Latin America

The Guatemalan genocide, also referred to as the Maya genocide,[3] or the Silent Holocaust[4] (Spanish: Genocidio guatemalteco, Genocidio maya, or Holocausto silencioso), was the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive US-backed Guatemalan military governments.[5] Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilians at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965, and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of.[6][7][8] A report from 1984 discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror".[9] Human Rights Watch has described "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces, mostly against unarmed civilians.[10]

The repression reached genocidal levels in the predominantly indigenous northern provinces where the Guerrilla Army of the Poor operated. There, the Guatemalan military viewed the Maya as siding with the insurgency and began a campaign of mass killings and disappearances of Mayan peasants. While massacres of indigenous peasants had occurred earlier in the war, the systematic use of terror against them began around 1975 and peaked during the first half of the 1980s.[11] The military carried out 626 massacres against the Maya during the conflict[12] and acknowledged destroying 440 Mayan villages between 1981 and 1983. In some municipalities, at least one-third of the villages were evacuated or destroyed. A March 1985 study by the Juvenile Division of the Supreme Court estimated that over 200,000 children had lost at least one parent in the war, and that between 45,000 and 60,000 adult Guatemalans were killed between 1980 and 1985.[13] Children were often targets of mass killings by the army, including in the Río Negro massacres between 1980 and 1982.[14]

An estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the war, including at least 40,000 persons who "disappeared".[2] 92% of civilian executions were carried out by government forces.[2] The UN-sponsored Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) documented 42,275 victims of human rights violations and acts of violence from 7,338 testimonies.[15][16] 83% of the victims were Maya and 17% Ladino.[17] 91% of victims were killed in 1978 through 1984, 81% in 1981 through 1983, with 48% of deaths occurring in 1982 alone.[1] In its final report in 1999, the CEH concluded that a genocide had taken place at the hands of the Armed Forces of Guatemala, and that US training of the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques "had a significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation", but that the US was not directly responsible for any genocidal acts.[18][11][19][7][20] Former military dictator General Efrain Ríos Montt (1982–1983) was indicted for his role in the most intense stage of the genocide. He was convicted in 2013 of ordering the deaths of 1,771 people of the Ixil Indigenous group,[21] but that sentence was overturned, and his retrial was not completed by the time of his death in 2018.

Beothuk extinctionCanadian residential schoolsConquest of the DesertDepopulation of the​ TaínoEnslavementFall of TenochtitlanForced sterilization in
Guatemalan intelligence was directed and executed mainly by two bodies: One, the Intelligence Section of the Army, subsequently called Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the National Defense and generally known as "G-2" or S-2. The other, the intelligence unit called Presidential Security Department, also known as "Archivo" or AGSAEMP (Archives and Support Services of the Presidential General Staff).

Archivo was formed with money and support from US advisers under President Enrique Peralta Azurdia, during which time it was known as the Presidential Intelligence Agency. A telecommunications database known as the Regional Telecommunications Center or La Regional was integrated into this agency and served as a vital part of the Guatemalan intelligence network. La Regional provided a link between the Presidential Intelligence Agency and all of the main security bodies, including the National Police, the Treasury Guard, the Judicial Police, by way of a VHF-FM intercity frequency. La Regional was also used as a depository for records and intelligence gathered on suspected "subversives", which would have included leftists, trade unionists, student activists, clergy, etc. This intelligence was used to draw up lists of persons to be assassinated.[22]

. . .

During Ríos Montt's tenure, the abuse of the civilian population by the army and the PACs reached unprecedented levels, even when compared to the Army's conduct under Benedicto Lucas. These abuses often amounted to overkill, civilians in "red" areas are reported to have been beheaded, garroted, burned alive, bludgeoned to death, or hacked to death with machetes. At least 250,000 children nationwide were estimated to have lost at least one parent to the violence; in El Quiche province alone these children numbered 24,000.[97] In many cases, the Guatemalan military specifically targeted children and the elderly. Soldiers were reported to have killed children in front of their parents by smashing their heads against trees and rocks.[14] Amnesty International documented that the rate of rape of civilian women by the military increased during this period. Soldiers at times raped pregnant women.[citation needed] The Guatemalan military also employed pseudo-operations against the peasants, committing rapes and massacres while disguised as guerrillas. One example is the massacre of up to 300 civilians by government soldiers in the village of Las Dos Erres on 7 December 1982. The abuses included "burying some alive in the village well, killing infants by slamming their heads against walls, keeping young women alive to be raped over the course of three days. This was not an isolated incident. Rather it was one of over 400 massacres documented by the truth commission – some of which, according to the commission, constituted 'acts of genocide.'"[10]

Montt was an Evangelical Christian, and his religious zealotry gave a theological justification to the massacres, the logic of which has been summed up by journalist Vincent Bevins as follows: "they are communists and therefore atheists and therefore they are demons and therefore you can kill them."[98] Most of the victims practiced traditional Mayan religions.[98]

The CIIDH database documented 18,000 killings by government forces in the year 1982. In April 1982 alone (General Efraín Ríos Montt's first full month in office), the military committed 3,330 documented killings, a rate of approximately 111 per day. Historians and analysts estimate the total death toll could exceed this number by the tens of thousands.[99] Some sources estimate a death toll of up to 75,000 during the Ríos Montt period, mostly within the first eight months between April and November 1982.[100]

More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_genocide#cite_note-schirmer-23

(Rios-Montt was completely pampered and protected by Ronald Reagan, who also promoted him heavily with US christo-fundamentalist evangelicals)