The secret papers from the genocide in Guatemala. Help us make the truth known!
Background
Between 1978 and 1984, a genocide that remains unpunished took place in Guatemala. Dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and his high command drew a secret plan to exterminate the Maya Ixil people. More than 100.000 people were murdered in the course of its execution. The code name for one of the operations was “Operación Sofía.”
In 2006, the file of Operación Sofía was sent anonymously to a Guatemalan NGO. It contained secret military messages which would provide key evidence against Ríos when he was later tried for genocide. In 2013, after a lengthy legal battle, the ex-dictator was found guilty of genocide, but the trial was illegally declared null ten days later. Ríos died in his bed in 2018.
From the moment the verdict was declared null, I’ve dedicated every moment available to analyse and do research on Operación Sofía
What was the plan? Who gave the orders to exterminate the Mayas? Who carried them out? Who connived with them, inside and outside Guatemala? How is it possible that none of these culprits is in prison?
Along these 400 pages, I try to establish how the Maya ixil people were methodically annihilated. I examine this brutal operation on the bases of factual evidence, including maps that show where Maya villages were burned and their dwellers massacred, or else sent to concentration camps known as “model villages”. The book also includes photographs of the genocide taken by Jean-Marie Simon and Ulf Aneer, who were in Guatemala at the time of the massacres and know this tragic story in depth.
Impunity grieves the memory of the victims and prolongs the suffering of the survivors.
A genocide that goes unpunished is an open wound for all humankind.
That’s why I am asking for your help to publish my book.
Main features and goals of the crowdfunding campaign
This project’s main goal is to make public how the genocide of the Maya Ixil people took place.
Though other books have dwelled on the subject, none have examined in this level of detail and based in documentary evidence the modus operandi of the Guatemalan military, who branded all Maya Ixil enemies of the State and tried to annihilate them.
The photographs and maps in my book reveal to what extent this was a coordinated, methodical campaign whose victims had no chance to defend themselves against their own country’s security forces.
The book also highlights how easily racism and greed can lead to dehumanizing the other: for Ríos Montt, his high command and those who followed their orders, the Maya Ixil were not men and women, boys and girls, but military targets without rights, lives or dreams.
The fact that they were “Indians” spared fears of being brought to justice. Structural racism was at the origin of the Mayan genocide and allowed the culprits to hide and minimize their crimes, not only inside Guatemala but across what we consider the civilized world.
In this sense, I aim to denounce once more these crimes against humanity. In a language accessible to everyone, I tell again the story of this war of annihilation, so my book can be read and consulted not only by specialized lawyers and researchers but also by students, teachers, social leaders, human rights defenders and all those who want to know what happened.
The minimum target of this campaign will cover the costs of editing and printing The secret papers of the genocide in Guatemala. If we reach the optimum, I’ll be able to launch it and promote it in Guatemala, Spain, Sweden and other countries where there is support for the project. In gratitude to contributors, I have designed postcards and posters that help raise awareness of the horrors that took place in Guatemala.
The truth of the Guatemalan genocide must be made known.
Its victims must not fall into oblivion.
That’s why I am asking you for help to me publish my book.
Why this is important
Why is this crucial?
According to international law, victims and survivors of crimes against humanity such as genocide have a right to learn the truth, see justice done and receive compensation. In Guatemala, these rights have never been recognized or honoured by the State.
Learning the truth not only gives genocide victims dignity or ease ongoing suffering amongst genocide survivors. It is also paramount for democracy, since a society that ignores its own past, doesn’t recognize victims and doesn’t punish culprits is condemned to relive its own history. In Guatemala, today, crime and impunity run rampant and this erodes the credibility of the country’s institutions, plagued by corruption and violence.
To publish the secret history of the genocide also implies denouncing the structural racism and unfairness that are still pervasive in Guatemala’s institutions and security forces, involved daily in crimes and wrongdoings that range from petty corruption to the assassination of social leaders.
Both this campaign and my book intend to be an urgent wake up call. The genocide of the Mayas is not a memory from the past: it could take place again today in Guatemala. It’s up to each one of us to do everything in our power in order to prevent it.
Team and experience
I spent nearly a decade researching and writing The secret papers of the genocide in Guatemala.
I put into it all my professional expertise as a human rights researcher and as a criminal lawyer, as well as my experience in development cooperation, migrations and humanitarian law.
Between 2008 and 2013, I had direct knowledge of the evidence as part of the legal team in the genocide case against Ríos Mort at the Spanish Special Criminal Court. Simultaneously, I acted as legal advisor for the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) in the case against Ríos and his intelligence chief Rodríguez Sánchez that was prosecuted in Guatemala.
During this period, I wrote various articles on gender and defence of human rights and coordinated several anthologies about the Guatemalan genocide. I have also had the opportunity to investigate human rights violations in other Latina American countries, including Colombia, Honduras and Mexico.
Along the long road leading to this campaign, I received crucial support from two Guatemalan NGOs and two Spanish ones: the Human Rights Office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala (ODHAG) and the International Platform Against Impunity, both in Guatemala, and in Spain, Fundación Paz y Solidaridad and Fundación Abogacía Española, all of them recognized for their long time commitment to the defence of human rights.
I owe the book’s wonderful prologue to Virgilio Álvarez Aragón, a brilliant sociologist and pedagogue with a profound knowledge of the Guatemalan armed conflict. The epilogue was written by attorney Nery Rodenas, who is the head lawyer at the ODHAG. Professor Manuel Ollé, an expert in Universal Justice cases, has generously contributed a short text, and so has Antonio García, former head of the legal department at Comisiones Obreras, the organization that denounced Ríos Montt of genocide before the Spanish Special Criminal Court.