It would be impossible to give a detailed history of Guatemala here, but in order to better understand the types of literature coming out of this country it is necessary to look at the backdrop of political and social activity.

According to Gail R. Ament, in her doctoral dissertation The Postcolonial Mayan Scribe:  Contemporary Indigenous Writers of Guatemala, published in 1998:

From 1954 to 1996, the Guatemalan military, with considerable financial and technical assistance from the United States, controlled the government, either by holding elections in which all candidates were generals in the armed forces, or, in times of relative calm or of increased pressure from the international human rights community, by allowing a civilian president to function as a front for military control.  By the early 1960s, shortly after the Cuban Revolution, the first signs of organized guerrilla activity appeared, under the leadership of two disaffected army officers, leading in the ensuing decades to increasingly brutal counterinsurgency efforts by the armed forces.  In 1970 the presidency of Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio secured the institutionalization of terror:  in a three-year period, fifteen thousand Guatemalans suspected of sympathizing with the insurgents were murdered or disappeared.  The very darkest years of counterinsurgency brutality, however, were from 1977 to 1982, when President Efraín Ríos Montt´s infamous “scorched earth” campaign annihilated villages whose inhabitants were suspected of providing material support for the guerrillas.  By the army’s own calculations, some 440 villages were wiped from the map during this period.

In 1982 the various guerrilla forces regrouped.  The Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP), the Organización Revolucionaria del Pueblo Armado (ORPA), and the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes de Trabajadores (FAR) joined the military unit of the Partido Guatemalteco de Trabajadores (PGT) to form the umbrella organization known as the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional de Guatemala (URNG).  Revolutionary dogma allowed little space for specifically ethnic considerations, nor did the hierarchical structure allow any notable degree of upward mobility for indigenous guerrillas.

Gail R. Ament, The Postcolonial Mayan Scribe:  Contemporary Indigenous Writers of Guatemala, pages 58-59.

Gail Ament goes on to explain the loss of identity experienced by indigenous individuals who joined these forces and in so doing had to abandon their regional dress, and with it their regional identity.  The above groups translate as EGP:  The Guerrilla Army of the Poor, ORPA: The Revolutionary Organization of Armed Peoples (pueblo usually denotes the group of people or the community from a town or village), FAR:  The Armed Rebel Force of Workers, PGT: The Guatemalan Worker’s Party, URNG: The National Revolutionary Unit of Guatemala.   Ament provides more information on the terror experienced in the villages and rural areas where the indigenous live.  The PAC, Patrullas de Auto Defensa Civil, spoken of here, translates as the Civil Self-Defense Patrol:  

Ex miembros de la guerrilla con la ropa que les han dado en la base militar de Cobán, donde se disponen a recibir adoctrinamiento para instalarse en los asentamientos construidos por el Gobierno. Former guerrilla members with the clothes they have been given at the military base in Cobán.  There they will receive indoctrination to live in the communities set up by the government.

(Notice only one of the young men is wearing shoes.)
Photo and caption from Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas, Rigoberta Menchú, 1998.

After a coup in 1982 against President General Romeo Lucas García, Efraín Ríos Montt - critical of his predecessors’ crude and ineffective methods- institutionalized the Patrullas de Auto Defensa Civil (PAC) in hundreds of indigenous villages, arming civilian males and commanding them to flush out insurgent elements in their own communities.  As a reaction to the extreme and sustained violence being carried out against Mayan communities, numerous grassroots organizations formed within Guatemala, to press their demands for social change.  For example, the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM)*, the Coordinadora Nacional de Viudas de Guatemala (CONAVIGUA), the Consejo de Desplazados de Guatemala (CONDEG), and the human rights organization  Comunidades Étnicas Runujel Junam (CERJ) date from this period.  The grassroots movements have seen two of their demands recognized:  the disbanding of the paramilitary PAC patrols, and an end to forced recruitment of indigenous youths for thirty months of military service.  These groups enjoy a relatively high profile in the opposition press in Guatemala, and have helped to galvanize Guatemalan resistance and the solidarity of international organizations.

  *GAM translates as Group for Mutual Support, CONAVIGUA as The National Coordinator for Widows of Guatemala, CONDEG as the Counsel for Homeless Refugees, and CERJ as The Ethnic Communities of Runujel Junam.

Gail R. Ament, The Postcolonial Mayan Scribe:  Contemporary Indigenous Writers of Guatemala, pages 59-60.  

Los pintos, militares así llamados porque usaban telas miméticas y se embadurnaban el rostro de negro, fueron los ejecutadores del genocidio durante la guerra de Contrainsurgencia, principalmente en los años ochenta.  La fotografía se tomó en junio de 1987, durante un desfile militar el Día de las Fuerzas Armadas. Military soldiers, called the painted ones because they smeared their faces with black paint and wore mimetic fabric, carried out the genocidal executions during the Counterinsurgency war, mainly during the eighties.  The photograph was taken in June of 1987, during a military parade for the Day of the Armed Forces.

Photo and caption from Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas, Rigoberta Menchú, 1998.

One can only imagine the terror of being patrolled by someone from within the community and the way this pitted families and neighbors against one another, destroying the strong community bonds, the attitude of togetherness and the unity that had prevailed among many citizens before the armed conflicts. Gail Ament summarizes the tumultuous situation of the past 30 years:  

Patrulla de Autodefensa Civil (PAC) a la entrada del municipio de Tres Cruces, en las montañas de Cuchumatán, en agosto de 1987.  Fue la etapa de militarización del campo.  The Civil Self-Defense Patrol (PAC) at the entrance to the town of Tres Cruces, in the mountains of Cuchumatán, in August of 1987.  During this era the countryside was militarized.  Photo and caption from Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas, Rigoberta Menchú, 1998.

 

Altogether, within the past thirty years, approximately 165,000 Guatemalans have been killed or disappeared. (Perera 9).  One million civilians, caught between the guerrillas and the military, were displaced from their villages and towns.  Some sought refuge in “model” villages created and patrolled by the military, others established hidden Comunidades de Poblaciones en Resistencia (CPR)* in remote regions of the country, hundreds of thousands were displaced to slums in Guatemala City and other urban centers, more than thirty thousand fled to hastily constructed refugee camps in southern Mexico and the Yucatan, and the rest overflowed into neighboring Belize and other Central American countries, the U.S., Canada and Europe.  

Los vecinos de Cuarto Pueblo, en Ixcán, departamento de El Quiché, tamizan la tierra en busca de los restos morales de miembros de su comunidad asesinados en marzo de 1982 durante operaciones de insurgencia del Ejército guatemalteco. Residents of Cuarto Pueblo, in Ixcán, state of Quiché, sift dirt in search of the mortal remains of community members assassinated in March of 1982 during the insurgent operations of the Guatemalan government.

Photo and caption from Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas, Rigoberta Menchú, 1998.

The brutality of the military oppression in Guatemala brought harsh condemnation from international civil rights organizations, and the presence of Guatemalan refugees in communities throughout the Western world assisted in the internationalization of the efforts to defend indigenous rights.  Scores of foreign organizations, such as Amnesty International, Witness for Peace, Peace Brigades International, and the U.S. Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala (NISGUA), along with educational, governmental, and both progressive and conservative religious organizations, attempted to help buffer indigenous peoples from the genocidal practices of the military, and to assist with material and moral support.  In 1992 Rigoberta Menchú, the Mayan organizer and testimonialist, received the Nobel Peace Prize for the indigenous rights campaign that she conducted on an international level while in exile.

El 15 de diciembre de 1992, durante su discurso de aceptación del Premio Nobel de la Paz.  December 15, 1992, during her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize.  Photo and caption from Rigoberta: La nieta de los mayas, Rigoberta Menchú, 1998.

*CPR translates as Communities of Resistance Populations

Gail R. Ament, The Postcolonial Mayan Scribe:  Contemporary Indigenous Writers of Guatemala, pages 60-61.

This background influenced the type of literature coming out of Guatemala and the lack of literature that results when a community is under attack and in extreme fear.   Armed conflict is used to silence those in disagreement; in this case the silencing has been going on for over 30 years, and although the Peace Accords were signed in 1996 there is still a fear to speak out.  Unfortunately, the injustice seems to continue even today.