Violence and Genocide in Guatemala[1]

By Victoria Sanford

vdlsanford@aol.com

Senior Research Fellow

Institute on Violence and Survival, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities

Assistant Professor

Department of Anthropology, Lehman College, City University of New York

CHART 10 (Percentage of Massacre Victims By Gender): Genocide is a gendered atrocity because its intention is to destroy the cultural group. This means destruction of the community’s material culture as well as its reproductive capacity - thus, women and children are prime genocidal targets. One way to pinpoint the height of the genocide is to look at the ratio of male to female massacre victims. In 1981, females (including women and girls) comprised 14 percent of massacre victims in Rabinal. By 1982, they made up 42 percent of massacre victims. By charting the gender composition of massacre victims over time, we see that halfway through 1982 the increase in the number of women killed in massacres rises so rapidly that the comparative percentage of men killed actually drops. This point of intersection represents the successful implementation of a shift in army strategy from selective massacres to genocide and is located midway through 1982 about three months after Rios Montt seized power through military coup d’etat.[2]

No doubt, the ever-increasing number of Maya massacre victims and the pattern from the Lucas Garcia regime to the rule of Rios Montt indicates an ongoing army strategy that was consistent in its target population (the Maya) and one which became increasingly efficient. Moreover, this improved efficiency was no accident and certainly not the random and coincidental outcome of rogue commanders in the field. It was the field implementation of the Guatemalan army's "Plan de Campana Victoria 82" (Victory Campaign Plan 82) which sought to "eliminate," "annihilate," and "exterminate" the "enemy."[3]

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[1] This draws from Violencia y Genocidio en Guatemala (Guatemala City: FyG Editores, 2003) and Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). The author thanks Allison Downey for her assistance in developing the massacre databases, Raul Figueroa Sarti for publishing this critical material in Guatemala, and Ben Kiernan for making it available on this website.

[2] Analysis on massacres in Baja Verapaz in this section id based on massacre data presented in CEH, Memoria, vol. 8.

[3] For more on Plan Victoria, see Schirmer, Guatemala Military Project; Tom Barry, Guatemala: The Politics of Counterinsurgency (Albuquerque: Inter-Hemispheric Education Center, 1986); Guatemalan Church in Exile, Guatemala: Security, Development and Democracy (location not identified: Guatemalan Church in Exile, 1989); Hector Gramajo, De la guerra . . . A la guerra (Guatemala City: Fondo de Cultura Editorial, S.A., 1995).