The mass murders in Guatemala

This video, in English, is called Intervencion de la CIA en Guatemala [1954] – 1 of 5.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Interview

(Tuesday 26 June 2007)

DRIVEN BY SOCIAL JUSTICE: Political poet Abigail Zammit.

ABIGAIL ZAMMIT explains to ANDY CROFT what drove her to write a book of poetry about brutal US-funded killings in Guatemala.

“Do you think we’ve left proof? In Argentina, there are witnesses, there are books, there are films, there is proof. Here in Guatemala, there is none of that. There are no survivors,” said Guatemalan army public relations chief Colonel Edgar d’Jalma Dominguez in 1984.

The story of Guatemala‘s 36-year-long civil war is a familiar one of exploitation, poverty and repression in pursuit of US interests.

But the “silent holocaust” of Guatemala was extraordinarily brutal, even by the standards of central America, involving CIA-trained death squads, the widespread use of torture and rape, the deliberate targeting of churches and the genocide of 200,000 indigenous peoples.

By the late 1970s, even the US government was embarrassed by the scale of the killings and Jimmy Carter halted military aid to the Guatemalan government.

The Maltese writer Abigail Zammit recently visited Guatemala with the Roman Catholic charity Mission Fund. She was there to help build the first floor of a hospital for disabled children in Jalapa.

Digging Guatemala: Anthropologists Look for Clues to Past Political Killings: here.

Democracy Now! Report: Guatemalan Soldiers Sentenced to 6,060 Years in Prison for Role in 1982 Massacre: here.

Trade unionist killed in Guatemala: here.

March 24, 2011. Internationally-funded Guatemalan bio-fuel interests are evicting Mayan Qeqchi families from their historic lands, destroying homes and crops, killing one and injuring more. Thousands are without food or shelter: here.

Reagan and Guatemala’s Death Files. Robert Parry, Consortium News: “Ronald Reagan’s election in November 1980 set off celebrations in the well-to-do communities of Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter’s human rights nagging, the region’s anticommunist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems. The oligarchs and the generals had good reason for the optimism. For years, Reagan had been a staunch defender of right-wing regimes that engaged in bloody counterinsurgency campaigns against leftist enemies”: here.

GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 13, 2012 (IPS) – “In 1982 they killed my mama and 15 other people, and they burned down our house. Now we are trying to get support, because we have not received any aid,” says Jacinto Escobar, an Ixil Indian who is seeking reparations for the damages sustained during Guatemala’s 1960-1996 civil war: here.

Related articles

• Rand Paul Risks Telling the Truth About Ronald Reagan