Plan de Sánchez massacre
Encyclopedia
Guatemala
Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...
n village of Plan de Sánchez
Plan de Sánchez
Plan de Sánchez is a village in the municipality of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz department, Guatemala. On July 18, 1982, while General Efraín Ríos Montt was President of Guatemala, a massacre was committed there by government forces during which over 200 people were killed...
, Baja Verapaz
Baja Verapaz
Baja Verapaz is a department in Guatemala. The capital is Salamá.Baja Verapaz houses the Mario Dary Biotope Preserve, preserving the native flora and fauna of the region, especially the endangered national bird of Guatemala, the Resplendent Quetzal....
department
Departments of Guatemala
||Guatemala is divided into 22 departments :#Alta Verapaz#Baja Verapaz#Chimaltenango#Chiquimula#Petén#El Progreso#El Quiché#Escuintla#Guatemala#Huehuetenango#Izabal#Jalapa#Jutiapa#Quetzaltenango#Retalhuleu#Sacatepéquez...
, on 18 July 1982. Over 250 people (mostly women and children, and almost exclusively ethnic Achi Maya
Achi people
The Achi are a Maya people in Guatemala. Their indigenous language is also called Achi and is closely related to K'iche'....
) were abused and murdered by members of the armed forces
Military of Guatemala
The Military of Guatemala consists of National Army of Guatemala , the Guatemalan Navy and the Guatemalan Air Force ....
and their paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
allies.
The killings took place during one of the most violent phases of Guatemala's Civil War
Guatemalan Civil War
The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular response to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government , and the President's disrespect for the human and civil rights of the majority of the population...
, which pitted various groups of left-wing
Left-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
insurgents
Insurgency
An insurgency is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents...
against the government and the armed forces. After assuming power in March 1982, defacto President
President of Guatemala
The title of President of Guatemala has been the usual title of the leader of Guatemala since 1839, when that title was assumed by Mariano Rivera Paz...
Gen.
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Efraín Ríos Montt
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt is a former de facto President of Guatemala, dictator, army general, and former president of Congress. In the 2003 presidential elections, he unsuccessfully ran as the candidate of the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front .Huehuetenango-born Ríos Montt remains one of the most...
embarked on a military campaign that largely succeeded in breaking the insurgency, but at a terrible cost in human lives and human rights violations. The massacre
Massacre
A massacre is an event with a heavy death toll.Massacre may also refer to:-Entertainment:*Massacre , a DC Comics villain*Massacre , a 1932 drama film starring Richard Barthelmess*Massacre, a 1956 Western starring Dane Clark...
in Plan de Sánchez was an element in the government's scorched earth
Scorched earth
A scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
strategy, and the village was targeted because of the authorities' suspicions that the inhabitants were harbouring or otherwise supporting guerrilla
Guerrilla warfare
Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and...
groups.
After the massacre, the village was practically abandoned for a number of years and the survivors were told that reprisal
Reprisal
In international law, a reprisal is a limited and deliberate violation of international law to punish another sovereign state that has already broken them. Reprisals in the laws of war are extremely limited, as they commonly breached the rights of civilians, an action outlawed by the Geneva...
s would follow if they spoke about the incident or revealed the location of the numerous mass grave
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...
s they had helped to dig. With the gradual return to democracy that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of the survivors felt they could begin to talk about the killings without fearing for their lives. Accusations were filed with the authorities in 1992 and, in 1993, a criminal investigation was launched. However, faced with delays and other irregularities in the proceedings, and stonewalled by a National Reconciliation Law that granted amnesties
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
to the suspected perpetrators, the survivors saw that Guatemala's domestic legal remedies were ineffective in this case and consequently decided to lodge a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States .Along with the...
(IACHR), the supranational human rights arm of the Organisation of American States
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
, in 1996.
The IACHR began processing the complaint, received a partial recognition of the state's institutional responsibility from democratically elected president Alfonso Portillo
Alfonso Portillo
Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera is a Guatemalan politician. He served as the President of the Republic of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004....
in the first year of his term, and finally referred the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...
for judgement and settlement. In 2004, the Inter-American Court issued two judgements, in which it established Guatemala's liability in the case and ordered an extensive package of monetary, non-monetary and symbolic forms of compensation for the survivors and the next-of-kin of the deceased.
National context
- See also: History of GuatemalaHistory of GuatemalaThe history of Guatemala begins with the arrival of the first human settlers as early as 12,000 BC or even 18,000 BC. Civilization developed and flourished during the Pre-Columbian era with little to no contact with cultures from outside of Mesoamerica...
, Guatemalan Civil WarGuatemalan Civil WarThe Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular response to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government , and the President's disrespect for the human and civil rights of the majority of the population...
.
1982 was one of the bloodiest years in Guatemala's 36-year-long history of internal conflict (1960–1996).
On 23 March 1982, army troops commanded by junior officers staged a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
to prevent the assumption of power by Gen. Ángel Aníbal Guevara
Ángel Aníbal Guevara
Ángel Aníbal Guevara Rodríguez is a Guatemalan soldier and politician. He was born in La Democracia, Escuintla in 1924.Having served as defense minister in the previous administration, Guevara was victorious in the 7 March 1982 presidential election to succeed outgoing President Romeo Lucas, who...
, the hand-picked successor of outgoing president Gen. Romeo Lucas García who had won a disputed election
Guatemalan presidential election, 1982
General elections were held in Guatemala on 7 March 1982. Ángel Aníbal Guevara, hand-picked successor of previous president Romeo Lucas García, was declared the winner of the presidential election and was scheduled to take office on 1 July...
two weeks earlier. The coup leaders asked retired Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt
Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt is a former de facto President of Guatemala, dictator, army general, and former president of Congress. In the 2003 presidential elections, he unsuccessfully ran as the candidate of the ruling Guatemalan Republican Front .Huehuetenango-born Ríos Montt remains one of the most...
to negotiate the departure of both Lucas and Guevara.
Ríos Montt, who had been the candidate of the Christian Democracy Party in the 1974 presidential election
Guatemalan general election, 1974
General elections were held in Guatemala on 3 March 1974. No candidate received more than 50% of the vote in the presidential election, resulting in Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García being elected president by Congress on 12 March. The Congressional elections were won by an alliance of the...
and was widely regarded as having been denied his own victory through fraud, accepted the appointment.
He formed a three-member military junta
Military dictatorship
A military dictatorship is a form of government where in the political power resides with the military. It is similar but not identical to a stratocracy, a state ruled directly by the military....
that annulled the 1965 constitution, dissolved Congress
Congress of Guatemala
The Congress of the Republic is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of Guatemala.It comprises 158 deputies, who are elected by direct universal suffrage to serve four-year terms . Twenty-nine of these are elected from nationwide lists, with the rest on a district list basis...
, and suspended all political parties. After a few months, he dismissed his junta colleagues and assumed the de facto title of President of the Republic; in his inaugural address, Ríos Montt – a lay pastor in the evangelical Protestant Church of the Word
Church of the Word
The Church of the Word is an evangelical pentecostal Christian church. Its parent organisation is the Gospel Outreach church, which is based in California, United States....
– stated that his presidency resulted from the will of God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
.
The country's guerrilla forces and their leftist allies denounced Ríos Montt, who sought to defeat the guerrilla insurgency with a combination of military action and economic reforms; in his words, "beans and rifles" (frijoles y fusiles).
An army officer was quoted in the New York Times of 18 July 1982 (the exact day of the Plan de Sánchez killings) as telling an audience of indigenous people
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
in Cunén
Cunén
Cunén is a municipality in the El Quiché department of Guatemala. The municipality covers 168 square kilometers. At an average altitude of 1,827 meters above sea level, its climate is temperate. It is 68 kilometers from the departmental capital, Santa Cruz del Quiché, as measured by paved road....
, in the department of El Quiché
Quiché (department)
El Quiché is a department of Guatemala.El Quiché department is in the heartland of the Quiché people, to the north-west of Guatemala City. The capital is Santa Cruz del Quiché.-Population:...
, that: "If you are with us, we'll feed you; if not, we'll kill you."
The government began to form local "civilian self-defence patrols" (the paramilitary forces known as patrullas de autodefensa civil or PACs). Participation was in theory voluntary, but in practice, many campesinos
Peasant
A peasant is an agricultural worker who generally tend to be poor and homeless-Etymology:The word is derived from 15th century French païsant meaning one from the pays, or countryside, ultimately from the Latin pagus, or outlying administrative district.- Position in society :Peasants typically...
, especially in the north-west, had no choice but to join either the PACs or the guerrillas. The country's conscript army, supported by the PACs, recaptured practically all the guerrilla-held territory – guerrilla activity lessened and was largely limited to hit-and-run operations. However, this partial victory was won at an enormous cost in civilian deaths.
Ríos Montt's brief presidency was probably the most violent period of the 36-year internal conflict, which resulted in about 200,000 deaths of mostly unarmed, mostly indigenous civilians.
Although leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squad
Death squad
A death squad is an armed military, police, insurgent, or terrorist squad that conducts extrajudicial killings, assassinations, and forced disappearances of persons as part of a war, insurgency or terror campaign...
s also engaged in summary executions, forced disappearance
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
s, and torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
of non-combatants, the vast majority of human rights violations were carried out by the military and the PACs they controlled. The internal conflict is described in great detail in the report of the Historical Clarification Commission
Historical Clarification Commission
The Historical Clarification Commission was Guatemala's truth and reconciliation commission.The creation of the CEH was ordered by the Oslo Accords of 1994 that sought to bring an end to the Central American nation's three-decade-long Civil War, during which an estimated 200,000 people lost their...
(Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, or CEH), which estimates that government forces and their paramilitary confederates were responsible for 93% of the violations.
On 8 August 1983, Ríos Montt was deposed by his own Minister of Defence, Gen. Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores
Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores
Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores was the 27th President of Guatemala from 8 August 1983 to 14 January 1986. A member of the military, he was President of Guatemala during a time of increased repression and death squad activity...
, who succeeded him as de facto president of Guatemala.
Local context
The central Guatemalan departmentDepartments of Guatemala
||Guatemala is divided into 22 departments :#Alta Verapaz#Baja Verapaz#Chimaltenango#Chiquimula#Petén#El Progreso#El Quiché#Escuintla#Guatemala#Huehuetenango#Izabal#Jalapa#Jutiapa#Quetzaltenango#Retalhuleu#Sacatepéquez...
of Baja Verapaz
Baja Verapaz
Baja Verapaz is a department in Guatemala. The capital is Salamá.Baja Verapaz houses the Mario Dary Biotope Preserve, preserving the native flora and fauna of the region, especially the endangered national bird of Guatemala, the Resplendent Quetzal....
comprises eight municipalities
Municipality
A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...
, one of which is Rabinal
Rabinal
Rabinal is a small town located in the Guatemalan department of Baja Verapaz, at . It serves as the administrative seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. The municipality covers 504 km² and, in 2004, had a population of around 36,000...
(15°6′0"N 90°27′0"W), some 70 km to the north of Guatemala City
Guatemala City
Guatemala City , is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Guatemala and Central America...
. In 1982, the municipality was made up of the municipal seat of Rabinal town, along with another 14 villages and 60 hamlets. Among the villages was Plan de Sánchez
Plan de Sánchez
Plan de Sánchez is a village in the municipality of Rabinal, Baja Verapaz department, Guatemala. On July 18, 1982, while General Efraín Ríos Montt was President of Guatemala, a massacre was committed there by government forces during which over 200 people were killed...
, located in a hilly woodland area some 9 km from the town of Rabinal. The local inhabitants were overwhelmingly Achi Maya
Achi people
The Achi are a Maya people in Guatemala. Their indigenous language is also called Achi and is closely related to K'iche'....
Native Americans. Achi is one of the 21 varieties of the Maya language
Maya language
A Maya language is one of a group of languages spoken by the Maya peoples of Mesoamerica.Maya language may also refer to:* Yucatec Maya language or Maya, a Mayan language spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula...
recognised in Guatemala; according to a 2002 government census, it was spoken by some 105,000 people in the Baja Verapaz highlands.
The events of July 1982
Since early 1982, the inhabitants of the area had been facing increasing pressure from theauthorities. Many of the local men had refused to participate in the self-defence patrols and, as a result, the military kept a strong presence in the area. Many men fled their homes for the mountains, leaving the womenfolk and children behind. Others had already, prior to the massacre, filed formal complaints – reporting the armed forces' constant threatening behaviour and harassment – with the justice of the peace in Rabinal, but these allegations were never investigated; on the contrary, the men who lodged the complaints were fined.
In early July 1982, a military aircraft flew over the village and dropped a number of bombs on areas close to several homes. On 15 July, an army detachment set up camp in the village and began house-to-house inspections, asking after the menfolk and threatening the villagers.
Sunday, 18 July, was market-day in Rabinal. The pathways and roads of the municipality were, from an early hour, crowded with people from local villages and farms taking their goods to market. The village of Plan de Sánchez was one of several settlements criss-crossed by the network of routes leading to the municipal seat.
At around 08:00 that Sunday morning, soldiers at the military detachment fired two 105-mm mortar
Mortar (weapon)
A mortar is an indirect fire weapon that fires explosive projectiles known as bombs at low velocities, short ranges, and high-arcing ballistic trajectories. It is typically muzzle-loading and has a barrel length less than 15 times its caliber....
shell
Shell (projectile)
A shell is a payload-carrying projectile, which, as opposed to shot, contains an explosive or other filling, though modern usage sometimes includes large solid projectiles properly termed shot . Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used...
s at the village. One of these landed to the east of the main group of houses; the other, to the west. Later that same day, between 14:00 and 15:00, a military detachment arrived in Plan de Sánchez.
This force of some 60 men – comprising regular army (led by a captain and a lieutenant), PAC patrolmen, police, and civilians dressed in military fatigues and armed with assault rifle
Assault rifle
An assault rifle is a selective fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. Assault rifles are the standard infantry weapons in most modern armies...
s –
took up stations at the village's points of entry and exit, heading off people from other settlements returning from market. Others went from house to house, gathering the inhabitants together. At this point, some of the men succeeded in fleeing the round-up and took to the surrounding woods and hills.
The younger women were sent to one house, with the men, children, and older women directed to another. A group of around twenty of the younger women (aged between 12 and 20) were separated from the main group and taken to another building; there, they were humiliated, accused of supporting the guerrillas, beaten, and raped. A handful of these women managed to escape and take refuge in the surrounding countryside, while the remainder were killed.
The children were separated from the main group and beaten and kicked to death. Then, at around
17:00, the soldiers threw two hand grenade
Hand grenade
A hand grenade is any small bomb that can be thrown by hand. Hand grenades are classified into three categories, explosive grenades, chemical and gas grenades. Explosive grenades are the most commonly used in modern warfare, and are designed to detonate after impact or after a set amount of time...
s into the house where the adults were being held and began spraying the walls with automatic gunfire. Residents of nearby villages and those from Plan de Sánchez who were observing the massacre from vantage points in the surrounding hills report that intense gunfire continued until about 20:00, when the army set fire to the buildings. The armed forces finally left the village at around 23:00.
The next morning, some of those who had fled returned to the smoking ruins of their village. None of the bodies in the houses could be identified; many of the others who had fallen in the yards adjacent to the houses had bullet holes in their heads, chests, and backs, but identification of these victims was made difficult because many of the charred corpses had already been partially devoured by dogs and other animals.
At around 15:00 on that Monday, two military commissioners and a squad of PAC patrolmen arrived in Plan de Sánchez and ordered the survivors to dig graves and bury the victims' remains, threatening them that the village would be bombarded by the air force if they failed to comply. More than 20 clandestine communal graves
Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple number of human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave, although the United Nations defines a mass grave as a burial site which...
were dug and filled. Meanwhile, the patrolmen ransacked the houses that had not been burned down, stealing personal property and livestock and destroying identification papers.
Witness testimony
- "They separated the children, and the girls of 15 to 20 years old. Then they began the massacre. First, they tortured the elderly, because they said the latter were guerrillas; then they threw two grenades and fired weapons… After executing the women, the men and the elderly, they took the children one by one, smashed them against the ground, and threw them into the flames. No one could escape because the Army had surrounded the entrance and exit of Plan de Sánchez, as well as the adjacent roads… [The next day] he braced himself to leave the place where he was hiding to go and examine the havoc that had been wrought. Together with his brothers, Juan, Buenaventura and Esteban, and with Eulalio Grave Ramírez, he put out the fire that was still consuming the corpses."
- – Benjamín Manuel Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgement.
- "They separated the girls who were 15 to 20 years old from this group, and took them to Guillerma Grave Manuel's house; they raped them; they broke their arms and legs, and then they killed them… The children were smashed against the floor, and then thrown into the flames together with their parents… At 8 p.m., he was able to enter his own home and saw that his wife and three of his children were dead. He found one of his daughters alive; she had managed to escape, because she was buried under the bodies of her two siblings."
- – Eulalio Grave Ramírez, Inter-American Court's reparations judgement.
- "My sister went shopping in Rabinal but when she got to the hamlet of Plan de Sánchez the army was already there. There they grabbed her and raped her in a house. There were fifteen girls raped and then they were riddled with bullets. Afterward, they were buried by the people, in a clandestine cemetery."
- – Unidentified female villager, Draining the Sea (CIIDHInternational Centre for Human Rights ResearchThe International Centre for Human Rights Research or CIIDH is a Guatemalan non-governmental organisation....
).
- – Unidentified female villager, Draining the Sea (CIIDH
- "The witness heard her mother, who was walking through the village, scream and saw when they seized her nine-month old nephew from her mother, with its shawl and everything, and took them to the house where all the people were gathered… At the time of the massacre, she was 13 or 14 years old. She lost her mother, sister, grandmother, aunts and all her cousins, even the babies… The following day, she was able to see the corpses, but only for a short time, because the soldiers granted three hours to bury her next of kin."
- – Narcisa Corazón Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgement.
Aftermath
Over the ensuing months, because of regular visits by the army during which they were threatened, harassed, and intimidated, most of the survivors abandoned the village for the mountains, other towns and villages, or Guatemala CityGuatemala City
Guatemala City , is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Guatemala and Central America...
. In 1985, they began to trickle back and were allowed to resettle in Plan de Sánchez and work their land, provided that they served in the PACs and remained subject at all times to military oversight. By 1987, some 20 families were again living in the village, albeit under strict orders from the military not to discuss the massacre. The harassment and threats from the military and paramilitaries continued, and the requirement that they patrol with the PACs was enforced, until the peace accords were signed and the civilian self-defence patrols were dissolved in 1996.
Witness testimony
- "The militarisation of Plan de Sánchez prevented them from continuing their ancestral traditions. Before the massacre, they performed individual and private ceremonies, called "devotions". Several of the older men were responsible for officiating these acts, but many of them died in the massacre and their knowledge could not be transmitted to the new generations… Owing to the repression exercised by the Army and the obligation for the young men to do military service, the latter lost their faith, their devotion for the traditions and knowledge of their ancestors, and did not want to continue the traditions… They performed a few Mayan ceremonies very infrequently, because the military agents did not allow these rites, alleging that they were practicing witchcraft against their enemies."
- – Benjamín Manuel Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgement.
- "The witness was obliged to enlist in the Army for 30 months. On 31 October 1987, he left the military barracks to return to Plan de Sánchez… [and] was obliged to join the patrol again. The men who survived found second wives among women from other communities, because very few women were left in Plan de Sánchez after the massacre."
- – Buenaventura Manuel Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgement.
- "The older people who were responsible for officiating the Mayan ceremonies died in the massacre and the traditions died with them, because the young people did not have anyone to teach them… Military agents and the patrols monitored every meeting, so that they were afraid to hold their religious ceremonies. No one could speak freely or discuss the situation of repression and violence in which the community lived."
- – Eulalio Grave Ramírez, Inter-American Court's reparations judgement.
Death toll
Years later, the petition lodged with the Inter-American Commission on Human RightsInter-American Commission on Human Rights
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States .Along with the...
by the survivors and next-of-kin set the death toll of the massacre at 268,
and the Guatemalan state, in the later supranational proceedings, admitted its responsibility in that number of killings.
However, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...
published a list of named victims that numbered only 170,
and various other reports on the incident quote figures of between 150 and 200. Forensic anthropologists
Forensic anthropology
Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropology and human osteology in a legal setting, most often in criminal cases where the victim's remains are in the advanced stages of decomposition. A forensic anthropologist can assist in the identification of deceased...
working on the massacre site have exhumed fewer than 100 sets of remains.
The discrepancies in the various figures can be attributed to several factors: first of all, entire families were killed, and many of the survivors were subsequently scattered across the country. The absence of relatives made tallying the dead more difficult, as did the severe warnings the villagers received in the immediately ensuing years about what would happen if they discussed the massacre. The fact that many of the victims were burnt alive in a single, small enclosure complicated the identification of remains and, to date, it is not certain that all the clandestine graves in the vicinity of Plan de Sánchez have been found.
Domestic legal proceedings
On 10 December 1992, a group of villagers reported the existence of a clandestine grave in Plan de Sánchez and, on 7 May 1993, Ramiro de León CarpioRamiro de León Carpio
Ramiro de León Carpio was the President of Guatemala from 6 June 1993 until 14 January 1996.-Career:He studied law at the University of San Carlos and then at the Rafael Landívar University, where he ran the Sol Bolivariano newspaper...
, the country's human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
ombudsman
Ombudsman
An ombudsman is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some internal or external constituency while representing not only but mostly the broad scope of constituent interests...
(Procurador de los Derechos Humanos), lodged an official accusation with the public prosecution service, reporting the massacre that had taken place 11 years earlier.
A criminal investigation was begun by an investigating magistrate in Salamá
Salamá
Salamá is a city in Guatemala. It is the capital of the department of Baja Verapaz. It is situated at 940 m above sea level.The municipality of Salamá, for which the city of Salamá serves as the administrative centre, covers a total surface area of 776 km² and contains 40,000 people.The...
, Baja Verapaz
Baja Verapaz
Baja Verapaz is a department in Guatemala. The capital is Salamá.Baja Verapaz houses the Mario Dary Biotope Preserve, preserving the native flora and fauna of the region, especially the endangered national bird of Guatemala, the Resplendent Quetzal....
, and, on 8 June 1994, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team (EAFG) began examining the clandestine graves in the community. Two months later, the forensic anthropologists had exhumed a total of 84 corpses from 21 graves. An additional grave site was identified during the field work and, once the legal formalities had been met, the EAFG was able to examine it, and exhume four sets of human remains, in August 1996.
On 2 September 1996, Ombudsman Jorge Mario García Laguardia
Jorge Mario García Laguardia
Dr. Jorge Mario García Laguardia is a Guatemalan jurist.He has been a tenured lecturer at several Guatemalan and foreign universities, including the Universidad de San Carlos in Guatemala City and the National Autonomous University of Mexico,...
issued a historic resolution in which he denounced the massacre of Plan de Sánchez (and two others that took place in Rabinal the same year: Chichupac and Río Negro
Río Negro Massacre
In 1978, in the face of civil war, the Guatemalan government proceeded with its economic development program, including the construction of the Chixoy hydroelectric dam. Financed in large part by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, the Chixoy Dam was built in Rabinal, a region of...
) as crimes against humanity
Crime against humanity
Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings...
, laid the blame for them firmly at the feet of the government and the military, and said that they had been carried out as part of a premeditated state policy.
In May 1997, the villagers named as plaintiffs in the criminal investigation gave the authorities a list of names of soldiers and patrolmen who had been involved in the massacre.
In June 1997, they requested ballistic tests on the spent cartridges found in the graves; the ballistic material was reported as "lost" by the prosecution service and did not resurface until February 2000. As late as May 2000, no formal charges had been filed in the case.
Supranational legal proceedings
In October 1996, faced with constant delays and other irregularities in the domestic proceedings and stonewalled by the terms of the National Reconciliation Law, under which amnesties were granted to the suspected perpetrators of the massacre, the survivors and their representatives decided to lodge a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human RightsInter-American Commission on Human Rights
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States .Along with the...
(IACHR). The IACHR is the agency of the Organisation of American States
Organization of American States
The Organization of American States is a regional international organization, headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States...
charged with overseeing the American Convention on Human Rights
American Convention on Human Rights
The American Convention on Human Rights is an international human rights instrument.It was adopted by the nations of the Americas meeting in San José, Costa Rica, in 22 November 1969...
, a continental human rights instrument that Guatemala ratified in 1978, and responsible for ensuring justice for victims of human rights abuses when domestic legal systems fail.
In their filing, they accused the Guatemalan state of violating the victims' human rights by allowing its agents to kill civilian men, women, and children and by failing to respond to that situation with measures of judicial protection and guarantees. Guatemala replied to the petition by stating that during the armed conflict both parties committed abuses, and that events such as those in Plan de Sánchez stand as testimony to that fact. It went on to say, however, that the villagers' petition was inadmissible since it had been presented extemporaneously and because the jurisdictional remedies offered by the domestic courts had not yet been exhausted. The petitioners countered that they had attempted to exhaust the domestic remedies, but had been prevented from so doing by excessive procedural delays on the part of the state's judicial officers. Finding for the petitioners, the Commission declared the case admissible on 11 March 1999.
On 9 August 2000, during (failed) negotiations between the state, the petitioners, and the Commission with a view to reaching a friendly settlement of this case and others, President
President of Guatemala
The title of President of Guatemala has been the usual title of the leader of Guatemala since 1839, when that title was assumed by Mariano Rivera Paz...
Alfonso Portillo
Alfonso Portillo
Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera is a Guatemalan politician. He served as the President of the Republic of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004....
admitted the state's "institutional responsibility" for the massacre.
On 28 February 2002, the IACHR issued a resolution recommending that the Guatemalan government:
- Conduct a serious investigation to prosecute and punish those who perpetrated and masterminded the massacre.
- Make reparations (including but not limited to financial compensation) to the survivors of the massacre, to the next-of-kin of the dead, and to the village as a community.
- Take steps to ensure that similar incidents did not occur in the future.
Two months later, after consulting with the petitioners, the Inter-American Commission referred the case to the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
Inter-American Court of Human Rights
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...
.
Guatemala first lodged three exceptions with the Court, arguing, inter alia, that the case was not admissible because the available domestic remedies had not been exhausted and that the scope of President Portillo's admission of responsibility had been misconstrued. At the Court's public hearing on 23 April 2004, however, the state withdrew those exceptions. It then repeated the admission of responsibility extended by Alfonso Portillo in August 2000 and admitted that it had violated the human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
enshrined in Articles 1, 5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 21, 21, 24, and 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights
American Convention on Human Rights
The American Convention on Human Rights is an international human rights instrument.It was adopted by the nations of the Americas meeting in San José, Costa Rica, in 22 November 1969...
. It asked the victims for their forgiveness and expressed its willingness to make full amends. Guatemala did not, however, address the charges of genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
levelled at it by the Commission in its application to the Court, since that particular crime against humanity was not covered by the Convention. The Court accepted the state's admission of guilt, issued a judgement to that effect on 29 April 2004,
and proceeded with the reparations phase.
On 19 November 2004, the Inter-American Court issued its reparations judgement.
In order to make full redress to the survivors of the massacre and to the next-of-kin of those who were killed, Guatemala was ordered to make compensatory payments to those individuals totalling USD
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
$7,996,836 – the highest award ever given by the Court.
In addition to the monetary redress, the Court ordered the state to fulfill its legal duties, undertake various infrastructure projects in the locality, and realise various symbolic acts of reparation and reconciliation:
- Conduct a proper investigation of the massacre, and identify and punish the guilty.
- Organise a ceremony in Plan de Sánchez at which high-ranking government officials would recognise the state's responsibility and honour the memory of the dead, to be covered by the media and conducted in both Spanish and Achi Maya.
- Translate the American Convention on Human Rights and the Court's two judgements into Achi Maya.
- Publish key sections of those judgements in its official gazette and in a major national newspaper (in both languages).
- Pay USD $25,000 for the upkeep of the village's memorial chapel to the massacre victims.
- Build houses in the village.
- Provide the survivors with any medical and psychological care they might require – free of charge, including medicines and supplies.
- In addition to regular budgeted government spending:
- Promote the study and awareness of the Achi Maya language and culture in the affected communities.
- Improve the municipality's road network, drinking water supply, and sewerage systems.
- Provide the communities with qualified, bilingual schoolteachers.
- Set up a health clinic in Plan de Sánchez and a health centre in the town of Rabinal.
All these items were to be completed within five years of the Court's judgement, with the state submitting annual progress reports until completion.
Guatemala was also ordered to pay USD $55,000 in costs.
The public ceremony required by the judgement was held in Plan de Sánchez on 18 July 2005, the 23rd anniversary of the massacre. It was attended by representatives of the government, led by Vice President
Vice President of Guatemala
Vice President of Guatemala is a political position in Guatemala which is since 1966 elected concurrently with the position of President of Guatemala. Latest Vice President who took over as President was Gustavo Espina in 1993....
Eduardo Stein
Eduardo Stein
Dr. Eduardo Stein Barillas is a Guatemalan diplomat.He was the Vice President of Guatemala, serving a concurrent four-year mandate with that of President Óscar Berger, from 14 January 2004 to 14 January 2008....
, delegations from the IACHR and the International Centre for Human Rights Research
International Centre for Human Rights Research
The International Centre for Human Rights Research or CIIDH is a Guatemalan non-governmental organisation....
(CIIDH), as well as survivors and relatives of the victims. During the ceremony, Stein apologised for the actions of the army, which had "unleashed bloodshed and fire to wipe out an entire community".
External links
- Inter-American Commission on Human RightsInter-American Commission on Human RightsThe Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is an autonomous organ of the Organization of American States .Along with the...
:- Plan de Sánchez Massacre: Report No. 31/99, Case No. 11.763. Admissibility report, 11 March 1999. Accessed on 18 July 2005.
- Inter-American Court of Human RightsInter-American Court of Human RightsThe Inter-American Court of Human Rights is an autonomous judicial institution based in the city of San José, Costa Rica. Together with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, it makes up the human rights protection system of the Organization of American States , which serves to uphold and...
:- Case of the Plan de Sánchez Massacre v. Guatemala. Merits. Judgement of 29 April 2004, Series C No. 105. Accessed on 18 July 2005.
- Case of the Plan de Sánchez Massacre v. Guatemala. Reparations and Costs. Judgement of 19 November 2004, Series C No. 116. Accessed on 18 July 2005.
- Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology FoundationGuatemalan Forensic Anthropology FoundationThe Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation is an autonomous, non-profit, technical and scientific non-governmental organisation.Its aim is to strengthen the administration of justice and respect for human rights by investigating, documenting, and raising awareness about past instances of...
:- The Massacres of Rabinal. Guatemala City, 1997. Accessed on 18 July 2005.
- International Centre for Human Rights ResearchInternational Centre for Human Rights ResearchThe International Centre for Human Rights Research or CIIDH is a Guatemalan non-governmental organisation....
:- Draining the Sea: An Analysis of Terror in Three Communities in Rural Guatemala, 1980–1984. Guatemala City, 1996. Accessed on 18 July 2005.
- Draining the Sea. Chapter 4: State Terror in Three Guatemalan Regions: Rabinal, Baja Verapaz
- Commission for Historical Clarification:
- Guatemala: Memoria del silencio (final report). Guatemala City: 1999. Accessed on 18 July 2005.
- Guatemala: Memory of Silence. Summarised English translation of the CEH's final report.
- Press:
- "Estado reconoció responsabilidad por hechos violentos de 1982" Diario de Centro AméricaDiario de Centro AméricaThe Diario de Centro América is the newspaper of public record in Guatemala. Founded in 1880, it is the official newspaper of the country's government.-External links:...
(official gazette), 19 July 2005. - "Disculpa oficial por masacre" BBC MundoBBC WorldBBC World News is the BBC's international news and current affairs television channel. It has the largest audience of any BBC channel in the world...
, 19 July 2005. - "Guatemala apologises for 1982 massacre" Guardian UnlimitedGuardian Unlimitedguardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
, 19 July 2005. - "Guatemala apologises for killings": The Globe and MailThe Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
, 19 July 2005.
- "Estado reconoció responsabilidad por hechos violentos de 1982" Diario de Centro América