Guatemala Civil War:

1960–1996

Civil War Events

A brief background and history of Guatemala’s seemingly endless Civil War:

1

Between 1944 and 1951, democratic elections resulted in leftist governments.

2

In 1954, the United States instigated and backed a coup d’état.

3

Colonel Manuel Arana Osorio was installed as head of the military regime.

4

Osorio’s administration was followed by several more conservative military dictators.

5

During the 1970s, the Institutional Democratic Party dominated Guatemalan politics, retaining power largely through fraud and intimidation.

6

Also during the 1970s, groups indigenous peoples (Mayans) and rural peasants who had been impoverished by unequal land distribution became increasingly militant and engaged in an active insurgency.

7

Partly as a reaction to growing insurgency during the 1980s, the military assumed almost total control of every facet of Guatemalan life and ruled by terror.

8

It is estimated that as many as 200,000 Guatemalan citizens disappeared during the course of the Civil War.

As Doyle notes, Guatemala was a “vast unmarked grave.” Bones were exhumed, but they were anonymous. This is of course deeply disturbing, but it’s the anonymity of the bones that begins to shed light on the profound importance of the Atrocity Files themselves and which allows us to begin to understand the transposition of these records from instruments of complicity and torture into a vast monument for the victims.

The Guatemalan G2 and S2 security services as well as the distinct intelligence service La Regional or Archivo (headquartered in an annex of the presidential palace) were responsible for coordinated killings and "disappearances" of opponents of the state and suspected.

Doyle’s introduction captures the enormity of the Secret Police atrocities, “When Guatemala’s thirty-six-year civil war ended, in 1996, the country was a vast unmarked grave. More than 200,000 people had died or disappeared in the conflict, most of them unarmed civilians.”

Go Back to Top