Víctor Peña presented this photo essay in Spanish in March 2019, in El Faro. It is now translated in the lead-up to the verdict in the trial of retired Guatemalan General Benedicto Lucas García on the charge of genocide against the Maya Ixil people.
Four decades ago, in the early 1980s, the Maya Ixil people were crushed by the Guatemalan Army as it perpetrated multiple massacres across Ixil territory, a region encompassing the municipalities of Santa María Nebaj, San Gaspar Chajul, and San Juan Cotzal in the department of Quiché, some 300 kilometers from Guatemala City. Under the justification of counterinsurgency, the Guatemalan military murdered hundreds of Indigenous people in multiple operations. The Ixil people continue to denounce abuses, counsel each other, honor the victims, and remember their lost loved ones every day. And they do it all in the same remote and isolated countryside where the communities attacked during the armed conflict, and ignored by the state during the post-war period, survive to this day. Decades after the war, the dead live among them still.
You can view the whole powerful piece with photos, here, Ixil Dignity.
The translation was by Max Granger.
Categories: Accompaniment, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Military, Solidarity in Action, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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