Guatemala Continues to Deal with the Legacy of its Civil War

In Guatemala, Louisa Reynolds writes about Indigenous Victims Still Await Compensation. While the Guatemalan government has apologized for crimes government forces committed during the thirty-six year conflict, victims are still awaiting financial compensation. According to some victims, 

apologies ring hollow when little progress has been made in terms of compensating survivors and ending the dire misery in rural areas that led desperate peasants to join the guerrilla in the first place.

Reynolds also discusses how today’s generation has little knowledge of the war and genocide committed against the country’s indigenous population.  

Until now, the national curriculum vaguely states that teachers should explain why the Peace Accords were signed, but the issue is usually treated in a superficial manner and with no mention of why there was a war in the first place. 

While the military, the right, and the oligarchy are not interested having teachers discuss the country’s democratic opening in the 1940s and 1950s, causes of the war other than international communism, and the extent of government repression used to defeat the guerrillas and democratic forces in the country.

However, when I ask, I’m usually told that it is been up to individual teachers to explain the war to students. If they want to, they can. Officially, there is no one who says they have to or cannot. Unofficially, that’s a different story I guess.

Meanwhile, General Otto Perez Molina is on his way to Washington, D.C. The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission/USA is looking for your support to make his stay here as uncomfortable as possible. Perez Molina was one of the men in charge during the height of the genocide in Guatemala and has been linked to atrocities committed in the Ixil Triangle.

While Perez Molina is in town, Pedro Pimental Rios is on his way back to Guatemala to stand trial in for his participation in the 1982 "Dos Erres" massacre. Pimental’s asylum request was recently denied by Judge Lorraine J. Munoz. Upon arrival, he will most likely be taken into custody and await his day in court. Now the US and Canada need to deport the accused we already have in custody.