Guatemala in the 1990’s: Breaking the Silence, Part 1 of 2

Mayan ruins in Tikal, Guatemala. The indigenous Mayans form the majority of the population (© Wikipedia)

By the time Guatemala’s decades-long civil war came to an end in 1996, some two hundred thousand people had died or disappeared in the violence, most of them by far having been killed by government forces. Guatemala is one of the few countries in Latin America where the indigenous population forms the majority, and most of the human rights violations committed under the military dictators and during the civil war were directed at the native ethnic Mayan population. At times this has led to a mass exodus of the repressed rural poor to neighboring Mexico, while others went underground and into hiding, for example in the Ixqan communities in the northwestern lowlands.

Produced and presented by Dheera Sujan

Broadcast in Euroquest August 30 and September 6, 1996