Guatemala in the 1980s: A Genocide Turned into Ethnocide? by Anika Oettler-German Institute of Global and Area - HTML preview

FOOTNOTES

1 In 1996, the PACs were disbanded and their remaining 271,000 members disarmed. "On September 13, 1996, we were demobilized because of the peace accords, and they took our weapons. Some patrulleros started to cry, because they did not want to give away their weapons.” (CEH, Vol. II: 234, § 1402, testimony).

2 Other examples of exclusion are Chalk/Jonassohn 1990 and Jones 2004

3 For an analytical survey of the origins, work and effects of the Guatemalan Truth Commission and its ecclesiastical equivalent, the Catholic Project for the Recovery of Historical Memory, see Oettler 2004, 2006.

4 In the cases presented to the CEH, 83% of the victims were Mayan. 91% of the crimes documented by the CEH were committed between 1978 and 1984. 93% of all crimes were committed by the State and 3% by insurgent groups. Estimates for the internally displaced range from 600,000 to one-and-a-half-million. Some 150,000 refugees crossed the Mexican border.

5 The CEH had analyzed in detail the armed confrontation in four geographical regions: 1. Maya-Q’anjob’al and Maya-Chuj, in Barillas, Nentón and San Mateo Ixtatán in North Huehuetenango, 2. Maya-Ixil, in Nebaj, Cotzal and Chajul, Quiché, 3. Maya-K’iche’, in Joyabaj, Zacualpa and Chiché, Quiché, and 4. Maya-Achi, in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz.

6 Two scholars, Victoria Sanford and Greg Grandin, made significant contributions to our understanding of the Guatemalan case. Victoria Sanford, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Leh-man College – CONY, worked as a consultant with the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropological Foundation and the Truth Commission. In "Buried Secrets”, she describes her work at the exhumation of mass graves and sheds lights on the importance of memory work. Her book, "Violencia y Genocidio en Guatemala” is based on "Buried Secrets” and the statistical evidence presented by the CEH. Recently, she made her findings available on the website of the Genocide Studies Program at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies. Gregory Grandin, Assistant Professor of History at New York University, published several books and articles on Guatemalan history and the historiographic work of truth commissions. Driven by his own experience as a contributor to the CEH report, he focused on the combination of legal and historic methods in understanding the Guatemalan genocide (Grandin 2003).

7 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article 2.

8 Plan Nacional de Seguridad y Desarrollo, 1982 (Ejército), Manual de guerra contrasubversiva, 1982 (Centro de Estudios Militares), Manual de Inteligencia G-2, 1972 (Centro de Estudios Militares), Plan de campaña Victoria 1982 (Ejército).

9 NYT, El Imparcial, Foreign Broadcast Information Service.

10 According to its website (2006), the Inter-American Defense College "is an international educational institution operating under the aegis and funding of the OAS and the Inter-American Defense Board. It provides a professionally oriented, multidisciplinary, graduate-level course of study. This eleven-month program provides senior military and government officials with a comprehensive understanding of governmental systems, the current international environment, structure and function of the Inter-American system, and an opportunity to study broad based security issues affecting the Hemisphere and the world. The development of these concentrations is accomplished through the detailed study of political, economic, psychosocial, and military factors of power.” (www.jid.org/en/college/).

11 Héctor Alejandro Gramajo Morales: United States Army Infantry School (1959, 1966, 1969), School of the Americas (1967), Inter-American Defense College (1975-1976); Rodolfo Lobos Zamora: United States Army Infantry School (1959), Escuela Militar, Colombia (1965); César Augusto Cáceres Roja: Military Academy, France (1959), Inter-American Defense College (1981).