Guatemalan Youth Rewrite History

By Elias Lawless, WireTap. Posted July 31, 2006.

La Violencia is a term employed by some Guatemalans to describe one of the Western hemisphere's bloodiest civil conflicts in the modern era -- a 36-year-long period stretching until 1996, when the state army launched a violent campaign against alleged guerrilla sympathisers, wiping entire villages off the map. More than 200,000 people -- most of them civilians -- were killed or have disappeared.

A United Nations-led commission calculates that 93 percent of the "human rights violations and acts of violence" during this time span were perpetrated by the Guatemalan government. They document at least 626 massacres committed by state forces against Mayan communities during this period which, coupled with findings that 83.3 percent of La Violencia`s victims were Maya, contributes to an increasing awareness within Guatemala and worldwide that the extraordinarily brutal, government-led campaign indeed constitutes genocide.

Despite the ongoing failure of Guatemalan courts to move forward with legal cases seeking to charge former state authorities for crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide -- left in limbo since an initial filing in 2000 -- a sudden glimmer of hope along the judicial front has recently emerged.

On July 7, by declaring the right to "universal jurisdiction" in the interest of human rights, a Spanish judge issued international arrest orders for ex-dictators, military leaders and other government officials responsible for the genocide. Among those named is past president Efraìn Rios Mòntt (1982-1983), who not only ruled over perhaps the most gruesome chapter of La Violencia but even now remains a political heavyweight within Guatemala, having served as president of the National Congress as recently as 2004.

In addition to their plans to exterminate the Maya, who make up about half of the population of Guatemala, the intellectual authors of the genocide also attempted to eliminate political opponents -- many of whom resided in the nation's universities. The University of San Carlos, for example, transformed into a hotbed of subversive activity to challenge the state-led violence. In 1980 alone, at least 127 members of the San Carlos academic community -- mostly students, but faculty and administrators as well -- were either killed or have disappeared.

Today, members of H.I.J.O.S. -- Hijos e Hijas por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio (Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence) -- represent a new front of radical Guatemalan youth intent on battling the executors, cheerleaders and benefactors of La Violencia (as well of those who continue to exercise similar state repression and order similar forced disappearances to squash social movements, while similarly enjoying impunity for their crimes).

HIJOS -- largely comprised of youth whose family members were killed or disappeared during La Violencia -- first surged to the public light a mere 30 months after the Guatemalan state, under mounting international pressure, inked a finalizing ceasefire agreement with an organization of surviving guerrillas. On June 30, 1999 -- the perennial holiday within Guatemala termed Army Day -- at a public celebration honoring generals from the genocide in the company of the nation's commander-in-chief, HIJOS shocked onlookers by disrupting the commemoration with screams demanding justice.

HIJOS' omnipresent anti-impunity street art, along with its organizing against Guatemala's ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement and various other programs, has triggered the attention of state authorities and other powerful forces within Guatemala. On Jan. 8 of last year, HIJOS' office was raided; personal agendas, organizational archives, computers, a megaphone and paint were stolen, while other objects of value were left behind. Several months later on May 12 -- one day after three other Guatemalan social justice groups were raided -- HIJOS' office was targeted a second time. Again, numerous photographs and a laptop were taken, while more costly items were untouched.

"We the youth reclaim memory, truth, justice -- HIJOS."

Almost a week before the second raid, on May 6, one of HIJOS’ members, Francisco Sánchez Méndez, was subjected to an attempted kidnapping when two gunmen attacked him and tried to force him into a car. He resisted and escaped. Then, last August, Francisco received an anonymous call to his cell phone saying, "You are going to die, son of a bitch."

WireTap Magazine caught up with two HIJOS organizers, Raùl and Paco, to discuss their group's struggle against impunity within Guatemala and the importance of affecting public consciousness in advancing social change.

This article was written and translated from Spanish by Elias Lawless, who currently lives in Guatemala. All photographs by the author.

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