Subject Pages
- Armenian Genocide
- Cambodian Genocide
- Central African Republic Conflict
- Contemporary Antisemitism
- 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda
- Guatemalan Genocide
- Holocaust
- Nanjing Massacres
- Roma Interviews
- Belarus
- Bulgaria
- Czechoslovakia
- Czech Republic
- Estonia
- France
- Georgia
- Germany
- Greece
- Hungary
- Italy
- Kazakhstan
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- Netherlands
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Russia
- Slovakia
- Spain
- Ukraine
- United Kingdom
- USSR
- Uzbekistan
Guatemalan Genocide
The persecution and mass killing of civilians, especially those of Mayan origin, as part of supposed counter-insurgency operations during the 1960–1996 Guatemalan Civil War. While some massacres took place in 1966–1967, the most intensive period of mass killings started with the Panzós massacre in 1978 and culminated in the years 1982–1983 during the rule of President Ríos Montt. The total number of victims has been estimated at 200,000.
The VHA currently contains 140 interviews with survivors to the Guatemalan Genocide recorded by the Fundación de Antropologia Forense de Guatemala in 2015-2017 in Guatemala.
The following are indexing terms for some of the major topics in this collection, each discussed in 50 or more interviews:
abductions, agricultural occupations, agriculture, aid giving, attitudes toward perpetrators, beatings, bombardments, brutal treatment, burials and funerals, childbearing, children's occupations, civilian aid givers, clothing, corpses, “costumbres”, courtships, death fears, desaparecidos, diseases, domestic flight routes, domestic migration routes, education, evasion, executions, extended family members, family histories, family home returns, family homes, family life, fathers' occupations, fear, flight, flight decisions, food, food acquisition, friends, future message, games, grandchildren, Guatemala 1954 (June 28) - 1960 (November 12), Guatemala 1960 (November 13) – 1969 (December 31), Guatemala 1960 (November 13) - 1978 (May 28), Guatemala 1970 (January 1) - 1978 (May 28), Guatemala 1978 (May 29) - 1983 (August 8), Guatemala 1983 (August 9) - 1996 (December 29), Guatemala 1985 (January 1) - 1990 (December 30), Guatemala 1991 (January 1) - 1996 (December 30), Guatemala 1996 (December 30) – 1999 (January 31), Guatemala City (Guatemala), Guatemalan armed forces, Guatemalan Genocide awareness, Guatemalan Genocide testimony-sharing willingness, Guatemalan Genocide-related psychological reactions, Guatemalan Peace Accords (December 29, 1996), Guatemalan resistance groups, Guatemalan resistance participants, Guatemalan soldiers, hiding adaptation methods, hiding in mountains, hiding-related food, hiding-related hunger, home searches, homemaking occupations, house burnings, interrogations, interviewee memory, interviewee occupations, interviewees' children, killings, land ownership, livestock, living conditions, loved ones' deaths, loved ones' fates, loved ones' renewed contacts, loved ones' separations, marriages, mass executions, mass grave exhumations, mass graves, Mayan property attacks, migration (domestic), military commissioners (Guatemala), military outposts (Guatemala), mothers' occupations, neighbors, Patrullas de Auto-Defensa Civil, Patrullas de Auto-Defensa Civil personnel, plantations, post-conflict justice, post-Guatemalan Genocide reflections, remains reburials, resistance participation suspicions, restitution, retail and sales occupations, Roman Catholic Church, roundups, sadness, schools, sexual assaults, shootings, siblings' occupations, social relations, socioeconomic status, Spanish (language), spouses' occupations, teachers, threats, tracing loved ones, warnings, working life
Selected Bibliography
Falla, Ricardo. Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975-1982. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. Print.
Garcia, Prudencio. El Genocidio de Guatemala: a la Luz de la Sociología Militar. Madrid: Sepha Edicion y Diseño, 2005. Print.
Goldman, Francisco. The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? New York: Grove Press, 2008. Print.
Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala (ODHAG). Guatemala: Never Again! REMHI, Recovery of Historical Memory Project: The Official Report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. Print.
Manz, Beatriz. Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Print.
Montejo, Victor. Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press; New York, N.Y.: Distributed by Talman Co., 1987. Print.
Rothenberg, Daniel; Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico. Memory of Silence: The Guatemalan Truth Commission Report. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print.
Sanford, Victoria. Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Print.
Schirmer, Jennifer. The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Print.
Special double issue: Guatemala, the Question of Genocide, Journal of Genocide Research 18, no. 2/3 (2016). Print. [USC access]
Vela Castañeda, Manolo. Los pelotones de la muerte: la construcción de los perpetradores del genocidio guatemalteco. México, D.F.: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Sociológicos 2014. Print.
Yale University. Genocide Studies Program. “Guatemala.” Web.
