David Toro Escobar writes in La Prensa Latina about the trial of nine former members of the Guatemalan army regarding the 1982 massacre of Rancho Bejuco. Of the 25 indigenous Achi Maya peoples killed, 17 were children. Rancho Bejuco, is a hamlet some 80 km (50 mi) north of Guatemala City, and the massacre followed the refusal of the community’s male residents to join a rural militia established by the military.
The Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Network (BTS) outlines the events and also provides a brief summary of the challenges faced in bringing the case to trial.
On the 29th of July, 1982 a group of civil patrollers and military commissioners committed a massacre in the community of Rancho Bejuco located in the municipality of El Chol, Baja Verapaz. This violence targeted a group of children and women fleeing violence in other communities. The 25 people killed in the Rancho Bejuco massacre were mostly children, some as young as 8 months old. They had fled their community of Xesiguan, Rabinal during the conflict and were looking for refuge in El Chol.
In 1997, a formal report denouncing the massacre was made. Two years later in 1999 an exhumation was performed, uncovering the bodies of 15 of the massacred. In 2022, 9 ex-civil-patrollers were captured and remanded to preventative custody by judge Erica Aifán of the high risk court D.
You can read the piece from La Prensa Latina here, 9 Ex-soldiers go on trial in Guatemala for 1982 massacre.
You can read the piece from BTS here, The Massacre of Rancho Bejuco, and the challenges facing the ongoing fight for justice here, Progress and Set-backs in the First Declarations Phase of the Rancho Bejuco Case.
Categories: Accompaniment, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Military, Racism, Solidarity in Action, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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