The Effects of Civil War: the Memory of Guatemalan Refugees in Tziscao

On December 8, 1982, Guatemalan state military helicopters landed on the community field of Quetzal, Guatemala and troops began to fire at the people of the village. The women picked up their children, some picked up a pot of beans from their stoves, and they ran over the hill into Mexico, where they lived for at least 14 years until they could return to their lands in Guatemala.

I spoke to one woman who is currently living in Quetzal. She had began her life in that town, however the army descended on the village when she was only a girl and she had to flee with her family to Mexico, right over the border into Tziscao. Her father had already died at that point, so her mother had to work hard to support her, her sister, and her brother. They were away from their village for many years and they stayed away because they heard the army was occupying the town. But eventually they returned because they heard things were better and they were struggling to live in Mexico, without land. They returned could have a little bit of land to work and live after. Nevertheless, soon after they returned, the army came back again. And the result? As she put it matter-of-factly, “Well, many people died.”

What makes this story even harder to hear is knowing that what happened in Quetzal was happening all over Guatemala in those years. From 1960-1996, Guatemala was embroiled in a civil war, one of the longest and deadliest in recent history. The state government, in an effort to put down guerrilla groups of mainly indigenous people, engaged in “scorched earth” practices that affected primarily indigenous civilians in the Guatemala countryside. My good friend Amanda is currently working as an accompanier in Guatemala to help ensure that justice is brought to the victims of this conflict. She has also been incredibly important in educating me about the situation in Guatemala. As she put it in a letter last December, “At the conclusion of the conflict, an independent report by the United Nations Historical Clarification Commission determined that over 200,000 civilians – over 80% of whom were indigenous – had been killed or disappeared, more than 600 villages and communities had been destroyed, and more than a million civilians had been forcibly displaced. The report also concluded that the state military and paramilitary forces were responsible for 93 percent of the worst atrocities, including perpetrating acts of genocide against Maya populations.”

While this report has been disseminated, little has been done to hold the perpetrators of these atrocities accountable. In short, there is much more work to be done. To learn more about current work for human rights in Guatemala, visit http://www.amnestyusa.org/all-countries/guatemala/.