Chapter 13: Methods of Terror

During the early years of the armed conflict, the Guatemalan State used mass detention to repress its opposition. Throughout the conflict, it employed torture to collect information and to discourage further participation by opponents. But relative to other authoritarian states in the region that regularly used mass detentions and torture to fight their opposition, such as El Salvador,18 Guatemala built its coercive rule on the twin practices of outright murder and disappearance. As Francisco Villagrán Kramer, Lucas García’s civilian Vice-President, said in a resignation statement before going into exile, "There are no political prisoners in Guatemala—only political murders" (Amnesty International 1981: 5).

Consequently, the CIIDH database primarily contains cases of government murders and disappearances. As Figure 13.1 shows, killings easily outnumber other types of violations. Even though a large proportion of victims killed remain anonymous, killings also represent the majority of violations of named victims.19

Figure 13.1 may underreport some types of violations more than others. Relative to other violations, killings might be easier for witnesses to recognize as a grave human rights violation, and would then be more likely to be denounced. Compared to killings, a smaller proportion of acts of kidnappings, torture, or injury are listed in press reports or documentary sources. In testimonies both torture and rape (coded as a form of injury) are seldom denounced, perhaps due to the intimate nature of the violation. In addition, survivors tend to more easily and more comfortably recall cases of murder or disappearance, even though other rights violations have serious human consequences as well.

Figure 13.1. Number of total violations and named violations, by type, 1959-1995

Disappearances, on the other hand, may or may not get reported less than outright murder. Unlike relatives of known murder victims, the family of a disappeared person can hold out hope that the victim may still be alive and in state custody. Thus, family members may be more likely to pursue disappearances than other violations with more certain outcomes. Indeed the persistence of this hope, and the associated nightmare of never knowing whether a loved one is dead or alive, helped create two of Guatemala’s the most important human rights groups: the Mutual Support Group (GAM), and the Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Guatemala (FAMDEGUA, whose leadership split from GAM in 1992).

Even with the presence of these organizations, many forced disappearances have never been denounced. Through threats and further violence, the Guatemalan government regularly intimidated victims’ families from proceeding with investigations (ACAFADE 1988: 17). Furthermore, activists challenging the State on the issue of the disappeared have been murdered, including members of GAM and the rural-based human rights group CERJ (the Council of Ethnic Communities "Runujel Junám"). The same hope and the same organizational capacity that may have encouraged the pursuit of justice for the disappeared also made these survivors a target of state terror.

Admittedly, the emphasis on killing in this report reflects the availability of data. We do not want to suggest that other forms of state violence are not important or less destructive to the victims or the society at large. The widespread practices of kidnapping and torture, for example, have also damaged lives and helped establish rule by state terror in Guatemala.

Guatemalan security forces often went beyond simply eliminating their victims. "Overkill" we define as the practice of committing additional indignities on someone who is either in the process of being killed or who is already dead. For example, overkill includes burning or mutilating a corpse, decapitating a corpse after death, shooting bullets into a body already killed by stabbing, raping a victim before killing her, or torturing a victim to death.

Overkill can serve many purposes. Disfiguring a corpse can augment the impact of a murder on survivors. It can also demonstrate to the politically active that the government’s willingness to harm its opponents has no limits. When a superior officer forces troops (or police or paramilitary agents) to commit such horrors, it helps break down subordinates’ aversion to violence and makes them more effective operatives for the government’s campaign of violence (Montejo et al. 1992).

Figure 13.2 provides evidence that overkill appears more often in individual rather than in mass killings. As group size gets bigger, they include smaller proportions of victims of mutilation and torture. That is, state forces appear to spend more time per victim on individual murders than in collective ones. This difference is consistent both for victims from the city and those killed in the countryside (see Appendix A6).

Figure 13.2. Percent of overkill for group of given size, 1959-1995

This finding contradicts one commonly-held understanding of the methods employed during the counterinsurgency: that overkill is associated most frequently with rural massacres. Journalist and case-based human rights accounts of rural mass killings from the early 1980s often highlighted the most horrendous rights violations that took place during a mass killing, including graphic examples of torture and mutilation. This reporting helped alert the world to the state terror in Guatemala. But it also suggested to readers a qualitative association of overkill with massacres.

Information from the CIIDH database presented in Figure 13.2 suggests that state forces usually committed rural massacres as efficiently as possible. Although overkill was employed in mass killings, a higher proportion of victims of selective killing were subjected to it. During army sweeps, state forces would decimate one village and proceed to the next, moving quickly perhaps out of fear of a guerrilla ambush. It may also be that by the time the State moved its apparatus of violence to the western highlands it had less time for, or interest in, each of its victims.

19 Note that Figure 13.1 counts violations and not victims. For example, many of the reported cases of torture happened to victims who were also illegally detained or killed by the State.