On July 18, 1982, units of the Guatemalan Army and the civilian self-defense patrols called PAC (“Parullas de Autodefensa Civil”) massacred indigenous Maya civilians/peasants (men, women, and children), whom they believed to be communist supporters, in the remote rural village of Plan de Sanchez in northern Guatemala. An estimated 60 soldiers and paramilitaries entered the village, separated the men from the women and children into different huts, and killed them with guns and grenades. The huts were then torched. The victims were later buried in 21 mass graves.
The massacre was one of several that occurred that year, part of the military’s scorched earth strategy envisioned President General Efrain Rio Montt to maintain control over the countryside where communist rebels were taking refuge. The year 1982 also witnessed one of the most violent phases of the Guatemalan Civil War, a protracted conflict (1960-1996) between government forces and left-wing armed militias.
In 2012, a Guatemalan court convicted five perpetrators of the Plan de Sanchez Massacre, each of whom was sentenced to 7,710 years in prison.
(Taken from Guatemalan Civil War – Wars of the 20th Century – 26 Wars in the Americas and Caribbean: Vol. 7)
Background of the Guatemalan Civil War In 1821, Guatemala gained its independence from Spain as part of the (First) Mexican Empire. Then when the Empire collapsed two year later, Guatemala became a member of the United Provinces of Central America (together with El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica), which also fell apart in 1838. Thereafter, Guatemala became a separate, fully sovereign state.
Political power in fully independent Guatemala was controlled by the ladinos (hispanized descendants of Amerindian-European unions) and the small pure Spanish Criollos, who passed laws and policies that were advantageous to them, and coincidentally alienated the indigenous Amerindian population (which comprised about 40% of the population).
Wealth distribution was uneven, with the biggest landowners owning vast tracts of lands, called latifundia, which were developed into coffee and sugarcane plantations and worked by the indigenous farm hands under harsh, exploitative conditions. About 2% of the population owned 70 – 80% of all agricultural lands, while 90% of the indigenous people owned plots of land that were too small to subsist on.
This socio-economic imbalance was enhanced further when in 1904, President Manuel José Estrada allowed the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company (UFC), to establish banana farm operations in the country. With generous tax incentives and several thousands of hectares allocated by the government, UFC opened large banana plantations in regions near the Atlantic side of the country. As part of the agreement, UFC developed and controlled the road, railway, and port infrastructures to enhance regional development and support its own commercial operations.
Thereafter, succeeding Guatemalan governments maintained close ties with the United States, and allowed UFC to expand considerably. By the 1940s, the American firm’s massive investments and economic benefits had become crucial to the local economy that Guatemala and the United States entered into economic and military agreements. Particularly favorable to the United States in the 1940s was the regime of President Jorge Ubico, who allowed the U.S. government to establish military bases in Guatemala. He also allocated many more thousands of hectares of land and granted additional financial incentives that allowed UFC to expand further.
In July 1944, President Ubico was forced out of office, and a brief period of political unrest followed that led to the “October Revolution”, an uprising on October 19, 1944, by reformist army officers that overthrew the military government that had succeeded into office. Then in the presidential election held in December 1944, Juan José Arévalo prevailed, and thereafter embarked on a dramatic effort to radically change the country’s socio-economic system. President Arévalo enacted labor laws beneficial to workers, electoral reforms that allowed greater voter participation, and educational programs to reach a larger segment of the population.
In 1951, Jacobo Arbenz succeeded as president after winning the presidential race in free, fair elections. President Arbenz continued the social reforms of his predecessor, but made two crucial additions: he legalized the Guatemalan Party of Labor (PGT; Spanish: Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo), which was the local communist party; and implemented an agrarian reform law. Regarding the second point, President Arbenz wanted to nationalize about 600,000 hectares of land, which would be carried out by purchasing unused agricultural lands from big landowners (including UFC), and then divide the lands and distribute the resulting parcels to peasants. The combined tenures of Presidents Arévalo and Arbenz, who implemented socially and economically progressive reforms, historically have been called the “Ten Years of Spring”.
The reforms were strongly condemned by the traditional political elite, business and landowning classes, Catholic Church, and the military, as they threatened to overturn the established order. UFC also particularly was alarmed, and turned to the U.S. government for assistance.
By the early 1950s, the Cold War was in full swing, and the United States, through its intelligence agencies, led by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), was watching out for countries around the world where communism potentially could take hold. UFC publicly denounced President Arbenz, calling him a communist who had ties with the Soviet Union. Businessmen and landowners, and the Catholic Church launched similar media and propaganda campaigns, and organized street protests against what they perceived was a communist government. The United States stopped sending military aid to Guatemala, and increased weapons deliveries to nearby Honduras and El Salvador, both ruled by pro-U.S. regimes.
Facing the threat of aggression by its neighbors and the United States, the Guatemalan government purchased weapons from Czechoslovakia, a Soviet satellite state, which further raised U.S. suspicions that Guatemala might allow a “Soviet beachhead” in the Western Hemisphere. In June 1954, a CIA-organized force of Guatemalan mercenaries invaded Guatemala. The Guatemalan military foiled the attack, but President Arbenz, concerned that U.S. forces would intervene directly, abdicated and fled into exile abroad.
After a brief period of political restructuring that saw a succession of military rulers take charge of government, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, the coup leader, came to power and then set about to reverse the reforms of the previous governments. The agrarian reform law was scrapped and expropriated lands were returned to the landowners. The PGT was outlawed, and leftists and communists were targeted by the military, sparking a wave of killings and assassinations against leaders of peasant and labor unions. The 1954 coup ended the “Ten Years of Spring” and led to the country being ruled by a succession of military rulers (including one civilian government that was subservient to the military) for the next 32 years.