Violence In The Guatemalan Civil War

Guatemalans began fleeing to the United States during the three and a half decade long Civil War (1960-1996), and today, child migration fueled by a desire to escape from violence is still very prevalent. This violence began during the Civil War, when civilians were often attacked and treated as military objectives. In the years after the war, violence has remained prevalent, and acts receive little response from the police. Additionally, the corruption of the government and justice system parallel conditions during the War. Political instability, corruption, and violence have become engrained in Guatemalan society, and as a result, the magnitude of these issues has become clouded. Beginning in the Civil War, individuals responded to dangerous

conditions by migrating to other countries. As of 2004, ten percent of Guatemalans lived in the United States. In recent years, child migration has been increasing, including a ninety percent increase throughout Central America between 2013 and 2014. Twenty-four percent of Central American migrants are from Guatemala. Migration is very dangerous; many are injured, and gang-violence is common along the journey. In areas such as the Tierra Blanca, a Mexican city through which refugees travel, gangs kidnap people, then demand money from them and threaten death. Following this procedure, they then pose as children’s relatives to Guatemalan authorities in order to escape suspicion. Once children arrive in the United States, the majority are allowed to stay, by showing that they merit asylum or receiving special immigrant juvenile status if they were neglected or abused by their parents. As a result of the decades of violence that began during the Civil War, Guatemalan citizens have become desensitized to the omnipresent violence. The years of ineffective police and government response to this violence have created dangerous conditions, forcing children to flee and migrate through Mexico to the United States.
Unaccompanied children are migrating from Guatemala to escape a society filled with violence, abuse, and economic hardships. Children experience violence, through witnessing gang violence at school, violence at home, and public lynching. In a United Nations Refugee Agency study of four hundred unaccompanied minors from Central America, forty-eight percent experienced violence by crime-organized groups, twenty-two percent experienced abuse at home, and thirty nine percent were recruited into human smuggling, illegal immigration. Violence, specifically gang violence, homicides, and sexual abuse, has increased within the past decade, and the homicide rate has doubled between 2000 and 2006. As a result, adolescents recognize that it can be less dangerous to migrate to the United States than to stay in Guatemala. In an interview on National Public Radio, Jose Alberto Lima Barrera, a child migrant, said: “it’s scarier here than making the dangerous trek through Mexico.” The issues in Guatemala are furthered by the lack of police response to these events. Dulce Melinda, a child migrant who left because of sexual abuse, described her experiences with violence in an interview with José Díaz-Balart. When asked if rape is common, she answered: “Actually, it’s really common in [Guatemala], because it happens a lot, a lot of times, but a lot of times the people don’t do nothing, or the police don’t do nothing over there, in Guatemala.” As a result of the regularity of these incidents, police and public response is often minimal, a consequence of the years of violence and injustice that began during the thirty-six year Civil War.
The Guatemalan Civil War began in 1960, when a group of former military officers sought to implement political reform and overthrow the government by waging war.

On November 13, 1960, the first revolt against the Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes regime began in Eastern Guatemala, because rebels were angered by his conservatism and dishonesty. Thomas and Marjory Melville, two historians describe this government as “ideologically conservative, blatantly dishonest and constantly erratic. Radicals were especially angered by President Ydígoras’ role in the 1961 CIA Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The radicals were defeated, but this began the left-wing guerrilla movement and the Civil

War.
Two years later, in 1962, the Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre (Revolutionary Movement 13th November), MR-13, was formed and began the military campaign against the government. In March of 1963, the Ydígaras regime fell when Enrique Peralta Azurida, the Guatemalan Defense Minister and a communist radical seized control of the presidential palace. Mr. Azurida then abolished Congress and the constitution, in an attempt to turn Guatemala into a dictatorship. However, this attempted dictatorship failed, because Congress voted to replace him with the democratically elected Julio César Méndez Montenegro. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Guatemala was under military rule. Multi-party rule allowed the army to choose a candidate to lead the country. During this time, two revolutionary groups, both titled the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces), were created. Both of these groups rallied city-dwellers to join the rebellion and relied on violent acts such as assassinations, kidnappings, robberies, and bombings to revolt against the government. New guerrilla groups, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and the Revolutionary Organization of the People, were established, leading to an increase in counterinsurgency of military regimes. These groups launched military offensives, which employed a variety of tactics. One of the most popular was the scorched-earth tactic, the act of destroying anything potentially useful to the opponent while rapidly moving through the country. In addition to this, the groups bombed cities, massacred citizens in designated zones, destroyed villages, and took action against civilian populations, thus beginning the increased violence of the 1970s.
During the Civil War, violence was used tactically by the military and by revolutionaries, to instill fear in communities and their leaders.

Beginning in 1966, the military caused radical leaders to disappear as a method of state terrorism. In addition to army violence, guerrillas also used violence to promote their cause. To justify this violence, the Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (Military Guerrillas of the Poor), a new radical organization, deemed it “popular justice.” The individuals tried were charged and often killed by guerrillas for counterrevolutionary acts committed during the 1960s. This violence continued throughout the 1970s and escalated in 1978, when the existing armed opposition groups began to fight with the military. The government responded to this engagement with persecution and repression directed at discontent. Instead of fining, or sending criminals to jail, law enforcement employed death squads of police officers to deal with many instances of petty crime. Disputes were settled by assassination, rather than arbitration. During this period, radical leaders were killed, leading many to believe that the government was involved, and that death squads were given lists of targets. In addition to police violence, guerrilla violence also increased. These groups burned houses, killed innocent men, women and children, and completely destroyed villages routinely. As the War continued, violence no longer involved only guerrillas and the army; it

began to affect the entire civilian population.
The army treated people as as military objectives, because they supported revolutionary political organizations, both politically and logistically. Ordinary people became a key focus of military strategy, and were involved in the war against their will. The country was divided into zones, which designated the numbers of people to be killed, in order to instill fear in Guatemalan communities. Regardless of age, no one was spared, and the soldiers did not care who witnessed the killings. The army forced everyone to fight and participate in patrols. Soldiers marched into villages and were forced to kill everyone, including children, family and friends. As seen in the photograph Army Day, In Front of the National Palace, soldiers had the same uniforms, stances, and facial expressions, removing their individuality and becoming instruments of war. Consequently, many became emotionally removed and forgot details of their former life and their own values. As Heather Dean describes, “they forgot what life is,” leading them to lose their humanity and continue the violence against civilians. Nearly two thousand people were killed annually, due to the death squads, which operated freely and openly in the streets. In order to escape the violence and repression, individuals began migrating to Mexico and hiding in the jungle for years. From the 1970s to the end of the Civil War, more children were killed than soldiers.