Editorial - Guatemalan Civil War - Mike Goldwater & Blue Cube Productions

Quiche women washing clothes in the village of Chajul, Quiche province, March 1982

Mother and daughters harvesting beans from dried bean pods, El Caracol

Bottling honey, Chimaltenango

Women queue to have their maize machine-ground, San Pedro Nectra, Huehuetenango. Hand-grinding maize for tortillas is very time-consuming.

Cane cutters bring in the last of the sugar cane harvest, La Democcracia, Escuintla. Most of the workers are from Quiche and Huehuetenango doing seasonal labour, usually for very low wages.

An Easter procession during Holy Week, Comalapa, Chimaltenango.

An ID check on bus passengers on the Pan American Highway

Soldiers occupy the small town of Chajul in Quiche Province that had until recently been an EGP guerrilla stronghold.

Soldiers occupy the small town of Chajul in Quiche Province that had until recently been an EGP guerrilla stronghold.

Houses destroyed by an army attack on this Mayan village near the Solola military base. Eleven people were killed with only two survivors.

This girl was the sole survivor of an army attack on her house close to the Pan American Highway at Los Inquentros.

The army dismantle an EGP roadblock on the Pan-Am Highway just before Presidential elections in March 1982.

The army on patrol in an Indian village near Chichicastenango after a guerrilla operation nearby.

Civil Patrols – a form of severe state repression – villagers given shotguns and ordered to patrol village area on 24 hour duty twice a week - put in direct confrontation with guerrilla forces – disrupt the cycle of subsistence farmers. To refuse to take part was not an option.

Civil Patrols – a form of severe state repression – villagers given shotguns and ordered to patrol village area on 24 hour duty twice a week - put in direct confrontation with guerrilla forces – disrupt the cycle of subsistence farmers. To refuse to take part was not an option.

Graves of small children who starved to death after villagers fled to the hills following an army attacked their village of Macalajuah, in Quiche province in 1981.

Tourists still came to the resort of Panajachul on Lake Atitlan

An election rally in Guatemala City for the Popular Democratic Front's candidate General Anibal Guevara, the hand-picked successor of previous president Romeo Lucas Garcia.

People queue to vote in Soloa, Quiche provice under the watchful eye of the army. Guatemala, 7th March 1982

The elections were widely denounced as fraudulent and Police arrested demonstrators who assembled to protest. It was my first taste of tear gas.

The following day General Guevara declared himself President, holding a document that he said proved the fraudulent elections were free and fair. Two weeks later Guevara was ousted in an army coup led by General Rios Montt.

Four years later in April 1986 the army continued their grip on power. Here at Macalajuah 'model village' in Quiche the army have cleared almost every tree and forcibly resettled the Mayan villagers.

The army had cleared almost every tree - no cover for guerrilla forces, adopting one of America’s counterinsurgency strategies from the Vietnam War.

‘Central Park’ in Chacaj, a 'Development Pole' in Huehuetenango where trees have been similarly cleared.

Government soldiers watch over Mayan people confined inside Chacaj’s wire fence

There were many orphaned children, here a brother and sister being looked after by a nun's mission in Nebaj, Quiche province,

Civil Patrols continued

Alcohol abuse was widespread.

The US NGO CARE was distributing bulgur wheat, milk and oil in Chajul, Quiche as part of the US Government’s PL480 programme

Critics said this PL480 program was to change the way people ate and expand the market for US agricultural products

The Guatemalan army on a programme to improve their image - a radio announcer turned army captain lectures school children at San Pedro Necta.

and puts out music and army propaganda from the town hall roof on market day.

During the civil war over 40,000 people were disappeared. In Guatemala City GAM, a 'Mutual Support Group', began a protest about this outrage on the steps of the Presidential Palace.

The only response - the president's secretary appeared to tell protesters to move away from the steps of the palace.

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During the Guatemalan civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996, the state applied repression on a massive scale, particularly targeting the Mayan population. The conflict was at its most intense in the 1980s and disproportionately affected indigenous communities. 200,000 people died in this conflict, with more than 40,000 disappearances. Longstanding issues of unfair land distribution with wealthy, mainly European-descended, citizens, and foreign companies had dominated control over much of the land – leading to conflicts with the rural indigenous poor.