The Guatemala genocide was a long-running campaign of ethnic oppression and murder which was perpetrated against native groups in Guatemala, primarily the native Maya people. It was underway in one form or another for most of the second half of the twentieth century, though there were periods of increased intensity, notably during the early 1980s when the ‘Silent Holocaust’ was perpetrated. The background of the genocide was the Guatemalan coup d’état in 1954, the advent of military rule and the lengthy civil war that followed down to 1996. The lengthy conflict and the violence led to severe internal and external displacement and many migrants fled north towards Mexico and the United States, particularly so during the 1970s and 1980s when the war was at its height. The Guatemalan American migrant community is one of the largest in the United States today, particularly so given the relatively small size of Guatemala itself comparative to other Latin American nations. Approximately 200,000 people are believed to have lost their lives in the genocide, of which 83% were native Maya people.[1]
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Guatemalan Genocide chronology of eventsGuatemalan Genocide chronology of events
The Guatemalan genocide occurred during the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. In the late 1940s and early 1950s Guatemala was experiencing a period of liberal reform after decades of dictatorial rule in the country which facilitated the outsized influence of the American-owned United Fruit Company.[2] This was brought to a shuddering halt in 1954 when a coup d’état re-established a right-wing military government.[3] Tensions followed and in 1960, inspired to some extent by the Cuban Revolution, a new guerilla war against the government commenced. This would continue for the next 36 years. There were different stages to the conflict and it was more limited in scale and bloodshed at certain times. The civil war was most intense in the late 1970s and 1980s, an era of broader conflict and unrest throughout Central America.[4]
The Guatemalan genocide was primarily perpetrated against the country’s Maya community. Guatemala is a country which retains a very indigenous population, in contrast to many other Latin American countries like Mexico or Argentina where people of Spanish or other European backgrounds predominate. Just over half of the Guatemalan population is classed as Ladino, a group mixing both Hispanic and mestizo or ‘mixed’ people. The Maya, a Mesoamerican people who once ruled over a thriving and sophisticated empire in Central America, make up much of the rest of the population (between 40% and 45%), with a number of smaller indigenous groups like the Xinca and Garifuna constituting the remainder.[5]
While the Guatemalan Civil War did not simplistically pit Ladino against Maya in Guatemala, the Mayan people have generally been poorer in Guatemalan society in modern times and leaned more towards the cause of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity that led the guerrila war against the government. Moreover, in the 1970s the Maya began engaging in protests and other lobbying to improve their position within the country and respect for their culture. This in part led to the government’s growing antagonism towards the Maya people.[6]
The genocide developed in stages and was more brutal during certain periods of the civil war. Much of it consisted of massacres perpetrated against rural villages and small towns. Over 600 such massacres have been charted by those who have studied the genocide. Often these occurred on multiple occasions in the same village or town, as was the case with the Río Negro massacres between 1980 and 1982. The early 1980s witnessed the worst of the genocide. During this period the government identified the more rural Guatemalan highlands where many of the Maya lived as being centers of concentrated insurgent activity. Military units were sent here, essentially with orders to eliminate any types of perceived resistance. A campaign of mass murder and terror followed, with tens of thousands of Maya killed in the Guatemalan highlands between 1980 and 1983. This has been termed the ‘Silent Holocaust’ on account of it being relatively unreported on in international circles at the time, much like several other genocides of the twentieth century like that of the Isaaq people of Ethiopia during the late 1980s.[7]
The worst of the genocide abated in the late 1980s. As with so many other conflicts that had begun around the world in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the end of the Cold War in 1991 spurred change, as left-wing entities lost their Moscow backers and Washington curtailed its support for right-wing governments and regimes. There were already moves to hold legitimate elections at the end of the 1980s and these resulted in a growing détente in the 1990s. A program of constitutional reforms and some changes to how land was held and worked in Guatemala allowed for the peace process to reach a successful conclusion in 1996, bringing the civil war to an end after 36 years.[8]
Extent of migration caused by the Guatemalan GenocideExtent of migration caused by the Guatemalan Genocide
The violence attendant on the civil war and the genocide led to the migration of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans from their country. A proportion of these simply relocated to the neighboring countries, El Salvador, Honduras, Belize and Mexico, but many went onwards to the north and eventually crossed into the United States. At the height of the violence in the late 1970s and into the 1980s tens of thousands of Guatemalans arrived to the US in a given year. On other occasions the number was smaller and in the hundreds or thousands. Cumulatively, over a civil war that lasted more than 35 years, this had a substantial bearing on the growth of the migrant community.[9] Many of those who arrived in the 1970s and 1980s did so to California, with Los Angeles becoming the center of the Guatemalan American community in the US.[10]
Demographic impact of the Guatemalan GenocideDemographic impact of the Guatemalan Genocide
The foremost demographic impact of the genocide was in the murder of an estimated 200,000 people in Guatemala. The violence also led to the displacement of millions of people in the small Central American country. Of these, a proportion were internally displaced within Guatemala or just over the borders to Hondura, Belize, El Salvador and southern Mexico. As noted, many travelled further afield to other parts of Mexico or the United States. The demographic impact on the US has been considerable. By some estimates the Guatemalan American community is just over two million strong as of 2024, when those born in Guatemala and second and third generation immigrants are taken into consideration. About a million were born in Guatemala. This makes the Guatemalan American community one of the largest recently developed migrant communities in the United States, particularly so given that Guatemala is a relatively small Latin American country.[11]
See alsoSee also
Explore more about the Guatemalan GenocideExplore more about the Guatemalan Genocide
- Guatemala, Baptisms, 1730-1917 records collection on MyHeritage
- Guatemala, Marriages, 1730-1950 records collection on MyHeritage
- Guatemala, Deaths, 1760-1880 records collection on MyHeritage
- Guatemala Civil Registration, 1877-2008 records collection on MyHeritage
- 1877 Ciudad de Guatemala Census records collection on MyHeritage
References
- ↑ https://cja.org/where-we-work/guatemala/
- ↑ https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/united-fruit-guatemala/
- ↑ Michelle Denise Getchell, ‘Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala’, in Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 2015), pp. 73–102.
- ↑ Susanna Jonas, The Battle of Guatemala (Abingdon, 2019).
- ↑ https://www.countryreports.org/country/Guatemala/population.htm
- ↑ https://minorityrights.org/communities/maya-2/
- ↑ https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/genocide-watch-country-report-guatemala
- ↑ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/latin_america-jan-june11-timeline_03-07
- ↑ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/guatemalan-migration-times-civil-war-and-post-war-challenges
- ↑ Jonathan Solares, ‘Guatemalan Migration to Los Angeles’, in The Toro Historical Review, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2010), pp. 78–97.
- ↑ https://data.census.gov/table?q=B03001:+Hispanic+or+Latino+Origin+by+Specific+Origin