laura (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} shinyobject) wrote,@ 2008-04-29 02:36:00 |
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The short version: 332 years after the Mayans were massacred by Spanish conquistadors, the U.S. helps overthrow the democratically elected government, implementing a military regime. We continued supporting this military government financially and politically for decades. Over 200,000 people died during the civil war that lasted 36 years, ending in 1996. Entire Mayan villages were massacred by government troops, including infants, and buried in mass graves. Widespread gang rape, torture, and mutilation, portrayal of the indiginous Mayans (over 60% of the population *today*, after all this) as subhuman...
Did you know about any of this? Why is this not taught in schools alongside the Vietnam War and the Holocaust?
Oh, right. Because the U.S. is the bad guy here.
1523-24 - Spanish adventurer Pedro de Alvarado defeats the indigenous Maya and turns Guatemala into a Spanish colony.
1941 - Guatemala declares war on the Axis powers.
1944 - Juan Jose Arevalo becomes president following the overthrow of Ubico and introduces social-democratic reforms, including setting up a social security system and redistributing land to landless peasants.
 |  Efrain Rios Montt era saw some of the war's worst episodes Born in 1926 1982: Led military coup 2003: Unsuccessful bid for presidency  |
1951 - Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman becomes president, continuing Arevalo's reforms.
1954 - Land reform stops with the accession to power of Colonel Carlos Castillo in a coup backed by the US and prompted by Arbenz's nationalisation of plantations of the United Fruit Company.
|  Indians make up about 60% of Guatemala's population |
1998 - Catholic Bishop Juan Gerardi, a human rights campaigner, murdered [beaten to death with a concrete block after unearthing evidence that the military massacred thousands of civilians during the civil war. His murderers were never punished]
1999 - UN-backed commission says security forces were behind 93% of all human rights atrocities committed during the civil war, which claimed 200,000 lives, and that senior officials had overseen 626 massacres in Maya villages.
2000 - Alfonso Portillo sworn in as president after winning elections in 1999.
2001 December - President Portillo pays $1.8 millon in compensation to the families of 226 men, women and children killed by soldiers and paramilitaries in the northern village of Las Dos Erres in 1982.
2006 July - A Spanish judge issues a warrant for the arrest of former military leader Efrain Rios Montt and other former officials over atrocities committed during the civil war.
2007 May - Guatemala ratifies an international adoption treaty, committing to make sure babies aren't bought or stolen.
2007 July - Amnesty International urges the government to ratify the CICIG as a first step towards tackling the culture of impunity it says has contributed to Guatemala's soaring murder rate.
2007 August - International election monitors say they are worried about the high murder rate among political candidates and activists in the run-up to the 9 September polls.
2007 November - Alvaro Colom of the center-left National Unity of Hope Party wins presidential elections with nearly 53 percent of the vote.
selectively copy-pasted from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/coun
Still proud to be an American, we do a lot of great things, but we really need to stop torturing and massacring and being complacent or even supportive of genocide. Just a thought.
