Guatemala’s Reign of Terror - Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

10.2.12

Guatemala’s Reign of Terror � Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names: by W. T. WHITNEY

Guatemalan prosecutors announced January 26 that 85-year old Efraín Ríos Montt, military dictator in 1982-1983, was going to trial in March. He’s accused of responsibility for killing and disappearing thousands of mostly poor and indigenous Guatemalans.

Gratified, blogger Juan José Guerrero wrote: “I was surgeon in the Coban Regional Hospital when you (Ríos Montt) were the de facto government leader. The cadavers that arrived at the morgue – when they arrived – seemed to have come out of a diabolical nightmare: women raped and pathologically tortured beforehand; children ripped open.”

A 36 year civil war ended in 1996 with peace accords signed both by the government and guerrilla insurgents known asGuatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). The war emerged out of chaos following CIA overthrow of an elected government in 1954 bent on mild land reform. Except during the Carter administration, U.S. support for the government side included military advisors, CIA operatives, military hardware, and funding. Both governments advanced the pretext of anti-communism.