Conclusions

I. The tragedy of the armed confrontation

1. With the outbreak of the internal armed confrontation in 1962, Guatemala entered a tragic and devastating stage of its history, with enormous human, material and moral cost. In the documentation of human rights violations and acts of violence connected with the armed confrontation, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) registered a total of 42,275 victims, including men, women and children. Of these, 23,671 were victims of arbitrary execution and 6,159 were victims of forced disappearance. Eighty-three percent of fully identified victims were Mayan and seventeen percent were Ladino.1

2. Combining this data with the results of other studies of political violence in Guatemala, the CEH estimates that the number of persons killed or disappeared as a result of the fratricidal confrontation reached a total of over 200,000.

Historical roots of the armed confrontation

3. The Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) concludes that the structure and nature of economic, cultural and social relations in Guatemala are marked by profound exclusion, antagonism and conflict – a reflection of its colonial history. The proclamation of independence in 1821, an event prompted by the country’s elite, saw the creation of an authoritarian State which excluded the majority of the population, was racist in its precepts and practises, and served to protect the economic interests of the privileged minority. The evidence for this, throughout Guatemala’s history, but particularly so during the armed confrontation, lies in the fact that the violence was fundamentally directed by the State against the excluded, the poor and above all, the Mayan people, as well as against those who fought for justice and greater social equality.

4. The anti-democratic nature of the Guatemalan political tradition has its roots in an economic structure, which is marked by the concentration of productive wealth in the hands of a minority. This established the foundations of a system of multiple exclusions, including elements of racism, which is, in turn, the most profound manifestation of a violent and dehumanising social system. The State gradually evolved as an instrument for the protection of this structure, guaranteeing the continuation of exclusion and injustice.

5. The absence of an effective state social policy, with the exception of the period from 1944 to 1954, accentuated this historical dynamic of exclusion. In many cases, more recent State policy has produced inequality, or, at the very least, endemic institutional weaknesses have accentuated it. Proof of this can be seen in the fact that, during the twenty years of Guatemala’s most rapid economic growth (1960-1980), state social spending and taxation were the lowest in Central America.

6. Due to its exclusionary nature, the State was incapable of achieving social consensus around a national project able to unite the whole population. Concomitantly, it abandoned its role as mediator between divergent social and economic interests, thus creating a gulf which made direct confrontation between them more likely. Of particular concern for the CEH, was the way in which successive constitutions of the Republic, and the human and civil rights guarantees set forth in them, became formal instruments violated by the various structures of the State itself.

7. The legislative branch and the participating political parties also contributed at various times to the increasing polarisation and exclusion, establishing legal norms which legitimised regimes of exception and the suppression of civil and political rights, as well as hindering or obstructing any process of change. Appropriate institutional mechanisms for channelling concerns, claims and proposals from different sectors of society were lacking. This deficit of channels for constructively directing dissent through mediation, typical of democratic systems, further consolidated a political culture of confrontation and intolerance and provoked almost uninterrupted instability, permeating the whole social order.

8. Thus a vicious circle was created in which social injustice led to protest and subsequently political instability, to which there were always only two responses: repression or military coups. Faced with movements proposing economic, political, social or cultural change, the State increasingly resorted to violence and terror in order to maintain social control. Political violence was thus a direct expression of structural violence.

Repression as a substitute for the law

9. The CEH has concluded that during the armed confrontation, the incapacity of the Guatemalan State to provide answers to legitimate social demands and claims, led to the creation of an intricate repressive apparatus which replaced the judicial action of the courts, usurping their functions and prerogatives. An illegal and underground punitive system was established, managed and directed by military intelligence. The system was used as the State’s main form of social control throughout the internal armed confrontation and operated with the direct or indirect collaboration of dominant economic and political sectors.

The ineffectiveness of the judicial system

10. The country’s judicial system, due either to induced or deliberate ineffectiveness, failed to guarantee the application of the law, tolerating, and even facilitating, violence. Whether through acts of commission or omission, the judicial branch contributed to worsening social conflicts at various times in Guatemala’s history. Impunity permeated the country to such an extent that it took control of the very structure of the State, and became both a means and an end. As a means, it sheltered and protected the repressive acts of the State, as well as those acts committed by individuals who shared similar objectives; whilst as an end, it was a consequence of the methods used to repress and eliminate political and social opponents.

The closing of political spaces

11. After the overthrow of the government of Colonel Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, there was a rapid reduction of the opportunity for political expression. Inspired by fundamentalist anti-communism, new legislation outlawed the extensive and diverse social movement and consolidated the restrictive and exclusionary nature of the political system. These restrictions on political participation were agreed to by the country’s real powers and activated by the period’s civil and political forces. In itself, this process constitutes one of the most overwhelming pieces of evidence for the close relationship between the military, the economic powers and the political parties that emerged in 1954. From 1963 onwards, in addition to the legal restrictions, growing state repression against its real or suspected opponents was another decisive factor in the closing of political options in Guatemala.

The underlying causes of the armed confrontation

12. The CEH concludes that other parallel phenomena, such as structural injustice, the closing of political spaces, racism, the increasing exclusionary and anti-democratic nature of institutions, as well as the reluctance to promote substantive reforms that could have reduced structural conflicts, are the underlying factors which determined the origin and subsequent outbreak of the armed confrontation.

The cold war, the National Security Doctrine and the role of the United States

13. The CEH recognises that the movement of Guatemala towards polarisation, militarization and civil war was not just the result of national history. The cold war also played an important role. Whilst anti-communism, promoted by the United States within the framework of its foreign policy, received firm support from right-wing political parties and from various other powerful actors in Guatemala, the United States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard. In the case of Guatemala, military assistance was directed towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques, key factors which had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation.

14. Anti-communism and the National Security Doctrine (DSN) formed part of the anti-Soviet strategy of the United States in Latin America. In Guatemala, these were first expressed as anti-reformist, then anti-democratic policies, culminating in criminal counterinsurgency. The National Security Doctrine fell on fertile ground in Guatemala where anti-communist thinking had already taken root and from the 1930s, had merged with the defence of religion, tradition and conservative values, all of which were allegedly threatened by the world-wide expansion of atheistic communism. Until the 1950s, these views were strongly supported by the Catholic Church, which qualified as communist any position that contradicted its philosophy, thus contributing even further to division and confusion in Guatemalan society.

The internal enemy

15. During the armed confrontation, the State’s idea of the “internal enemy”, intrinsic to the National Security Doctrine, became increasingly inclusive. At the same time, this doctrine became the raison d’être of Army and State policies for several decades. Through its investigation, the CEH discovered one of the most devastating effects of this policy: state forces and related paramilitary groups were responsible for 93% of the violations documented by the CEH, including 92% of the arbitrary executions and 91% of forced disappearances. Victims included men, women and children of all social strata: workers, professionals, church members, politicians, peasants, students and academics; in ethnic terms, the vast majority were Mayans.

The Catholic Church

16. Only recently in Guatemalan history and within a short time period did the Catholic Church abandon its conservative position in favour of an attitude and practise based on the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the Episcopal Conference of Medellin (1968), prioritising its work with excluded, poor and under-privileged sectors and promoting the construction of a more just and equitable society. These doctrinal and pastoral changes clashed with counterinsurgency strategy, which considered Catholics to be allies of the guerrillas and therefore part of the internal enemy, subject to persecution, death or expulsion. Whereas the guerrilla movement saw in the practise of what was known as “liberation theology” common ground on which to extend its social base, seeking to gain the sympathy of its followers. A large number of catechists, lay activists, priests, and missionaries were victims of the violence and gave their lives as a testimony to the cruelty of the armed confrontation.

The Guatemalan insurgency, the armed struggle and the Cuban influence

17. The Guatemalan insurgency arose as the response of one sector of the population to the country’s diverse structural problems. Faced with injustice, exclusion, poverty and discrimination, it proclaimed the need to take power by force in order to build a new social, political and economic order. Throughout the armed confrontation, insurgent groups adopted Marxist doctrine in its diverse international forms. Although they had common historical roots in the proscribed communist Guatemalan Worker’s Party (PGT), several new guerrilla organisations emerged as a result of their criticism of the party’s reluctance to follow the path of armed struggle.

18. The influence of Cuba and its promotion of armed struggle had a bearing on these processes as much in Guatemala as in the rest of Latin America. The CEH concludes that political, logistic, instructional and training support provided by Cuba for the Guatemalan insurgents during this period, was another important external factor that marked the evolution of the armed confrontation. In the context of an increasingly repressive State, sectors of the left, specifically those of Marxist ideology, adopted the Cuban perspective of armed struggle as the only way to ensure the rights of the people and to take power.

19. As state repression intensified and broadened its range of potential victims, the rebel position which held a guerrilla victory to be the country’s only political solution, gained strength. Rather than sharing a specific ideological-political platform, for the greater part of the confrontation, the cohesion of the Guatemalan insurgency revolved around the idea of the need for, and the primacy of, armed struggle as the only solution.

20. During its investigation, the CEH has confirmed that the political work of the guerrilla organisations within the different sectors of society was increasingly directed towards strengthening their military capacity, to the detriment of the type of political activity characteristic of democratic sectors. Likewise, attempts by other political forces to take advantage of the limited opportunities for legal participation, were radically dismissed by some sectors of the insurgency as “reformist” or “dissident”, whilst people who sought to remain distant from the confrontation were treated with profound mistrust and even as potential enemies. These attitudes contributed to political intolerance and polarisation.

Enemies of the insurgents

21. Along with a clear definition of the Army as its enemy, insurgent groups also included some civilians in this category, especially representatives of economic and political power who were considered to be allies of the repression and those people suspected of providing support to the Army, or who held local economic power, especially in rural areas. Among the cases registered by the CEH, insurgent actions produced 3% of the human rights violations and acts of violence perpetrated against men, women and children, including 5% of the arbitrary executions and 2% of forced disappearances.

More than just two parties

22. Although the most visible actors in the armed confrontation were the Army and the insurgents, the CEH investigation has made evident the involvement of the entire State, through the unification of its various coercive institutions and mechanisms. Likewise, although of a different nature, the responsibility and participation of economically powerful groups, political parties, universities and churches, as well as other sectors of civil society, has been demonstrated.

23. For this reason, the CEH concludes that a full explanation of the Guatemalan confrontation cannot be reduced to the sole logic of two armed parties. Such an interpretation fails to explain or establish the basis for the persistence and significance of the participation of the political parties and economic forces in the initiation, development and continuation of the violence; nor does it explain the repeated efforts at organisation and the continuous mobilisation of those sectors of the population struggling to achieve their economic, political and cultural demands.

A disproportionately repressive response

24. The magnitude of the State’s repressive response, totally disproportionate to the military force of the insurgency, can only be understood within the framework of the country’s profound social, economic and cultural conflicts. Based on the results of its investigation, the CEH concludes that from 1978 to 1982 citizens from broad sectors of society participated in growing social mobilisation and political opposition to the continuity of the country’s established order. These movements in some cases maintained ties of a varying nature with the insurgency. However, at no time during the internal armed confrontation did the guerrilla groups have the military potential necessary to pose an imminent threat to the State. The number of insurgent combatants was too small to be able to compete in the military arena with the Guatemalan Army, which had more troops and superior weaponry, as well as better training and co-ordination. It has also been confirmed that during the armed confrontation, the State and the Army had knowledge of the level of organisation, the number of combatants, the type of weaponry and the strategy of the insurgent groups. They were therefore well aware that the insurgents’ military capacity did not represent a real threat to Guatemala’s political order.

25. The CEH concludes that the State deliberately magnified the military threat of the insurgency, a practise justified by the concept of the internal enemy. The inclusion of all opponents under one banner, democratic or otherwise, pacifist or guerrilla, legal or illegal, communist or non-communist, served to justify numerous and serious crimes. Faced with widespread political, socio-economic and cultural opposition, the State resorted to military operations directed towards the physical annihilation or absolute intimidation of this opposition, through a plan of repression carried out mainly by the Army and national security forces. On this basis the CEH explains why the vast majority of the victims of the acts committed by the State were not combatants in guerrilla groups, but civilians.

Territorial concentration of military operations and their victims

26. Based on information analysed by the CEH, relevant differences in the territorial concentration of military operations and the type of victims can be confirmed, depending on the specific period of the armed confrontation. In the period from 1962 to 1970, operations were concentrated in the eastern part of the country, Guatemala City and the south coast, the victims being mainly peasants, members of rural union organisations, university and secondary school teachers and students and guerrilla sympathisers. In the years from 1971 to 1977, the repressive operations were more selective and geographically dispersed. Victims included community and union leaders, catechists and students.

27. During the most violent and bloody period of the entire armed confrontation, 1978-1985, military operations were concentrated in Quiché, Huehuetenango, Chimaltenango, Alta and Baja Verapaz, the south coast and the capital, the victims being principally Mayan and to a lesser extent Ladino. During the final period, 1986-1996, repressive action was selective, affecting the Mayan and Ladino population to a similar extent. The Communities of Population in Resistance were principal targets of military operations in rural areas.

Children

28. The CEH has confirmed with particular concern that a large number of children were also among the direct victims of arbitrary execution, forced disappearance, torture, rape and other violations of their fundamental rights. Moreover, the armed confrontation left a large number of children orphaned and abandoned, especially among the Mayan population, who saw their families destroyed and the possibility of living a normal childhood within the norms of their culture, lost.

Women

29. The CEH’s investigation has revealed that approximately a quarter of the direct victims of human rights violations and acts of violence were women. They were killed, tortured and raped, sometimes because of their ideals and political or social participation, sometimes in massacres or other indiscriminate actions. Thousands of women lost their husbands, becoming widows and the sole breadwinners for their children, often with no material resources after the scorched earth policies resulted in the destruction of their homes and crops. Their efforts to reconstruct their lives and support their families deserve special recognition.

30. At the same time, the CEH recognises the fact that women, the majority of them relatives of victims, played an exemplary role in the defence of human rights during the armed confrontation, promoting and directing organisations for relatives of the disappeared and for the struggle against impunity.

The Mayan population as the collective enemy of the State

31. In the years when the confrontation deepened (1978-1983), as the guerrilla support base and area of action expanded, Mayans as a group in several different parts of the country were identified by the Army as guerrilla allies. Occasionally this was the result of the effective existence of support for the insurgent groups and of pre-insurrectional conditions in the country’s interior. However, the CEH has ascertained that, in the majority of cases, the identification of Mayan communities with the insurgency was intentionally exaggerated by the State, which, based on traditional racist prejudices, used this identification to eliminate any present or future possibilities of the people providing help for, or joining, an insurgent project.

32. The consequence of this manipulation, extensively documented by the CEH, was massive and indiscriminate aggression directed against communities independent of their actual involvement in the guerrilla movement and with a clear indifference to their status as a non-combatant civilian population. The massacres, scorched earth operations, forced disappearances and executions of Mayan authorities, leaders and spiritual guides, were not only an attempt to destroy the social base of the guerrillas, but above all, to destroy the cultural values that ensured cohesion and collective action in Mayan communities.

Racism as a component of violence

33. Through its investigation, the CEH also concludes that the undeniable existence of racism expressed repeatedly by the State as a doctrine of superiority, is a basic explanatory factor for the indiscriminate nature and particular brutality with which military operations were carried out against hundreds of Mayan communities in the west and north-west of the country, especially between 1981 and 1983 when more than half the massacres and scorched earth operations occurred.

Retreat of the guerrillas

34. The CEH has confirmed that the guerrillas applied a tactic of “armed propaganda” and temporary occupation of towns to gain supporters or demonstrate their strength; once they withdrew however, they left the communities defenceless and vulnerable. In many cases, communities were then attacked by the Army, with a very high civilian death toll, especially among the Mayan population. In some of the cases known to the CEH, whole villages were razed by state military forces just days after the insurgent groups withdrew. In these cases, although acknowledging the Army’s clear and sole responsibility for the massive violations, the CEH is convinced that guerrilla actions had a bearing on the way these events occurred.

35. Faced with scorched earth operations and massacres, which were a part of the Army’s strategy and the result of systematic planning, the guerrillas were unable to protect the people who had sympathised with their objectives or had supported them. This inability created a broad sense of abandonment, deception and rejection in these sectors.

Militarization

36. The CEH has confirmed that the militarization of the State and society was a strategic objective which was defined, planned and executed institutionally by the Guatemalan Army, based on the National Security Doctrine and the institution’s particular interpretation of the national reality. The process of militarization passed through different stages during the years of the armed confrontation. It began during the 1960s and 70s with the Army’s domination of the structures of the executive branch. The Army subsequently assumed almost absolute power for half a decade during the 1980s, by penetrating all of the country’s institutions, as well as its political, social and ideological spheres; in the final stage of the confrontation, it developed a parallel, semi-visible, low profile, but high impact, control of national life.

37. Militarization was one of the factors that provided the incentive for and fed the armed confrontation as it profoundly limited the possibilities for exercising rights as citizens. Subsequently, it became one of the most damaging consequences of the confrontation. Militarization became a pillar of impunity. Moreover, in a broad sense, it weakened the country’s institutions, reducing their possibilities for functioning effectively and contributing to their loss of legitimacy, since for years people have lived with the certainty that it is the Army that retains effective power in Guatemala.

Military intelligence

38. Based on its investigation, the CEH also concludes that military intelligence structures in Guatemala played a decisive role in the militarization of the country. These structures assumed functions beyond those normally assigned to intelligence systems within the framework of the democratic rule of law, namely the systematisation and interpretation of information important to the country’s security. Instead, the Guatemalan intelligence system became the driving force of a state policy that took advantage of the situation resulting from the armed confrontation, to control the population, the society, the State and the Army itself. This total domination was based on a political-military strategy and was put into practice using mechanisms which violated human rights, the Constitution and the laws of the Republic.

39. The CEH has confirmed that the control exercised by military intelligence depended not only on its formal structures, but also on an extensive network of informants who infiltrated social organisations, communities and various state institutions, thus giving it access to a vast quantity of information. Thus it was able to manage other structures of the Army and to manipulate the different interests and entities of the Guatemalan State and civil society. One of the objectives of incorporating intelligence operatives into state institutions was to multiply their informational resources and capacity for psychological warfare. At the same time, intelligence agents infiltrated social organisations where many activists subsequently became the victims of grave human rights violations.

40. The CEH’s investigation has corroborated the involvement of military intelligence services in unconventional and irregular operations far removed from any legal order. Its illegal operations were secret, in both their preparation and execution. The purpose of these missions was to guarantee that the work remained covert, so that the intellectual and material perpetrators of the incidents could not be identified, to exonerate state agents of any responsibility and thereby to assure the ineffectiveness of any judicial or police investigation.

41. This clandestine activity was evident in the use of illegal detention centres or “clandestine prisons”, which existed in nearly all Guatemalan Army facilities, in many police installations and even in homes and on other private premises. In these places, victims were not only deprived of their liberty arbitrarily, but they were almost always subjected to interrogation, accompanied by torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the majority of cases, the detainees were disappeared or executed. In a few cases detainees were set free, but no judicial procedure was followed. Sometimes, victims were forced to work illegally and secretly for the Army in exchange for their partial freedom. The occasions when a detainee was brought before a competent court were an exception.

The Kaibiles

42. The substantiation of the degrading contents of the training of the Army’s special counter insurgency force, known as Kaibiles, has drawn the particular attention of the CEH. This training included killing animals and then eating them raw and drinking their blood in order to demonstrate courage. The extreme cruelty of these training methods, according to testimony available to the CEH, was then put into practice in a range of operations carried out by these troops, confirming one point of their decalogue: “The Kaibil is a killing machine.”

A militarized police

43. The CEH concludes that the National Police and the Treasury Police, two important state security forces, also committed numerous and grave human rights violations during the armed confrontation. Beginning in the mid-1960s, these forces were subordinated to Army control, a situation that was maintained throughout the confrontation. Often acting under Army orders, the “Judicials”, members of detective units and other plain-clothes police, became the principal agents of state terror in Guatemala City for a period of almost twenty years.

Terror

44. The CEH confirmed that throughout the armed confrontation the Army designed and implemented a strategy to provoke terror in the population. This strategy became the core element of the Army’s operations, including those of a strictly military nature as well those of psychological nature and those that were called “development” operations.

45. The guerrilla organisations committed violent and extremely cruel acts, which terrorised people and had significant consequences. Arbitrary executions, especially those committed before relatives and neighbours, accentuated the already prevalent climate of fear, arbitrariness and defencelessness.

46. The State’s use of terror intensified in Guatemala in 1966, when a process was initiated whose worst stages took place during the periods of maximum violence and whose epicentres were located in areas of most intense repression. A high proportion of the human rights violations known to the CEH and committed by the Army or security forces were perpetrated publicly and with extreme brutality, especially in the Mayan communities of the country’s interior. Likewise, in considering the training methods of the Armed Forces, and especially the Kaibiles, the CEH concludes that extreme cruelty was a resource used intentionally to produce and maintain a climate of terror in the population.

47. The terror created was not just a result of the acts of violence or the military operations; it was also generated and sustained by other related mechanisms, such as impunity for the perpetrators, extensive campaigns to criminalise the victims and the forced involvement of civilians in the causal sequence leading up to the actual execution of atrocities. For these reasons, terror does not automatically disappear when the levels of violence decrease; on the contrary, there are cumulative and lasting effects, which, to overcome, require time, effort and the direct experience that things have changed.

48. The investigation has established that beyond the physical elimination of opponents, either alleged or real, state terror was applied to make it clear that those who attempted to assert their rights, and even their relatives, ran the risk of death by the most hideous means. The objective was to intimidate and silence society as a whole, in order to destroy the will for transformation, both in the short and long term.

Criminalisation of victims

49. The State also tried to stigmatise and blame the victims and the country’s social organisations, making them into criminals in the public eye and thus into “legitimate” targets for repression. This was done by stripping them of their dignity as individuals, using fire and sword to teach them the lesson that the exercise of their rights as citizens could mean death. The CEH considers that this systematic indoctrination has profoundly marked the collective consciousness of Guatemalan society. Fear, silence, apathy and lack of political participation are some of the most important effects of having criminalised the victims, and present a serious obstacle to the active participation of all citizens in the construction of democracy.

Forced complicity in the violence

50. The CEH counts among the most damaging effects of the confrontation those that resulted from forcing large sectors of the population to be accomplices in the violence, especially through their participation in the Civil Patrols (PAC), the paramilitary structures created by the Army in 1981 in most of the Republic. The CEH is aware of hundreds of cases in which civilians were forced by the Army, at gun point, to rape women, torture, mutilate corpses and kill. This extreme cruelty was used by the State to cause social disintegration. A large proportion of the male population over the age of fifteen, especially in the Mayan communities, was forced to participate in the PAC. This deeply affected values and behavioural patterns, as violence became a normal method of confronting conflictive situations and promoted contempt for the lives of others.

Local arbitrary power

51. Of deep and special concern to the CEH is that this process created a sector of civilians who subsequently, as a result of their convictions, committed atrocities against their own neighbours and even against close relatives. An uncontrolled armed power was created, which was able to act arbitrarily in villages, pursuing private and abusive ends.

52. The coexistence of victims and perpetrators in the same villages reproduces the climate of fear and silence. For the victims, daily confrontation with their transgressors has kept the painful memory of their violation alive. The CEH has confirmed that, for fear of reprisals, a large number of people continue to remain silent about their past and present suffering, while the internalisation of traumas prevents the healing of their wounds.

Altered mourning and clandestine cemeteries

53. The testimonies received by the CEH bear witness to the wide range of circumstances which during the armed confrontation, prevented thousands of Guatemalans from observing the rites that normally accompany the death and burial of a person. This has caused deep and persisting anguish in those sectors of the population affected. Forced disappearance was the most pernicious practise in this sense, due to the uncertainty regarding the whereabouts or fate of the victim. Likewise, the climate of terror, the military presence, as well as other circumstances related to the massacres, to flight and to persecution in the mountains, often prevented the burial of the dead. For all cultures and religions in Guatemala, it is practically inconceivable that the dead not be given a dignified burial; this assaults everyone’s values and dignity. For the Mayans, this is of particular importance due to their core belief in the active bond between the living and the dead. The lack of a sacred place where this bond can be attended is a serious concern that appears in testimonies from many Mayan communities.

54. The CEH has concluded that the existence of clandestine and hidden cemeteries, as well as the anxiety suffered by many Guatemalans as a result of not knowing what happened to their relatives, remains an open wound in the country. They are a permanent reminder of the acts of violence that denied the dignity of their loved ones. To heal these particular wounds requires the exhumation of secret graves, as well as the definitive identification of the whereabouts of the disappeared.

Social effects of torture

55. The CEH concludes that the systematic use of torture resulted in two fundamental social problems: firstly, the formation and continuing presence in society of experts trained in the most efficient and deviant ways of applying pain to human beings to crush them physically and spiritually; secondly, the normalisation of the use of torture as something “normal” in the routine work of state military and police structures, especially among members of military intelligence structures, and the toleration of this by society and by judicial officials.

Impunity

56. The justice system, nonexistent in large areas of the country before the armed confrontation, was further weakened when the judicial branch submitted to the requirements of the dominant national security model. The CEH concludes that, by tolerating or participating directly in impunity, which concealed the most fundamental violations of human rights, the judiciary became functionally inoperative with respect to its role of protecting the individual from the State, and lost all credibility as guarantor of an effective legal system. This allowed impunity to become one of the most important mechanisms for generating and maintaining a climate of terror.

57. These factors combined to thwart the existence of the rule of law in Guatemala. Likewise, a deep-rooted scepticism developed in society regarding the value of improving Guatemala’s legal system and of believing that the administration of justice system could be an effective option for the construction of a society of equally free and dignified individuals. Thus, one of the most challenging and complex tasks in the establishment of peace consists of restoring the basic system, making it available to and functional for all citizens, so that social groups as well as individuals may channel their demands and conflicts through competent state institutions.

The weakening of social organisations

58. The CEH has confirmed that during the armed confrontation, social organisations were an important target of the State’s repressive action. Considered as part of the “internal enemy”, hundreds of leaders and grassroots members of a wide spectrum of groups were eliminated. These actions left civil society weakened and still affect its full participation in Guatemala’s political and economic debates. The loss of professionals, academics and researchers, the “creative powers” who died or went into exile, not only created a vacuum during a specific period of political and cultural history, but also resulted in the loss of an important part of the pedagogic and intellectual capacity to educate several future generations in Guatemala.

59. As well as repression and exile, the weakening and fragmentation of social organisations were largely due to the various mechanisms activated during the armed confrontation by the State to destroy them. These mechanisms continue to be present in the collective memory. Stigmatisation, fear, mistrust and the perception in some sectors that the signing of the peace accords has not yet changed the repressive State, are still obstacles which prevent the full participation of society, even though the process of peace and national reconciliation indicates an encouraging reversal of this tendency.

60. The participation by members of insurgent groups in social organisations also affected them, not only because it created one more reason for their repression, but also because in many cases it led to division, polarisation and serious in-fighting in the organisations, inevitably weakening them. The vertical structure that the insurgency brought to the social organisations in which it participated curtailed their freedom to make their own decisions, suffocating their autonomy and exacerbating the effects of the State’s repressive policies of dismantling the country’s social and political opposition.

Curtailed freedom of speech

61. Freedom of speech goes hand in hand with the free exercise of civil rights. When opportunities for social and political participation are closed, then, implicitly, so are opportunities for freedom of speech. During the long period of armed confrontation, even thinking critically was a dangerous act in Guatemala, and to write about political and social realities, events or ideas, meant running the risk of threats, torture, disappearance and death. In exercising freedom of speech, citizens, writers, artists, poets, politicians and journalists were subject to the risks that repression and ideological polarisation imposed upon them. Although there were people who spoke out despite the risks, the large news agencies, in general, supported the authoritarian regimes through self-censorship and distortion of the facts. The price was very high, not only in the number of lives lost, but also because Guatemala became a country silenced, a country incommunicado.

Damage to the Mayan communities

62. The CEH concludes that the Mayan communities also became a military objective during the bloodiest years of the confrontation. In some regions and years, because of the terror and persecution, Mayans were obliged to conceal their ethnic identity, manifested externally in their language and dress. Militarization of the communities disturbed the cycle of celebrations and ceremonies, and concealment of their rituals became progressively more widespread. Aggression was directed against elements of profound symbolic significance for the Mayan culture, as in the case of the destruction of corn and the killing of their elders. These events had a serious impact on certain elements of Mayan identity and disturbed the transmission of their culture from generation to generation. Similarly, the culture was degraded through the use of Mayan names and symbols for task forces and other military structures.

63. Beginning in 1982, traditional Mayan authorities were generally substituted by delegates from the armed forces, such as military commissioners and PAC commanders. In other cases, the Army tried to control, co-opt and infiltrate the traditional Mayan authority structures. This strategy caused the rupture of both community mechanisms and the oral transmission of knowledge of their own culture, likewise damaging Mayan norms and values of respect and service to the community. In their stead, authoritarian practices and the arbitrary use of power were introduced.

64. The presence of the guerrillas also led to the displacement of traditional authorities and to a reduction of their power, especially through the establishment of their own authority structures, such as the Local Irregular Forces and the Local Clandestine Committees, which generated new leadership within the communities.

Massive forced displacement

65. Unprecedented terror, provoked by the massacres and the devastation of complete villages during the period 1981 to 1983, led to the flight en masse of a diverse population, the majority of which was Mayan, but which also included a considerable number of Ladino families, especially in the newly settled areas close to the Mexican border. The forced displacement of civilians in Guatemala stands out in the history of the armed confrontation because of its massive nature and its destructive force. It embodies the rupture of social fabric in its most direct and heart-rending form. Families and communities were fractured and cohesive cultural ties weakened.

66. Estimates of the number of displaced persons vary from 500,000 to a million and a half people in the most intense period from 1981 to 1983, including those who were displaced internally and those who were obliged to seek refuge abroad. The variation in these figures reflects the changing nature of this displacement. About 150,000 people sought safety in Mexico. Almost a third of these settled in camps and were given refugee status by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Another 50,000 people lived as refugees dispersed throughout Chiapas, while the remainder settled in the Mexican capital or other Mexican cities. People also fled, though in far fewer numbers, into Honduras and Belize, as well as to the United States of America. However, all shared similar experiences: the loss of relatives and the destruction of their property, often the entire family heritage accumulated over generations, as well as the violent change in the course of their lives.

67. Through its investigation, the CEH has confirmed that those who fled were forced to move constantly while they remained in the country, mainly to evade military operations directed against them despite their being defenceless, and partly to search for food, water and shelter. Military persecution, being constantly on the move and the threat of death made their subsistence extremely difficult. Living exposed to the elements, malnutrition and the severe emotional traumas that resulted from having witnessed numerous atrocities, left people vulnerable, especially children and the elderly, a great number of whom died during the flight and displacement.

Militarised resettlement and the stigma of the displaced

68. From 1983 onwards, Army strategy towards the displaced population was designed to bring it under military control: amnesties were offered and those who accepted were resettled in highly militarised communities. The most important mechanisms for ensuring control of the resettlements were: the organisation of people in the PAC, the military appointment of the mayors and auxiliary mayors, the creation of the Interinstitutional Co-ordinators to ensure military control of state and social institutions at all jurisdictional levels, the expansion of the Army’s Civil Affairs (S-5) activities that included psychological operations to “re-educate” the people and the construction of model villages in the most conflictive regions.

69. The CEH has confirmed that the stigmatisation by the State of the displaced population, in many cases, fomented and perpetuated divisions in their communities. In accusing the displaced people of being guerrillas or in spreading the message that they were responsible for the confrontation, their return to their places of origin was hindered and they were marginalised by those who had remained in these communities. For internally displaced persons detained during the course of military operations or those who gave themselves up to the authorities in order to return to their communities, the situation was even more complicated. Very often they were isolated for a time in special camps or in military bases, submitted to interrogation and to an intense re-education process.

The anonymity of displaced persons in Guatemala City

70. In the case of people who sought refuge in Guatemala City, the fear of being located and identified as a target of repression meant that they sought anonymity as a survival strategy, given that their place of origin, their name and even the lack of personal documents could have been reason to suspect them of ties to the insurgent movement.

Resistance and the identity of the displaced

71. The testimonies of the internally displaced received by the CEH reveal an attitude both of resistance to military control and in defence of life, not only in its physical sense, but also with regard to cultural and political identity. Resistance as astrategy to preserve identity took various forms, and in turn produced changes in that very identity. Interactions with other ethnic groups, inhabitants of the city, people from other countries, other educational systems and different natural environments, as well as the experience of persecution and death, transformed relationships that constitute this sense of identity, producing a Guatemalan society marked by confrontation, but also potentially strengthened by its experience of diversity.

The economic costs of the armed confrontation

72. Based on its investigation of the economic costs of the armed confrontation and taking only the 10-year period between 1980 and 1989, the CEH estimates that the total direct quantifiable costs were equivalent to zero production in Guatemala for almost 15 months, equal to 121% of the 1990 Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

73. The majority of the costs, equivalent to 90% of the 1990 GDP, resulted from the loss of production potential due to the death, disappearance or forced displacement of individuals who had to abandon their daily activities, or from recruitment into the PAC, the Army or the guerrillas. The destruction of physical assets, including private and community property, and the loss of infrastructure, such as bridges and electrical towers, also represented considerable losses, over 6% of the 1990 GDP. These material losses frequently involved the total destruction of family capital, especially among Mayan families, particularly in the west and north-west of Guatemala.

74. Based on its investigation, the CEH concludes that the increase in military spending during the armed confrontation diverted necessary investments of public resources away from health and education, resulting in the abandonment of social development. This accelerated the deterioration of health and educational conditions in those areas most severely affected by the confrontation.

75. The armed confrontation also exacerbated the traditional weakness of the State regarding tax collection and intensified private sector opposition to necessary tax reform. This was reflected by the fact that during the period from 1978 to 1984 taxes as a percentage of GDP dropped constantly, in the final year reaching 7.1%, the lowest level registered over the previous 50 years. The effects were decisive: the gap between income and spending widened, leading to macroeconomic imbalance and further weakening the State’s capacity to promote development.

76. Guatemala’s macroeconomic performance during the 1980s compared with that of other countries in the region, particularly Honduras and Costa Rica, suggests that a consequence of the internal armed confrontation was the loss of opportunity for economic growth, which during the decade under study was the equivalent to about 14% of the 1990 GDP. Similarly, there were other non-quantifiable costs related to the destruction of human and social capital in the country which, along with the direct economic losses they represent, seriously limited the future development of the Guatemalan State and society. The CEH has concluded that society as a whole, and not just those people directly affected, has had to assume the high costs that resulted from the confrontation.

Solidarity and the defence of human rights

77. The CEH concludes that repression did more than generate terror, passivity and silence. Simultaneously, and with varying intensity at different stages of the armed confrontation, individual and collective responses arose to the dehumanising and denigrating effects of violence. Hindered by enormous obstacles, the organisations that emerged from this process dedicated their efforts to the defence of life, even when this implied living under the threat of death. Composed mainly of the surviving communities and relatives of the victims, their essential raison d’être was human solidarity, the defence of basic human rights and the desire for respect for dignity and justice. At the same time, they also contributed to reclaiming people’s rights as citizens within the country’s legal framework.

78. Human rights organisations made decisive contributions to establishing new principles of social relations and to reconstructing the social fabric. Although these organisations emerged from those sectors most affected by the confrontation, their claims immediately extended to other sectors of society. Particularly during the final years of the armed confrontation, taking into account the close relationship between impunity for those who used systematic violence and the persistent militarization of society, various civic groups sought strategies to wrest away the Army’s power and its pre-eminence in Guatemalan social and political life. The CEH considers that these efforts promoted a new awareness of the need for justice, respect for the law, and the validity of the rule of law as basic requirements of democracy.

The Mayan movement

79. In the judgement of the CEH, during the later years of the armed confrontation the Mayan movement affirmed its role as a key political actor. In the struggle against exclusions suffered since the foundation of the Guatemalan State, the Mayan people has made important contributions in the area of multiculturality and peace. These provide the essential bases for society as a whole to review its history and commit itself to building a new project of nationhood consistent with its multiculturality, which should be inclusive, tolerant and proud of the wealth implicit in its cultural differences.