER LUCAS GARCÍA
By the first months of 1982, the counterinsurgency campaign in the west-
ern highlands succeeded in stabilising those zones of manifest guerrilla
influence and bringing specific regions under military control as a result
of the two-pronged strategy of mass killings and militarisation. These
achievements permitted the armed forces to assert a degree of military
supremacy. Whilst insurgent forces had not been entirely eradicated, the
military felt sufficiently confident to extend its killing campaign from the
western highlands to the northwest of the country, focusing subsequently
on the region of the Verapaces, where the insurgents had also crafted a
substantial social base. In addition to re-establishing military presence
in these areas, the campaign partially disarticulated guerrilla networks in
Guatemala City. As zones were neutralised, so the initial wave of mass
atrocities came to a temporary pause. The killing in Chimaltenango and
Sololá subsided first. As villages were ‘cleansed’ in Huehuetenango, El
Quiché and the Verapaces, so the massacres came to an end there and the
PAC were established. Lucas García’s campaign thus guaranteed the mili-
tary’s temporary strategic advantage over the guerrilla.
However, the EGP’s extensive presence across the country, combined
with its, as yet, undefeated military strategy, continued to represent a
threat to the established order. The first wave of massacres then achieved
only a minimal, provisional impact upon the rebels. In the wake of the
violence, as the military struggled to stabilise the western highlands, so
the EGP dug in, its military forces having evaded much of the direct vio-
lence: it had been civilians that had borne the brunt of the bloodletting.
The guerrilla’s bold protagonism was made yet more robust given that
132 R. BRETT

the massacres pushed indigenous communities further towards the guer-

rilla for protection, in turn extending and consolidating the insurgents’
social base. As Schirmer, has argued, the Lucas counterinsurgency strategy
ultimately ‘created far more resistance than it had destroyed’ (1998: 37).
In this context, the EGP’s extensive and growing presence across the
country came to represent a more immediate and genuine military and
political threat, even in spite of the campaign of mass atrocities. Significantly,
not only did the counterinsurgency strategy force communities towards
the guerrilla, the decisive and ferocious violence of the campaign was also
unable to unify the military and political establishment and led to further
fractures within it. Sectors within the military were disconcerted that the
counterinsurgency’s dependence upon largely unguided terror had neither
defeated the guerrilla in the short term, nor extinguished the root causes
of revolution in the long term. Furthermore, the extreme visibility of the
killings ‘allegedly generated a degree of contention within the political
establishment and the regime itself, as officials, at least in private, opposed
the sheer unguided brutality with which the regime acted’.11 The prob-
lem was not the violence as such, but rather, its desultory orientation. To
make matters worse, political and economic elites signalled the Lucas García
administration as corrupt and inept, as being concerned only with protect-
ing its own interests.12 Kemp argues that the regime was deeply corrupt and
self-serving; in this respect, the only strategy that the regime followed was
one of ‘The preservation of military, economic and political power benefit-
ing the High Command and its allies, through the intensification of coun-
terinsurgent operations’ (p. 86).

THE COUP D’ÉTAT

The rifts in the establishment gradually became irreconcilable, leading
powerful sectors within the military, political elite and private sector to
oppose the regime vehemently. Military officials openly criticised the inef-
fectual counterinsurgency campaign and rejected the political and eco-
nomic mismanagement by the government, whilst expressing doubts over
whether there was a strategy in place to guarantee the institution’s future
trajectory. Moreover, a sector of military officials felt excluded from the
material benefits of political power and corruption bestowed by the regime
upon its close allies. As any last vestiges of legitimacy and support for the
Lucas government dissipated, two groups emerged within the military,
the hardliners committed to the Lucas strategy, and the institutionalists,
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 133

officers more open to the possibility of constructing longer term, trans-

formative strategies within the institution, which Montt would allegedly
come to represent (Kemp, unpublished, pp. 156–166).
The failure of the Lucas administration to defeat the guerrilla had scaled
up the level of threat perceived by the primary political community, and
its armed arbiter, the military. Within this backdrop, on 23 March, 1982,
Lucas García was deposed through a military coup staged by high-ranking
institutionalist officers, allegedly precipitating the beginning of the
political transition, as the military orchestrated a process through which
gradually to return the country to civilian rule.13 The junta comprised of
General Efraín Ríos Montt, General Horacio Egberto Maldonado Schaad
(Commander of the Guard of Honour) and Colonel Fernando Gordillo
(former commander of the Brigades of Izabal and Quetzaltenango), linked
to the extreme right-wing party, the Movement of National Liberation
(MLN), and to the urban death squads. The junta declared it would con-
front corruption, strengthen the counterinsurgency offensive and mod-
ernise public administration, while generating greater confidence within
the private sector. Within two weeks, the Army Special Staff presented the
National Plan for Security and Development, a strategy that would inten-
sify and modify counterinsurgency strategy, ultimately institutionalising
guided and planned mass atrocities on an unprecedented level. The strat-
egy, which moved away from the unguided atrocities under Lucas, would
ultimately define the outcome of the conflict.
The junta had been in place for little over two months when Ríos
Montt declared himself de facto President of Guatemala, paying his two
associates a sum of $50,000 USD to resign from the junta (Black 1984:
124). The coup consolidated the military as the sole institutional power,
embedding counterinsurgency strategy across and militarising all aspects
of political, social and legal life. Given that urban violence had created a
climate of distrust and an overwhelming sense of calamity, the junta had
prioritised the reduction of political violence in urban centres, particu-
larly Guatemala City. Consequently, the change in regime precipitated an
immediate decrease in urban violence, as it sought, moreover, to project
internationally an image of respect of the rule of law and human rights
guarantees. Curiously, under Montt, a number of international conven-
tions were signed, including, in 1983, the United Nations Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. However, rural kill-
ings continued and the death toll from the policy of mass atrocities crafted
and initiated during the Lucas government would soon escalate. Within
134 R. BRETT

this context, the Reagan administration lifted the ban on military aid to
Guatemala, removing the country from its human rights ‘blacklist’ (Black
et al. 1984: 152–154). Reagan, in fact, boldly stated that Montt himself
had received a ‘bum rap’ from human rights organisations.
In April 1982, all media coverage of political violence was prohibited,
whilst the regime simultaneously ensured there would be no legal opposi-
tion to its strategies by banning trade unions and other associations. The
regime intensified rural militarisation, placing greater control over munic-
ipal mayors through Decree 9–82 and decreeing a state of emergency,
which formally suspended the Constitution and placed the judicial system
under the jurisdiction of Military Tribunals. In June, a nationwide amnesty
was offered for political crimes, giving insurgents thirty days to surrender
to the armed forces. Montt declared that once the amnesty were lifted,
the state would no longer be responsible for protecting the constitutional
rights of the guerrilla and its collaborators, particularly in highland depart-
ments controlled by the insurgency. The amnesty was largely unsuccessful,
leading to the surrender of only 1936 individuals. However, the amnesty
provided Montt with the ‘legal and moral justification for subsequently
storming communities where the guerrilla still operated or whose inhabit-
ants were resistant to government authority’ (Kobrak 1997: 21).

OPERATION VICTORY 82
In July 1982, with the amnesty over, the military inaugurated the most
intensive phase of the counterinsurgency campaign yet, with the launch of
Operation Victory 82, which involved the mobilisation of more than 60 %
of the Armed Forces (Schirmer 1998: 45). Designed by Montt and his
military strategists, the Plan sought the total elimination of armed subver-
sion and its roots, as well as of its so-called ‘parallel organisations’. The
Campaign proposed the implementation of three strategies: (i) the rescue
of the civilian population; (ii) the recovery of members of the FIL; and
(iii) the annihilation of the CCL and the UMP (Guatemalan Army 1982;
cited in ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3, 164).
Victory 82 provided the formal strategic framework for the annihilation
of the insurgency’s principally indigenous support base. The strategy iden-
tified the entire indigenous civilian population as the collective internal
enemy to be physically eliminated, what Valentino has termed ‘collective
punishment’ (2004: 201). The armed forces engaged in both regular and
irregular warfare and, with the support of a range of state institutions,
implemented sophisticated psychological operations as it sought to win the
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 135

‘hearts and minds’ of those that survived the holocaust. According to Juan
Francisco Soto, Director of the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action in
Guatemala, ‘Victory 82 stipulated that each military zone was mandated
with developing its own specific strategy, which would be reported to the
High Command and to Montt personally’.14 As part of the strategy, in
1982, the Department of Civil Affairs (S-5) was established, with special
divisions in each military zone tasked with indoctrinating ‘recuperated’
members of the population. Presaging US COIN in Iraq and Afghanistan,
S-5 staff included both soldiers with training in ‘social services, psycho-
logical techniques and ideological indoctrination’, as well as psychologists
and anthropologists (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 2, 83; Schirmer 1998).
On 1 July 1982, the massacres, characterised by their profoundly per-
formative acts of killing, commenced. Under the previous state of emer-
gency, the military had assumed the power to expand the armed forces by
enlisting former soldiers under the age of thirty and ordering the trans-
fer of military reservists to the regular armed forces.15 In the following
months, a second wave of massacres was carried out in the western and
north-western highlands in zones identified as representing an ongoing
guerrilla threat. The massacres extended the decimation began under
Lucas and burnt any remnant of subversion, perceived or otherwise, off
the face of the earth. A total of 660 villages were razed to the ground,16
in military operations executed by the newly created Task Forces, with the
support of reservists, strategists, paratroopers, Special Forces (Kaibiles),
the Guard of Honour and members of the Guatemalan Air Force.17 From
the middle of 1982, the military experimented with the inclusion of a low
number of indigenous recruits in its units; the majority of troops, how-
ever, were ladino.
The killing strategy ‘resulted in a centralised and highly coordinated
system of command for an intensification of the massacre campaign’
(Schirmer 1998: 46). Kemp argues that the Montt campaign demon-
strated two clear aspects of continuity with respect to the Lucas strategy:
the use of Task Forces and the identification of the indigenous population
as the internal enemy. However, the Montt strategy consolidated a series
of distinct focuses: (i) absolute control of the population in the wake of
operations; (ii) engagement with the supposed ideological roots of the
conflict, in particular through indoctrination programmes (Kemp p. 418–
20); and (iii) a shift in the 100 % kill strategy to 30 % ‘total kill’ and 70 %
‘soft pacification’ in the zones of conflict (Garrard-Burnett 2010: 87).
The latter dynamic was supported by the introduction of development
programmes and psychological operations. The shift in strategic planning
136 R. BRETT

was of key importance, differentiating the Montt counterinsurgency from

its predecessor, allegedly decreasing the incidence and operationalisation
of massacres (although actual kill numbers increased). In short, the Montt
strategy was so unequivocal in its brutality and focus that it precipitated
the beginning of the end to mass atrocities.
Simultaneously, the plan introduced a policy of ‘beans and bullets’,
through which the military was ordered ‘first to exterminate thousands
upon thousands of indigenous non-combatants in waves of terror and
then recoup any refugee-prisoners left over in order to ensure the perma-
nent destruction of the combatants’ infrastructure’ (Schirmer 1998: 45;
Garrard-Burnett 2010: 89). Sanford (2003) contests the proposition that
the number of massacres and massacre victims decreased under Montt,
arguing that the number of victims per massacre in fact increased from an
average of thirty-seven to forty-five victims; and an 18 % increase in the
number of victims per massacre. Sanford further disaggregates her analy-
sis, focusing upon massacres perpetrated during the final three months
under Lucas Garcia and the initial three months under Rios Montt, evi-
dencing a total of 775 victims and 1057 victims respectively (2003). It is
in this regard that scholars have identified an immediate spike in killing
under the Montt regime (see Annex One).
Elaborated from within the military high command, the meticulously
planned massacre campaign brought the ‘routinisation of terror’ (Green
1999: 60). The campaign was conceived to guarantee the ‘scientifically
precise’ and ‘intentional’ systematic annihilation of ‘subversive elements’,
employing such tactics as the burning of communities to the ground, the
perpetration of mass killings, typically on Sundays or holidays, when more
individuals would be present in targeted communities,18 mass public rape,
forced sterilisation and the destruction of food supplies (Schirmer 1998:
45; Sanford 2003; Brett 2007: Chap. 2; Valentino 2004: 214). Operations
intentionally targeted and destroyed ancestral ceremonial sites (Grandin
2004: 3; Brett 2007). In the wake of mass atrocities, once communities
had been ‘cleansed’, so came the imposition of military control.

FROM COLLECTIVE KILLING TO POPULATION CONTROL

In the aftermath of the massacres, the military constructed so-called
Development Poles nearby or upon the ashes of towns that had been razed,
in what would become a central component of the army’s ‘Action Plan for
Conflict Zones’. The PAC were intensified under Victory 82 (Manz 1989,
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 137

2004: 158). So-called ‘model villages’—a banal euphemism for what were
essentially concentration camps—were built with the objective of extend-
ing the reach of military and governmental control over potential sub-
versive elements and ‘integrating’ and indoctrinating indigenous people
to ‘conform to the dominant cultural mould’ (Hale 2004: 51). Forms
of mass pacification restricted population movement and transmitted ‘the
army’s nationalist discourse’ (Wilson 1995: 230). The concentration and
control of indigenous survivors became a fundamental tenet of the ‘beans
and bullets’ strategy: an attempt to win the hearts and minds of surviv-
ing indigenous populations through a ‘twisted vision of development as a
cover for counterinsurgency’ (Wilson 1995: 233).
The military-channelled resources to the villages through the Inter-
Agency Coordinating Committees, comprised of local representatives and
members of the military. In the wake of the violence, the programme was
designed to restructure the foundations of rural life with the objective of
guaranteeing and perpetuating military supremacy (ODHAG 1998: Vol.
2, 145). The army imposed a new form of social organisation upon the
rural population, a population still regarded as a potential support base for
the guerrilla.19 Indigenous survivors were obliged to inhabit the model vil-
lages, some of which boasted electricity and running water. As Rothenberg
has argued, the villages were shaped by a ‘developmentalist philosophy
that combined military action with [limited] economic growth activities’
(2012: 39). The villages were monitored through permanent military
presence and male residents were forced to join the PAC. Residents were
obliged to sign up for ‘civic work’ programmes, including ‘Roofs, Work
and Tortillas’, which involved rebuilding areas previously destroyed by
the military, and the construction of roads and bridges. The irony could
be lost upon no one: indigenous communities were forced to forge a new
beginning out of the ashes of their own suffering.
Over and above the strategic objective of control, an explicit goal of
the model villages was to erode indigenous culture, reinforcing the geno-
cidal impact of the mass atrocities. Indigenous communities residing in
the villages were prohibited from speaking their own languages (Spanish
was the lingua franca) or practising their ancestral religion and traditional
customs (Taylor 1998: 37). Subjugation to the military precipitated the
disappearance of indigenous authorities and ancestral mechanisms of con-
flict resolution, bringing a systematic rupture with mechanisms of com-
munal self-government, whilst sculpting the absolute militarisation of
civilian life. Carried out by the S-5, indoctrination programmes in the
138 R. BRETT

villages were designed to assimilate the indigenous into the predominant

ladino culture, through ‘a programme of ideological warfare…designed to
brainwash the population, with the explicit aim of eroding ethnic identity’
(Editorial Praxis 1988: 175). In this regard, the counterinsurgency aimed
to impose a new sociocultural identity upon the indigenous, as Hale has
termed it, to ‘whiten’ the nation, so engineering the construction of an
‘authorised’ or ‘permitted Indian’ (Hale 2004: 16). As the villages guar-
anteed that indigenous survivors depended upon the military (Dunkerley
1988: 496; Wilson 1995: 235; Editorial Praxis 1988: 197–216; Taylor
1998: 103), they simultaneously fostered intra-communal surveillance,
which further broke down social capital and destroyed the indigenous
worldview (Grandin 2004: 130). Ultimately then, the counterinsurgency
sought to destroy both the physical infrastructure of indigenous commu-
nities through the strategy of massacres, as well as those social relations
within them, through the model villages (Green 1999: 32), ultimately
colonising ‘the spaces, symbols, and social relations analysts believed to
be outside of state control’ (Grandin 2004: 129). As the political vio-
lence had been, so the strategy of population control itself was also future-
oriented, both components aimed at the physical destruction and social
death of the indigenous population: in Lemkin’s words, ‘the destruction
of the national pattern of the oppressed group’ and ‘the imposition of the
national pattern of the oppressor’ (1944: 79).

THE IMPACT OF THE COUNTERINSURGENCY

UNDER MONTT
By the final months of 1982, the killing campaign had ‘cleansed’ indig-
enous communities in the western and north-western highlands of the
subversive threat, permitting the military to quarantine the surviving pop-
ulation and isolate it from the insurgency. By August 1983, the massacres
all but ceased: the guerrilla had been strategically defeated, and any ves-
tiges of revolutionary mobilisation sought refuge in Mexico.
In an inverse replication of the insurgents’ strategy, the military had
successfully plotted a path wrought in blood and fire from the centre of
the country (in both geographical and political terms), towards its periph-
ery, decimating the rebels’ support base and thus neutralising the guerrilla
threat as it did. The insurgency, now confined to remote and inaccessible
zones, was brought to its knees and bereft of its social base; in this con-
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 139

text, the military brought in special forces from the jungle to carry out the
final acts of liquidation (Rosada-Granados 2011: 137–142). Due, in part,
to its operational breadth, systematic levels of organisation, unrelenting
callousness, and military experience and discipline, the Montt counter-
insurgency succeeded where Lucas had manifestly failed. However, the
guerrillas’ hubris, their military weakness and their strategic miscalcula-
tions played a role in precipitating the defeat. Despite being embedded
in isolated areas of the country and being logistically dependent upon the
Mexican border, the rebels overestimated their own capacity, at the same
time as they underestimated the military’s might and the sheer brutality of
what would be its strategic response. The guerrilla was, moreover, inad-
equately prepared with regard to its understanding of the complexities
shaping and internal divisions within indigenous communities (Rosada-
Granados 2011: 165). Unarmed, divided and ill-prepared for a far supe-
rior and unashamedly ruthless enemy, the insurgents’ social base was never
likely to afford the EGP with the historical agent of revolution that is
so urgently required. However, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it was the
military high command’s strategic decision to unleash the dark angels of
genocide that forged the Montt regime’s mortal blow to the revolution.
Despite the fact that the armed conflict was being waged in an histori-
cal context moulded by egregious racism against indigenous populations,
where the ‘indian’ had consistently been identified as a threat to modern
civilisation, and although morally repugnant and heinous state violence
against the indigenous had been continuously validated by the primary
political community, the guerrilla gave little credence to the weight of
the past. Of course, such analysis is straightforward to carry out in retro-
spect and from the comfort of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. However, the
fog of revolutionary fervour inevitably shrouded the guerrilla’s capacity to
anticipate the state’s response. Accordingly, some question must be raised
as regards the insurgency’s responsibility to its social base, even in spite
of the usual and comprehensible caveats. However, as Richard English
(2010) has so eloquently observed, it is more often the state’s response
to political violence by non-state actors, rather than weight of the latter’s
violent strategies that so often shape historical outcomes: Guatemala, in
this regard, was no exception.
With the onset of 1983, the military launched Plan Firmness 1983, a
continuation of Victory 1982, although with a strategic focus less emphat-
ically dependent upon mass atrocities and more upon the confinement
of the surviving population within Development Poles. As had been the
140 R. BRETT

case with Victory 82, Firmness 83 was signed by General Héctor Mario
López Fuentes, the Chief of the Army General Staff, the entity mandated
with the formulation of military policy and general strategy. However, as
Kemp has argued, both plans were ‘prepared, emitted and implemented’
under the orders of Montt, the General Commander of the Armed Forces,
under whose responsibility the Chief of the Army General Staff directly lay
(p. 728). The Plan’s objective was to consolidate military victory by aug-
menting physical and psychological control over the population, including
through the development programmes in model villages, and establishing
new military zones (Rosada-Granados 2011: 169–173).
As the killing campaign had imposed its arc-shaped path through the
country, from Chimaltenango near the capital city to the northern reaches
of El Quiché, the Petén and the Verapaces, it left a trail of blood and dev-
astation. The military advanced from one Operational Zone to another
and, as the specific situational guerrilla threat was neutralised, so there
began a disjunctive end to the massacres, the most immediate instrument
of the military’s genocidal counterinsurgency policy (Brett 2016). The
strategy logically affected different regions of the country in a differen-
tiated and sequential manner, according to their demographic context,
the antecedents of conflict therein and the velocity with which atrocities
achieved their objective.
For example, in March 1982, massacres had been initially perpetrated
in Chimaltenango. PACs and model villages were subsequently imposed
upon rural communities in the department, although the zone was only
neutralised by October, when the last vestiges of the killing campaign had
subsided. The dual strategy of massacres and population control forced
the EGP and another armed group, the Rebel Armed Forces, out of the
zone and into neighbouring El Quiché by November. However, the kill-
ing campaign under Montt had, in fact, begun in El Quiché as early as
April 1982: operations had commenced in the departmental capital, Santa
Cruz, and had gradually moved to the Ixil region in the north of the
department. Under Victory 82, massacres in the Ixil region of El Quiché
began in August 1982, consolidating the impact of the formal massacre
campaign that had begun in February 1982 during the Lucas regime.
Many strategic villages in Ixil, including San Francisco Javier and Vivitz
were massacred between August and September. However, as we shall see
in the following chapter, the military continued to carry out massacres and
other forms of political violence, whilst persecuting the displaced popula-
tion through bombing campaigns and ground operations.
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 141

With the guerrilla threat neutralised, its social base, along with the rest
of highland and jungle indigenous communities, devastated, on 8 August
1983, Montt himself was overthrown in a coup. According to most schol-
arship, Montt had become uncontrollable and had allegedly begun to
diverge from the military project. General Mejía Victores was subsequently
imposed as the president who would preside over the transition to return
Guatemala to civilian rule. There was initially little democratic substance
to the political transition. Rather, what prevailed was the continuation of
counterinsurgency strategy, characterised by the pacification of the civil-
ian population and the embedding of national security within a national
doctrine of civilian affairs (Schirmer 1998: 31–34). With the formulation
of the 1985 Constitution through a National Constituent Assembly which
met in 1984, and the eventual return to civilian rule in 1986 under the
presidency of Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo, the political transition shifted away
from the civilian-led politics of counterinsurgency, from an ‘authoritarian
transition’, towards ‘democratic transition’ (Jonas 2000: 105).
The genocide strategy had, at least in the short term, represented an
effective and successful policy decision through which to eliminate the
threat of revolution and impede the transformation of Guatemala’s oligar-
chic social order into a land ruled by subversives, ‘indians’ and primitives.
Whilst the violence precipitated the defeat of the guerrilla, it simultane-
ously devastated rural life in general, and indigenous communities, in par-
ticular, silencing the ‘indian-subversive’ and writing him out of history.
However, as Maya Angelou has suggested, ‘History, despite its wrenching
pain, cannot be unlived’; the forces unleashed by the genocide would
remain neither inevitable, nor hidden. Ashes, as we know, often represent
a locus of life, not only death.

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López, J. (2010). Guatemala’s crossroads: Democratization of violence and second

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NOTES
1. The four guerrilla factions unified on 19 January 1980, within the National
Guatemalan Revolutionary Unity (URNG). According to Garrard-Burnett,
the alliance had been encouraged by the Cuban government, which subse-
quently provided it with additional training and support, including auto-
matic weapons. The alliance mirrored the unification process undergone by
insurgent forces in El Salvador years previously (2010: 40).
2. See Garrard-Burnett’s monograph on the Montt years for an excellent anal-
ysis of the early years of the armed conflict.
3. According to Rosada-Granados, objective conditions in the 1970s intensi-
fied the causes of the armed conflict. Said conditions included overpopula-
tion; lack of land distribution; the adoption of new agricultural technologies;
the impact of external actors, such as the church, guerrillas, the state and
political parties, upon indigenous communities; the crisis in the peasant
economy; frustration with electoral frauds; and expropriation of land, par-
ticularly in Franca Transversal del Norte (2011: 137).
4. The embargo on military and economic aid to Guatemala remained in place
until the Reagan presidency in 1980. In this context, the Guatemalan Army
sought alternative sources of finance during this period, receiving aid and
arms from Switzerland (airplanes), Israel (Galil assault rifles and airplanes),
Belgium (arms), the former Yugoslavia (arms), Spain (mortars), Argentina
and Chile. Under Reagan, pilots belonging to the Guatemalan Air Force
were trained at the Bell Corporation in Fort Worth between January and
March 1982. It is alleged that Reagan approved secret military and eco-
nomic assistance until the prohibition was lifted in 1982. Shortly after Ríos
Montt came to power, the Reagan administration removed Guatemala from
its ‘black list’ of countries responsible for human rights violations (Black
et al. 1984: 119–130; Ball et al. 1999) Between 1980 and 1981, the Reagan
administration provided $10.5 million worth of Bell helicopters and $3.2
million worth of military terrestrial transport vehicles to the Guatemalan
military (Ball et  al. 1999). According to Schirmer, the CIA also covertly
provided the Guatemalan military with ‘technical assistance…special fire-
arms, and collaborative use of CIA-owned helicopters’ (1998: 170).
5. See Cardoso (1979) and Shelton and Carozza (2013) for an in-depth dis-
cussion on the theme of NSD.
6. See Sanford (2001) and Grandin (2004) for an eloquent and detailed dis-
cussion of the significance of the massacre of Panzós.
7. As Kemp has correctly observed, the DSN proposed that a ‘state may legiti-
mately employ military force against an ideological threat within the national
territory with the aim of protecting national security’ (p. 107).
 BRUTALITY UNHINGED: THE COUNTERINSURGENT RESPONSE 145

8. Lucas García, speech to the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Powers, 1

July 1981, cited in Kemp (unpublished document, p. 105).
9. See Schirmer (1998: 43) for a similar argument.
10. Anonymous interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
11. Interview, Juan Francisco Forno, Guatemala City, 10 June 2013.
12. See Mc Cleary (1997, 1999) and Kemp (unpublished document) for a
detailed analysis of the fragmentation within the establishment. Kemp
argues unequivocally that the regime was highly corrupt and self-serving, in
particular through its endorsement of Angel Anibal Guevara as presidential
candidate for the 1980s elections.
13. The military proposed that the transition began in 1982, with the assump-
tion of Montt, an approach shared by certain scholars (Schirmer 1998;
Jonas 2000). The perspective taken in this research is that the transition
began after the end of the killing campaign in 1983.
14. Interview, Guatemala City, 5 June 2013.
15. Kemp cites the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ estimation that,
in 1982, the Guatemalan Armed Forces was composed of 18,550 individu-
als. Schirmer estimates that during Ríos Montt’s regime, this was increased
to a total of 36,000 (p. 407). For the latter, military bases throughout the
country, including highland, central, northern and coastal Guatemala, were
utilised; the military was mandated to coordinate with the National Police.
16. These villages included Santa Anita las Canoas, San Francisco Javier, Plan de
Sánchez, Chipastor, Petanac, Vivitz, San Francisco Nentón, Rancho Bejuco,
Puente Alto, La Plazuela, Xeucalbitz, Sumal, Nebaj, Tzalbal, Palop, Río
Azul and Agua Fría (Brett 2007).
17. The officers belonging to the High Command or the Senior Campaign Staff
in the field included lieutenants, colonels, majors and captains. The com-
mander of each military zone was usually a colonel and received direct
orders from the military high command under the command of Montt.
18. The CEH documented a total of 626 cases of massacres committed by the
Guatemalan Army, security forces and paramilitary structures (1999: 46). In
this framework, the CEH estimates that between 70 % and 90 % of the com-
munities there were razed in the Ixil region (1999). The Ixil population was
reduced by 26 % as a result of the combination of massacres (5 %) and dis-
placement (21 %) (Brett 2015, forthcoming).
19. According to REMHI, between 50,000 and 60,000 indigenous peoples
populated the model villages in the Ixil region alone (ODHAG 1998: Vol.
2. 141).
 CHAPTER 6

War in the Rebel Heartlands

The previous chapter outlined the trajectory followed by the national

counterinsurgency campaign during the government of Lucas García and
the de facto presidency of Ríos Montt. Logically, military doctrine and
operational frameworks designed by the Military High Command shaped
conflict dynamics at local and regional levels in Guatemala. The following
chapter details the evolution of the armed conflict in the two case-study
regions of the Ixcán and the Ixil respectively during the Lucas and Montt
years. Based upon prolonged field research in both regions, the chapter
details the development of military and counterinsurgency strategy, focus-
ing, in particular, upon the changing nature of political violence and the
forms through which the civilian population became increasingly impli-
cated in the violence. The discussions of each respective region will close
with a detailed description of a specific massacre perpetrated there, as a
means of evidencing the systematic nature of the operative mechanisms of
the genocide.

THE IXCÁN

Insurgent Mobilisation
The relative economic stability and political autonomy of the Ixcán coop-
eratives, as we know, represented a significant challenge for the insur-
gency. Bereft of the possibility to offer significant economic benefits to the

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 147

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_6
148 R. BRETT

civilian population, the EGP had found itself obliged to forge a long-term
social endowment through which to construct its support base, appealing
to broader ideological and identity-based grievances. Given that the eth-
nic origins of the Ixcán’s population were diverse, and communities were
composed of both indigenous and ladino peasants, it was not feasible,
moreover, for the guerrilla to adopt a revolutionary discourse aimed exclu-
sively at the indigenous population. These conditions, combined with the
peasants’ generalised fear of unknown armed actors, meant that the rebels’
incursion into the Ixcán cooperatives at the beginning of the 1970s ini-
tially precipitated a hostile reaction, and that few people would collaborate
immediately with the guerrilla.
In general, living conditions in the Ixcán had begun to deteriorate
steadily after 1975, due largely to growing tensions in the zone of the
FTN and, significantly, an increase in arbitrary executions perpetrated
by the guerrilla as it sought to consolidate control over the region, in
turn provoking higher levels of military repression. Three years into the
insurgent campaign, sporadic communities began to collaborate with the
rebels, whilst elsewhere their strategies continued to cause disaffection.
According to one campesino, the guerrilla

Came and stole food and belongings. They showed us their weapons, say-
ing: ‘give us what we ask for or you’ll all die’. So we were in a really difficult
situation and each day it got worse. Guerrilla violence led to more military
repression in the Ixcán. There were those amongst us who didn’t want to
have anything to do with the guerrilla and so these people collaborated with
the army instead.1

As the guerrilla began to consolidate its presence, it was not long before
direct confrontations with the military took place. With the escalation of
the armed conflict, political violence became commonplace. According to
a campesino from Santa María Tzejá,

In 1976, the guerrilla started to harass soldiers who were based in towns
belonging to the cooperative. Consequently, the army reacted violently,
accusing those of us living in the community of collaborating with the
guerrilla and passing on sensitive information, even though many of
us had nothing to do with them. That’s how the violence came to our
community.2
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 149

Local dynamics profoundly influenced the course of the conflict in the

Ixcán; however, local manifestations of armed conflict and political vio-
lence remained closely linked to and shaped by the internal armed conflict
at the national level. In this regard, during the final years of the 1970s,
the Ixcán was itself affected by the generalised intensification of the coun-
terinsurgency campaign under Lucas García and became a central zone
of contention. State-sponsored political violence gradually spread from
Guatemala City to the rest of the country in response to the guerrilla’s
expansion and consolidation and its public announcement that it would
henceforth wage a generalised armed struggle against the state. Towards
the end of the 1970s then, political violence against the civilian population
by both armed groups came to shape daily life across the Ixcán, whilst lev-
els of confinement of the non-combatant population increased. According
to one peasant leader, gradually ‘it became almost impossible to travel
without putting ourselves in danger. In fact, we often had to abandon our
homes in order to seek refuge from the violence’.3
In 1979, the guerrilla escalated its violent campaign. In the commu-
nity of Santa María Tzejá, the rebels killed Andrés Ixchoy, a campesino
accused of collaboration with the military. In other communities belong-
ing to Ixcán Grande and Ixcán Chiquito, the EGP executed military com-
missioners and suspected military informers. Within this context, civilian
collaboration with the insurgency began gradually to increase, as fear and
coercion pushed individuals towards the rebels. In 1980, the EGP’s mili-
tary operations became steadily more ambitious, as it targeted infrastruc-
ture and engaged in direct attacks on military columns. According to a
campesino from the cooperative of Pueblo Nuevo:

In January 1980, the guerrilla gunned down an army helicopter in Pueblo

Nuevo. It was on a Sunday that the helicopter flew over the community of
Playa Grande, and the guerrilla was waiting on the runway, ready to attack.
Five army officers were in the helicopter and the guerrilla killed them all. In
response, the army sent three or four aircraft to Pueblo Nuevo, and they began
to bomb the area. This was the first bombing we had experienced. They were
dropping bombs everywhere and we were terrified. Nobody died, but we were
very frightened and we hid under our beds. Because of this, the president of
the cooperatives, Emilio Martínez, visited the community. He was eating his
lunch when the army came to his house and said ‘you’re going to show us
where the helicopter crashed’. He went with the army and he never returned.4
150 R. BRETT

After 1980, clashes between state and guerrilla forces in the Ixcán
increased and, almost without exception, were followed by military
reprisals against civilians, regardless of whether evidence existed of their
collaboration with the guerrilla. In January 1980, in the wake of the
sacking of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City, indigenous peasants
from the Ixcán consolidated their presence in the CUC, at a moment
when the organisation began to shift its strategies from mass mobilisa-
tions to ‘employing acts of sabotage, propaganda bombs, road blocks,
barricades and so forth. These acts were a demonstration of support
for the wider armed struggle’ (Praxis 1988: 160). The CUC began to
provide a political infrastructure to those cooperatives and communities
faced with collapse as a result of increasing incursions of armed actors
and escalating levels of political violence (McAllister 2010). In the after-
math of the sacking of the Spanish Embassy, other peasants from the area
actively sought out the EGP, incorporating themselves into the guer-
rilla’s ranks. According to Praxis

From this moment on, the majority of the indigenous population in the
highland region participated in the war in one way or another…. Many pro-
vided clothes and food for the permanent guerrilla units whose grassroots
militants were mainly indigenous Maya who had left their relatives behind
in several villages […] The indigenous population also began to participate
in large-scale guerrilla operations […] they cut telephone wires and blocked
all the roads for several kilometres. (1988: 165)

During the first few months of 1980, the EGP’s Ernesto Che Guevara
Front, the guerrilla front commanding the region, carried out highly
accomplished and coordinated military operations in the Ixcán. On 22
April, the front ambushed and attacked an oil field belonging to the com-
pany Rubelsanto and, in May, attacked a police station in Chisec. In July
of the same year, the EGP ambushed a military column in Lake Lachuá
and the following month, a military truck in Polígono. With the objec-
tive of increasing FIL and CCL membership, the insurgency focused its
recruitment efforts on strategic villages. According to those interviewed,
during this period, the guerrilla pressured cooperative members to join
the EGP, precipitating rising levels of anxiety and fear of military reprisals.
However, patterns of collaboration were not uniform: for diverse sets of
reasons, peasants both voluntarily participated in the insurgency and were
coerced into doing so.
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 151

Towards the end of December 1980, the Compañía 19 de enero began

to operate in the area. According to the military, guerrilla fronts here
received systematic support from the civilian population (REMHI 1997:
45). The military alleged that support for the guerrilla was unanimous:
children transported information, adolescents provided them with food
and adults provided logistical support and essential supplies.
The Ernesto Che Guevara Front was allegedly responsible for some of
the most egregious acts of violence perpetrated against non-combatants
for ‘exemplary’ or ‘dissuasive’ purposes during the bloodiest years of the
conflict (REMHI 1999). The non-combatant population was lodged
between the fury of both armed actors, in many cases coerced by the guer-
rilla into collaborating, whilst living in fear of reprisals as military threats
and repression sought to forge unconditional allegiance. The civilian pop-
ulation remained the terrain upon which the armed conflict was waged.
Between 1980 and 1981, a period during which time guerrilla violence
against the civilian population increased and civilian support for the guer-
rilla was at its peak,5 the EGP intensified its military campaign. Towards
the end of December 1980, the 19 de Enero Front attacked several army
barracks, including San Juan la Diéciseis, La Resurrección, Los Ángeles,
San José la 20, Xalbal, Santa María Copón and San Luis Ixcán. The guer-
rilla pursued its campaign until mid-January, staging an attack on the
Santa María Dolores barracks on 9 January. The most serious attack took
place on 19 January 1981, when a military helicopter was gunned down in
La Resurrección, killing at least nine military officers. By mid-1981 then,
the guerrilla had forged an increasingly broad social base in the Ixcán
and had begun to evidence its potential capacity to gain military superi-
ority over state forces in the region. Whilst guerrilla commanders began
to envision the possibility of revolutionary victory, the military, acutely
concerned over increasing guerrilla capacity, formulated its response to the
subversive threat: ‘scorched earth’.

Counterinsurgency in the Ixcán
The military campaign pursued in the Ixcán followed a staged implemen-
tation strategy closely linked to military operations occurring simultane-
ously in other conflict zones. However, the campaign was characterised
by certain distinctive features, setting it apart from other regions of the
country, determined, principally, by the economic and political con-
ditions in the Ixcán. The military deliberately aimed to penetrate the
152 R. BRETT

cooperatives where the EGP had sought to embed itself and, between
1976 and 1981, the army levied a strategy that combined increasing lev-
els of selective repression with military actions of a ‘civic’ nature. In this
regard, the Armed Forces employed low-intensity repression against the
civilian population, ostensibly with the objective of eradicating the guer-
rilla and preventing further collaboration with it. The strategy of selective
repression was accompanied by civic programmes, a central component of
which was the role of intelligence officers sent to the region disguised as
advisers, teachers, health promoters and medical brigades with the aim of
infiltrating local communities. Above all, the programme sought to create
a ‘benevolent façade’, providing infrastructure within the cooperatives,
including public services, runways and aircraft to transport cooperative
products. In parallel with the civic programmes, military detachments
were installed across the region (Falla 1992: 219).
Once the guerrilla had begun to make its presence known publicly,
the Armed Forces of both Guatemala and Mexico carried out unsuccess-
ful military operations in the region with the aim of locating, identify-
ing and defeating the insurgency. The EGP’s clandestine political work
in local villages, which was followed by the initiation of the armed pro-
paganda phase of armed struggle in 1975, converted the Ixcán into a
central conflict zone, as the military reacted to the presence of the reb-
els. Immediately after the murder of military commissioner Guillermo
Monzón in May 1975, the military made an incursion into the village
of Xalbal. According to those interviewed, the guerrilla had already con-
structed a support base in the village. It would appear that the military’s
incursion into Xalbal was not only a response to the commissioner’s
execution, but also to intelligence allegedly provided by Monzón prior
to his execution. During the operation, the military accused the inhabit-
ants of Xalbal of being guerrilla combatants. According to Father Javier
Gurriarán, brother of one of the Spanish priests who had initiated the
colonisation of the region

This military operation was a key component of the counterinsurgency cam-

paign. The operation aimed to eradicate the emergent guerrilla threat and
was focused against the insurgents who had been located clandestinely in
the mountains for the previous three years. It was necessary to cut off the
guerrilla’s support base – the civilian population – so that it would spread
no further into the jungle, given that the army had realised that the guerrilla
had expanded into the highlands (1990: 9).
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 153

Several weeks after their first visit, on 10 June, soldiers entered Xalbal
once gain, this time wielding a ‘black list’ used to identify three men who
were subsequently tortured. Almost a month later, on 6 July, the military
returned to the village and captured fifteen men, who were shortly after-
wards disappeared. Xalbal would subsequently become a central zone of
contestation.
In the early 1970s, the military consolidated its presence, constructing
a series of bases and detachments in the Ixcán. Within a short period of
time, detachments were installed, initially on the access routes to the Ixcán,
including in La Pimienta, Chel, San Luis Ixcán and Finca Chailá. Military
posts were also established within the cooperatives, including in Buenos
Aires, and in those locations where INTA had constructed its installations,
for example, in San Antonio Tzejá and Playa Grande. Military repression
steadily increased during 1975, reaching its peak in November of the same
year, when thirty-five cooperative leaders of Ixcán Grande and other local
territories were kidnapped during an assault led by military paratroopers.
All thirty-five leaders were tortured and killed within the military installa-
tions in Buenos Aires. According to Gurriarán:

This was the beginning of a wave a selective repression with the objective
of exterminating the leadership of Ixcán’s autonomous, collective farming
enterprise. In each community health and education promoters and coop-
erative leaders were killed.

As the military presence increased across the region, the army began
to pay regular visits to the Ixcán cooperatives and villages. During the vis-
its, the military would give speeches against the guerrilla and, oftentimes,
accuse residents of collaborating with the rebels. The visits generated an
atmosphere of fear and confusion. According to a campesino from Santa
María Tzejá

They began to pressure the entire community, asking us whether we had seen
the guerrilla. One day, in 1976, a group of one hundred soldiers entered the
village, along with three lieutenants. They accused us of collaborating with
the guerrilla and they held us at gunpoint. I pleaded with the lieutenant to
respect the people and not to hurt them, but he said, ‘we are simply follow-
ing orders’. This was the first extremely violent action that we were subject
to. The community realised that the army had begun to kidnap people and
we were all extremely frightened. The guerrilla was already passing through
our communities and the Mobile Military Police (PMA) also began to patrol
154 R. BRETT

the village in order to locate insurgents. During this period, the army regu-
larly stayed for fifteen days. The PMA built a military detachment and that’s
how we came to have permanent military presence in the area. They built it
right beside our runway.6

The Conflict Escalates

The death of Father Woods in an apparent aeroplane accident on 25
November 1976 represented a severe blow to both the Catholic Church
and to the inhabitants of Ixcán cooperatives. Father Woods had been a key
figure during the process of colonisation in the Ixcán and an important
leader of the cooperative movement in the region. Although the military
reported that the death of the priest had been caused when his aircraft
had crashed, the circumstances of the accident were highly suspicious,
and military officers would not allow relatives or friends to see the body
prior to the autopsy. When military officers visited the cooperatives in
the aftermath of the incident, they publicly accused the guerrilla of hav-
ing murdered the priest, allegedly because Woods had refused to collabo-
rate with them. According to Falla (1992), witnesses later heard Colonel
Fernando Castillo, the military officer mandated with the military’s civic
programmes in the region, admit to the murder of Father Woods.7
According to a campesino from Pueblo Nuevo:

Father William Woods was an extremely supportive, generous man. He

organised the cooperative in Ixcán Grande with the idea of purchasing land.
He helped campesinos travel to the Ixcán because there was land available.
And we all fought together in order to obtain the land. In 1975, Father
William Woods began to receive threats because the army was against him.
They said that he was a communist, a guerrilla, and that he was creating a
mini-Cuba. At that time he was battling with the army and the authorities
in order to legalise land titles. However, the authorities weren’t used to this
kind of behaviour because they believed that campesinos should simply obey
orders. Things became complicated when the guerrillas killed the Tiger of
Ixcán. Then Guillermo Monzón was killed in Xalbal. Father William Woods
suffered the consequences of these murders, and the threats against him
intensified. After his death, we were alone. Everything changed. A month
later the army arrived, with Colonel Castillo. He said, ‘the guerrilla killed
him, but don’t worry because we are going to work with you. The Air Force
has aircraft and you can use them’. But we knew the truth, that the army
had killed Father Woods.8
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 155

In Father Woods’ absence, the military occasionally provided air-

craft for the transportation of agricultural products from the coopera-
tives. However, according to those interviewed, it was not long before
this support muted into a form of social control made conditional upon
the installation of further military detachments within communities and
accompanied by a dramatic rise in the number of ground forces operat-
ing in the area. As part of the increasing strategy of population control,
campesinos were forced to live in the centre of the cooperatives, rather
than on their individual plots of land, which was followed by an immedi-
ate rise in the number of community leaders who were kidnapped and
murdered. To exacerbate matters further, during this period, the presence
of the guerrilla in the region increased in parallel with that of the military.
By 1980, militarisation was consolidated with the construction of runways
utilised in bombing campaigns across the Ixcán.9 In parallel, and in contra-
vention of international humanitarian law, the military employed a series
of tactics aimed at controlling the civilian population and determining the
level of support for the guerrilla. As explained by a campesino from Santa
María Tzejá

It was on a Sunday when two civilians passed by, and we remembered what
the army had told us, that if we came across unfamiliar men we must cap-
ture them. So we detained the strangers and then went to the barracks to
inform the army what had happened. When the lieutenant was informed of
the situation, he reacted strangely, because the truth was that the strangers
were soldiers who had been sent to the community to spy and to observe
whether we were collaborating with the guerrilla or whether we were willing
to help the army. The lieutenant admitted that the strangers were soldiers
and that was the end of the matter; they now knew that we were loyal to the
military. We always followed the army’s orders, right up until the massacre
occurred.10

As the armed conflict escalated, and levels of hostilities between the

armed groups increased, rising levels of violence were evident across vir-
tually all of the Ixcán villages and cooperatives. During this first wave of
violence, selective repression, including killings and kidnappings, predom-
inantly targeted teachers, health promoters, community leaders, the direc-
tors of the cooperatives and Catholic Action members. Between 1979
and 1981, approximately fifty people were kidnapped in Ixcán Grande
and another fifty people in Ixcán Chiquito. During these years, under the
156 R. BRETT

leadership of the Bishop of El Quiché, Bishop Juan Gerardi, an outspo-

ken critic of the military repression, the Catholic Church was identified
as a military target.11 In March 1980, military-led death squads hung the
corpses of catechists from the railings of the El Quiché Radio Station in the
departmental capital, Santa Cruz del Quiché. Shortly after the incident,
the Diocese publicly accused the military of murdering three women, as
well as community leaders and teachers in Nebaj, Ixil (ODHAG 1998:
Vol. III, 135). From May 1980, as part of its broader strategy of repres-
sion, the military launched further direct attacks against members of the
Catholic Church in El Quiché, allegedly murdering Father José María
Gran in June 1980 and in July, carrying out the attempted murder of
Luis Gurriarán, a priest based in the Ixcán. As a result of said attacks, the
Diocese withdrew from El Quiché in July 1980.
Military presence brought increasing levels of confinement of the non-
combatant population, transforming the Ixcán into an enormous, de
facto prison (Taylor 1998: 104). According to a campesino from Pueblo
Nuevo, Ixcán:

Whenever we left the community, the military was always nearby, and they
would ask us what we were carrying. If we had a radio, they would ask us
what we were listening to. They would say, ‘you listen to the Voice of Cuba,
don’t you?’ If we were carrying medicine, they would ask us what and who
it was for. If we had more than a pound of salt or sugar with us, they would
take it from us, saying that we were using it to feed the guerrilla. So it was
very difficult to have enough food for basic survival. The result of this was
strict control of the population.12

In the following months, daily life in the Ixcán changed dramatically.

Increasing levels of political violence were accompanied by acute levels of
militarisation and population control, severely affecting the population’s
relative political stability and socio-economic independence. A campesino
from Santa María narrates his experience:

In 1981, the military began to retain our freight and arrest lots of people.
This prevented us from transporting merchandise, such as salt and sugar.
They accused us of being guerrillas, or collaborating with them, saying that
our goods were for the guerrilla. In 1981, the army came to tell us that they
had employed a Military Commissioner in the community. Our documents
were taken because the army was going to replace them with a military
identity card. Our community leaders went to collect the documents and
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 157

merchandise which the army had retained. But they were unable to get back
the merchandise the military had seized. We were too scared to collect our
documents, so we went without identification for a long time. In 1982,
the same thing happened again. We formed a commission of fifteen people
to get back our merchandise. But we were told ‘don’t go because they are
going to kill you in Playa Grande’. So we decided not to go and we lost a lot
of merchandise and a lot of money.13

In response to increasingly audacious guerrilla operations during the

first two months of 1981, the military began to reorganise its troops,
abandoning its detachments in La Resurrección and Los Ángeles towards
the end of March, with the aim of concentrating troops in Cuarto Pueblo,
Xalbal and Mayalán. The military’s return to Xalbal, now a designated ‘red
zone’, was decisive. An army battalion established a camp on nearby river-
banks, apparently in response to a guerrilla ambush earlier that month. On
30 March, soldiers captured and allegedly disappeared three campesinos,
and, according to interviews, between 31 March and 5 April, the military
executed a further thirty-seven campesinos. According to witnesses, the
soldiers placed grenades beneath the corpses, which led to further injuries
and fatalities when relatives attempted to bury their dead.14 In the wake of
the Xalbal massacre, army battalions combined kidnappings, mass murders
and other methods of military repression with assaults on entire com-
munities. Military strategy was gradually shifting towards more extreme
violence. The military began to destroy abandoned communities, burn-
ing belongings, livestock and crops, with the objective of preventing the
return of displaced peasants. The strategy of repression perpetrated by the
military is described by a campesino from Pueblo Nuevo:

The army came to our village. Before the army came, we lived on our plots
of land, but afterwards we were forced to live in the village centre. We
were working there, when at midday we heard gunshots coming from the
direction of our house. We didn’t know who was firing the shots, but a
neighbour who was on his way to Xalbal warned us that the army was in the
village centre. So we all went to hide in the mountains […] and we waited
there for my father. He had gone to see whether he could retrieve any of
our belongings, but there was hardly anything left – the army had burned
everything, including our house. We spent a week in the mountains close to
our house because there was food there. My father and another boy visited
our house a week later to see if anything could be salvaged. But when my
father returned to our house, the army was there. They killed him brutally.
158 R. BRETT

They shot him several times, tortured him and then hung him from a tree,
with his hands tied behind his back. Maybe he remained alive during the
night because the rope had been twisted around several times as though he
had struggled to release himself. It’s not easy to die like that; it causes me
great pain to think about it.

The highest levels of political violence occurred in areas where the

military identified the greatest levels of civilian support for the guerrilla
and in strategic zones, such as in villages located geographically close to a
guerrilla encampment, for example, between the Ixcán and Xalbal rivers.
The military also targeted villages situated in proximity to where previous
guerrilla offensives had taken place, for example, in Cuarto Pueblo and
Pueblo Nuevo. During the course of 1981, the escalation of violence was
accompanied by an acute military crisis in the Ixcán. Initial attempts to
win over the civilian population by building hospitals, healthcare centres
and schools had rotundly failed, as had the military’s strategy to disarticu-
late the insurgency through kidnappings, repression and selective murders.
According to a female campesino, ‘At the same time as soldiers carried out
charitable, social work, they continued to kill, kidnap and harass people.
So, how could we accept something as good when it was always followed
by violence? They never won our allegiance’.15 To the military’s dismay,
despite intensified levels of repression, guerrilla presence in the region was
on the increase, due both to the support of growing numbers of peasants
for the insurgency and the military’s incapacity to defeat its elusive enemy.
On 30 April 1981, the guerrilla carried out its perhaps most signifi-
cant operation in the region during this period, executing a full-blown
assault on the military detachment in Cuarto Pueblo. The operation was
intended to hasten the army’s withdrawal from the Ixcán. However, as
we shall see, the thwarted assault led to Cuarto Pueblo’s being identified
as a key strategic zone of subversion: the following year, the military per-
petrated the massacre of 350 people in the town. According to insurgent
sources, 130 soldiers and three guerrillas were killed during the assault on
the Cuarto Pueblo detachment, although the military has disputed this
figure (Brett 2007). The attack was far from a complete success given that
the guerrilla’s attempt to seize the military base was foiled by the arrival
of two helicopters and two further aircraft, which proceeded to attack the
guerrilla column and bombard the community. Most of the insurgents
succeeded in fleeing from the area and, at that point, no civilians were
killed. However, the military’s rapid and unequivocal response was the
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 159

execution of fifteen campesinos, the majority of whom were community

leaders from Cuarto Pueblo. The killings were accompanied by the imple-
mentation of a series of repressive measures, including strict surveillance
of the community and, the following month, the destruction of a nearby
hospital by soldiers disguised as rebels.
The confrontation in Cuarto Pueblo had serious repercussions for the
EGP, whose operational capacity was reduced to the extent that military
manoeuvres of this kind were no longer sustainable. The guerrilla saw itself
obliged to resume its previous strategy of smaller-scale operations, such as
ambushes and harassment, as evidenced during operations in Xalbal (May),
San Luis and Santo Tomás (May), Mayalán and Barillas (August) and
Asunción Copón (October). The guerrilla’s most significant military opera-
tion during this period was an ambush perpetrated between Polígono 18
and Playa Grande on 15 November, in which seventeen soldiers were killed.
The guerrilla assault on the military detachment in Cuarto Pueblo pre-
cipitated the initiation of a new phase in military strategy, as it became
clear to the security forces that the rebel threat had reached levels of sever-
ity and urgency previously not experienced. The military began deliber-
ately to draw civilians into the conflict, obliging them to provide logistical
support, whilst forcing them to participate in targeted killings through the
PAC. The escalating political violence imposed terror across the coopera-
tives (Carmack 1988; Stoll 1993; Le Bot 1997; Schirmer 1998). The mili-
tary began to innovate its strategy, gradually crafting both more numerous
operations and more diverse forms of political violence. Operating out
of the Military Zone in Playa Grande, Ixcán, soldiers were responsible
for ‘repeated’ and ‘systematic’ acts of torture against civilians and cap-
tured guerrillas (CEH 1999a: Vol. VII, Appendix I: Illustrative Cases
17: 49–50). Simultaneously, the military employed forced disappearances
and kidnappings, often planned in advance and coordinated by the local
military commissioner. These practices increasingly implicated the civilian
population in the armed conflict and led to a vicious cycle of violence:

The population reacted openly and fearlessly. The kidnappings provoked

a popular mobilisation, which brought the civilian population into greater
conflict with the army and therefore increased the likelihood of further
kidnappings. Kidnappings therefore became an ever more frequent method
of population control, but due to their inefficiency in contributing to intel-
ligence information, the practice was soon replaced by public murders and
massacres (CEH 1999: Vol. II, 28–29).
160 R. BRETT

In the aftermath of Cuarto Pueblo, the military abandoned all attempts

to win the hearts and minds of the civilian population through civic action
programmes and finally began to unleash its demons, although albeit in a
still haphazard fashion. The events that took place in the village of Pueblo
Nuevo in June 1981 clearly evidence this change in strategy (Falla 1992:
40). Soldiers apparently under the command of Colonel Castillo burned
down the town’s hospital, which the military itself had constructed and
inaugurated the previous month. They then raided and burned down the
cooperative’s shop and warehouse, much to the dismay of local residents.
On the same day, the military executed a fourteen-year-old teenager from
Pueblo Nuevo whom they accused of belonging to the guerrilla. The vio-
lence deeply traumatised the residents of Pueblo Nuevo, and exacerbated
what were already heightened tensions between the civilian population and
the Armed Forces. The strategy employed in Pueblo Nuevo was repeated
in Xalbal, when, in June, the village was the site of further kidnappings
and murders. The military left disfigured corpses on the village streets and
several victims were burned alive. According to Falla, ‘Having despaired
of the effectiveness of civic actions, the army increased its brutality against
the civilian population, provoking widespread terror (hanging the corpses
of people who had been tortured and burned)’ (1992: 46).
The strategy under the Lucas administration had shifted; moreover, a
precedent had been established for the subsequent massacres perpetrated
within the context of the scorched earth campaign.

The Scorched Earth Campaign in the Ixcán

On 17 November 1981, after what had ultimately been an unsuccess-
ful campaign waged since 1980, the military abandoned all of its detach-
ments and barracks in the Ixcán with the exception of the military base at
Playa Grande. The civilian population welcomed the military’s withdrawal
from the area, and initially celebrated what appeared to be the end of the
armed conflict. Encouraged by the insurgents, civilians burned military
detachments, sabotaged the runways built by the Armed Forces within the
cooperatives and raised flags in support of the EGP. From the perspective
of the military, these acts of destruction further evidenced what it already
suspected: the embeddedness of subversion within the region leading
the military ‘to believe that the only way to curb the insurgency was by
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 161

decimating the civilian population there’ (REMHI 1998: Vol. III, 162).
According to a campesino from Cantabia

In November 1981, shortly after the massacre of the members of Cuarto

Pueblo’s cooperative board, the army withdrew its troops from the coopera-
tive of Ixcán Grande. We were alone. We wondered why the army had gone.
The guerrilla was elated and so were we. Because of this, the guerrilla told us
that we had defeated the army and they ordered us to destroy the army’s camps
and the community’s runway. ‘They won’t be back’, the guerrilla assured us.16

Significantly, it remains unclear as to why the EGP, likely in possession

of extensive intelligence, failed immediately to inform the civilian popula-
tion that the military’s withdrawal did not represent an insurgent victory
in the Ixcán. In fact, to the contrary, the military had withdrawn its troops
in a calculated move. In preparation for the national scorched earth cam-
paign, the temporary withdrawal from the region permitted the military to
replenish troops before executing what would be the mass-killing campaign,
to begin in Chimaltenango towards the end of November, moving north,
and eventually reaching the Ixcán in February 1982, when the genocide
would begin. According to Falla, the first stage of the campaign involved
‘cleansing’ (February and March), whilst the second phase, beginning in
May under Montt, included ‘a more coordinated counterinsurgency pro-
gramme within the framework of the National Security and Development
Plan’ (1992: 220). It was during this latter period that the ‘model villages’
were created, whilst the massacres continued and survivors were relentlessly
pursued by the military into the mountains and refugee camps in Mexico.
In February 1982, the military massacred the inhabitants of villages
geographically close to Playa Grande. The first massacre was perpetrated in
Polígono 520, followed immediately by massacres in San Pablo, Trinitaria,
Santa Clara, San Juan la Quince and El Quetzal (Ixcán Chiquito).
According to a survivor of the massacre of Santa María Tzejá

On 15th February, they killed fifteen people and we hid in the mountains.
Afterwards they burned all our houses. We had to leave in the torrential rain
with children and without food, we left everything behind in the house, and
we had to hide in groups in order to have a better chance of escaping from
the army. They killed our animals and burned everything else. The soldiers
cut down all our corn, they took our corn mill and other equipment which
belonged to the cooperative. The same thing happened in many other com-
162 R. BRETT

munities. They tried to destroy us, not only with weapons and bullets, but
also by burning our homes and crops. We had nothing left – not even food
and clothes.17

Although the guerrilla failed to protect the civilian population from

the killings, evacuation plans implemented by the CCL helped to save
some lives during massacres. Nevertheless, as the massacres occurred, the
EGP continued to pursue a very limited military strategy, characterised by
ambushes and ongoing harassment, but to little effect. For example, the
guerrilla set fire to a commercial plane, which had landed in Santa María
Tzejá to deliver commodities, and also killed the pilot. On the same day,
and in retaliation, the army bombarded the community of San José la 15.
As the counterinsurgency campaign moved forward, the military
destroyed the villages of La Trinitaria, El Quetzal, Santa Clara, Santo
Tomás, Kaibil Balam, Santa María Tzejá, Santa María Dolores, San Lucas
and La 14. A massive wave of displacement followed in the wake of the
massacres, as survivors fled to the jungle. Other survivors crossed the bor-
der into Mexico. Over time, groups of internally displaced people situated
in Ixcán Grande formed so-called CPR, groups of thousands of survivors
that lived clandestinely, as we shall discuss later.
The pattern of the massacres under Lucas would shape the subsequent
strategy under Montt. The majority of massacres in the region occurred
in urban centres and cooperative settlements. Massacres were typically
perpetrated at weekends or holidays, when the military knew it would be
likely to encounter most inhabitants in the villages. On the weekend of 13
February, the military massacred somewhere between twelve and seventeen
people in Santa María Tzejá, between twenty-seven and forty-one people
in Santo Tomás and fifteen people in San Lucas. On the weekend of 20
February, the army massacred fourteen people in Polígono, and on the
weekend of 27 February, between twelve and fourteen people in Kaibil
Balam. After 27 February, troops were deployed to the furthest point
north of the Ixcán in order to secure entry to the region, having previously
gained control of the eastern flank of Ixcán Grande. During the first few
days of March, the army executed massacres in a further eight villages.18 As
the massacres achieved their goal of ‘cleansing’ the area, military control
over the survivors was established and guerrilla control severely weakened.
On 23 March, Lucas García was deposed in the coup that would lead to the
assumption of Montt as de facto President. As the Ixcán burned, thousands
fled to the mountains and jungle. However, the violence was far from over.
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 163

The Violence Under Montt

The counterinsurgency under Montt began in the Ixcán in April 1982,
weeks after the coup. During April and May, military operations were car-
ried out in three principal areas: Asunción Copón, Santiago Ixcán and
San Luís. The army targeted local villages, where it carried out massacres,
whilst simultaneously seeking to locate and destroy ‘camps which were
providing refuge for the civilian population in the mountains’ (Falla 1992:
170). PACs were consolidated in the area, as the military forcibly recruited
survivors of the massacres who had not fled to the mountains. PAC mem-
bers were forced to participate in the perpetration of massacres, a practice
common in other parts of the country. During these massacres, soldiers
and civilian patrollers destroyed entire villages, typically returning at a later
date to round up any survivors.
The killing continued into the following month, with a further wave of
massacres shaking the region in mid-May. In the case of Piedras Blancas, for
example, approximately one hundred soldiers arrived in the village on 18
May. The victims (men, women and children) were bound by the soldiers,
before being burned alive. According to Falla, ‘this was a genocidal mas-
sacre whose aim was to annihilate the entire population. The objective was
to destroy the very seeds of life, including that which was growing in the
wombs of pregnant women’ (1992: 174). A total of sixty-four people were
killed and a further fifteen disappeared. In the following weeks, violence
intensified and on 27 May, when a follow-up massacre was carried out in
Piedras Blancas. In June, the number of massacres perpetrated by the mili-
tary began to decrease; however, repression remained ongoing. At the end
of the first week of the month, two combined battalions, one transported
by helicopter from Altamira, were used to raze the Mayalán cooperative.
The soldiers burned everything they came across to the ground. However,
no massacres were perpetrated because local inhabitants had already fled
to the mountains. The following month, however, seventy-one people
were massacred in Rosario Canijá. According to those interviewed, the
victims were unable to escape before the military’s arrival. In July, the mili-
tary strategy to control the population was consolidated, as persecution
of the civilian population in the Ixcán intensified and extended to those
who were on the run in the mountains. The military, in joint operations
with PAC patrols, hunted down those who had fled in search and destroy
missions, killing any campesinos they encountered. Between September
and December 1982, twenty-nine confrontations took place between the
164 R. BRETT

guerrilla and the military, as the insurgency struggled to push back against
the Montt counterinsurgency (EGP 1982). In fact, throughout January,
and during the first few weeks of February 1983, guerrilla operations in
the Ixcán had markedly increased, precipitating a comparatively higher
number of direct confrontations. Nonetheless, the rebel operations rep-
resented little more than the insurgents’ military swansong. The devasta-
tion of its social base that had resulted from the killing campaign, and
the sheer brute, interminable force of counterinsurgency operations ulti-
mately overwhelmed the EGP, leading to the disbanding of fronts in Alta
Verapaz, Chimaltenango and in most of the department of El Quiché. The
revolution was one the wane.
In August 1983, Montt was toppled from power. Whilst the perpetra-
tion of mass atrocities had gradually tailed off after the first few months of
the year, the military, now under the command of de facto President Mejía,
prioritised the strategic objectives of consolidating population control and
neutralising the potential threat from civilians hiding in the mountains and
jungle, and along the border with Mexico. In Mexico, the communities
of Puerto Rico, Ixcán and Chajul were created, as refugees flooded across
the border. According to Falla, ‘civilians had fled to the jungle, waiting for
the army to withdraw; but in the face of the permanent military presence
thousands of refugees, including countless orphans, chose to cross the
border into Mexico’ (1992: 215). In the aftermath of the massacres, and
up until 1984, with the exception of the ‘model villages’, the cooperatives
lay abandoned; the Ixcán remained a virtual ghost town. Only in 1984,
did the military conclude that the Ixcán could be repopulated, given that
the region had been successfully ‘cleansed’ and the EGP no longer rep-
resented a military threat. Within this context, an offer of free land was
publicised through a nationwide campaign, urging Guatemalans to move
to the Ixcán.
The arrival of those that had taken up the state’s offer for land brought
with it a series of complex problems. Various factors shaped the ten-
sions that emerged between the existing and arriving populations: the
widespread fear and violence caused by the conflict; inadequate infra-
structure resulting from the scorched earth strategy and, significantly, the
intentional instrumentalisation by the military of religious and ethnic dif-
ferences between previous and new residents. To facilitate control within
the newly reconstructed villages, the military arranged the houses in
centralised grids. Once control was achieved, military presence gradually
decreased, and PAC members were mandated to control the communi-
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 165

ties. However, civilians continued to live in fear of the armed forces.19 The
combination of massacres, militarisation and social control obliterated the
social fabric in the area:

All spheres of village life are militarised to the extent that the army’s physi-
cal presence is no longer required to guarantee total submission […] Even
though villagers complain about the rules and restrictions imposed by sol-
diers, they are afraid to challenge the military because they are aware of the
potential consequences of such an act. The inhabitants are treated as if they
were criminals, a perception which they have begun to internalise to the extent
that they subconsciously censor their thoughts and expressions, behaving as if they
possess no rights whatsoever (Praxis 1988: Vol. II, 223; emphasis added).

By 1984 then, the formal mechanisms of genocide had ground to a halt

and massacres no longer represented the central instrument of military
counterinsurgency strategy. With the retreat of the EGP and the devasta-
tion of its social base, and with the population confined under military
control, the threat of the ‘indian-subversive’ had been eliminated. Future-
oriented and fatal collective violence had ‘purified’ and stabilised the
country: the terms of history could been wrought once again in the image
of the dominant political community.

The Cuarto Pueblo Massacre, Ixcán, Quiché

The Cuarto Pueblo massacre ‘was one of the largest massacres perpe-
trated during the armed conflict and one of the most serious in terms of
human rights violations’ (CEH Illustrative Case No. 4 Vol. VII Appendix
I 1999: 111). The massacre shared similar patterns with other massacres
and instances of political violence perpetrated during the armed conflict,
characteristics and patterns that evidence a State-led policy of genocide
(CEH 1999; Kobrak 1999; Brett 2007). Examples of the recurrent char-
acteristics of military violence include raiding villages at strategic times and
on strategic days (market days, holidays); the selection and separation of
victims according to gender, and prior to execution; the collective rape of
women and girls prior to execution; and the utilisation of women as slaves.
In the Ixcán region, massacres were generally carried out in villages
previously identified by the military as guerrilla strongholds, where report-
edly high levels of collaboration with the insurgency existed, or in those
villages that were geographically close to conflict zones. Massacres perpe-
166 R. BRETT

trated in villages targeted for their allegiance to the guerrilla were gener-
ally more violent and on a much larger scale than those perpetrated in
other communities.

Background
Cuarto Pueblo is a village only a few hours’ walk from the Mexican bor-
der. The village was founded in the early 1970s, along with several other
villages across the region. A predominantly indigenous population colo-
nised the area, gradually developing the community’s infrastructure and
constructing the cooperative’s buildings. During the early 1970s, the
community enjoyed a high level of socio-economic development and was
directed by its own local authority, as had been the case across the Ixcán.
The guerrilla began to make visits to the community in the early 1970s,
at first only occasionally and always clandestinely, although, with time,
the visits became more frequent. The close proximity of Cuarto Pueblo
to the Mexican border—a zone central for refuge and potential transport
of arms—was likely of key strategic importance to the guerrilla. Control
over Cuarto Pueblo came to represent a pivotal insurgent tactic and, con-
sequently, the village was later selected by the military as a prime target
of counterinsurgency operations. In fact, in 1980, a military detachment
was installed in Cuarto Pueblo. The relationship between the military and
residents was, from the beginning, precarious. According to former inhab-
itants, soldiers regularly stole from the cooperative and raped female resi-
dents. To a certain degree, according to survivors of the massacre, military
violence and abuses compelled them to support the guerrilla.
In time, the guerrilla’s political cadres began to exert decisive influence
over the community, whilst the majority of local inhabitants collaborated
by providing information, refuge and food through the CCL and FIL. In
response, the military subjected the cooperative to increasing levels of
repression. However, according to those interviewed, and as documented
in other villages and cooperatives, such a Santa María Tzejá, ‘collabora-
tion’ with the guerrilla ‘wasn’t just a question of personal choice. We felt
pressured by the guerrilla, and we were scared of what would happen if we
refused to collaborate with them’.20
During their initial incursions into the region, the guerrilla had dis-
seminated flyers and painted slogans and inscriptions on the walls of coop-
erative buildings, stating ‘Long live the EGP’, ‘We are guerrillas’, and
‘We are your comrades’. The rebels carried out their first public act in
Cuarto Pueblo at the turn of the decade, occupying the cooperative’s cen-
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 167

tral market and convoking a meeting with its board of directors. Shortly
after this incident, the military detachment was constructed and, from this
moment on, military repression intensified. Soldiers kidnapped and mur-
dered campesinos and constantly harassed the local population.
The key antecedent to the massacre took place, as we know, on 30
April 1981, when, led by the Compañía 19 de Julio, the EGP attacked the
Cuarto Pueblo military detachment. All guerrilla fronts in the north of
the country had taken part in the offensive, which resulted in the death
of approximately 130 soldiers and three guerrillas. According to an ex-
commander of the EGP, Alba Estela Maldonado, the attack on Cuarto
Pueblo’s military detachment was the URNG’s most important mili-
tary victory: ‘for several years we permanently harried the detachment in
Cuarto Pueblo. We wanted to wear the army down, and make them realise
that the time for change had come’.21 However, the confrontation was by
no means a military success for the guerrilla and likely contributed to the
decision to perpetrate the massacre in the town the following year.

The Massacre
As we know, between November 1981 and February 1982, the military
withdrew from the Ixcán in preparation for and in order to redistribute
troops to be employed during the scorched earth campaign being waged
in the highlands. Residents of the Ixcán cooperatives had been encour-
aged by the EGP to celebrate the withdrawal of the military and, with
the guerrilla’s assistance, had sabotaged military facilities and runways,
painted guerrilla slogans and a death symbol over a large poster of Lucas
García and raised EGP flags. However, in early March, guerrilla forces
occupied Cuarto Pueblo and announced that the celebrations were over
due to the army’s imminent arrival, although it is unclear as to whether the
guerrilla had intelligence evidencing that Cuarto Pueblo was to be next in
the counterinsurgency sweep.
On Sunday, 14 March, the market was brimming with people, includ-
ing the inhabitants of nearby villages. That morning, the army arrived in
Nueva Concepción, situated to the northeast of Cuarto Pueblo’s centre.
Soldiers killed thirty-five people in the barrio, and disappeared a further
three. In the midst of the violence, approximately 150 residents escaped
to the mountains or crossed the border to Mexico. While some troops
remained in Nueva Concepción, others moved on to Cuarto Pueblo’s
town centre. According to interviewees, the troops had deliberately
avoided using firearms in Nueva Concepción, so as not to alert the resi-
168 R. BRETT

dents of Cuarto Pueblo of the imminent attack. Victims there were killed
with machetes, tortured and burned alive.
The massacre itself took place over a period of three days, between
14 and 16 March 1982, the week prior to the coup d’état against Lucas.
According to survivors,22 a high degree of coordination by radio took place
between troops and their commanders, and operations were conducted
through the use of a civilian helicopter. According to one interviewee, on
one occasion large quantities of petrol were requested via radio to be used
in the massacre. The massacre was perpetrated over several stages, and
approximately eight military officers formed part of the battalion.
The first stage of the massacre lasted until approximately 10 am, when
a helicopter began to encircle the area. Between 9.30 am and 10 am, the
army approached Cuarto Pueblo, while the helicopter continued to fly
over the town. Many people had already congregated in the centre of
the cooperative, close to the cooperative buildings, churches and shops.
Military commissioners tried to convince those present not to flee the
area. When the soldiers arrived, they opened fire and many were imme-
diately killed in the village centre, although some residents managed to
escape to the mountains and to Pueblo Nuevo. Simultaneously, troops
surrounded the village and its main administrative buildings. Many people
sought refuge in the evangelical chapel and the community centre, believ-
ing that being inside the chapel would offer them some degree of sanctu-
ary. Meanwhile, soldiers separated the men and the women, and herded
the latter into the chapel. According to interviewed survivors, an official
explained that the ‘interrogations’ had been unsuccessful and ordered the
soldiers to kill everyone in sight.
Once the residents of the village had been captured and locked within
designated buildings, the soldiers feasted on a pig, a cow and several chick-
ens, and they forced residents to fetch firewood. The soldiers stole from
the cooperative, loading 450 kg of cardamom into the helicopter. When
they had finished their meal, the soldiers proceeded to burn people alive;
they also burned their homes, the cooperative shop and the community
centre. On Sunday night, the massacre was temporarily suspended while
soldiers systematically raped women and girls in the village school.
The violence began anew the following day. According to those inter-
viewed, a lieutenant encouraged the soldiers to finish things off properly,
explaining that all the inhabitants were allies of the guerrilla and that the
only way to end the conflict was by exterminating them all. The lieuten-
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 169

ant carried a list of other villages whose residents allegedly supported the
guerrilla, and he congratulated the troops on their success, boasting that
the guerrilla had one less village to turn to. A witness explains what hap-
pened on Monday, day two of the massacre:

On Monday we received confirmation of what had happened, and we

remained hidden in the mountains, keeping watch. We were well coordi-
nated. People climbed trees in order to see what was happening and they
could here the children screaming. The soldiers took the women in order
to rape them. The men were locked up, and we could hear the screams of
people being tortured. Days later, we saw the ashes of everything that had
been burned. From then on, we stayed in the mountains. Some of us were
able to buy medicine and sugar. The army patrolled the area, installed a
detachment and began to patrol the mountains.23

On the Monday, soldiers burned alive the children who had been
locked up in one of the administrative buildings, and killed many of the
women who had been rounded up. According to one survivor, ‘I saw the
soldiers, God knows how many, raping my godmother. When the last sol-
dier finished, they cut off her breasts and threw them into the fire. Then
they threw her into the fire too. Then the same thing happened with my
godfather and their little children.’24
On the final day of the massacre, when all the men and senior citizens
had been executed, the soldiers killed the women whom they had kept
alive to prepare their food and rape during the entire three days of the
massacre. The other women who had been enclosed in the chapel were
burned alive. Although the massacre came to an end on Wednesday, the
military remained in Cuarto Pueblo for a further five days to ensure that
every last vestige of human existence was erased, and to kill those survivors
who attempted to return to the village. During the massacre, 362 people
out of a total of 2500 were killed, representing 14 % of the population of
Cuarto Pueblo. The majority of victims were indigenous Maya belonging
to the mam, k’iché’, q’anjob’al, jakalteka and kaqchikel ethnic groups.
Civilians were burned alive in the community centre and the evangeli-
cal church; children were killed in the cardamom dryer; other residents
were tortured prior to execution; the women and girls were systematically
raped. The military burned all the buildings and the harvested crops and
slaughtered the livestock. Falla’s description of the systematic and coor-
dinated nature of the massacre recalls the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust:
170 R. BRETT

The army selected certain buildings for their crematoriums or human ovens.
They did not act randomly, but according to a plan […] the grouping
together of these “ovens” meant that large numbers of people were killed in
one area and burned in another (1992: 104).

According to one of the survivors of the massacre of Cuarto Pueblo:

I thought the guerrillas were supposed to be armed, but these people were
unarmed. The children didn’t carry weapons. The pregnant women, what
did they do to deserve this? Just because someone has contact with the guer-
rilla doesn’t mean that they should be massacred, that an entire commu-
nity should be eliminated. Giving the guerrillas food or information doesn’t
make you a combatant.25

THE IXIL

The Counterinsurgency Project

The Ixil represented a region of central strategic importance for the insur-
gency. From the rebels’ perspective, its proximity to the porous border
with Mexico, its disaffected population subjected to conditions of bru-
tal, hacienda economics and its isolated, inaccessible location, moulded
a region of prime revolutionary material. Over time, as the guerrilla suc-
cessfully crafted a massive support base embedded within indigenous
communities, the region would become a key theatre of war. Within this
context, the military campaign executed in the Ixil region was, in strategic
terms, possibly the most important and bloody offensive carried out by
the Guatemalan military (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 3, 171). The war for the
Ixil then would be decisive for the outcome of the insurgency.
The guerrilla first began to visit Ixil country in the early 1970s, gradu-
ally carrying out incursions into isolated indigenous communities with the
objective of construing its social base. The guerrilla’s discourse in the Ixil
eventually focused upon poverty and racial discrimination as central to its
struggle. By framing its armed struggle within narratives with which the
Ixil population could more readily identify, the EGP lowered the levels
of resistance to collaboration that it had encountered in the Ixcán and
was ultimately successful in constructing a broad base of support from
sympathetic communities and individuals. In 1974, the first guerrilla con-
ference took place in the region and, in its aftermath, the revolutionary
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 171

movement began to expand its presence throughout the Ixil, particularly

into the municipalities of Nebaj and Chajul. As the EGP strengthened
its clandestine military forces, it simultaneously consolidated its support
base, building a network of underground activists, initially in Nebaj and
subsequently across the entire region. According to a former rebel who
had been based in El Quiché:

The conditions of poverty and exploitation in which people were already

living weakened their spirits, and created greater sympathy with our cause.
Our first, small-scale military operations caused enough of a stir for people
to realise what was happening. As these operations intensified, the local pop-
ulation had greater access to information about our cause and became more
sympathetic towards us. It didn’t solve all our problems, but it did make
things a little easier. People were able to believe in the possibility of a differ-
ent outcome, a way out and hope for the future. We spread the message that
there was light at the end of the tunnel, a path to follow, and a way for peo-
ple to alleviate their burdens, their oppression. And people gradually came
together. They said to the community, ‘We need to organise ourselves’. We
visited these areas and the communities in order to help them. We gave talks
and we told the young people in the communities what they had to do. We
showed them how to organise. We showed them the way. ‘You must train,
go to the mountains and prepare yourselves’. All of this was voluntary.26

Significantly, it was in the Ixil region that, in June 1975, after years of
clandestine mobilisation, the EGP publicly announced its presence with
the execution of Luis Arenas Barrera, the Tiger of the Ixcan. The mur-
der of Arenas Barrera, a well-known businessman and a leading member
of the Anti-Communist Unification Party in the La Perla finca, left little
doubt as to the belligerent intentions of the rebel army. According to the
Commission for Historical Clarification:

As part of its strategy, the EGP agreed to carry out acts which would bring
them public notoriety and through which would be symbolised the estab-
lishment of ‘social justice’ in the context of the inefficiency and ineffec-
tiveness of the jurisdictional and administrative organs of the State. The
rebels considered that the indigenous and rural population in the region
would identify with the insurgency as a result of these actions, thus moti-
vating them to join their ranks. Within the framework of this plan, it was
agreed to perpetrate the so-called executions (ajusticiamientos), or settling
of accounts. In order to determine the individuals who would be subject
172 R. BRETT

to executions, the EGP received complaints from the population (CEH

Illustrative Case 1999: Vol. 59, 535).

A month after the execution of Arenas Barrera, the EGP executed

Guillermo Monzón, a military commissioner in the Ixcán. The actions of
the guerrilla across both fronts brought a series of immediate repercussions
to the Ixil, which would establish a lasting precedent. In the aftermath of
both killings, the military immediately imposed severe levels of repression
against the non-combatant population in the Ixil, killing leaders and insti-
tuting blanket harassment and intimidation (Le Bot 1997: 117). Within
this context, after the murder of Arenas, Ixil villages, including Hom,
Ixtupil, Sajsivan and Sotzil, increased their support for the guerrilla, prin-
cipally due to the land disputes that many peasants had with finca owners:
the killings had achieved their goal. The impact of the guerrilla’s strategy
was unequivocal: their supporters in the Ixil swelled, due not only to the
success of the rebels’ recruitment strategy, which inspired both fear of the
guerrilla and hope that it would precipitate change, but also because non-
combatants began to seek protection from the harsh military reprisals to
which they were subject the wake of the ajusticiamientos. Between 1976
and 1978, inhabitants of Nebaj came to participate directly in the guer-
rilla for the first time. This pattern became central to the dynamics of the
conflict in the Ixil region: guerrilla executions precipitated military reper-
cussions against non-combatants, which, in turn, pushed individuals and
communities towards the insurgency. As we shall see below, the reaction
of the military was, almost without exception, grossly disproportionate.

The Violence Intensifies

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of 1976, and following
the rebels’ ‘insertion’ period, guerrilla operations intensified, precipitating
the first wave of military repression, which brought selective kidnappings
and assassinations of suspected rebel collaborators by soldiers based in the
area. In this context, the guerrilla began to mirror the tactics of the armed
forces, carrying out the selective execution of civilians, and focusing upon
those who were known to be collaborating with the authorities, security
forces and local landowners (Le Bot 1997: 118–120). The scaling up of
hostilities by both parties brought with it an increase in episodes of direct
combat between the military and the EGP and more systematic levels of
violence against non-combatants. In January 1978, the EGP kidnapped
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 173

Roberto Herrera Ibargüen, a well-known businessman and landowner.

The action provoked an increase in military presence in the town of Nebaj
and escalating military repression: by 1979, the armed forces had killed
350 indigenous leaders and catechists in the region (Stoll 1988: 101). As
the first wave of military repression intensified, the military assumed an
antagonistic role, deliberately assailing the civilian indigenous population,
and carrying out extensive bombing campaigns in Chajul, Nebaj and the
surrounding villages. As the violence penetrated indigenous communities,
they began to fragment and fall apart.
In 1979, the guerrilla’s first regular military column in the region, the
19 de Enero Front, embarked upon a sustained military offensive in the
Ixil, combining both regular and irregular warfare. According to a wide
range of sources and interviewees, the insurgency appeared for the first
time in the town of Nebaj at the beginning of 1979, announcing its inten-
tion to wage war on the state. On 21 January, a market day, the guerrilla
occupied the town centre and set up camp for a few hours in the main
square (Stoll 1993: 61; Le Bot 1997: 118–120). During the occupation,
the EGP set fire to the town’s prison and attempted to take over the PMA
installation, capturing two officials allegedly known for their brutal treat-
ment of the indigenous population. The EGP executed both officials, and
also killed Enrique Brol, a notorious landowner from a well-known family,
in the central park. In the words of a former public official from Nebaj:

They came to the park in their green uniforms and carrying weapons. We
were really confused at first. We didn’t know who they were. Then they
told us, ‘We are the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and we are on your side.
The army belongs to the rich. But we are poor and we are here to defend
you’. They talked to us about exploitation and poverty. They killed two
policemen from the PMA, then they took their weapons and destroyed the
prison. They stayed for a few hours and then they left. Afterwards some of
us remained scared, but others reassured us saying that the guerrilla would
defend us.27

Following this incident, the military reinforced its permanent pres-

ence in Nebaj, establishing a base within the installations of the Catholic
Church, and building further detachments throughout rural Ixil. The
growing guerrilla presence and its increasingly belligerent capacity signi-
fied that 1979 marked a key moment of transition in the evolution of the
conflict in the region. Within this framework, the military began to attack
174 R. BRETT

entire communities and carry out widespread kidnappings, as it sought to

erode the insurgency’s capacity to embed itself within the civilian popula-
tion. At the turn of the decade, the bloody precedent had been set and
the violence began to impact upon all aspects of daily life. As it had done
in the Ixcán, the escalation of the dynamics of the conflict brought with
it the systematic militarisation of the Ixil and more violent repercussions
from the military. The indigenous population en masse was believed by
the military to be participating in or collaborating with the rebels. In the
words of a campesino from the hamlet of Tuchubuc

When the repression started, we couldn’t travel as much as we used to. If

we wanted to go to other villages in order to buy and sell goods, we had to
get permission from the army or the PAC and carry a military identification
card. It was really difficult because during that period there wasn’t much
food to eat. We couldn’t go to the coast to work on the estates and earn
money because we had to patrol and there were soldiers on the roads. If we
went to a town to buy salt and food, it was really difficult. The army had a
rule, that we couldn’t buy more than one or two pounds of salt, because if
we bought more, they would say that we were collaborating with the guer-
rilla and they would take it from us. The army always searched us, and if
we were wearing a shirt and a coat at the same time, or if we were wearing
something to keep us warm under our trousers, they would accuse us of
being guerrillas.

The imposition of military identification cards represented a key com-

ponent in the process through which the military sought to regain control
of the Ixil, as was the case in other regions. All males between the ages of
sixteen and sixty were required to collect their identification cards from
the military base in Nebaj; failure to do so was automatically interpreted
by the military as a sign of collusion with the guerrilla, as was the fail-
ure to present the card at the numerous military checkpoints across the
region. However, the introduction of military identification cards went
beyond a strategy through which to exercise immediate control. The mili-
tary took advantage of the episodes during which non-combatants were
obliged to collect their identification cards in order to terrorise the civilian
population into submission, in the process committing grave international
crimes. According to one interviewee

We arrived at the military base in Nebaj in the morning, and began to form a
queue outside. There was a supposed guerrilla informer, an oreja (informer),
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 175

wearing a balaclava at the door, accompanied by soldiers. If he shook his

head, you would pass straight into the church. If he nodded, and he would
be indicating you were a guerrilla collaborator, then you were shot dead
immediately. We were terrified. When we had finished eating in the military
base, an official stood up and thanked us for coming to collect the cards. He
said it was a good thing we had done so. And he shouted, angrily, ‘Do you
know what we do with those damn guerrillas?’ We didn’t know and we were
very scared. Then he took a human arm out of the pot of stew and said ‘This
is what we do’. We had been eating people. It was terrible.28

Survivors of the political violence confirm how a significant proportion

of those who travelled to Nebaj to collect their identification cards never
returned to their communities. In March 1980, a group of women, whose
husbands and relatives had thus disappeared, marched on the military
base, located close to the central park in Nebaj, demanding the immedi-
ate release of their family. According to eyewitnesses interviewed, prior
to the demonstration, construction work had been taking place in the
town and consequently several large pits had been dug bordering the park.
The demonstration became agitated once the women made clear that
they would not abandon their positions until their relatives were released.
According to one female interviewee, ‘The military commander told us
we should not worry and that our husbands and relatives would return
home shortly’. The military’s response enraged the women, who began to
hurl stones at the soldiers. The military immediately opened fire, forcing
the women to throw themselves into the ditches and causing numerous
fatalities and injuries.29
By 1981, the guerrilla had consolidated its presence throughout the
Ixil. As combatant numbers increased, a dense network of supporters was
also established. Some communities sought out the guerrilla for protection
from the violent acts of military repression, which had, significantly, also
generated increasing sympathy towards the rebels’ plight. The violence
then had the effect of ‘forging’ ideological affinity, as Wood has identi-
fied for the case of El Salvador. Other campesinos collaborated out of fear
of the rebels, or because they were coerced into so doing. According to
a campesino from the La Perla Estate, the finca where the guerrilla had
executed the Tiger of the Ixcán several years before

We were really afraid of the guerrilla. They were armed and had carried
out violent acts in the area, such as murdering the Tiger and burning an
176 R. BRETT

aeroplane on the La Perla estate. They also began to harass people here.
‘Our hands are tied’, we said to ourselves. So some families began to col-
laborate, but not all of them – maybe a maximum of 10 families, and always
clandestinely. We only gave them food and occasionally information, we
didn’t know their names or what it was that the guerrilla actually wanted.
The truth is that we didn’t have much choice. We were in a really difficult
situation.

The military responded to growing guerrilla audacity by further milita-

rising the area and designating a high number of red zones. In 1981, for
example, a military detachment was constructed on the La Perla estate.
Subsequently, politically motivated kidnappings and murders on the haci-
enda began to increase gradually, as did the incidence of sexual violence
carried out against indigenous women by the soldiers stationed on the
finca. In January, soldiers forcibly removed thirty people from their homes
in La Perla before executing them. A further twelve villagers were executed
in February. These episodes of violence, which inevitably formed an inten-
sifying continuum of violence on the estate, would represent the prelude to
the massacre there on the day of the coup against Montt, in March 1982.
In this context, by mid-1981, in the run-up to the ‘scorched earth’
campaign, political violence in the Ixil region peaked. Sources indicate
that the first massacres appear to have been carried out by the military in
the Ixil between 1980 and early 1981, prior to the formal implementa-
tion of Lucas’ scorched earth strategy, with the execution of forty-five
individuals in Bipulay and sixty-eight in Cocop, amongst other massacres
(Stoll 1993: 123). By the summer of 1981, a wave of further massacres hit
the region, affecting the towns and villages of Xeucalbitz, Sumal, Nebaj,
Tzalbal, Palop, Río Azul and Kekchip, where civilians and members of the
CCL and FIL were summarily executed. At the same time, although on
a much smaller scale, the guerrilla persisted in carrying out its strategy of
ajustacimientos of informers and collaborators, seeking to sway communi-
ties ever closer towards the revolution. According to those interviewed,
over and above basic training by the EGP in self-defence techniques, how-
ever, the EGP provided little moral, political or military support in those
communities upon which the military focused its repression or within
which it perpetrated massacres. Abandoned to the wrath of the military
and with no way of defending themselves from the massacres, communi-
ties implicated in the violence were torn apart and survivors fled to the
mountains or to the guerrilla. According to a former member of the EGP
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 177

The truth is that one of the most significant errors of the guerrilla was that
we tried to generate the impression that we were stronger militarily than we
actually were. As a consequence, although our strategy led to the increas-
ing image of consolidated military and political revolutionary power in the
country, it also meant that the military perceived us as falsely and exager-
rated our capacities. When the counterinsurgency campaign began in the
1980s, the military reacted disproportionately against the civilian popula-
tion and we were unable to defend them.30

In June 1981, at the same point at which the haphazard strategy of

massacres escalated, the EGP initiated an intensive military campaign in
the region. The campaign ‘involved raiding towns and ambushing and
harrying army outposts’ (REMHI 1998: Vol. 3, 172). On 28 June, a
month after the assault on the military detachment in Cuarto Pueblo, the
guerrilla attacked the military detachment in San Juan Cotzal in a daring
and highly effective assault, killing three officers, forty soldiers and two
informers.31 As it had done in the Ixcán, the military immediately retali-
ated against civilians living in nearby towns and hamlets, targeting com-
munities believed to be providing refuge for and support to the guerrilla.
Over the few next weeks, military repression once again ratcheted up, as
soldiers executed twenty people in Cotzal’s town square and 128 people
in Cocop and Chajul, pushing survivors in the towns and nearby ham-
lets to flee to the mountains. In this context, and in preparation for the
imminent ‘scorched earth’ campaign in the Ixil, the armed forces scaled
up their presence. Reinforcements were brought in to the La Perla Estate;
two further platoons were stationed in La Taña, one in the San Francisco
Estate, and another stationed at La Panchita. The stage was set for the
military’s coordinated onslaught.
Perhaps the final high-profile act of defiance by the rebels prior to the
commencement of the scorched earth campaign was the execution, in
December 1981, of the indigenous leader, Sebastián Guzmán, in Nebaj.
The following day, General Benedicto, Lucas García’s brother and Chief
of the National Defence High Command arrived in Nebaj by helicopter.
According to a former town counsellor, the inhabitants of Nebaj gathered
in the main square to hear the General speak. His words were a spoken
portent of the carnage that would soon reign down on the Ixil:

General Benedicto arrived and he was furious. He said, ‘We are going to
kill everyone in this village so that you don’t stop collaborating with the
178 R. BRETT

guerrilla and messing with my soldiers’. Soon afterwards the military came
in planes and helicopters to bomb the villages near Nebaj. We hid under our
beds because as the houses shook. It was terrifying.32

The Scorched Earth in the Ixil

During the scorched earth campaign, military operations in the Ixil were
carried out by the newly established Gumarcaj Task Force. By 1983, the
indigenous population in the Ixil region would be reduced by over a quar-
ter: 5 % would be murdered, and another 21 % would flee to the mountains
and jungle and across the border into Mexico (Brett 2007). As was the
case in the Ixcán, the political violence orchestrated by the military had
followed a trajectory of gradual intensification, shaped by local dynamics,
the shifting balance of military power between insurgent and counterin-
surgent forces and the increasing implication of the civilian population in
the conflict. In the Ixil, the military had begun by targeting individuals
through kidnapping and selective killings, in particular community lead-
ers, teachers and those accused of collaboration with the rebels. As this
military strategy failed to bring the population into line—in fact, as it
began to push indigenous communities further towards the insurgency—
after 1980, the military began to perpetrate massacres in those villages it
believed possessed links with the rebels. For example, in February 1981,
soldiers killed forty-five people in Xecax, firebombing their houses after
an EGP ambush. Finally, between February 1982 and August 1983, the
military began its scorched earth campaign in the Ixil, framed as it was
within operations implemented initially under Lucas García and subse-
quently under Ríos Montt.
Within the broader context of the armed conflict, the loss of the Ixil, a
critical strategic zone for the rebels, would have been profoundly damag-
ing for the counterinsurgency. Significantly, as the guerrilla consolidated
its ranks and amassed a broad and dense support base, the armed forces
became acutely concerned that such an eventuality was becoming increas-
ingly possible. The Guatemalan military made no attempt to conceal its
perception that the Ixil region represented a zone of central significance:
the Ixils were historically perceived of as being subversive and, moreover,
unlikely to render their allegiance to the military readily, as Kemp has
evidenced (unpublished document). In fact, the region was identified
as being of such strategic importance that a separate campaign plan was
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 179

formulated through which to operationalise the military campaign there.

Operation Ixil, also known as ‘Plan Sofía’ was conceived in May 1981,
although not implemented until June of the following year. In May 1981,
at the behest of General Benedicto Lucas García, Captain Juan Cifuentes
was given a mandate by the military to carry out an investigation into Civil
Affairs in the Ixil region. Cifuentes’ report dealt with two themes in par-
ticular: the possibility of ‘rescuing the hearts and minds of the population’,
and the development of strategies that could be employed by the mili-
tary to assimilate the indigenous Maya into the dominant ladino culture.
Cifuentes concluded that, given the Ixil population’s historical resistance
to previous ladinisation processes, an assimilation strategy might actually
increase the gap between the predominantly ladino state, the primary polit-
ical community, and the indigenous population there. However, Cifuentes
argued that if the Ixil were afforded too high a degree of cultural freedom,
their demands for cultural autonomy would increase. The military officer
therefore recommended an ideological approach to civic affairs, based on
psychological operations, and the synthesis of military and development
strategies (Schirmer 1998: 104–106). This ‘ideological’ process was led by
S-5 groups operating in the region, and reinforced by the creation of Civil
Defence Patrols (PAC), Development Poles and Model Villages. Civilian
operations would represent the brimstone to the military’s fire that would
subsequently be set upon the Ixil through the scorched earth operations
within the framework of Plan Sofia and Operation Victory 82 under Montt.
Prior to the initiation of the scorched earth campaign during 1981, the
military had already perpetrated a series of massacres in the Ixil region, tar-
geting alleged guerrilla strongholds. The systematic massacres and sweep
operations of the scorched earth campaign formally began in January
1982. According to Kemp, in January 1982, General Benedicto Lucas
advised publicly the deployment of a further 15,000 soldiers to participate
in operations in the western highlands, in particular in the border zone
of El Quiché with Mexico. In February, nine new battalions were estab-
lished (unpublished document, 321). From this point onwards, indige-
nous communities in the Ixil experienced a dramatic intensification in the
number, scale and coordinated nature of the massacres to which they were
subject. The month of February 1982 in the Ixil, for example, represented
the darkest period in the entire conflict, when more massacres were perpe-
trated by the military than at any other moment during the armed conflict
(CEH 1999). The number of massacres perpetrated by the Gumarcaj Task
Force in the municipalities of Nebaj, Chajul and Cotzal during that month
180 R. BRETT

alone was more than three times the average number of monthly mas-
sacres for the period from June 1981 to December 1982. Soldiers burnt
indigenous communities to the ground, coordinating massacres through-
out the Ixil highlands. Once more, massacres were perpetrated, principally
on Sundays and holidays, when higher numbers of potential victims were
likely to be found in the villages. The military entered communities, often
brandishing blacklists of alleged collaborators. Prior to killing their vic-
tims, the military separated the men from the women. Women were often
systematically raped. The soldiers executed children, smashing their heads
against trees, and cut open pregnant women and pulled out their foetuses.
Victims were bound and often shot with a coup de grace in the back of the
head and buried in mass graves.
Referring to operations in the Ixil in February 1982, the CIA stated
how the military had received orders from the high command to destroy
all towns and villages that were signalled as collaborating with the reb-
els. In those cases where the military encountered resistance, it had been
ordered to presume that the entire community was hostile and should
thus be destroyed. At the same time, those communities from which resi-
dents had fled were similarly identified as zones of collaboration with the
insurgency; said communities should also be burnt to the ground and any
crops or animals there destroyed (Kemp, unpublished document, 114).
During the massacres then, soldiers systematically burned homes, posses-
sions, livestock and food with the aim of destroying any means for civilian
survival. These tactics clearly formed part of a premeditated military strat-
egy designed to annihilate the indigenous population in the Ixil region.
According to a campesino from Vicalamá, one of the massacred villages,

When the army arrived in our village, the soldiers began to cut down the
sacred corn. This had never happened before, not even when our grand-
parents were alive – no one had ever cut down our sacred corn in the past.
People had a lot of respect for our culture. But each day we saw the army
cutting down the corn in our villages and burning it, and we had no food.
When soldiers found campesinos, they killed them; when they found our
corn, they burned it; when they found our houses, they set them alight. In
those days, many people cried out with hunger.33

On occasion, soldiers ordered the collaboration of PAC members in

the destruction of ancestral sacred sites, whilst, at the same time, sacred
sites were also targeted during aerial bombings campaigns, for example,
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 181

the sacred caves of Juil. The destruction of indigenous material culture

then represented a key component of the military offensive in the Ixil
region, with the aim of preventing the reproduction of indigenous cul-
ture. Violence was present and future-oriented.
The massacre in Xix, of which Don Tiburcio was a survivor, represents
a particularly cruel example of the political violence perpetrated by the
military in the Ixil during the government of Lucas. In 1981, CCL and
FIL were created in Xix. The FIL kept watch over entry points to the
community, in order to warn of the military’s arrival, whilst the CCL gave
ideological lectures and organised workshops. According to one survivor,
whose relatives were killed during the massacre in Xix, prior to the army’s
attack, only a handful of young people had joined the EGP as combatants
and left for the mountains.
On 16 February 1982, at approximately 10 am, troops entered the
village, shooting at random, whilst people tried desperately to escape. In
the first house that was raided, five people were killed; more died when
the house was set alight. In the second house, soldiers wielding machetes
bludgeoned five people to death, including a pregnant woman. The deputy
mayor was forcibly removed from the second house and obliged to lead
the soldiers to the home of the Director of Catholic Action, where they
killed him and his family, as well as the deputy mayor. During the course
of the massacre, the army razed the village to the ground, burning houses
and cremating corpses, with the exception of two houses belonging to
the military commissioner and his relatives. Approximately twenty people
were finally killed, including eleven children and a pregnant woman, all of
whom were beaten and subsequently shot. According to one survivor who
had hidden in a place from which he watched the operation and heard
the gunshots and screams of victims, ‘The soldiers cut open a pregnant
woman’s belly and tore out the foetus, smashing its tiny head against a
rock and also smashing the woman’s head to pieces. They locked people
in their homes and burned them alive’.
Some of the inhabitants of Xix escaped to the villages of Sumalito and
Bicotz, where they were hunted down by the army. According to a survivor

We kept running until we were about four hours’ distance from the com-
munity; we stayed close to the village for a while, but there was nothing to
eat because the military had burned everything. The army and PAC stayed
here everyday and we couldn’t enter the community. The PAC set fire to
woodland where they thought we were hiding, and that’s how more people
were killed.34
182 R. BRETT

The army relentlessly pursued the survivors of the Xix massacre, so they
travelled by night in order to avoid being detected. The villagers were
careful to tread only on twigs and undergrowth in order to avoid leaving
footprints on the soil. They were unable to light a fire for warmth or to
cook food that they found along the way (plants and insects), for fear of
being detected by the army. With the objective of killing the survivors
from the massacre, soldiers left bags of poisoned salt in the mountain
region for the displaced communities to find. According to the survivors
from Xix, approximately 200 children died of cold, hunger and sickness in
the wake of the massacre.

The Assumption of Montt and Victory 82 in the Ixil

Rural violence immediately increased in the wake of the Montt-led coup.
In the Ixil, there was no respite between the Lucas and Montt regimes.
On 23 March, the day of the coup, the military perpetrated a massacre in
the community of Ilom, on the La Perla Estate, where Arenas Barreras
had been executed by the EGP.  The operation evidenced meticulous
planning and preparation, commencing at five o’clock in the morning,
when a military officer arrived in Ilom, accompanied by soldiers and civil
patrollers from the La Perla Estate. During the massacre, fifty-five people
were selected from a list and forced to congregate in the village school.
A resident from the community was forced to collaborate with the army:
his hands were tied behind his back and he was tortured until he pro-
vided names of supposed guerrilla sympathisers. The man was then hung
by his feet inside the school and subsequently executed along with the
other fifty-five individuals. The Ilom massacre established the precedent
for what would transpire under the Montt regime in the Ixil region, mass
atrocities of targeted, indigenous communities carried out with impec-
cable precision and planning:

The vast majority of the massacres required a process of psychological and

technical preparation. Although the destruction of villages was nearly always
meticulously planned, psychological preparation was necessary in order to
ensure that the troops were in a permanent state of tension and alertness.
There was also a great deal of planning involved in the execution of mas-
sacres: people were captured and separated, then interrogated and tortured;
mass graves were prepared; flammable materials were used for burning
homes; food provisions were required (ODHAG 1998: Vol. 2, 215).
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 183

During the brief regime of General Ríos Montt, levels of state-terror

spiralled. The Ixil scorched earth campaign was directed from the mili-
tary bases and detachments in Nebaj, Cotzal, Chajul, Juil, La Perla, San
Francisco, Cunén, Uspantán and Chel. The military burnt at least one
hundred villages in rural Ixil off the map, whilst attacking virtually every
indigenous village in the area (Schirmer 1998: 56). The violence brought
an unprecedented death toll, whilst provoking the mass displacement of
thousands of civilians, as it had done in the Ixcán. With power concen-
trated in the Military High Command, and with the media effectively
silenced, the military took free reign to expand its killing campaign.
Under Montt, the military razed to the ground Santa Anita las Canoas,
San Francisco Javier, Plan de Sánchez, Chipastor, Petanac, Vivitz, San
Francisco Nentón, Rancho Bejuco, Puente Alto, La Plazuela, Xeucalbitz,
Sumal, Nebaj, Tzalbal, Palop, Río Azul and Agua Fría, amongst other set-
tlements. Under the the Gumarcaj Task Force, operations were directed
by the Mariscal Zavala Brigade, with the support of reservists, strategists,
paratroopers, Kaibiles (special forces), the Guard of Honour and mem-
bers of the Guatemalan Air Force. The violence ripped through the Ixil,
drenching the mountains with blood:

The army’s brutality was totally incomprehensible for these people […] their
most sacred places were deliberately profaned by the army […] These peo-
ple had absolutely no idea that human beings were capable of such things
[…] These were people who had always felt very sure of themselves; but the
army’s cruelty left an indelible mark on all those who witnessed or directly
suffered military repression (Praxis 1988: Vol. II, 224).

During its incursions into indigenous communities, the military burned

the inhabitants together with their belongings, destroyed infrastructure,
sacred places and churches, and devastated markets and food reserves that
had been collected from recent harvests. The counterinsurgency sought
to annihilate indigenous communities and to eliminate their material cul-
ture. When individuals were not executed during massacres, the slaughter
or, in other cases, stealing of animals, and the confiscation of clothes and
other belongings, left individuals without the basic means for survival.35
Thousands starved to death. On 3 April, soldiers massacred ninety-two
campesinos in the village of Chel, and returned nineteen days later to kill
a further forty-five people.36 In relation to the massacre in Chel, Chajul,
the CEH concludes:
184 R. BRETT

The army’s concept of ‘enemy’ did not necessarily include the notion of
an armed combatant. The army regarded the community of Chel as ‘sub-
versive’. The officers who executed the plan were instructed to destroy all
villages believed to be cooperating with the EGP and eliminate all sources of
resistance […] These crimes are totally unjustifiable, regardless of whether
or not the victims collaborated with the guerrilla [and] they demonstrate
the army’s intention to totally or partially destroy this particular community.
These crimes were therefore of a genocidal nature (1999: Vol. 5, 65–70).

The Montt strategy was so effective that, by July 1982, large-scale vio-
lence in the Ixil region had gradually begun to decrease, given its pre-
cipitous and overwhelming impact, which ultimately forced the EGP’s
retreat from the area.37 Significantly, the nature and scale of the massacres
perpetrated in the Ixil during this period led the CEH to conclude that
all military operations planned and executed in the area within the frame-
work of Operation Victory 82 were of a ‘genocidal nature’.38 The Ixil
represented a zone of key strategic importance for both the armed forces
and the insurgency. Indigenous support to the rebels there had been
widespread, as it had across many other highland departments, includ-
ing Huehuetenango and El Quiché, a factor that, in part, explains the
extraordinary force and brutality within which the campaign was waged.
Indigenous communities had voluntarily supported the rebels, whilst oth-
ers had been coerced into so doing by the insurgents.39 The threat–vul-
nerability nexus is central for our understanding of why violence in the
Ixil was so egregious. The ‘indian’ threat in the Ixil was perceived of as
being particularly acute: indigenous communities were subject to terror as
a means of both purifying and cleansing them of subversion and punish-
ing them for their act of deviance. Subversion would not be permitted;
its roots would be obliterated to prevent future sedition. However, given
that, from the perspective of the primary political community, the ‘indian’
was perceived as inherently insubordinate, physical destruction alone was
not enough: defiance had to be eradicated at the root, indigenous culture,
such as it was, could not be permitted to persist into future generations.

Military Control and Cultural Death

After 1982, within the framework of the military’s ‘Action Plan for Conflict
Zones’, those who survived the massacres and did not flee the area were
forcibly relocated in Development Poles and Model Villages—concentra-
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 185

tion camps designed to control and pacify the surviving population—and

forced to patrol in the PAC.40 In practice, a total of six Development
Poles were formulated in those areas of most pronounced conflict, and
model villages were located within the Development Poles. In many cases,
residents themselves were obliged to build the villages. Resources for the
Plan, as we know, were executed through the Inter-Agency Coordinating
Committee.
Inhabitants were entirely dependent on the military for their survival,
in both economic and infrastructural terms (Dunkerley 1988: 496), as the
guerrilla had been upon indigenous communities. Model villages were,
at least initially, subject to permanent military presence, a presence con-
solidated by the obligatory civil patrols. Inhabitants were also obliged to
sign up for ‘civic work’ programmes, initially known as ‘Beans and Rifles’
(Fusiles y Frijoles) and later, ‘Roofs, Work and Tortillas’ (Techo, Tortilla
y Trabajo), which involved rebuilding areas destroyed by the military.
Simultaneously, with the guerrilla threat now scorched from indigenous
lands, the military began to repopulate those territories that had been
destroyed during the counterinsurgency campaign. The military’s objec-
tive was to occupy the hearts and minds of the indigenous population, to
colonise their cultural, political and economic institutions and to forge a
new indigenous subject, what Hale (2004) has defined as ‘el indio per-
mitido’, the permitted indian.
The fundamental objective of the strategy of population control was to
restructure the very foundations of rural life in order to guarantee con-
tinuing military supremacy.41 From the perspective of the military and the
primary political community, the indigenous population was guilty not
only of supporting the current insurgency, but also, by its very nature,
of future-subversion, what we might define as a species of systematic,
Orwellian thoughtcrime. In this context, the indigenous population had
to be purged of its innate capacity to transmit controversial, subversive
and socially unacceptable thoughts and actions. The indoctrination pro-
grammes carried out within the model villages pursued the objective of
sculpting just such an indigenous subject who would be defined by what
Orwell termed crimestop, ‘the faculty of stopping short, as though by
instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought… of being bored or
repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical
direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity’ (2012: 181).
Consequently, within the model villages, the army sought to forge a
new indigenous subject, prohibiting the practice of traditional customs
186 R. BRETT

and sacred rites, and thus precipitating the disappearance of indigenous

authority structures, rituals and historical mechanisms of conflict resolu-
tion, by subjugating the population to military authority. The confine-
ment of diverse ethnic groups within the same village led to an immediate
decline in the diversity of spoken indigenous languages in the Ixil, as
it would in other areas, as inhabitants were forced to communicate in
Spanish. Fear gradually became internalised, reinforcing the de oficio
prohibition with a de facto, self-censorship. Simultaneously, ideological
indoctrination programmes provided by the S-5 were designed to facil-
itate the assimilation process of the Maya into the predominant ladino
culture, to construct a loyal, patriotic subject in place of the mutinous,
incendiary subversive. A new form of social organisation was thus imposed
upon the rural population, a population still regarded as a potential sup-
port base for the guerrilla, fostering profound divisions at the very heart
of indigenous community life. Over time, the strategy eroded indigenous
culture, reinforcing the impact of the massacres, threatening the survival
and reproduction of indigenous culture. The physical obliteration waged
through Campaign Victory 82 had, in this respect, represented only the
beginning of the military’s plan. As the guerrilla began to internalise its
strategic defeat, so the military sought to construct a new nation out of
the flames consuming indigenous lands, built upon civilisation, order and
subordination. In the aftermath of the genocide, however, history would
not be unwritten; truth would not be repelled.

The Massacre in San Franciso Javier, Santa María Nebaj

The impact of the political violence on San Francisco Javier is closely
linked to the military’s offensive in the surrounding towns and villages,
particularly Salquil Grande, Palop and Vicalamá, where the military had
installed military detachments. The military first visited the village in
1979, en route to Palop, where troops reportedly remained for a month.
However, shortly after this incident, the military launched a campaign
against the civilian population of San Francisco Javier, soldiers capturing
several local inhabitants and killing two people, allegedly guerrilla collabo-
rators, in their houses.
In 1981, the violence escalated as the military’s visits became more fre-
quent and soldiers began to kidnap local residents. During the first incur-
sion of the year, soldiers burned twelve houses, at the same time as they
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 187

subjected the village of Palop—a twenty-minute walk from San Francisco

Javier—to more extreme and savage acts of violence.

Well, there was a massacre in Palop. The soldiers killed seven people, they
tortured them and killed them with bullets and machetes and some of them
had their ears cut off. This really shocked us, because we didn’t understand
why this was happening. Yes, we had heard of the guerrilla, but we didn’t
have anything to do with them. The soldiers visited Palop every two weeks
to kill people. The people of Palop suffered a lot and then the violence came
to our village.42

Later that same year, after the military had returned to its encamp-
ment in Palop, soldiers captured a resident of San Francisco Javier. A large
number of villagers reacted by marching on the detachment in Palop to
demand the release of their neighbour. According to eyewitness accounts,
the soldiers immediately identified the group of villagers as guerrillas
who had come to stage an attack on the camp—even though they were
unarmed. When the group entered Palop’s main square, the army opened
fire and subsequently launched an extensive bombing campaign in San
Francisco Javier, causing fatalities and casualties. This incident contributed
to increasing levels of violence in San Francisco Javier, and confirmed the
military’s belief that the local population was subversive, was collaborating
with the guerrilla. By the end of 1981, the military was making regular
incursions into the area, carrying out by killings, kidnappings, the destruc-
tion of homes, the raping of women and general looting.
The guerrilla had first arrived in San Francisco Javier towards the end
of the 1970s, when the violence was beginning to permeate the region.
According to those interviewed, the guerrilla visited the village at least
once a fortnight, initially talking to the inhabitants about poverty, injustice
and the dangers posed by the army.

We had heard about the guerrilla before they came because they attacked
the army not far from our community. But they officially visited our com-
munity in 1980. They told us that we were being discriminated against and
that they were going to recover our land and all the indigenous peoples’
land. ‘You must fight against the wealthy’, they told us. ‘Maybe they’re right
because it’s true that we are poor’, some people said. Others were scared
because of what the soldiers had told them, and because of the growing vio-
lence. We weren’t afraid of the guerrilla; but we were afraid of the soldiers.
Even so, the guerrilla’s words had a big impact on us.
188 R. BRETT

It was through the sale of food that the inhabitants of San Francisco
Javier began to communicate and interact with the guerrilla. Conversations
gradually became more frequent, particularly due to increasing military
violence, which incentivised several inhabitants to join the village’s emerg-
ing CCL and FIL groups. However, between 1980 and 1981, collab-
oration was minimal, and, according to interviewees who survived the
massacre, no more than fifteen villagers actively supported the insurgency.
According to a campesino from San Francisco Javier:

They told us not to surrender to the army but to hide, or the army would
kill us. People trusted the guerrilla because they didn’t steal from us like
the soldiers did. The guerrilla paid for their food. Before the massacre there
wasn’t much support for the guerrilla here, but afterwards nearly everyone
supported the insurgents in the mountains by giving them tortillas, food
and a little bit of information.43

Whilst in some areas it was common for young people to leave for
the mountains in order to join the guerrilla as combatants, interviewees
asserted that no residents of San Francisco Javier had joined the guerrilla,
at least whilst they were living in the village. Furthermore, given that the
EGP executed several suspected army collaborators between 1981 and
1982 in villages close to the area, it remains difficult to construct a pre-
cise image of the nature of collaboration in San Francisco Javier, in short
whether it was principally voluntary or coerced.
In the run-up to the massacre, the military continued to visit the vil-
lage, increasingly seeking to test the degree of loyalty that villagers were
showing to the institution. According to a campesino from the village:

The army passed by our community in the morning, telling everyone, ‘Hey,
we are the guerrillas, we are going to organise things, give us food and
fight with us’. If people said yes, then the soldiers knew who was willing to
collaborate. The next day the soldiers returned and went directly to those
people’s homes to accuse them of being collaborators and to capture them.
But it wasn’t long before we caught on and realised that they were soldiers
and that they were deceiving people because of the way they spoke and the
boots that they wore. The same men also raped women near to the commu-
nity, saying that they were guerrillas, but we knew that they were soldiers.44

Prior to the massacre, the village was shaken by a series of violent events.
On 7 August, soldiers stole livestock and ambushed and killed a resident
who attempted to retrieve the animals. According to a campesino from the
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 189

village, on one occasion the army slaughtered 100 sheep. Although sev-
eral families were displaced by the violence and fled to the mountains, the
majority of the inhabitants had remained in San Francisco Javier, unlike
in other villages. On 15 August, between 8 am and 9 am, more than fifty
soldiers entered the community, indiscriminately opening fire and launch-
ing grenades. The soldiers, deployed in helicopter from Huehuetenango,
were supported by paratroopers and civil patrollers from Las Majadas. The
soldiers and PAC members raided each house in the village, and then
proceeded to burn the houses down and kill livestock. Villagers were
murdered in the streets or in their houses with firearms and machetes;
one woman was decapitated in the middle of the street. Approximately
thirty people were killed, including pregnant women, children and senior
citizens. Several women were also raped during the operation. During
the massacre, CCL and FIL members were killed, as were entire families
falsely accused of belonging to the guerrilla.
Soldiers remained in the village after perpetrating the massacre. They
finally abandoned the village at 2  pm, taking with them the remaining
animals and corn, and burning nearby fields. The following day, venturing
from their hiding places around the area, survivors returned to the village
and buried the victims in a mass grave. Several villagers who had fled to
the mountains were hunted down and murdered by soldiers and PAC
members. Following the massacre, the area was placed under permanent
military surveillance, and, in April 1983, soldiers killed a further five vil-
lagers, including children. Those interviewed report that the victims were
beaten prior to execution and their houses were burned.
The massacre in San Francisco Javier precipitated a wave of internal dis-
placement within the Ixil region, during which time individuals remained
hidden, in many cases, for over a decade. The military continued to pur-
sue the displaced population, bombing their encampments. Many died of
hunger, exposure to extreme weather conditions and sickness. According
to a survivor who sought refuge in the mountains:

‘They bombed us and we were all unarmed – women, elderly people and
children. Many people were injured, including my son whose right hand
was amputated. We were in hiding for several months close to the Visumal
Mountain, without food. There was hardly anything to eat; some people
had hidden corn, but the army heard that we were in the mountains, so they
came and bombed the area. Many died during this attack and many were
captured by the soldiers. Afterwards the soldiers ate their food and killed
their animals’.45
190 R. BRETT

REFERENCES
Ball, P., P. Kobrak, and H. F. Spirer. (1999). State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–
1996: A Quantitative Assessment. American Association for the Advancement
of Science.
Brett, R. (2007). Una Guerra sin Batallas: del Odio, la Violencia y el Miedo en el
Ixil y el Icxán, 1972–1983. Guatemala: F & G Editoriales.
Carmack, R. M. (1988). Harvest of violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan
crisis. Norman/London: University of Oklahoma Press.
Compañero. (1982). International magazine of Guatemala’s Guerrilla Army of
the Poor EGP. Solidarity Publications Magazine: GUATEMALA. p. 29.
Dunkerley, J. (1988). Power in the isthmus: A political history of modern Central
America. New York: Verso.
Editorial Praxis. (1988/1990). Guatemala: Polos de Desarrollo. El Caso de la
Desestructuración de las Comunidades Indígenas (Vol. I–II). Praxis: Guatemala.
Falla, R. (1992). Masacres de la selva: Ixcán, Guatemala (1975–1982). Guatemala:
Editorial Universitaria.
Hale, C. (2004). Rethinking indigenous politics in the era of the ‘Indio Permitido’.
NACLA Report on the Americas. pp. 16–21.
Le Bot, Y. (1997). Subcomandant Marcos. El Sueno Zapatista. Barcelona: Plaza y
Janes.
McAllister, C. (2010). A headlong rush into the future: Violence and revolution
in a Guatemalan indigenous village. In G. Joseph & G. Grandin (Eds.), A cen-
tury of revolution: Insurgent and counterinsurgent violence during Latin
America’s long cold war. Durham: Duke University Press.
Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (ODHAG).
(1997). Guatemala: Nunca Mas. Volumen ? El Entoro Histórico. Informe del
Proyecto Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (REMHI). ODHAG:
Guatemala.
Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala (OHDAG).
(1999). The report of the interdiocese project for the recovery of historical memory.
Guatemala/London: Never Again: Edición Internacional/CIIR y LAB.
Orwell, G., 2012. Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Annotated Edition. London: Penguin.
Schirmer, J. G. (1998). The Guatemalan military project: A violence called democ-
racy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stoll, D. (1988). Evangelicals, guerrillas, and the army: The Ixil triangle under
Rios Montt. In Harvest of violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan
crises. Norman/London: University of Oklahoma Press.
Stoll, D. (1993). Between two armies: In the Ixil towns of Guatemala. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Taylor, C. (1998). El Retorno de los Refugiados Guatemaltecos: Reconstruyendo el
Tejido Social. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Wood, E.  J. (2003). Insurgent collective action and civil war in El Salvador.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 191

NOTES
1. Interview with a campesino in Cantabal, Quiché.
2. Interview, Santa María Tzejá, Quiché, October 2003.
3. Interview, Guatemala City, September 2003.
4. Interview. Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
5. According to interviews, between December 1980 and January 1981, the
guerrilla executed at least five informers. The most polemic execution was
that of Victoriano Matías, a cooperative leader in Mayalán who had also
directed cooperatives when Father William Woods was alive. In February
1981, the EGP ambushed and killed Héctor Pineda, a residente of Cocales,
and also attempted to murder the deputy mayor, Jorge Fortunato Funes
Argueta, in Santa María Candelaria.
6. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, September 2003.
7. During this period, the Church was constantly harassed and threatened by
the Army. Father Luis Gurriarán went into exile in Guatemala City after
receiving death threats and on 19 December 1978, Carlos Stetter, a
German priest who worked in the región, was deported from Guatemala.
8. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
9. Runways were built in the following villages: Los Ángeles, Cuarto Pueblo,
Samaritano, Mayalán, Pueblo Nuevo, Xalbal, San Luis Ixcán, Santiago
Ixcán, Kaibil Balam, Playa Grande, Santa María Tzejá, San Antonio Tzejá,
Finca Ascensión Copón, Finca Chailá and Santa María Dolores.
10. Interview, Santa María de Tzejá, Quiché, October 2003.
11. Bishop Gerardi was subsequently executed in April 1998, after the publica-
tion of the Church’s truth commission, Guatemala: Nunca Mas. In June
2001, three military officers, Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada, Captain
Byron Lima Oliva and José Obdulio Villanueva, were convicted of
Gerardi’s murder, and sentenced to thirty year prison terms. A Catholic
priest, Mario Orantes, was sentenced to twenty years as an accomplice to
the murder.
12. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
13. Interview, Santa María Tzejá, Quiché, September 2003.
14. It is important to note that during this period, the National Security and
Development Plan was implemented (on 5 April 1981).
15. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, September 2003.
16. Interview, Cantabla, Quiché, October 2003.
17. Interview, Santa María Tzejá, Quiché, October 2003.
18. Xalbal, Mayalán, Pueblo Nuevo, Los Ángeles, Cuarto Pueblo, Piedras
Blancas, Malacatán and Ixtahuacán Chiquito.
19. The entire region of Ixcán was unified and incorporated into the munici-
pality of Ixcán Grande on 21 August 1985.
192 R. BRETT

20. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.

21. “La URNG Cumple 22 Años” (The URNG’s 22nd Anniversary).
Interview, Alba Estela Maldonado, URNG, El Periódico, pp.  12–13
(01.02.2004).
22. This is corroborated in the report of the CEH (1999 Vol. VII, Appendix
I).
23. Interview, Guatemala City, November 2003.
24. Interview, Guatemala City, November 2003.
25. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
26. Interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
27. Anonymous interview, Nebaj. Quiché, April 2002.
28. Anonymous interview with a campesino from Tuchubuc, del Municipio de
Santa Maria Nebaj, April 2002.
29. Stoll posits a distinct interpretation of this incident, reporting that several
of the protesters were guerrillas disguised as women who had infiltrated
the demonstration as a pretext for attacking the military (1994: 78–80).
30. Interview, Guatemala City, June 2002.
31. According to interviews, the guerrilla again attacked the Cotzal military
base seven months later, on 19 January 1982. Allegedly, three officials and
an undisclosed number of soldiers died during the attack.
32. Anonymous interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
33. Anonymous interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
34. Anonymous interview, Nebaj, Quiché, April 2002.
35. Whilst massacres represented the most common modality of counterinsur-
gent violence, the insurgency also committed massacres. For example, in
June 1982, the EGP slaughtered 125 people in the village of Chacalté,
because they were regarded as ‘reactionaries’ for not supporting the insur-
gency (ODHAG 1998 Vol. 3: 175–177). This massacre, reportedly com-
mitted by the Ho Chi Minh Front, is one of the CEH’s illustrative case
studies (see Illustrative Case Study 110 CEH 1999 Vol. 5). The guerrilla
also committed massacres in Batzul, Chajul and Cotzal, between May and
June.
36. During the killing spree, massacres were also perpetrated in Juá (thirteen
people), Covadonga (thirty-four people), Caxixlá (ten people), Ilom (110
people), San Francisco Javier and Vivitz. The military also destroyed the
village of Tzalbal and its surrounding districts, including Batzuchil,
Tzjulche, Canaquil, Vicoxo, Corralcay, La Vega, Nepecbalam, Xecoco,
Majal, Janlay, Chuche, Xoloché, Vipacna and Tuchabuc (ODHAG
1998 Vol. 3: Chap. 4; Schirmer 1998; CEH 1999).
37. The massacres did in fact continue beyond 1982, although with less fre-
quency. In December, for example, soldiers killed twenty-three campesinos
in Sumal Chiquito, Nebaj, and 300 people in Parraxtut, Sacapulas.
 WAR IN THE REBEL HEARTLANDS 193

38. In relation to the Chel massacre, see Illustrative Case Number 60 (CEH
1999).
39. In his monograph on the Ixil, Stoll (1993) incorrectly attributes support
to the rebels in the area as deriving exclusively from coercion of the non-
combatant population by the EGP. Whilst direct coercion most certainly
played a role in pushing the civilian population towards the guerrilla, as did
fear of their reprisals and the search for protection from military repres-
sion, individuals and communities did develop a revolutionary exhilaration
during the armed conflict. In some cases, Ixil did support the rebels volun-
tarily, as McAllister (2010) has cogently evidenced for the case of the
Chupol community in El Quiché. From the perspective of Elisabeth Wood
(2003: 259), Stoll’s conclusions are questionable, given that research was
carried out when the region remained under military control. Wood also
charges that the research suffered from selection bias, given that a third of
the Ixil population at the time of research remained displaced or in exile
from the region and those that would have been more likely to support the
guerrilla were either dead or absent.
40. Between 50,000 and 60,000 indigenous peoples populated the model vil-
lages (ODHAG 1998 Vol. 2: 141).
41. In the Ixil region, Development Poles were situated in the municipality of
Nebaj, Aldea Acul, Tzalbal, Juil-Chacalté, Río Azul, Pulaj, Xolcuay, Ojo de
Agua, Santa Avelina, Bichibalá, Salquil-Palop Atzumbal, Juá-Ilom, Chel,
Xemal/Xeputul, Chiché, and San Felipe Chenlá (ODHAG 1998 Vol. 2:
145).
42. Interview, San Francisco Javier, April 2002.
43. Interview, San Francisco Javier, April 2002.
44. Interview, San Francisco Javier, April 2002.
45. Interview, San Francisco Javier, April 2002.
 CHAPTER 7

Displacement and Exile

Thousands fled from counterinsurgency operations under both Lucas and

Montt, although Campaign Victory 82 was perhaps the most severe in
terms of its humanitarian impact. During this period, processes of res-
cue, what Casiro has termed ‘the banality of good’, took place both in
Guatemala, through the CPRs and in Chiapas, southern Mexico, on the
Mexico–Guatemala border. Two predominant patterns of genocide res-
cue emerged: rescue within Guatemala characterised by the mobilisation
of displaced indigenous communities through the CPRs, what we term
here endogenous rescue, and rescue driven by non-indigenous, non-
Guatemalan actors, outside of the country (in Mexico), what we term exog-
enous rescue.
By documenting the processes of genocide rescue carried out by ordi-
nary citizens, both Guatemalan and Mexican, the research presented in
this chapter begins to elucidate episodes of profound humanity and stra-
tegic innovation wielded in the context of genocide and mass atrocities,
whilst demonstrating that the decisive impact of genocidal violence may
itself not be uniform. Histories of genocide rescue fracture the sweeping
narrative that mass violence is terminal and paralysing, and thus accord-
ingly closes down spaces for agency, resistance and resilience. Within the
context of mass atrocities, spaces exist where the complexities of human
behaviour and the exercise of agency in both organised and improvised
rescue efforts not only represent defiance to enduring horror, but also

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 195

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_7
196 R. BRETT

contribute to the formation of contestatory political identities, to pro-

cesses through which to rewrite histories of violence.
The chapter will focus on the role in genocide rescue of the CPRs and
of non-state actors and networks in Chiapas, Mexico and close with a
series of observations.

MASS EXODUS
The counterinsurgency campaign sparked a flood of internal displace-
ment and predominantly indigenous refugees. In general terms, those
who fled can be divided into four categories: those who were displaced
from one indigenous community to another; those who found refuge in
Guatemala City and other parts of the country; those who fled to the
mountains and jungle, where they often joined CPRs and those who
sought refuge in Mexico and other countries. Approximately, one mil-
lion Guatemalans were internally displaced, whilst a further 400,000
individuals were exiled in Mexico, Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica and the
USA. Of those that fled Guatemala, 150,000 sought asylum in Mexico,
of which 45,000 were granted refugee status and largely confined to refu-
gee camps, and 200,000 sought asylum in the USA.  A further 20,000
displaced Guatemalans joined the CPR (CEH 1999a; Falla 1992; Manz
1989; ODHAG 1998; Taylor 1998). An estimated total of 1.5 million
Guatemalans were forcibly displaced, representing almost 20 % of the then
population, the majority being indigenous Maya. The abrupt and violent
mass displacement was most keenly felt in the highland departments of
El Quiché, Huehuetenango, Alta Verapaz and Chimaltenango (cited in
Mack, cited in Oglesby 1991: 9). The violence directly precipitated an
acute humanitarian crisis.
Mass exodus was a direct consequence of the widespread suffering and
terror created by the counterinsurgency and, to a lesser extent, guerrilla-
led violence. Those who fled the violence were subsequently pursued
through counterinsurgency offensives, to the extent that the internally
displaced ‘were not simply a direct consequence of the violence; they were
also directly targeted by counterinsurgency policies, particularly in areas
embattled with serious social conflicts, where there was guerrilla presence
or influence’ (ODHAG 1998: 155). Many Guatemalans who were forced
to seek refuge in the mountains perished due both to the army’s relent-
less persecution, illnesses caused by the inhospitable climate and lack of
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 197

basic necessities. According to one interview, ‘for months on end we were

forced to eat leaves and, at times, soft sticks. This was the only thing we
could find.’1 In the face of imminent attacks by the military, or during
and in the aftermath of massacres, inhabitants from the Ixil and Ixcán
were forced to flee their communities with nothing more than the clothes
on their backs. Whilst many displaced Guatemalans attempted to salvage
their belongings, the army’s deliberate destruction of homes, crops and
harvests meant that, in most cases, there was nothing worth recovering.
Many children and elderly people, who were forced to live in these precari-
ous conditions, subsequently died in their place of refuge.
According to the REMHI report:

What at first appeared to be a transitory exodus gave way to a long-term

phenomenon which radically altered people’s lives, especially within the
confines of refugee camps, where community experiences were restructured
and new social and cultural problems arose. Many refugees were continually
haunted by their past (155).

EXOGENOUS RESCUE: THE CPR

We fled to the mountains after they massacred our community. We were
on the run and terrified. Little by little we began to organise ourselves into
groups. It wasn’t easy belonging to the CPR; we were pursued, bombed,
machine-gunned and killed. Some of us were captured. The army destroyed
many places and burned everything. We had to live like this, to tolerate this
terrible situation, for many years. We publicised the work of the CPR on a
national and international level, to raise awareness of what was happening to
us, and the way in which the army illegally pursued the civilian population.2

The above testimony, provided by an ex-CPR member in the Ixcán and

a former resident of the village of Cuarto Pueblo, evidences how the CPRs
initially began in an improvised manner as a form of collective self-rescue.
Communities were obliged to organise as an immediate survival strategy
in the aftermath of threats or massacres, when individuals and entire com-
munities would flee to the mountains or jungle to seek refuge. As time
passed, however, the CPRs became organised and members learnt key
survival strategies. The above narrative also confirms the manner in which
the military pursued displaced survivors. The presumption made by the
military was that all of those who fled were guilty of collaborating with the
198 R. BRETT

guerrilla. Given that the objective of counterinsurgency Operation Victory

82 was to annihilate the guerrilla’s logistical support base, the displaced
population logically became designated as a military target.
Thousands of non-combatants organised collectively to seek refuge in
the mountains surrounding the Ixil and in the jungle of the Ixcán, either
in separate groups or as part of the CPR. The CPR and their governing
bodies were created over time as a formal strategic mechanism to confront
continuingly hostile conditions.3 The maximum authority of the CPR,
which was elected by means of a general assembly in December of each
year, directed working groups that were responsible for coordinating a
variety of community tasks: surveillance and security; health committees;
development and education; work; essential supplies; communications and
the community’s self-defence. CPR members were principally indigenous
individuals and communities, victims of the counterinsurgency bound by
a sense of collective survival. In many cases, a shared indigenous identity
and cosmology brought cohesion to the communities, as did pre-existing
commercial and social networks and kinship ties between them.
The CPRs were keenly aware of the likelihood that they might be
discovered at any moment, either by soldiers or by civil patrollers. As a
result, they built only makeshift homes and an atmosphere of constant
fear and necessary alert pervaded their daily lives. Under these circum-
stances, CPR communities were obliged to be simultaneously mobile
and cohesive, and were usually situated close to guerrilla camps for the
potential provision of protection. However, hope for protection by the
guerrilla was often of little use, given the limited strategic and military
capacity of the rebels.
In an extraordinary demonstration of humanity and innovation, CPR
members developed a series of key survival strategies. Whilst much of the
CPRs’ activity was reactive—communities and individuals were permit-
ted to join whenever they fled military operations—CPR members also
actively assisted other communities under threat. Strategically, the CPRs
used pioneering survival tactics, developed as they were through every-
day learning processes in the hostile conditions in which they lived. Hats
were prohibited in order to facilitate the identification of strangers. Dogs
were not kept and members were not authorised to cook during day-
light hours, so as to avoid being detected through noise or the smoke
from fires. Homes and community structures were portable, and could be
easily dismantled, concealed and/or transported in emergency situations.
According to the REMHI report, life entailed ‘great suffering and peril;
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 199

permanently keeping watch and taking precautions; the reorganisation of

community life in temporary and insecure conditions; organisational pro-
cesses’ (1998: 160). According to a female survivor of the Pueblo Nuevo
Massacre, who fled into the mountains

We went to Mexico in 1989, but between 1982 and 1989 we lived in the
CPR. We even had hens. We had to find ways of living like families. The hens
laid eggs, and we carried the chickens in small boxes. The chickens grew and
wanted to squawk. We had to find a way of surviving, because the chickens’
squawking would have given us away to the army, but we needed them for
the food they provided. Consequently, we put a fine thread through their
necks, to cut through their vocal chords, and they never made a sound.4

THE ROLE OF THE GUERRILLA

Although the CPRs were constituted by displaced civilians, they often
maintained a close relationship with the guerrilla. The insurgency had gen-
erally lacked, however, the military capacity or the political will to defend
the predominantly indigenous CPRs from the military. Whilst the guerrilla
had oftentimes warned the inhabitants of indigenous and peasant com-
munities from the Ixil and Ixcán, and the CPRs themselves, of imminent
military operations, hundreds of massacres had been perpetrated through-
out the region. Nevertheless, aware of the importance of the CPR to the
guerrilla’s long-term survival, the EGP invested considerable time and
effort supporting these communities. In this regard, the guerrilla played
an, albeit indirect and partial logistical role in facilitating genocide rescue
in the region.
According to interviews, initially the guerrilla provided displaced indig-
enous communities, in general, and the CPR, in particular, with tools and
materials to build shelters in the mountains and the jungle. The EGP also
broadened what had previously been political activities carried out in local
communities to include training CPR members in a series of strategies,
techniques and tactics. Said training included ‘the creation of surveillance
committees; the compilation of emergency guidelines; the construction of
shelters; the creation of safe havens and the establishment of communica-
tion mechanisms in the eventuality that community members were sepa-
rated’. However, CPR members were generally unarmed and, with few
exceptions, did not participate in guerrilla actions. Rather, collaboration
200 R. BRETT

with the guerrilla largely consisted of providing emergency refuge, food

and other logistical support to them, as many communities had done in
the run-up to the massacres.
According to former CPR leaders, the fact that these communities col-
laborated with, or were geographically close to guerrilla encampments, did
not signify that they were controlled by the EGP. Interviewees stated that
the CPRs were autonomous and directed by their own civilian authorities,
which bore no resemblance to the guerrilla’s hierarchical, military organ-
isational structure and did not share its goals. The CPRs were thus ‘close
but independent’. According to a former CPR member in the Ixcán, origi-
nally from Cuarto Pueblo:

While we were living in the mountains we collaborated quite a lot with the
guerrilla, but we were never armed and we always acted as civilians, living in
family groups. When the guerrilla needed something, they would purchase it
from us, and clearly many families collaborated in this way. No guerrilla can
function, work and survive without a social base. The guerrilla’s objectives
at that time were a reaction to the situation we were in and to the suffering
and mistreatment of indigenous peoples. It is also important to recognise
the fact that during this time the guerrilla helped the civilian population to
survive, both in the CPRs and in Mexico. For us, it was a question of two
groups helping each other, but we were never forced to help the guerrilla in
the way that we were forced to help the army.

Nevertheless, as we have elaborated upon in previous chapters, a fine

line may separate voluntary and coerced collaboration, as Weinstein (2011)
and Kalyvas (2006) have evidenced for civil wars and internal armed con-
flicts elsewhere. There is no question that the guerrilla depended upon the
support of the civilian population in order to pursue its revolutionary cam-
paign. The CPR provided logistical support and a safe haven where insur-
gents could recuperate and rest between military operations. However,
at the same time, some interviewees claimed that while they were hid-
ing in the mountains, they were obliged to support the guerrilla: those
who refused to collaborate with the EGP were subject to intimidation
and death threats. Territorial control by the guerrilla restricted freedom
of movement, ultimately reinforcing the confinement of displaced popula-
tions. According to a former CPR member:

The guerrilla always said to us: you can’t go to Mexico, because if you go,
you’ll lose everything. They prevented people from leaving. They didn’t
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 201

want anyone to leave, that’s what took place in April and May of 1982. But
in October, a group of 50 families managed to leave for Mexico. We had
no idea that so many people were leaving, that there was an important sup-
port structure in Mexico. The guerrilla didn’t tell us what was happening.
The guerrilla didn’t want us to go to Mexico because we were their oxygen,
their social base. So we were forced to stay where we were. People began
asking questions too, about the security that the guerrilla provided for the
communities. The guerrilla didn’t defend us very well because they didn’t
have the capacity.

EXOGENOUS GENOCIDE RESCUE:

ACTORS AND NETWORKS IN MEXICO
Due to their proximity to the Mexican border, a large proportion of
Guatemalan civilians, particularly those displaced from the department of
El Quiché during the first few months of 1982, sought refuge in Mexico.
Many of those who crossed the border into Mexico had already built com-
mercial and social networks there. Campesinos from the Ixcán, in particu-
lar, had previously worked on plantations in southern Chiapas, especially
at the Puerto Rico Estate. As a consequence of these networks and the
trust they had built up with their Mexican colleagues, in particular with
local farmers and within religious communities, when the violence broke
out, many massacre survivors immediately sought refuge on the Puerto
Rico Estate. Refugees remained in Puerto Rico until the Mexican govern-
ment formulated a clear policy towards them and initiated their transfer to
the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche, several years later. According
to a campesino from Santa María Tzejá: ‘The campesinos and small land-
owners had previously given work to Guatemalan campesinos, so there
were already links between them before they fled to Mexico.’5 Mexican
estate owners had provided better working conditions and salaries than
their Guatemalan counterparts.
Approximately, 145,000 Guatemalans sought refuge in Mexico, of
whom 45,000 eventually settled in official refugee camps. In response
to the growing humanitarian crisis, the Mexican government established
the Mexican Commission for Aid to Refugees (COMAR). COMAR
was incorporated into the Mexican Interior Ministry and overseen by
the Department of Immigration, ‘whose previous mandate had been to
prevent undocumented Guatemalans from entering Mexico in the first
place’ (Praxis 1988: 113).
202 R. BRETT

During the first few months of mass exodus, campesinos from the
highlands, particularly from the Ixcán region, fled to southern Chiapas.
Initially, the Mexican authorities barely tolerated their presence, channel-
ling assistance and support via COMAR, whose presence was augmented
when the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) later estab-
lished an office in the region. However, as the human rights situation
rapidly deteriorated, refugee numbers swelled, particularly after the mas-
sacres carried out in early 1982. In this context, under pressure from the
Rios Montt regime, Mexican authorities changed their policy towards
Guatemalan refugees. According to a wide range of interviewees, includ-
ing political analysts, members of the Catholic Church from the Diocese
of Chiapas and Mexican civil servants, the governments of Mexico and
Guatemala did not consider it wise to allow refugees to remain close to
the Guatemala–Mexico border for a prolonged period, given the security
threat to both states. It was in this context that non-state actors began to
construct networks through which to provide protection for refugees, as
Mexican state institutions failed them.
Both governments coincided in perceiving that it would be danger-
ous to allow a ‘hostile’ population to remain close to the border zone,
largely because it would provide fertile ground for clandestine guerrilla
operations, creating a ‘safe haven’ in which guerrillas could move freely
and take refuge when necessary. Given that the Montt regime regarded
refugees as an extension of the guerrilla, it feared that refugee camps
close to the border zone would facilitate the flow of arms between both
countries, moreover. The presence of Guatemalan refugees in Mexico
would also likely have provided the international community, includ-
ing the UN system, with access to information about the mass atroci-
ties being committed by the Guatemalan military, thus undermining
the government’s repeated public denial of acts of state terrorism. The
Mexican government itself feared that the presence of organised, socially
conscious refugees in Chiapas, one of the poorest states in Mexico,
might itself generate widespread unrest amongst its own indigenous
population. Consequently, in 1984, Mexican authorities forcibly trans-
ferred Guatemalan refugees to the states of Campeche and Quitana Roo,
claiming that the move was designed to guarantee their safety. Hardly
a decade later, as we know, Chiapas was to experience its own guerrilla
insurgency, when the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN)
emerged, after a decade of clandestine organising.
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 203

PUERTO RICO, CHIAPAS, MEXICO: MASS RESCUE

The Puerto Rico estate rests on the border with Guatemala, approximately
six hours’ walk from the community of Cuarto Pueblo. According to inter-
views with the estate owner, Don Antonio, and campesinos from the Ixil
and Ixcán, prior to the armed conflict, Guatemalan campesinos, mainly
from Cuarto Pueblo, Mayalán and Los Ángeles, regularly worked on the
Puerto Rico Estate. The labourers developed a close relationship with
the estate owner and other labourers, which extended to the exchange of
produce and labour. The estate owner’s family itself often visited Cuarto
Pueblo’s market. Trust and collaboration were determinant factors in the
relationship that had been built up over time.
According to those interviewed, following an initial confrontation
between the guerrilla and military forces in Cuarto Pueblo in April 1981,
displaced campesinos sought refuge in territories bordering on Puerto
Rico. Campesinos remained in these territories for several days, until a
Guatemalan helicopter arrived to transport them back to Guatemala.
However, the continuing violence meant that life was intolerable and the
campesinos soon returned to Mexico.
Over the next few months, levels of violence diminished as the military
strategically withdrew from the Ixcán in preparation for its final, and most
brutal, counterinsurgency offensive; consequently, at least temporarily,
the flow of Guatemalan refugees to Puerto Rico decreased significantly.
However, on 14 March 1982:

At midday, two children from Cuarto Pueblo came to our house on the
estate. We think that lots of people have been killed in a massacre and we don’t
know where our parents are, they told us. At 8 pm we began to hear a com-
motion and we saw light coming from the mountains. About 16 or 22
women arrived without their husbands, with their small children and what
they had been able to carry, things from their homes, food, but not much.
They’ve destroyed us, they said. They’ve killed our entire family. They couldn’t
explain what had happened because they were crying so deeply; I’ve never
seen people in such a state. They stayed for about a month in the house, and
there was a time when we couldn’t walk here because there were so many
people on the floor. Later we began to build a camp.6

From this moment, a dramatic increase in the flow of refugees from

the Ixil and Ixcán to Mexico, and from other regions of the Guatemalan
highlands, took place. Over time, a series of refugee camps were built in
204 R. BRETT

Chiapas and the largest camps were based in Puerto Rico, El Chupadero
and La Sombra. Although approximately 15,000 Guatemalans, predomi-
nantly indigenous Maya, passed through Puerto Rico, the camp was home
to 5500 permanent residents until the Mexican government began to
transfer Guatemalan refugees to other Mexican states, in 1984.
According to Don Antonio

Each day they arrived from the mountains, their shirts in shreds. They
had injuries from bullets and machetes; they were bleeding and crying.
Sometimes children arrived without their parents and sometimes women
came alone. They were traumatised. Many of them couldn’t speak. One day
1900 people arrived. They slept just here. They were terrified that the army,
the Kaibiles (special forces), would come for them. So we created a surveil-
lance system. There wasn’t a day that went by without someone dying from
their injuries, or from illness or malnutrition. Many died from sadness. We
dug mass graves where we buried the bones of all those who died; there
were mountains of bones, and it was a terrible sight to see.7

Don Antonio’s prior relationship and networks constructed with some

of the massacred communities, his indignation at the violence they had
suffered and his belief in the injustice of the killings, drove his efforts to
support the refugees. His links with the religious and medical commu-
nities in Chiapas itself, however, would become decisive in broadening
the rescue effort to include other actors, who were themselves driven by
humanitarian values. The consolidation of a network of rescuers furnished
with human and material resources ultimately sustained the process.
Gradually, and with the support of COMAR and UNHCR, the camp
was furnished with a basic infrastructure, including a shelter for refugees
to sleep in, a warehouse and a runway for landing light aircraft used to
transport medical supplies and doctors from nearby Comitán.
According to a Mexican doctor who treated refugees in the camp dur-
ing this period:

At first, the question of mental health was not very visible, although later
on it became extremely evident. The refugees were civilians, mainly indig-
enous, and many of them had bullet and machete wounds, and signs of
torture. They were all terrified. The women didn’t want to eat anything.
They always said that the Guatemalan Army wanted to massacre them, to
annihilate them.8
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 205

In an interview, the former Director of Comitán hospital (1975–1986)

described how refugees from the Ixcán began to flow into Mexico towards
the end of 1982 and 1983. They arrived starving and miserable, and each
day there were several fatalities due to tuberculosis, malnutrition and
severe infections.9
Within this context, the owner of the Cuarto Pueblo estate, together
with his family, saved the lives of thousands of refugees, as recognised by
the UNCHR.10 Comitán Hospital and the Diocese of San Cristobal de
las Casas played an important role in providing refugees with short- and
long-term assistance. As recounted by a Catholic sister from the Diocese
of San Cristobal de las Casas:

A steady flow of people started to arrive in 1982. In each camp there were
different ethnic groups. They were really scared, even of the Catholic
Church, especially when foreigners came. They explained that they had left
Guatemala because they were fleeing from the Kaibiles, the Guatemalan
Army’s Special Forces. At first they hardly spoke, but gradually they began
to share their stories. Many people from Cuarto Pueblo lived with us. One
of the women was experiencing severe psychological trauma. These women
had been abused and raped by the soldiers. One of the girls always kept
watch to see who was nearby. I told the woman to prepare the meat for
lunch. But she couldn’t. She started to shake and cry uncontrollably when
she saw the meat. She said, I can’t eat this, because it reminds me of the women
who were spread out on the road, cut open like cows. She told me how mothers
had drowned their children so that the army wouldn’t hear them crying.11

The estate owner, doctors and members of the Catholic Church

have consistently confirmed that none of the refugees carried weapons.
According to interviews, the only ‘weapons’ that presented serious dif-
ficulties for the refugees had been their Bibles. Those who had not already
buried their Bibles in Guatemala did so as soon as they arrived in Mexico.
They were afraid that the Guatemalan Military would catch them with
their Bibles and accuse them of being catechists. Many thus refused to
admit that they were Catholic, for fear of being persecuted, given that
many direct targets of the military had been those involved in Catholic
catechism.12
The structures established by non-state actors in Chiapas represented
the primary initial response to the humanitarian crisis, a response that
was, at first, improvised, but that later grew into a structured network
206 R. BRETT

that followed clear strategic policy patterns. As the refugee flow became
increasingly acute, the UNHCR, COMAR and the Catholic Church
collectively responded with material support. As the crisis continued,
they offered training and lectures for refugees in the Puerto Rico camp,
related to the conflict and its origins, Mayan culture, human rights and
national and international law. However, these courses were suspended
in 1989, when there was a shift towards the teaching of Mexican history.
Everyday life in the camps was highly structured so as to ensure maxi-
mum participation in pedagogical activities. As a result of this process,
the refugees who eventually returned to Guatemala were comparatively
more educated and politically aware than those who had stayed behind
and survived. Many would later participate in human rights and justice
initiatives.
In contrast to the case of the CPR, it is difficult to gauge the extent
to which refugees in Mexico collaborated with or were supported by the
EGP. According to one refugee who remained in Mexico

From Mexico we always organised ourselves with the guerrilla and we coor-
dinated with members of the guerrilla in order to provide them with food,
medicine and sometimes refuge. But at the same time, people were afraid
of the guerrilla. We took food to the border with Guatemala, to leave it
with members of the CPR. People who decided to join the Irregular Local
Forces, the guerrilla’s local support base, were armed, but we never had
weapons in Mexico and the civilian population was always unarmed. There
were always members of the guerrilla among us and we often had to hide
them so that they wouldn’t be found. The army patrolled the border and
captured people. Helicopters circled the area.13

Although this interviewee attests that refugees provided the guerrilla

with logistical support, several other refugees who remained in Mexico
deny that such collaboration took place. Nevertheless, a wide range of
sources, including employees of Comitán Hospital, have confirmed that
the inhabitants of refugee camps were unarmed.14 According to Taylor

Many of the refugees had some sort of connection with the guerrilla, and
they maintained strategic alliances with rebel groups while they were liv-
ing in exile. However, it is important to emphasise that the refugees were
civilians, and it was in this condition that they made plans to return to
Guatemala. The refugees shared some of the guerrilla’s ideas, but they were
never subordinate to the guerrilla (1998: 60).
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 207

The Guatemalan military relentlessly persecuted and pursued both CPR

members and refugees, including those who fled to Mexico. According
to survivors of the massacres who fled to Mexico and Mexican citizens
interviewed as part of this research, the Guatemalan military carried out
cross-border military operations on several occasions, in contravention
of international law, putting both the lives of the victims and the rescu-
ers at risk. The border violations often occurred when the Guatemalan
military flew over Puerto Rico, although no formal complaints appear to
have been lodged by the Mexican government against the Guatemalan
state. On one such occasion in 1983, when armed Guatemalan soldiers
attempted to enter the Puerto Rico Estate illegally (and forcibly), Don
Antonio reported the situation at the local military barracks: ‘As a result,
Mexican soldiers threw them [Guatemalan soldiers] out of the country.’15
On another occasion when the Guatemalan military entered their estate,
Don Antonio and his sons confronted them, armed only with hunting
rifles. The military withdrew without incident.
In the words of a Catholic sister from the Diocese of San Cristobal de
las Casas,

I saw the Guatemalan military flying over Puerto Rico a couple of times
during 1982. They aimed their guns at us. In 1982, in Chajul, Mexico,
Guatemalan soldiers threatened us. They were armed and they kept us hos-
tage all night.16

The Guatemalan military then conducted ground incursions and aerial

bombardments with the aim of capturing and killing refugees, of wip-
ing out the seeds of subversion and of preventing future threat. Mexican
citizens were also killed during these military operations. According to
several testimonies, the most serious incursion occurred in El Chupadero
in April 1984: seven people were killed, including women and children. As
explained by the Praxis study

The constant persecution of these communities reveals the extent to which

the objective was to eliminate or capture [Guatemalan refugees] at all cost,
despite knowledge of the fact that they were members of the civilian popula-
tion. (Praxis 1988: 158)

The Guatemalan military killed Guatemalan refugees and threatened

Mexican citizens, including civil servants and members of the Catholic
208 R. BRETT

Church who provided the refugees with humanitarian aid. Significantly,

according to members of the Catholic Church and former civil servants,
during this period, they were harassed by both Mexican and Guatemalan
authorities, in response to their work with Guatemalan refugees. In con-
trast to rescuers in other contexts, rescuers in Mexico were not breaking
domestic legislation, nor were they contravening international law.
Exile gravely affected and altered important aspects of indigenous cul-
ture, reinforcing the genocidal effects of the massacres and the strategy of
population confinement. The destruction of indigenous culture had been
a direct objective of the massacres within the framework of the scorched
earth campaign. The impact upon indigenous culture was acute, even for
those who sought refuge outside of Guatemala. According to a member
of the Catholic Church in San Cristobal de las Casas

The women wore ordinary clothing when they arrived; they didn’t want to
wear their indigenous dress because they were scared that the Guatemalan
Military would realise that they were indigenous and attack them. They
were therefore conscious of the link between the violence they had suffered
and the fact that they were indigenous. They always said, they want to anni-
hilate us. They were all terrified, and many of them didn’t want to go near
the border zone. They started to wear the clothes of indigenous Mexicans,
so that they wouldn’t stand out so much. They also started to speak with
a Mexican accent, so that it would be more difficult to identify them as
Guatemalan. They didn’t want to admit that they were Catholic, either.17

Between 1983 and 1984, Guatemalan refugees were forcibly trans-

ferred to the Mexican states of Campeche and Quintana Roo, provoking
widespread fear, as it was widely believed that they were being returned to
Guatemala. As a result, many refugees evaded the Mexican authorities by
hiding in the jungle area, where they later perished. There is no access to
reliable data regarding the exact number of refugees who died en route to
Mexico, or once they had arrived in the country. However, as occurred with
the CPR, counterinsurgency operations aggravated the already inhumane
conditions suffered by the refugees, in the process contravening interna-
tional law. Even when the massacres perpetrated within the framework
of the counterinsurgency came to an end after 1984, the army contin-
ued to regard Guatemalan refugees as a serious threat to national security,
as a representation of the ‘indian-subversive’. Consequently, the military
maintained acute levels of militarisation in areas where the guerrilla had
exercised important levels of control, such as northern El Quiché. When
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 209

refugees began to return to Guatemala informally (after 1983) and for-

mally (after 1994), they continued to face considerable difficulties.

CONCLUSIONS
This chapter has evidenced histories of individual and collective response
in the face of the brutal violence that characterised Guatemala’s genocide,
exploring how initially improvised rescue processes became sustainable
through the organisation and consolidation of rescue communities and
networks. The processes that emerged in a context of prevailing, inten-
tional horror were anything but banal, demonstrating histories of resil-
ience in the context of genocide.
A series of factors, including preconditions, networks and context,
precipitated and shaped both endogenous and exogenous rescue efforts
in the Guatemalan case, as Thalhammer et al. (2007) have convincingly
argued for processes of rescue elsewhere. In the immediate context of the
violence, lacking resources and connections with external actors, internally
displaced persons (IDPs) fled to urban areas of the country or, as explored
here, went into hiding in mountainous and jungle areas bordering on their
communities. As the likelihood that displacement would be a protracted
process became clearer, and in the context of ongoing counterinsurgency
operations, IDPs developed innovative survival strategies and organised
themselves into regulated, clandestine networks and communities. CPRs
became highly structured and organised entities where rescue and collec-
tive self-rescue merged into a singular process. Cohesion within the CPRs
was consolidated by social sanction and pre-existing indigenous values of
reciprocity and solidarity, whilst survival was sustained by strategic innova-
tion and the prior cosmological knowledge of plants and animals that facil-
itated living off the land. The CPRs benefitted from previously structured
networks with the guerrilla, who trained them in tactical methods to with-
stand the hostile conditions and state-sponsored political violence faced
by the CPRs. However, the guerrilla did not protect the CPRs from the
counterinsurgency, and its role was only partial in endogenous rescue, and
non-existent in exogenous rescue. The capacity of indigenous communi-
ties to withstand the acutely adverse conditions of internal displacement
for over a decade was in itself profoundly courageous. However, tales of
heroism do not adequately explain the capacity of indigenous agency in
resisting mass violence and, not insignificantly, partially limiting its impact:
approximately 20,000 lives were saved through the CPRs.
210 R. BRETT

Exogenous rescue in Guatemala was itself determined by the social and

commercial networks built up over decades between individuals and com-
munities on either side of the Mexico–Guatemala border. Whilst a degree
of chance may have moulded these relationships, indigenous victims took
advantage of the opportunities that they afforded and their previous expe-
riences with the estate owner and his family. Pre-existing networks in this
case were critical in facilitating an enabling environment for genocide res-
cue, as were the values of those individuals involved. Significantly, the
resources that Don Antonio was able to provide in the immediate after-
math of the genocide were critical to the survival of the victims in the most
acute moments of Guatemala’s humanitarian crisis: over 5000 individuals
lived permanently on his farm in Puerto Rico. Moreover, as the refugee
flow spiralled, infrastructure was accordingly built on the estate and food
and clothing were supplied in response to the deepening humanitarian
crisis. However, it was the networks between individual and institutional
rescuers, including those in the religious and medical communities, which
guaranteed the sustainability of exogenous rescue by structuring a broader
enabling environment that itself made use of wider resources, institutional,
legal and social opportunities furnishing legitimacy and credible informa-
tion. Whilst moral and religious values may have driven the actions of
particular individuals, it was broader structural preconditions and evolving
conditions that defined which paths would be more feasible to follow and
subsequently have greater impact.
The histories of genocide rescue documented in this chapter frac-
ture the all-encompassing narrative that mass violence perpetrated in the
framework of genocide consumes and destroys all social relations, leads
to atrophy, and closes down human agency. The resistance asserted by
genocide rescuers and victims who commissioned ‘collective self-rescue’
in Guatemala attests to human defiance against horror, resilience to state-
perpetrated barbarity and the reordering of community in the face of
social destruction and unhinged brutality. They show how life was not
extinguished, but struggled to persist in the embers of the scorched earth.

REFERENCES
Editorial Praxis. (1988/1990). Guatemala: Polos de Desarrollo. El Caso de la
Desestructuración de las Comunidades Indígenas (Vol. I–II). Praxis: Guatemala.
Falla, R. (1992). Masacres de la selva: Ixcán, Guatemala (1975–1982). Guatemala:
Editorial Universitaria.
 DISPLACEMENT AND EXILE 211

Kalyvas, N. S. (2006). The logic of violence in civil war. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Manz, B. (1989). Refugees of a hidden war: The aftermath of counterinsurgency in
Guatemala. Albany: SUNY Press.
Oglesby, E. (1991). Return and reintegration of Guatemala refugees and inter-
nally displaced populations: A presentation of the research of Myrna Mack.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Taylor, C. (1998). El Retorno de los Refugiados Guatemaltecos: Reconstruyendo el
Tejido Social. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Thalhammer, K. E., O’Loughlin, P. L., Glazer, M. P., Glazer, P. M., McFarland,
S., Shepela, S., & Stoltzfus, N. (2007). Courageous resistance: The power of
ordinary people. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Weinstein, J. (2011). Inside rebellion: The politics of insurgent violence. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

NOTES
1. Interview, Nebaj, Ixil, April 2002.
2. Interview, Guatemala City, December 2003.
3. The CPRs in Ixcán were based on land belonging to the villages of
Xecoyeu, Santa Clara, Amajchel, Cabá, Paal, Los Cimientos, Xeputul,
Xaxboj, Santa Rosa and Chaxa to the north of Chajul. These villages were
mainly inhabited by families from the municipalities of Chicamán,
Uspantán, Cunén, Sacapulas, Nebaj, Cotzal, Playa Grande, Chajul,
Aguacatán and Chiantla (in the department of Huehuetenango).
4. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, October 2003.
5. Interview, Santa María Tzejá, Quiché, September 2003.
6. Interview, Don Antonio, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
7. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2002 (emphasis added).
8. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2002.
9. According to the hospital’s statistics, between October and November
1982, an average of two people died each day in the Puerto Rico camp,
and during the last three months of 1982, ninety deaths were recorded.
10. Don Antonio was awarded a prize by UNHCR in 2005. His daughter died
from tuberculosis contracted from refugees living on the estate.
11. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
12. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
13. Interview, Cantabal, Quiché, September 2003.
14. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
15. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
16. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
17. Interview, Chiapas, Mexico, September 2003.
 CHAPTER 8

Conclusions: And History Shall Not

Be Unwritten

In late 1981, under the administration of General Lucas García, in the

midst of a grave military, economic and political crisis that found its ori-
gins in the governmental mismanagement and escalating armed conflict of
the previous decade, the Guatemalan state took the strategic decision to
subject its own population to a massive, sustained and systematic killing
campaign. Over the following two years, as Ríos Montt secured power,
the counterinsurgency strategy was meliorated, and its consummate homi-
cidal effectiveness decisively accomplished. Thousands were murdered and
over a million displaced, bringing strategic defeat to the guerrilla, precipi-
tously isolated and bereft of its social base. From the perspective of the
military, political and economic elites, state-sponsored political violence,
in the embodiment of genocide, represented a rational, legitimate and
meaningful response to the threat posed by the rebels and their, principally
indigenous, social base. Salvation was wrought by fire. The decision to
orchestrate group-selective, group-destructive, future-orientated violence,
in short, to perpetrate genocide, and, in fact, the ritualistic nature of the
violence itself, possessed deeply historical roots, shaped by a series of inter-
secting structural formations and ‘pre-existing ideological frameworks’
(Straus 2015: 10). The ideology of racism and the nation-/state-building
process, based on a purified founding narrative, represented the princi-
pal lens through which the military established a totalising vortex of gro-
tesque violence that sought both to impose order and to punish: violence
became, as Wilson (2010) has argued, ‘meaningful social behaviour’.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 213

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6_8
214 R. BRETT

Across continents and centuries, civilian populations, in general, and

peasant populations, in particular, have been instrumental for rebel insur-
gencies, oftentimes central to their emergence and consolidation and, in
the final instance, determinant for the outcome of revolutionary mobili-
sation (Skocpol 1979; Scott 1985). Within this context, counterinsur-
gent states have resorted, often successfully, to brutal, widespread and
organised violence as a means of vanquishing armed guerrilla groups.
Nevertheless, despite this dynamic, which may, in part, be understood
as a defining characteristic of the customary architecture of revolution-
ary–counterrevolutionary logic, genocide has not been as ubiquitous as
many historians would have us believe. Straus, in fact, has gone as far as to
argue that ‘we do not live in an age or century of genocide’ (2015: 6), an
assertion that perhaps substantiates Plato’s proposition that ‘when a man
is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater
when he might have the less’. Why then, in the case of Guatemala, did
the military opt for a strategy founded upon such barbaric and intentional
malevolence?
In my introduction, I proposed that at the core of this book was a con-
cern with the changing nature of political violence and, significantly, how
and under what conditions political violence may transform into genocide.
A further, no less substantial aim of the book has been to explore the strat-
egies that non-combatants adopt in contexts structured (or de-structured)
by armed conflict and genocide. This chapter brings together the prin-
cipal conclusions that have emerged out of the research, by addressing
four interrelated issues: the conditions under which genocide occurs; the
nature of the violence; the nature of civilian collaboration with insurgen-
cies; and the genocide ending and its impact.

UNDER WHICH CONDITIONS MIGHT GENOCIDE OCCUR?

As he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered
that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did
not know, but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never
dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in
furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks,
and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane
and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them
forth to die in a happy city (Camus 1947: 243).1
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 215

The final paragraph of Albert Camus’ extraordinary, yet perturbing

novel, The Plague, offers a poignant departure point for our closing reflec-
tions upon the contingency of genocidal atrocity. An interminable plague
of rats has taken the city of Oran, killing thousands, a metaphor developed
by Camus to refer to the Nazi occupation, and, more generally, it could be
said, to fascism. When the plague is finally over, despite the relief of Oran’s
residents, Rieux, the city’s surviving doctor, is cautious. He understands
that the plague bacillus is never entirely defeated; it is patient, it is strategic
and it is malign.
I had, several years ago, within the context of Guatemala’s despicable
violence, first imagined the plague beyond its signification as fascism, read-
ing it to intimate racism. It has been my contention throughout this book
that the image of the indigenous population in Guatemala had, since the
colonial encounter, been wrought through the figure of the abhorrent
other within the discourse and imaginary of the primary political com-
munity. Of primitive and slovenly race, the ‘indian’, a pejorative term used
to refer to indigenous peoples, represented an obstacle to the country’s
modernisation, yet ‘indian’ marginalisation and invisibility, however much
an impediment, had to be maintained indefinitely in order to preserve the
economic interests and political power of the non-indigenous, primary
political community. The shadow cast by the ‘indian’s’ absent-presence
had imposed a latent and oscillating threat over the status quo, extant
particularly at moments of potential social transformation, such as in the
aftermath of the economic reforms of the 1870s, the decade of liberalisa-
tion ushered in by Presidents Arévalo and Arbenz in the mid-twentieth
century and, decisively, the Prolonged Popular War waged by the EGP
in the 1970s. Precisely during these moments, as would rats called forth
in a happy city, so racism would run its violent course against indigenous
subjectivity, curtailing the slightest prospect of emancipation. As the insur-
gent threat became increasingly conspicuous in the late 1970s, a conse-
quence of its embeddedness in and support from indigenous communities
in the highland and jungle regions, and as its military capacity escalated,
the primary political community became convinced of the confluence of
historically wrought indigenous sedition with emanant communist sub-
version. The contingent became the inevitable: the backward ‘indian’ was
coming down from the mountains to reclaim his country and his history.
The emergence of the indian-subversive, a pernicious bastardisation
of racial and class, rural and urban grievances, heralded in an unfamiliar
and particularly incendiary threat from the perspective of the Guatemalan
216 R. BRETT

elite, regardless of whether this threat was real or perceived. Publicly, the
primary political community had always expressed at least a degree of
ambivalence towards whether the ‘indian’ was redeemable; as we have
seen, there had been ladino hopes for mass ‘westernisation’ of the indig-
enous even up until the mid-twentieth century. However, the suspicion of
systematic indigenous support for the armed struggle immediately shifted
the parameters of the admissible, both in terms of what had been expected
of the subordinate indigenous subject (from the perspective, of course, of
the primary political community) and the concomitant level of restraint
with which the state would subsequently permit itself to react to this pre-
cipitant insubordination. The catastrophic present is never more unbear-
able than when it is exacerbated by the weight of the past. The ideology
of racism in Guatemala had never remained too deeply hidden from view,
dormant yet malicious.
Recent genocide studies scholarship offers important insight with
regard to our understanding of under which conditions political violence
may mutate into genocide. Midlarsky (2005) and Straus (2015), perhaps
two of the most insightful and relevant scholars, have argued that the
construction of threat and, for Straus, the strategic responses of elites to
that threat, will assert a key influence in legitimating extreme violence
committed by state authorities. From Midlarsky’s perspective, as the state
experiences or perceives increasing vulnerability and threat, experiences
that, in turn, generate and legitimise ‘real or fantasised images’ of a threat-
ening civilian population, so the threshold for and likelihood of permis-
sible violence increases. At the same time, the assailant population (social
group) must itself be literally vulnerable to genocide—Straus’ domination-
vulnerability paradox (2015: 56)—if said violence is to be practicable.
Two conditions may increase this vulnerability, generating pre-genocide
conditions and making genocide an increasingly expedient and legitimate
option: previous experience of mass violence against the target group met
with no serious consequences for the perpetrators (Midlarsky’s concept
of ‘validation’); and pre-existing ideological frameworks, in particular a
‘founding national narrative’ that excludes the target group (Straus 2015).
Where perpetrators face low risks for the execution of egregious violence,
and where the victim group is a priori excluded from the national imagi-
nary of citizen, the probability for group-selective, group-destructive mass
violence increases. The victim is the other, their death inconsequential.
At the beginning of the 1980s, a decade moulded by the fears and
exhilaration of the region’s Cold War, embodied manifestly in Nicaragua’s
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 217

successful revolution, conditions in Guatemala became adequate for

genocide. In a country where, since the colonial era, the indigenous had
suffered a history of exonerated slaughter, the imminent military threat
posed by the guerrilla, forged through the historical menace of the sedi-
tious, excluded ‘indian’, threatened to obliterate the values of civilisation
that the primary political community believed itself to represent. Support,
both military and financial, and political enthusiasm from the regional
hegemon shored up the regime’s confidence. As Straus has eloquently
observed, the likelihood of the execution of a killing campaign will ulti-
mately be triggered if and when the target population is perceived of as
‘unwinnable’, uncontainable and ‘inherently dangerous’ (2015: 27).
Significantly, as we have seen, in both case study regions, the military
did not unleash its demons immediately. On the contrary, counterinsur-
gency strategy commenced with the objective of winning the hearts and
minds of the civilian population. Only when that strategy failed to prevent
guerrilla expansion—in fact, as the repression actually began to precipitate
it—did the military scale up the violence, a dynamic that ultimately led to
the intensification and perpetuation of the conflict and to the genocide.
In this context, the military took the decision to perpetrate ‘murderous’,
‘modern’ cleansing, as Mann (2005: 2) would define it, identifying the
rebels’ social base, indigenous and ladino peasant alike, as the internal
enemy. Victory over the insurgency inevitably signified ‘the destruction
of that social category’ (Straus 2015: 3). The contention here is that,
by 1981, what had been the contingent possibility of genocide became,
from the perspective of the military, the inevitable and, in fact, only pos-
sible strategic decision it believed it possessed within its repertoire. Whilst,
as Straus (2015) argues, genocide emerges out of contingent possibility
shaped by pre-existing structural conditions and ideological frameworks, a
proposition with which this author agrees, those who perpetrate the crime
perhaps do not see it as such. On the contrary, in the case of Guatemala’s
genocidaires, it would appear that their assumption of the historical inevi-
tability of an ‘indian’ uprising only gave more credence to their vehe-
mence in taking the inevitable strategic decision to seek to annihilate the
indigenous population. It is then, in this respect, that Camus’ metaphor
becomes yet more intriguing and relevant. From the perspective of the
generals, the indigenous population was the bacillus that had to be wiped
out, unrestrainedly and from its very roots. Rebellion, as the Argentine
Generals preached to their war-stricken society a few years before, was an
impure bacillus infecting the national body and had to be cut out.
218 R. BRETT

THE NATURE OF THE VIOLENCE

It has been my contention, as evidenced in the case study chapters, that,
as the dynamics and logics of violence evolved, macro-level, interethnic
killing orchestrated by the military precipitated instances of micro-level,
intra-ethnic violence within indigenous communities. In turn, local level
politics moulded the trajectory of the counterinsurgency. Local para-
military groups, or PACs, for example, particularly in the Ixil, became
instrumental in massacres and denunciations. Whilst the majority of
community-level violence was political, actors in some cases sought to
benefit from the chaos of war, shaping the conflict as they did so. Local-
level historical, demographic and social formations deeply moulded the
violence then. As English has argued for a broader set of conflicts, ‘Often,
local dynamics trump the alleged master division in a civil war or conflict,
the local rather than the national determining and defining what actu-
ally takes place in the context of such wars’ (2013: 27). In this regard, as
the dynamics of violence escalated in the country, local conflicts became
intrinsically linked to the ‘master cleavage’ of the conflict, signifying that
local dynamics of violence were ‘linked to the meta cause of the conflict’
(Kalyvas 2006: 371).
In the early years of the armed conflict and prior to the scorched earth
strategy, armed groups sought to assert their sovereignty and gain control
at local level by persuading civilians, through violence or otherwise, to
shift their support. The military response to civilian recalcitrance or reluc-
tance was systematically and proportionately more violent than that of the
insurgency, even from the very beginning of hostilities. However, in the
latter stages of the conflict, in light of its failure to win over the civilian
population and defeat the insurgency, the military took the strategic deci-
sion to annihilate the civilian population. Violence, after 1981, became
increasingly unilateral, with the guerrilla evidencing, at best, little capacity
or, at worst, little strategic vision to challenge the might of and push back
against the armed forces. When the scorched earth began in the Ixcán
and the Ixil, the most egregious and highest levels of violence perpetrated
by the military occurred in areas where the armed forces had identified
greatest civilian support for the guerrilla and in strategic zones, such as in
villages located geographically close to a guerrilla encampment. Military
strategy, at this stage, was not premised upon winning support in a battle
of sovereignty, to utilise Kalyvas’ terms (2006). On the contrary, mili-
tary strategy pursued the central aim of cleansing areas of rebel support,
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 219

of devastating the insurgency’s support base; there was no space at this

stage for contestation. Genocide was about exterminating the guerrilla’s
social base, not winning it over. In this context, as the logic of genocide
displaced the logic of violence in civil war, the options for non-combatant
populations became gravely restricted. In this regard, the Guatemala case
evidences a limit to Kalyvas’ concept of contested sovereignty. The options
available to civilians in contexts where a decision has been taken by the
state or another party to perpetrate genocide, signifying that the objective
of a belligerent party is group-destructive violence, are likely limited to
fleeing the zone of violence, as the penultimate chapter coherently illus-
trates. As the case studies demonstrate, even turning oneself in to the
military was unlikely to prevent death. In this context of heightened kill-
ing, actors mobilised through their networks to escape the violence, rather
than succumbing to it. Once the scorched earth offensive commenced,
moreover, so the nature of the violence became increasingly uninhibited
and licentious. By 1981, grotesque, ritualistic killing was not an aberra-
tion, but rather, the norm that textured the daily lives of indigenous and
non-indigenous peasants in the highlands.
In his brilliant historical work on violence in Northern Ireland and
Upper Silesia, Tim Wilson argues that the principal factor explaining
why violence in the former was restrained, whilst in the latter it became
horrific and systematic, was because violence was ultimately about the
maintenance or the creation of identity boundaries. In Northern Ireland,
argues Wilson, clearly demarcated boundaries, based principally upon
religion, already existed; consequently, lower levels of violence were
needed to maintain the boundary than in Upper Silesia, where boundar-
ies were more porous. In Wilson’s words, in Upper Silesia, ‘Violence…
was… more about boundary creation. This was a task that required more
“extreme” violence to achieve the desired polarization. In effect, violence
itself became the boundary’ (2010).
Wilson’s argument is convincing and his case studies attest to the
importance of violence as a structuring mechanism in contexts of national
conflict. In Northern Ireland, restraining conventions, moreover, the
‘unwritten rules of conflict’, prevented egregious violence from being
perpetrated and signified that, when this violence was carried out, such
as in the case of the ‘Shankill Butchers’, it wielded a profound impact,
‘not because their violence was typical of 1970s violence in Belfast, but
precisely because it was so aberrational’. Upper Silesia and Belfast remain
a far cry from Cold War, genocidal Guatemala, and context-specific fac-
220 R. BRETT

tors are central to Wilson’s research and the insight he offers, as are they,
it is argued here, for the case of Guatemala. Nevertheless, his propositions
urge a central question: why was state-orchestrated violence in Guatemala
so grotesque and so absolutely unrestrained? Wilson’s argument, at least
initially, does not appear to travel. In terms of boundaries, differences
between the indigenous population targeted by the counterinsurgency,
and the ladino soldiers acting on behalf of the primary political commu-
nity, could not, on the face of it, have been more clearly defined. The
victims of the insurgency were, in large part, killed precisely because they
were indigenous: linguistically, ethnically, culturally, there was little need
to create a boundary where it already appeared so unequivocally to exist.2
What seems, however, to be a more convincing framework through
which to comprehend the sheer brutality and ritualistic nature of the vio-
lence in Guatemala is the mobilisation of ideology, in this case, of racism, as
a key structuring factor of atrocities. Scholarship has convincingly explored
how narratives and discourses of dehumanisation, ‘atrocity-justifying ide-
ologies’, have fed into and shaped acts of killing and violence (Goldhagen
1997; Mann 2005; Semelin 2007; Jones 2010; Leader Maynard 2014).
Central to dehumanisation is a process of othering (Semelin 2007), which,
in short, by developing ‘us-them thinking’ and ‘moral disengagement’,
makes the killing easier; dehumanisation facilitates the perpetuation of
‘extraordinary evil’, as Waller (2007: 220) defines it.
Centuries of racism in Guatemala have shaped the texture of everyday
life, meaning that othering processes, and the killing they might eventu-
ally reinforce, have been and remain less likely to face social restraints. In
the case of Guatemala, integral to the perpetration of the violence was
the intentional generation and repeated operationalisation of a narrative
expressing the belief in the natural and immutable inferiority of the sav-
age, indigenous race. The violence was structured through racism, which
imposed an ethnic hierarchy based upon invented criteria of biological,
cultural and moral differences. Survivors have repeated how, during mili-
tary operations, soldiers referred to them as stupid, as indios, as animals;
the military was only killing ‘indians’ is a phrase one often collides with in
Guatemala.
At the same time, the concept of primary political community is inevi-
tably and intrinsically framed through a clear ethical axis. As Richard
English argues, modern war is often shaped by and waged over commu-
nity, power and nation. Herein, those that perpetrate violence do so in
the belief of their superior moral claims, values, purposes and obligations:
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 221

‘Grievance-driven nationalism, and its communal, struggling dynamics’

(2013: 20–25). It is indeed here where we find perhaps a further piece
of the puzzle regarding the particularly brutal nature of Guatemala’s
fratricidal conflict. Whilst the country’s genocide was indeed shaped by
and facilitated through the threat-vulnerability nexus, without which it is
unlikely to have taken place, the political violence at its centre represented
the extension of a hitherto unsuccessful nation-building project that had
failed to eliminate, assimilate or integrate the indigenous other. Central
to the genocide was indeed the struggle to burn the subversives and their
supporters off the map, to destroy the existential threat that they repre-
sented and, otherwise, to punish and terrorise them into repressing their
insurrection. In the Guatemala case, selective, group-destructive, future-
oriented violence possessed a terminal function, but it also sought to ter-
rorise, deter, punish and, ultimately, to destroy. In certain cases, massacres
perpetrated by the military sought to deter communities from collaborat-
ing with the insurgency; violence aimed to punish and make examples of
those communities that were suspected of collaboration with the guerrilla,
and to communicate this message to other nearby villages and hamlets.
However, at the same time, the political violence was, at least from the
perspective of its perpetrators, inherently moral, as Campbell (2009) has
argued for cases elsewhere. Perceived moral deviance was to be punished,
whilst values of civility were to be imposed: there was no place for moral
deviance in the new nation. The immediate justification for the genocide
then was indeed counterinsurgent; however, its deeper impulse was driven
by nationalism, the ultimate objective being to forge a new nation-state.
As English argues, ‘The elements of precious territory, people, culture,
and proud history—reinforced by a driving sense of ethical rectitude and
exclusivist assumption—make for a repeatedly powerful cocktail in poten-
tial conflict situations’ (2013: 24; emphasis added).
It is within this realm then that the present orientation and future ori-
entation of Guatemala’s genocide converged, merging to sculpt a ritu-
alistic, cruel violence. The goal of devastating the immediate existential
threat posed by the rebels and their supporters was achieved through sys-
tematic, organised violence, above all, through the massacre campaign.
However, the High Command was increasingly concerned that subver-
sion not only had to be wiped out in the short term, but also that it had
to be rooted out, quite literally, to prevent its cultivation in the future.
Defiance, it was believed, was innate to indigenous culture and thus, in
order for it to be eradicated, indigenous culture, such as it was, had to be
222 R. BRETT

destroyed. Those who survived had subsequently to be comprehensively

reprogrammed; otherwise insubordination would persist into future gen-
erations. Genocidal violence was not merely aimed at defeating an imme-
diate enemy, but rather, ‘future-oriented, anticipatory violence’, seeking
to guarantee a future where the ‘indian-subversive’ was absent from the
imagined community (Straus 2015: 54).
An understanding of the military’s perception of indigenous selfhood
as a ‘future’ threat provides insight into certain tendencies within the
counterinsurgency violence, such as the killing of pregnant women, the
destruction of foetuses and the execution of children. As survivors of
the massacres explained, such murders were justified by the soldiers as
‘destroying the seed’ of rebellion, to prevent the reproduction of the
indigenous race. However, and significantly, in the case of Guatemala,
genocide was not just about physical killing. As we have seen, the ‘model
villages’, or concentration camps, instituted as part of the strategy of
population control, particularly under Montt, operationalised initiatives
that sought intentionally to eliminate indigenous culture: indoctrination
programmes, the prohibition of the speaking of indigenous languages
and the interdiction of ancestral religious customs. The intention of
the violence and its correlative strategies was to cripple permanently the
indigenous group, to destroy its national pattern and impose ‘the national
pattern of the oppressor’, components central to Lemkin’s original defini-
tion of genocide (1944: 79). In this regard, confinement strategies were
indeed a central component of Guatemala’s genocide: what the massacres
were not able to destroy physically, population control and reprogram-
ming would subsequently ensure. In this regard, genocidal violence, it is
contended here, is not only ‘terminal’, as Straus would argue, but rather,
can indeed seek containment and ‘negotiation’, if and when the latter is
understood as possessing, in itself, a transformative/destructive objective
and capacity.
Guatemala’s genocide then was intimately related to state and nation-
building, a process that was as traumatic as it was violent. Political vio-
lence, in this respect, fit into the wider narrative of a state (and nation) still
being constructed: new villages carved out of the jungle in the image of
the oppressor, resettlement villages reminiscent of the French in Algeria
and the British in Malaya, new citizens, el indio permitido, whose values
repudiated those of his subversive, anti-modern, shameful past. Genocide
then was a project of grand social and political engineering to make the
country fit for democracy. Hale’s (2006) ‘permitted indian’ was to be the
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 223

new citizen in the emerging nation-state that stepped out of the ashes of
indigenous lands to accept the mantle of a modern Guatemala.
Perhaps then, Wilson’s argument may effectively travel, given that part
of the egregiousness of Guatemala’s violence might be explained by the
fact that the state was indeed seeking to forge a new boundary that would
demarcate national identity over and above pre-existing identities and
make cohesive what was on the brink of falling apart. It would be the
boundary to end all boundaries, a new nation-state forged out of blood
and fire in the image of the ‘national pattern of the oppressor’.

CIVILIANS AND REBELS
The non-combatant, above all indigenous population was intrinsic to the
trajectory followed by Guatemala’s nascent revolution: to its emergence,
consolidation and brutally abrupt defeat. The civilian population repre-
sented then the battleground upon which the conflict was waged and its
outcome decided. It has been the contention of this book that complex
and multidimensional factors motivated civilian collaboration with the
guerrilla. In the more culturally diverse Ixcán, peasants, organised through
cooperatives, enjoyed relatively stable economic conditions and asserted
comparatively elevated levels of political autonomy otherwise absent in
other parts of the country. It had been these conditions that had been
influential in the prioritisation of the region by the EGP as a prime motor
for insurrection. However, the assumption by the rebels that the peasants
in the Ixcán would be inherently revolutionary was not borne out by the
perceptions of the communities themselves, whose everyday experiences
were far from the condition of insurrectional grievance and suffering that
the guerrilla had expected. The Ixcán did not appear to be experiencing
pre-revolutionary conditions. In the Ixcán, it was not strategically effec-
tive for the EGP to base its initial recruitment strategy on discourses that
sought to appeal to conditions of poverty, politico-ethnic marginalisation
and the exploitation of the population. The rebels consequently focused
their narrative on the generalised historical marginalisation of the civil-
ian population and state weakness and ineffectiveness. The Ixil region, a
mountainous zone populated by an almost exclusively indigenous popula-
tion, had historically suffered acute poverty, low levels of socio-economic
development and ethnic exclusion. In the Ixil, the guerrilla sought to win
over the population by focusing upon the conditions of slavery and rac-
ism in which campesinos lived and were subject to at the hands of local
224 R. BRETT

authorities. In the Ixil, the guerrilla declared imminent victorious revolu-

tion, and sought to make clear how this would benefit the local popula-
tion. The guerrilla’s revolutionary narrative, at least initially, wielded more
impact in the Ixil, where the rebels’ discourse fell on more fertile ground.
The decision to carry out the first public execution, or ajusticiamiento, in
the Ixil, was no coincidence: the rebels believed that settling accounts with
those who had historically exploited the indigenous peasants would be an
effective recruitment strategy, which, to a degree, it was. In the wake of
the first ajusticiamiento in 1975, guerrilla numbers swelled, not, however,
uniquely as a result of immediately demonstrated sympathy for the EGP
by the peasants, although this indeed was a factor. The killing was fol-
lowed by violent reprisals from the military, pushing communities towards
the guerrilla. Others joined or collaborated out of fear of this new, lethal
actor in the Ixil. The rebels were consolidating their structures.
Given its incapacity to offer immediate economic benefits to its poten-
tial social base, the EGP saw itself obliged to appeal to longer term social
endowments, and construct effective, meaningful relationships and networks
within peasant communities, a phenomenon that arguably acted to restrain
insurgent violence against its social base, as Weinstein has argued for cases
elsewhere (2011). Unlike its belligerent counterpart then, deeply dependent
upon peasant communities and limited in its military capacity, the guerrilla
subjected non-combatants to a proportionately minimal number of homi-
cides and human rights abuses, although gross violations did indeed occur.
In both regions, civilian collaboration with the guerrilla was complex
and context-specific, characterised by a series of diverse and, oftentimes,
mutually reinforcing roles. As Kalyvas has convincingly evidenced, the
majority of those non-combatants that collaborated did so through ‘com-
plex, ambiguous and shifting’ behaviour, moving between toleration of,
support for and resistance to armed actors (2006: 87). Peasants provided
material support to rebels, including food and shelter; logistical support
in preparation for hostilities, including affording intelligence to the reb-
els and digging traps for soldiers; political support and militancy; and, at
times, participated directly in hostilities. Of course, collaboration, how-
ever it was manifest, represented no justification for the grotesque and
illegal military response to it.
The Guatemala case provides important insight into why civilians may
collaborate with armed groups. The reasons for collaboration with rebel
groups were indeed multiple and, at times, mutually reinforcing, and,
in many cases, changed over time, as scholarship has observed for cases
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 225

elsewhere (Wood 2003; Kalyvas 2006; Weinstein 2011). In the Ixcán and
the Ixil, the decision to collaborate with or participate in the armed strug-
gle was profoundly shaped by the violence itself. Violence perpetrated by
both armed groups, although particularly by the military, pushed civilians
towards the belligerents for protection. At the same time, as we saw in
the case of the Ixil, subjected continually to repression and subsequently
victim to massacres, a number of communities forged new and reshaped
their existing motivations for participation in the guerrilla. What began as
collaboration that resulted from coercive actions of the guerrilla or that
had been precipitated by the urgent need of civilians for protection from
the armed forces, gradually took on an ideological dimension, as state
violence generated the perception that the military was morally bankrupt.
As this violence pushed civilians towards the guerrilla, non-combatants
began to believe in it as an alternative. Particularly in the case of the Ixil
region, participation in and collaboration with the rebels, as Wood has
evidenced for the case of El Salvador, brought hope and dignity, as peas-
ants expressed defiance to the state’s military offensive and strategy of
repression. However, and perhaps significantly, the overall sense from the
interviews carried out in the Ixcán was less clear. The armed conflict in
this region interrupted conditions that were, at least comparatively, stable,
politically and economically speaking, unlike they had been in the Ixil; in
the Ixcán, there had then perhaps been more to lose. In relatively more
cases, as the conflict advanced, the rebels appeared to represent more
effectively the short- and long-term interests of survival and social trans-
formation in the Ixil than they would in the Ixcán. Patterns of collabora-
tion in both regions differed then, to a minor extent.
Finally, it is worth offering a corrective to the now common observa-
tion that collaboration emerges above all as a survival strategy, out of
personal interest or as a result of coercion, and has little relationship to
the assertion of agency or popular sovereignty by subordinate popula-
tions. In the case of the two regions presented as case studies in this book,
ideology did matter; some peasants did seek to become part of history
voluntarily and consciously. Whilst insurgent group consolidation was of
course shaped by the dynamics of the conflict itself, it would be remiss
not to recognise and acknowledge that struggles for justice, freedom and
social transformation did indeed play a role in Guatemala’s revolution.
Ideology did mean something during Guatemala’s dark and bloody Cold
War years; history, as Grandin (2010) has argued, was indeed there for
the taking.
226 R. BRETT

THE GUATEMALAN GENOCIDE: ENDING AND IMPACT

Guatemala’s genocide ended formally in 1983, once counterinsurgency
operations had successfully disarticulated the guerrilla, by literally scorch-
ing its support base off the map, in what had been, to a large extent, a war
without battles. As the rebels retreated, so mass atrocities came to a slow,
albeit disjunctive end across the country, leaving the survivors to be cor-
ralled into concentration camps to undergo moral, political and cultural
branding, the state’s mark of ownership burnt and sculpted into the indig-
enous psyche. The defeat of the insurgency led the military to precipitate
the gradual return to civilian rule by 1986, which was followed shortly
afterwards by the Central American peace process, Esquipulas II.  The
genocide had been invoked both to drain the sea to kill the fish and to
build a new nation-state, blanqueada, or whitened, and purified from sub-
versive aspiration and ‘indian’ values.
Guatemala’s formal peace process began in 1987, as the waning
of global Cold War politics began to impose its perestroika logic even
upon Central America, which had been one of the ideological confron-
tation’s most reticent and brutal battlegrounds.3 Between 1994 and
1996, seventeen peace accords were eventually signed between succes-
sive governments and the URNG, addressing operative and substantive
themes, including the Agreement Concerning the Identity and Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, signed in March 1995, an important achievement in
a post-genocide society. On 31 December 1996, the final peace accord
was signed, bringing the country’s armed conflict to a formal end. The
peace process had successfully orchestrated the formal end to hostilities.
Through a series of unprecedented and key accords relative to rights pro-
visions, the process legitimised victims’ demands relative to human rights
and indigenous rights claims, and reinforced the empowerment of civil
society organisations. The resultant consolidation of a partial rights cul-
ture opened a space for growing demands from increasingly visible civil
society actors, including the AJR and CALDH, for justice, truth, non-
repetition and reparations relating to the past violence, amongst other
issues. Victims learnt effectively to operationalise human rights frame-
works, including those relative to international crimes, such as genocide
and crimes against humanity. As the partial rights culture emerged, survi-
vors asserted the irreversibility of their rights, despite ongoing violations,
and with that, the state’s correlative obligations to guarantee and protect
them. As an indigenous human rights leader stated in interview, ‘We have
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 227

learnt our rights, and we cannot unlearn them: central to our struggles
now is the demand for their recognition.’4 Partial implementation of spe-
cific provisions consecrated in the peace accords related to institutional
strengthening brought with it the incipient transformation of the justice
system, including, specifically, the establishment of units within the Public
Prosecutor’s Office and tribunals to investigate past human rights viola-
tions, one of which would subsequently indict Montt.
However, and significantly, as a result of the reticence of Guatemalan
elites to engage directly with the structural causes of conflict (unequal
distribution and control of land; horizontal inequalities), the accords
excluded relevant provisions in this regard, subsequently impeding endur-
ing socio-economic transformation in the country.5 The parties had nego-
tiated a broad and inclusive series of issues then, with one key exception:
the embedded root causes of the conflict. As this author has argued else-
where,6 Guatemala’s peace settlement was uniquely framed within the
paradigm of the Liberal Peace, ‘peace from IKEA’, ‘a flat-packed peace’,
as Mac Ginty (2010) cogently terms it. Political and economic liberalisa-
tion, at best supported vehemently, at worst, imposed by the international
community, built a house of cards, ultimately precipitating little meaning-
ful reform for those that had been historically swept up by the country’s
unforgiving elite. Peace became the continuation of war by other means.
At the same time, no recognition of the genocide by the parties to the con-
flict was formally offered during, or in the aftermath of the peace process.
The negotiations brought an end to the internal armed conflict, whilst
deriding the genocide. Although the CEH addressed the genocide and
offered recommendations to investigate it and to prosecute human rights
violators, it was not referred to more generally in the accords, nor were
specific mechanisms through which to bring its perpetrators to account
established, unlike in Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia. The inclusion of
transitional justice mechanisms was limited to amnesties, and to the CEH
and to a subsequent programme of reparations for the victims. Not inex-
plicably, little international decisive pressure was placed upon the parties
to the conflict to acknowledge the genocide: the USA had financed the
violence and trained many of its architects, and the United Nations was
arguably enthusiastic for its newly formulated Agenda for Peace, launched
in 1992, to precipitate tangible results in Central America. Despite con-
siderable reference to the victims of the conflict, indigenous or otherwise,
the peace process showed disdainful disregard for the genocide, its victims
and its survivors, ultimately strengthening the regime of denial that had
228 R. BRETT

been assumed by state, political and economic elite actors for whom the
genocide remained a fiction. The military had, by their accounts, saved
the patria, the fatherland, from communist and ‘indian’ ruin and society
should, as a consequence, remain indebted to it.
However, ‘history cannot be unlived’, a statement previously ven-
tured in this book. Within the post-conflict context, ongoing struggles
for justice wielded by civil society organisations began gradually to build
upon the demands of indigenous and human rights organisations that had
emerged prior to the peace process, for example, of the Ethnic Council
Runujel Junam and the Mutual Support Group, shaping new forms of
political agency and indigenous subjectivity from within civil society (Brett
2008). Despite the structural weakness of the negotiations, human rights,
indigenous, women’s and peasants’ organisations were emboldened and
legitimised by the peace process and became central actors within the
peace agenda.7 As anthropologist Richard Wilson (1995) has argued,
indigenous politics, the ‘Maya Resurgence’, emerged as indigenous actors
sought to vindicate their rights and identity in the face of atrocity. Out
of fire, indigenous actors, such as the AJR, struggled for their rights to
justice for the crimes of the past: as we alluded to in previous chapters,
ashes often represent life, not only death. Indigenous actors, together with
the human rights movement, took advantage of the social and political
processes engendered by the peace process, and, over a period of thirteen
years pushed forward the investigation that would, finally, in 2013, lead to
the trial against, and (temporary) indictment of Ríos Montt. The collec-
tive response to genocide by its survivors had been one of resilience and
resistance, as they sought ‘redemptive denouement’ in the wake of the
‘catastrophic violence’ (Larson 2010). In less than a generation, victims
had organised and achieved the indictment of the General who had pos-
sessed maximum command responsibility over the military when the vio-
lence had been set upon them. Lucas García had, however, escaped trial,
having died in 2006 in Venezuela.
And what of the impact of the genocide? Referring to the genocide
against the Aboriginal peoples in Tasmania, political theorist Patrick
Hayden writes

The perpetrators of genocide sought to find and destroy an other defined

not only by skin tone, eye colour or facial features, but also by thoughts, con-
victions, ceremonies, rituals, narratives and memories carried precariously
through time. The perpetrators understood themselves to be destroying
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 229

something more than a group of individuals; they believed they were up

against a world whose difference from their own was so complete that only
one of these worlds could survive. For this reason the perpetrator’s actions
attacked not only individual lives but also the relational bonds of recogni-
tion that held together the Aboriginal world itself’ (Hayden 2016: 119).

Hayden’s description of perpetrator objectives a century prior to the

Guatemalan genocide is disquietingly reminiscent. The genocidaires
sought both the physical elimination of the Aboriginals, as well as the
annihilation of their ‘world’ through ‘radical non-recognition’, aimed at
the extermination of the other from a ‘shared moral or political realm’
(2016: 104). In this respect, and significantly, for Hayden, ‘the non-lethal
attempt to destroy the existential foundations of a group is no less geno-
cidal than direct killing’, a contention also posited in this book. What
the Tasmanian and Guatemalan genocidaires shared then is their inten-
tion to destroy ‘the relatively fluid web of relationships, beliefs, languages,
customs, histories, institutions and shared experiences around which a
group coheres’ (2016: 113–117). In short, they sought the destruction,
in whole, not in part, of the indigenous community, its world and the
webs of meaning and social relationships that defined it. The Guatemalan
genocide then was closely linked to the exercise of power, the expression
and construction of community and the functioning of politics, as is the
case for war more generally speaking, an observation English eloquently
makes (2013: 3).
In the immediate aftermath of the killing, as indigenous lands were
repopulated and survivors were confined in concentration camps, prohib-
ited to practise ancestral rites and speak their own language, it would have
appeared that effective destruction had indeed been wrought upon the
Maya. However, despite genocidal intention, history would not be unlived,
historical reality would not be denied. Within less than five years of the
signing of the final peace accord, the AJR and CALDH threw down the
gauntlet to the primary political community, demanding justice and truth
for the crimes of the past, as they sought to rebuild their world ‘as a shared
repository of memory and experience’ (Hayden 2016: 117). During the
armed conflict, from the perspective of the military and the primary politi-
cal community, the indigenous population had been guilty not only of sup-
porting the insurgency, but also, by its very nature, of future-subversion,
Orwellian thought-crime, as previously argued. The military had sought
to indoctrinate out the indigenous population’s alleged innate capacity to
230 R. BRETT

transmit controversial, subversive and socially unacceptable thoughts and

actions, to engineer a ‘permitted indian’ through its own perverse species
of Orwellian crimestop. As Don Tiburcio and other Ixil survivors of the
genocide sat in the High Impact Tribunal before Montt, it was abun-
dantly evident that the military’s project of social and political engineer-
ing had not been a complete success. As Spanish poet Antonio Machado
elegiacally put it, ‘the other refuses to disappear; it subsists, it persists; it is
the hard bone on which reason breaks its teeth’. Group-selective, group-
destructive killing had indeed wrought catastrophic effect, yet the survi-
vors had sought to reconstruct community, resonating as it does

with many of humanity’s deepest instincts and needs: towards survival,

security, protection and safety; towards the fulfilment of economic and
other practical needs; towards necessary belonging and, in particular… a
belonging to stable, coherent, meaningful, lastingly special and distinctive
groups… self preservation… the longing for dignity, prestige or meaning’
(English 2013: 19–21).

The genocide trial precipitated a significant national debate focused

around the themes of truth and memory, a debate that represented,
in effect, an entrenched struggle to elucidate publicly the history of
the country’s internal armed conflict and, to a degree, to redefine and
verify the nation’s founding narrative. With the public rebuttal by then
President Álvaro Arzú, in 1999, of the CEH’s final report, indigenous vic-
tims of past violence, in fact the very nature of the violence itself, had been
scorned and rejected, indigenous subjectivity nullified. In post-conflict
societies recovering from protracted and brutal violence, the past often is
often subject to ferocious and feral disputation. In those contexts where
the state has been implicated as the executioner of its own citizens, then
truth-telling, consensus over and justice for past crimes are likely to be
contested, dilatory and arduous tasks (Hamber and Wilson 2002: 48–49).
In the words of Hamber and Wilson, ‘The process of breaking a regime of
denial, addressing and recognising repressed memories, compensating for
loss, and ultimately arriving at some type of closure and reintegration of
liminal subjects, works at different levels, i.e., individuals, truth commis-
sions and criminal prosecutions’ (ibid.).
The verdict against Montt represented a critical achievement for indig-
enous and non-indigenous victims of the conflict alike, although the specific
nature of the crime and sentence were logically of profound relevance for
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 231

indigenous peoples. In the immediate aftermath of the sentence, human

rights, indigenous and women’s movements, whose historical struggles had
demanded recognition of the violations perpetrated by the military and
who had converged in the context of the prosecution, were vindicated; the
regime of denial had been broken.8 As one member of the human rights
community stated, ‘Indigenous victims sat in a court of law, on an equal
footing to the former dictator. This court, part of a racist exclusionary state,
heard their testimonies, and gave them probative value on the strength of
which Montt was found guilty.’9 In this regard, the trial ultimately repre-
sented a mechanism through which liminal subjects and violated subject-
hood could be respectively reintegrated and redressed (Hamber and Wilson
2002) and the victims of the genocide re-humanised. What emerged out of
the trial then was the partially reconstructed citizenship of indigenous vic-
tims; a contestatory citizen, not the military’s vision of the indio permitido.
However, both the enormous opposition to the trial exerted by
Guatemalans of many social classes and sectors, and in particular by the pri-
mary political community, and, ultimately, the annulment of the trial itself
evidence the continuing proclivity in Guatemala to write indigenous people
out of history, to seek to destroy their worldview and historical subjectivity.
The annulment, moreover, ‘validated’ the genocide in Midlarsky’s terms:
egregious acts had, once again, remained unpunished. The annulment of
the trial represented the experience of validation, par excellence, and thus
a direct challenge to victims’ rights to non-repetition. This social and legal
impunity suggests that violence against indigenous populations continues to
be acceptable and raises the spectre of possible future violence, or, at the very
least, reduces the restraints against it. It is the contention here that validation
of egregious harm against indigenous peoples remains permissive because, as
scholar Patrick Hayden has argued, ‘rights claims remain politically irrelevant
or ineffective if they are unheard and unseen by others who do not recog-
nise the claimant as sufficiently human’ (2013: 576, 2016). In spite of the
important, yet limited gains of the peace process, the basic condition of the
recognition of indigenous peoples as human beings in Guatemala has not yet
been achieved. As one indigenous leader stated, ‘In a country of indians, they
massacred indians, not human beings. Today, little has changed.’10
The annulment of the Montt trial evidences the ongoing challenges
that indigenous peoples continue to face in Guatemala, and arguably
across Latin America, as they seek to prevent the annihilation of their
social identity, to be recognised as humans, and to write themselves into
history and memory. The systematic massacres central to the genocide
232 R. BRETT

ended in 1983. However, indigenous Guatemalans today disproportion-

ately suffer extreme poverty, exclusion, acute rates of maternal mortality
and chronic infant malnutrition. Extractive projects, in turn, precipitate
displacement from and expropriation of indigenous ancestral lands. Whilst
genocide, juridically defined, effectively came to an end in 1983, neolib-
eral economic development and structural violence are slowly eliminating
indigenous selfhood and community, continuing what the conquistadores
had begun in the fifteenth century and the military’s massacres and indoc-
trination programmes sought to complete during the bloody years of the
Cold War. Despite critical efforts by indigenous and human rights organ-
isations to reclaim their past, break the regime of denial and etch justice
and memory onto an inclusive national narrative, Guatemala’s genocide
ending remains elusive. It is in this context, that Card’s concept of ‘social
death’ is germane, urging us to take the ‘focus off body counts’ and place
it onto less evidently visible, yet equally genocidal processes, such as the
impact of neoliberal development models upon the social identity of a
group. The annulment of the Montt trial and the obliteration of his indict-
ment and the harm to indigenous peoples caused by neoliberal develop-
ment in Guatemala today are not characteristics of the legacy of genocide;
they are manifestations of its continuity in the present. The Guatemalan
genocide then, and likely other genocides elsewhere, represents a continu-
ous, ongoing event, not an episodic, fragmented incarnation of atrocity
past.
It would be the final contention of this book then to provoke further
discussion regarding the limited framework of the juridical definition of
genocide and its particular inability to comprehend and provide meaning-
ful protection for those vulnerable groups whose destruction is a conse-
quence of the logic of structural violence and economic development, the
iron fist in a velvet glove.
The research presented in this book has sought to evidence the gro-
tesque violence of genocide, and hoped to elucidate the conditions under
which it may emerge as a strategic option for the primary political commu-
nity or other elite groups wielding political and military power. However,
the book has ended with a provocation; that the genocide ending in
Guatemala remains elusive, its constitutive operational mechanism having
evolved from mass killing, to silent, invisible, starving murder. Whilst I am
indeed convinced of the special evil of genocide, I am less persuaded of the
degree to which it remains more so than those less discernible processes
that slowly, through ‘the incurable belief of human reason’, in Machado’s
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 233

words, eliminate the other, devastate dignity and annihilate memory in the
pursuit of modernity. Is then the apparent legacy of Guatemala’s genocidal
history ultimately nothing more, or nothing less than the continuation
of group-destructive war by other means. In this context, genocide sur-
vivors have waged a systematic struggle to etch decipherable meaning
upon a desolate, violent past and a contingent, uncertain future. To speak
of Guatemala’s genocide legacy may then be sophistic; in post-conflict
Guatemala, what we are in fact witnessing is genocide continuity; the edg-
ing of indigenous peoples out of history, and the sculpting of a destitute,
perjurious future. In Don Tiburcio’s words: ‘We won the genocide case,
but everything else remains the same.’

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NOTES
1. See http://www.kkoworld.com/kitablar/Albert_Kamyu_Taun_ing.pdf
(Accessed 7 October 2015).
2. The exaggeration of difference should be approached with caution.
Anthropological studies on Guatemala, for example by Bastos and Camus
[eds] (2007), have often pointed to the proximity between indigenous and
non-indigenous groups (on the grounds of race, language, religion) and
the possibility of ‘passing’ between one group and another.
 CONCLUSIONS: AND HISTORY SHALL NOT BE UNWRITTEN 235

3. See Brett (2008, 2013) and Jonas (2000) for detailed analysis of
Guatemala’s peace process, with particular reference to the peace accords
and indigenous issues.
4. Interview, Guatemala City, June 2013.
5. See Brett (2013).
6. See Brett (2013).
7. See Roddy Brett, Social Movements, Indigenous Politics and Democratisation
in Guatemala, 1985–1996 (Brill-CEDLA Latin American Studies Series
2008).
8. See Brett (2016) for a detailed discussion of the genocide trial and its
impact.
9. Interview, CALDH, Guatemala City, 14 June 2013.
10. Interview, CALDH, Guatemala City, 09 June 2013.
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 INDEX

A dynamics of, 66
‘Action Plan for Conflict Zones,’ 184
acute military crisis in Ixcán, 158
Agenda for Peace, 227
Agreement Concerning the Identity and
Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 226
Alta Verapaz, 124, 164
Anderson, B., 35
Angelou, Maya, 141
Antonio, Don, 204, 207
Arbenz, Jacopo, 56, 59, 215
Areas of Operation, 127
Arévalo, Juan José, 97, 215
Arévalo, Vinicio Cerezo, 141
Argentina
dictatorship in, 43
political violence in, 84
Argueta, Colom, 123
Armas, Castillo, 97
armed conflict, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 23–4,
63, 80, 81
and authoritarianism, 16
civil war and, 20, 26, 71, 72
escalation of, 94
Guatemala’s internal, 12, 33, 34,
60, 73
initiation of, 102
intensification of, 112
internal, 20, 36, 72, 75, 87, 88, 96,
98–100
non-international, 74
onset of, 13
operational objectives of, 50, 66
political violence of, 98
trajectory of, 87
and violence, 18, 79
armed forces, 31n13, 74, 84, 106,
111, 113, 114
Army Intelligence Directorate (D-2), 123
Army Section for Civilian Affairs (S-5),
124, 186
Arzú, Álvaro, 230
Association for Justice and
Reconciliation (AJR), 7, 8, 10,
21, 31n10, 37

Note: Page number followed by ‘n’ refers to endnotes.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 241

R. Brett, The Origins and Dynamics of Genocide,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-39767-6
242 INDEX
Assumption of Montt and Victory 82 in,
182–4
atrocity-justifying ideologies, 61,
220
Auden, W.H.
Another Time in 1939, 6
Epitaph on a Tyrant, 4
authoritarianism, 14, 16
Azpuru, D., 14
B insurgencies, 79–83
Balam, Kaibil, 65
Barrios, Jazmin, 7, 8
Bauman, Z., 39
‘Beans and Rifles,’ 185
‘benevolent façade,’ 152
bombing campaign in San Francisco
Javier, 187
Brol, Enrique, 173
Buenos Aires, 153
C and armed conflict, 20, 26, 71, 72
CACIF. See Committee of
Agricultural, Commercial,
Industrial, and Financial
Associations (CACIF)
CALDH. See Centre for Human Rights
Legal Action (CALDH)
Campaign Victory 82, 195
Campaña de los Quinientos Años de
Resistencia, 9
Campbell, B., 39, 51, 52, 62, 221
campesino, 188–9
Camus, Albert, 215
Card’s concept of ‘social death,’ 232
Castillo, Fernando, 154, 160
catastrophic violence, 228
Catholic catechism, 205
Catholic Church in San Cristobal de
las Casas, member of, 208
CCL. See Clandestine Local
Committee (CCL)
CEH. See Historical Clarification
Commission (CEH)
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 56
Centre for Human Rights Legal Action
(CALDH), 7, 8, 10, 21, 31n10,
37
Cerezo, Vinicio, 10
Chiapas, 203–9
civilian collaboration, with
civilian operations, 179
civilian population, 2, 10–12, 18, 26,
31n13, 72, 73, 75–7, 79, 80, 84,
85, 88, 119, 151
historical marginalisation of, 109
mass violence on, impact of, 35
military violence forced, 106
political violence on, impact of, 20
violent actions against, 104
civilians, 223–5
civil war, 73
defined, 73–4
dynamics of, 87
indiscriminate violence during, 85
insurgent mobilisation and, 19, 35
in Latin America, 14
violence, 131
Clandestine Local Committee (CCL),
102, 111–14, 181, 189
impact of, 129
Cold War, 4, 9, 13–17, 33, 51, 54, 58,
59
collaboration, forced/voluntary,
114–15
colonial era, 217
colonisation of Ixcán, 92–5
Columbus, Christopher, 9
COMAR. See Mexican Commission
for Aid to Refugees (COMAR)

Commission for Historical
Clarification, 172–3
Committee of Agricultural,
Commercial, Industrial, and
Financial Associations (CACIF), 8
Committee of Peasant Unity (Comité
de Unidad Campesina, CUC), 98
Communities of Population in
Resistance (CPRs), 162, 195
guerrilla, role of, 199–201
maximum authority of, 198
community-level violence, 74
context, 120–1
contrast in revolutionary discourse,
108–11
contravention of international
humanitarian law, 155
counterinsurgency, 121–4
argument, 55
armed conflict and, 17
campaign, 196
forces, 10
impact of, 138–41
implementation of, 54
in Ixcán, 151–4
in Ixil, 170–2
logic, 34, 54, 55
policy, 18, 64
sheer savagery of, 128
strategy, 4, 10, 26, 27, 85, 131–2
trajectory of, 74
violence, 1, 2, 86
crimestop, 185
Cuarto Pueblo, 159, 160, 200–1
close proximity of, 166
detachment in, 167
guerrilla and military forces in, 203
massacre, 165–70
military detachment in, 158, 159,
177
CUC, 98, 100, 101, 122, 124, 150
cultural death, 184–6
INDEX 243
D
Davidson, L., 48
dehumanisation process, 220
Department of Justice and
Reconciliation (DEJURE), 11
Development Poles, 136, 139
Diocese of San Cristobal de las Casas,
205, 207
Doehny, Edward, 92
E
economic liberalisation, 227
economic modernisation in
Guatemala, 121
Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP),
11, 77, 78, 100–8, 114, 115,
119, 122, 125, 161, 164, 171,
173, 176, 224
civilian population and, 128
ideology and politico-military
strategy, 100–1
intensive military campaign in, 177
political discourse, 112
political strategy in Ixcán, 109
Prolonged Popular War, 216
retreat of, 165
strategy, 56–7, 101, 105
Ejército Zapatista de Liberación
Nacional (EZLN), 202
El Quiché, 1, 2, 10, 11, 23, 98, 140,
171
military operations in, 11, 64–5
political violence in, 12
socio-economic development in, 95
English, Richard, 69n5, 220, 221
Ernesto Che Guevara Front, 151
ethno-linguistic groups, 96, 98
exogenous genocide rescue, 201–2
exogenous rescue, CPR, 197–9
EZLN. See Ejército Zapatista de
Liberación Nacional (EZLN)
244 INDEX

F Goodwin, J., 44, 90n3

Falla, R., 154, 160, 163, 164 Gordillo, Fernando, 133
FAR. See Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) Grandin, G., 3, 14–16, 33, 86, 225
Feierstein, D., 43, 53 Gran, José María, 156
Fein, H., 48 grotesque violence, 3
first paramilitary PAC, 129 Guatemala, 5–6, 9, 11, 19, 35–7, 41,
Fisas, V., 87 45, 55
‘a flat-packed peace,’ 227 case, 124–5, 130–1
Floyd, Pink ethno-linguistic groups in, 98
The Fletcher Memorial Home, 14 exogenous rescue in, 210
‘forging’ ideological affinity, effect of, Guatemala: Núnca Más, 2–3
175 ideology of racism in, 216
formal peace process, Guatemala, 226 internal armed conflict, 12, 33–4,
Fourth Geneva Convention (1949), 60, 73
31n13 legal ruling in, 47
Frontism, 101 lower-middle-income economy, 23
FTN, context of, 121 military, 17–18
Fuentes, Héctor Mario López, 140 political and socio-economic reforms
in, 97
racism in, 220
G violence in, 56, 72, 223
García, Benedicto Lucas, 121, 125, war, 13
127, 132–3, 147, 162, 177–9, 213 Guatemala City
García, Romeo Lucas, 1, 4, 34, 41, guerrilla networks in, 131
57, 120–2, 124, 133, 136 refuge in, 196
administration, 132 Guatemalan Armed Forces, 127
counterinsurgency strategy, impact Guatemalan campesinos, 203
of, 131–2 Guatemalan elite, 215–16
mass violence, 124–6 Guatemalan genocide, 226–33
scorched earth campaign, 34 Guatemalan military, 178, 207
strategy of mass atrocities, 130 Guatemalan refugees in Mexico,
Garrard-Burnett, 120, 126, 143n1 202–4, 208
Gay, John, 4 Guelke, A., 50
Geertz, 78 guerrilla, 148
genocidal strategy, 2 forces, 34
genocidal violence, 12, 44, 46, 49, 51, networks in Guatemala City, 131
53, 66, 75, 83, 222 organisations and challenge of
decisive impact of, 195 recruitment, 75–9
genocide political cadres, 166
constitute, 46–50 role of, 199–201
definitions, 36–40, 48, 50–1 strategy, 125, 126
strategy, 141 Guevara, Che, 101
studies scholarship, 216 Gumarcaj Task Force, 65, 178, 179–80
Gómez-Suarez, A., 43 Gurriarán, Javier, 152, 153

Gurr, T.R., 69n4
Guzmán, Jacobo Árbenz, 97
H EGP political strategy in, 109
Hale, C., 222
Hamber, B., 230
haphazard strategy of massacre, 177
Harff, B., 69n4
Hayden, Patrick, 49, 228–9, 231
Hironaka, A., 73
Historical Clarification Commission
(CEH), 2–3, 183–4, 227
I in, 182–4
Ibargüen, Roberto Herrera, 173
Ilom massacre, 182
indigenous communities, 137
indigenous population, physical
destruction and social death of, 138
indigenous survivors, 138
concentration and control of, 137
indiscriminate violence, 44, 81, 86
during civil war, 85
institutionalisation of mass violence,
124–6
insurgencies
civilian collaboration with, 79–83
in Latin America, 18
insurgent groups, 18, 54, 76–80, 88
insurgent mobilisation, 147–51
insurgent violence, 18, 22
INTA. See National Institute for
Agrarian Transformation (INTA)
Inter-Agency Coordinating
Committees, 137, 185
International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC), 74
international humanitarian law, 74
contravention of, 155
Ixcán, 223, 225
acute military crisis in, 158
colonisation of, 92–5
INDEX 245
conflict escalates, 154–60
cooperatives, 119
counterinsurgency in, 151–4
Cuarto Pueblo massacre, 165–70
insurgent mobilisation, 147–51
population, 148
revolutionary movement in, 100–2
scorched earth campaign in, 160–2
violence under Montt, 163–5
Ixcán Grande, 92, 100, 149, 153–5,
162
Ixchoy, Andrés, 149
Ixil, 95–100, 223–5
assumption of Montt and Victory 82
Civil Affairs in, 179
counterinsurgency project, 170–2
diversity of spoken indigenous
languages in, 186
‘indian’ threat in, 184
massacre in San Franciso Javier,
Santa María Nebaj, 186–9
military control and cultural death,
184–6
population in, 145n18
rebels in, 109
revolutionary movement in, 100–2
scorched earth in, 178–82
violence intensifies, 172–8
Iximché Task Force, 127
J
Jentzsch, C., 129
Joseph, G., 15
K
Kalyvas, N.S., 16–17, 43, 71, 73, 80,
81, 85, 87, 90n5, 200, 218–19,
224
The Logic of Violence in Civil War, 87
Kaplan, 16
246 INDEX
Kemp, S., 127, 132, 140, 179
argues the Montt campaign, 135
King, 20
Koonings, K., 13
Kruijt, D., 13, 15
L institutionalisation of, 124–6
ladinisation processes, 179
Latin America
civil war, 14
cold war, 54
insurgencies in, 18
Le Bot, Y., 98
Lekha Sriram, 20
Lemkin, 43, 48, 50, 138
Liberal Peace, paradigm of, 227
Local Irregular Forces (FIL), 102,
111–14, 127–8, 181, 189
local-level violence, 86
M Midlarsky, M.I., 17, 18, 34, 35, 41,
Mac Ginty, 227
Machado, Antonio, 230
macro-levels of violence, 71, 73, 86
Maldonado, Alba Estela, 167
Mann, M., 39, 217
Manz, B., 95
Mariscal Zavala Brigade, 183
Martínez, Emilio, 149
Marxist–Leninist discourse, 100
massacre, 86
campaign, 5, 135
Cuarto Pueblo, 165–70
haphazard strategy of, 177
Ilom, 182
pattern of, 162
of Rio Negro in 1982, 130
in San Franciso Javier, 186–9
in Santa María Nebaj, 186–9
of Santa María Tzejá, 161–2
severity and scale of, 128
Victory 82, 140
in Xalbal, 157
in Xix, 181–2
mass exodus, 196–7
mass rescue, 203–9
mass violence
on civilian population, 35
Maya K’ekchis in Panzós, 124
‘Maya Resurgence,’ 228
Maynard, J., 60–1
Rethinking the Role of Ideology in
Mass Atrocities, 60
McAllister, C., 7, 81, 98, 101
Mexican border, 139
Mexican Commission for Aid to
Refugees (COMAR), 201–2, 206
Mexican soldiers, 207
Mexico, 203–9
actors and networks in, 201–2
Guatemalan refugees in, 202
micro-levels of violence, 71, 73, 86
52, 53, 55, 216
The Killing Trap, 52
militarisation, 128–31, 155, 156
military, 63–4
campaign in Ixcán, 151
control, 184–6
in El Quiché, 11, 64–5
identification cards, 174
repression, 172
strategy, 2, 127
military-channelled resources, 137
Military Intelligence Section (G-2), 123
military violence, 86, 106
civilian population, 106
MLN. See Movement of National
Liberation (MLN)
Mobile Military Police (PMA), 153–4
mobilisation, wave of, 122
model villages, 137
Mohr, Fuentes, 123

Molyneux, M., 8
Montt, Efraín Ríos, 1–2, 4, 5–9, 13,
34, 36, 41, 45, 47, 120, 133–5,
141, 144n4, 147, 176, 213, 228
assumption of, 182–4
Campaign Victory, 34
counterinsurgency, 138–41, 164
indigenous and non-indigenous
victims, 230–1
regime of, 123, 183
strategy, 184
violence under, 163–5
Monzón, Guillermo, 152, 172
Morales, Gramajo, 113
Moses, A.D., 48, 61
Movement of National Liberation
(MLN), 133
Moyano, M.J., 83, 84
N PAC. See paramilitary civil defence
National Guatemalan Revolutionary
Unity (URNG), 143n1
National Institute for Agrarian
Transformation (INTA), 92, 94,
153
National Plan for Security and
Development, 133, 161
National Security Doctrine (NSD), 120
operational framework of, 123
Nazi Holocaust, 169–70
Nelson, 7
neoliberal development models,
impact of, 232
non-combatants, 44
agency of, 16
in contexts, option, 72
defection of, 72
indigenous, 34, 45, 57
mass murder of, 46
options for, 72
population, 12, 16, 20, 25, 50, 66,
75, 77–9, 151
INDEX 247
strategies of, 35, 72
non-state forces, 33
Nordstrom, 20
Northern Transversal Strip (FTN), 94
NSD. See National Security Doctrine
(NSD)
Nueva Concepción, 167–8
O
Operation Ixil, 179
Operation Victory 82, 134–6, 179,
198
organised killing campaign, 125
ORPA. See Revolutionary Organisation
of People in Arms (ORPA)
Oxford’s Bodleian Library, 139
P
patrols (PAC)
parallel organisations, 134
paramilitary civil defence patrols
(PAC), 125, 129–30, 136–7, 163
members, 164–5
paramilitary forces, 1, 20
Paz y Paz, Claudia, 8
‘peace from IKEA,’ 227
Petersen, R., 80
Piedras Blancas, 163
The Plague, 215
Plan Firmness 1983, 139
Plan Sofía, 179
Plan Victory 82, 6
political liberalisation, 227
political violence, 18, 33, 71, 73
in Argentina, 84
of armed conflict, 98
on civilian population, 20
in El Quiché, 12
in Guatemala, 56, 72
logics and dynamics of, 15
248 INDEX
population control, from collective
killing to, 136–8
Praxis, 150, 207
President Carter, 123
President Mejía, 141, 164
primary political community, 179
Prolonged Popular War, 119
EGP, 216
guerrilla strategy of, 125
Pueblo Nuevo, 149, 154, 156–8, 160
massacre, female survivor of, 199
Puerto Rico, 203–9
refugees in, 201
R Santa María Nebaj, massacre in, 186–9
racism, 18, 24, 25, 36, 39, 51, 57,
100
and act of killing, 60–5
in Guatemala, 220
and nation-/state-building process,
ideology of, 213
Ramírez, Ricardo, 100
Reagan administration, 134
Reagan presidency in 1980, 143n4
Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), 101, 140
rebels, 223–5
REMHI report, 32n14, 102, 112,
128, 145n19, 197–9
Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC-EP), 84
revolutionary discourse, contrast in,
108–11
revolutionary movement, 97
in Central America, 15
in Ixcán and Ixil, 91, 100–2
Revolutionary Organisation of People
in Arms (ORPA), 122
Rio Negro in 1982, massacre of, 130
robust bond, 119
‘Roofs, Work and Tortillas,’ 185
Rosada-Granados, Hector, 124, 143n3
Rosario Canijá, massacred in, 163
Rothenberg, D., 137
Rubelsanto, 150
S
Sánchez, José Mauricio Rodriguez,
5–7
sanction military tactics, NSD, 120
Sandinista revolutionaries, 119
Sanford, V., 34, 136
San Francisco Javier
bombing campaign in, 187
massacre in, 186–9
Santa María, 156–7
Santa María Tzejá, 148, 149, 153–5
massacre of, 161–2
Schaad, Horacio Egberto Maldonado,
133
Schirmer, J.G., 34, 112, 132, 144n4
Schneiderhan, E., 38
‘scorched earth’ campaign, 1, 167,
176, 218
integral component of, 128
in Ixcán, 160–2
in Ixil, 178–83
strategy, 126–8
second-generation scholarship,
genocide, 46
Second World War, 33
sector of military officials, 132
Shaw, M., 34
sheer savagery of counterinsurgency,
128
Skocpol, T., 90n3
social control of deviancy, 62
social death, 49, 50
socio-economic development, 94, 99,
100, 108, 109
in El Quiché, 95
Soto, Juan Francisco, 135
 INDEX 249

Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City, Victory 82

150 in Ixil, 182–4
state forces, 33, 75, 81 massacre, 140
Stoll, D., 81, 86, 102, 115 violence. See also political violence
Stone, D., 48 community-level, 74
Straus, Whilst, 17, 34, 35, 41, 42, 44, counterinsurgency, 1–2, 86
45, 51, 53–5, 60, 216, 222 dynamics of, 15, 72, 83, 84
Second Generation Research on genocidal, 12, 44, 46, 49, 51, 53,
Genocide, 40 66, 75, 83
grotesque, 3
indiscriminate, 44, 81, 85, 86
T insurgent, 18, 22
Task Forces, 127 local-level, 86
Taussig, M., 46 logics of, 73–5
Taylor, C., 127, 206 macro-levels of, 71, 73, 86
terrorism, 13, 17, 44, 45, 50 mass, on civilian population, 35
defined, 69n5 micro-levels of, 71, 73, 86
threat–vulnerability nexus, 126, 184 nature of, 218–23
Tiburcio, Don, 1–6, 181, 230, 233 patterns of, 83–7

U W
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Waller, J., 62
(UNHCR), 202, 205, 206 wave of mobilisation, 122
Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Weinstein, J., 76, 78, 85, 90n3, 200
Guatemalteca (URNG), 2, 11, Wilson, Richard, 46, 213, 223, 228,
75, 85, 122, 167, 226 230
United Nations Convention on the Wilson, Tim, 219–20
Elimination of All Forms of Racial Wood, Elizabeth, 15, 20, 23, 78–9,
Discrimination (1983), 133 81, 82
United Nations Development Woods, William, 93, 154–5
Programme (UNDP), 23
Upper Silesia, 219
urban counterinsurgency strategy, X
Argentine specialists in, 125 Xalbal, 153, 157
US diplomats, 123 Xecax, 178
Utuy, Maria, 2 Xix, massacre in, 181–2

V Y
Valentino, B., 17, 34, 134 Yates, Pamela, 5