National elections were held on November 9, 2003. Oscar Berger Perdomo of the Grand National Alliance (GANA) party won the election, receiving 54.1% of the vote. His opponent, Alvarado Colom Caballeros of the Nation Unity for Hope (UNE) party received 45.9% of the vote. The new government assumed office on January 14, 2004.
==Civil War and US involvement==
The Guatemala Civil War was predominantly fought between the government of Guatemala and insurgents between 1960 and 1996.
In 1999, an independent Guatemalan Truth Commission (the "[[Historical Clarification Commission]]") issued a report which, according to Robert Parry writing in Consortiumnews.com, among other things, stated that the "government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some of these state operations." Parry also writes that the report {{quote|...estimate[s] that the Guatemalan conflict claimed the lives of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980s. Based on a review of about 20% of the dead, the panel blamed the army for 93% of the killings and leftist guerrillas for three percent. Four percent were listed as unresolved....the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages... [which] "eliminated entire Mayan villages... completely exterminat[ing] Mayan communities, destroy[ing] their livestock and crops."|Robert Parry|Consortiumnews.com<ref name=Guat_Perry>
{{cite web
| title =History of Guatemala's 'Death Squads'
| url =http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/011005.html
| accessdate=2007-06-23
| author =Robert Parry
}}</ref>}}
The report went on to term the Guatemalan military's campaign in the northern highlands a "genocide," and that besides "carrying out murder and "disappearances," the army routinely engaged in torture and rape. "The rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice" by the military and paramilitary forces, the report found."
In 1984 Human Rights Watch reported on Guatemala, stating: “Previous America’s Watch reports on Guatemala have discussed the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror. The killing continues as we document in this, our third report on Guatemala.”
<blockquote>
“As best as we can determine the rural massacres are smaller in scope, which partly reflects the fact that so many of Guatemala’s villages had already been decimated during the army’s terror tactics in the counterinsurgency campaign that it waged in 1982 and the early part of 1983. On the other hand the number of rural killings remains very high, and the number of killings in the cities has risen sharply, coming to resemble the situation that prevailed under President Lucas Garcia (1978-1982)” (Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984, p. 2-3)
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“The government of Guatemala continues to engage in the systematic use of torture as a means of gathering intelligence and coercing confessions. There is also evidence that torture is used for exemplary purposes, to instill fear among those who see themselves as potential victims of arrest or abduction. … We do find that between the Rios Montt and Meija administrations there has been no appreciable difference where the use of torture is concerned. “ (Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984, p11.)
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“In such places, the army faces a crucial dilemma: the resources are not now available to permanently garrison each village. Yet, should they be totally neglected, they could become an important stronghold for opposing the regime. In such situations, the army exercises several options designed to place the community under military control and hold back the development of any opposition. One frequent approach is terror: the burning of houses, beatings, torture, selective killings and even massacres. Distant communities visited in northwest Quiche, near the Huehuetenango border, have experienced some form of military terror…Not one community is what it used to be; a forced transformation has befallen each one. The terror does not simply stem from the cruelty of the armed forces or from the policies of a specific government- although both factors are obviously involved- but from the systematic application of force to maintain effective military control in remote areas of the country-side…the terror is sufficient to ensure that the population understands that no level of dissent, let alone rebellion, will be tolerated. When a village is burned and its people abused, the message is that this is punishment for real or imagined cooperation with the opposition.” (Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984, p.60)</blockquote>
====US involvement====
Declassified CIA documents<ref name="NSAArchive-Guatemala">
{{cite web|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/index.html|title=CIA and Assassinations: The Guatemala 1954 Documents |publisher=George Washington University NSA Archive (Republished)}}</ref> show that the United States was instrumental in organizing, funding, and equipping the [[1954 Guatemalan coup d'état|coup]] which toppled the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954. Analysts Kate Doyle and Peter Kornbluh argue that "After a small insurgency developed in the wake of the coup, Guatemala's military leaders developed and refined, with U.S. assistance, a massive counterinsurgency campaign that left tens of thousands massacred, maimed or missing." Professor of History, Stephen G. Rabe, writes in "In destroying the popularly elected government of [[Jacobo Arbenz Guzman]] (1950-1954), the United States initiated a nearly four-decade-long cycle of terror and repression that led to the death of 200,000 Guatemalans." <ref>{{cite book|title=Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954-1961 (review) |publisher=The Americas |page=Volume 59, Number 4 |date=April 2003 |pages=601-603 |author=Stephen G. Rabe}}</ref>
After the U.S.-backed coup, which toppled president [[Jacobo Arbenz]], lead coup plotter [[Castillo Armas]] assumed power. Author and university professor, Patrice McSherry argues that with Armas at the head of government, "the United States began to militarize Guatemala almost immediately, financing and reorganizing the police and military."<ref name=" EvolutionofNationalSecurityState "> J. Patrice McSherry. “The Evolution of the National Security State: The Case of Guatemala.” ''Socialism and Democracy''. Spring/Summer 1990, 133.</ref>
Human rights expert Michael McClintock<ref>{{cite web| title = About Michael McClintock | publisher = Human Rights First | url = http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/about_us/staff/mcclintock_m.htm | accessdate = 2007-07-03}}</ref> has argued that the national security apparatus Armas presided over was “almost entirely oriented toward countering subversion,” and that the key component of that apparatus was “an intelligence system set up by the United States.”<ref name="AmericanConnection"> Michael McClintock. ''The American Connection Volume 2: State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala''. London: Zed Books Ltd., 1985, pp. 2, 32. </ref> At the core of this intelligence system were records of communist party members, pro-Arbenz organizations, teacher associations, and peasant unions which were used to create a detailed “Black List” with names and information about some 70,000 individuals that were viewed as potential subversives. It was “CIA counter-intelligence officers who sorted the records and determined how they could be put to use.”<ref>McClintock 32-33.</ref> McClintock argues that this list persisted as an index of subversives for several decades and probably served as a database of possible targets for the counter-insurgency campaign that began in the early 1960s.<ref>McClintock 33.</ref>
Patrice McSherry argues that after a successful (U.S. backed) coup against president [[Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes]] in 1963, U.S. advisors began to work with Colonel [[Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio]] to defeat the guerrillas, borrowing “extensively from current counterinsurgency strategies and technology being employed in Vietnam.” Between the years of 1966-68 alone some 8,000 peasants were murdered by the U.S. trained forces of Colonel Arana Osorio.<ref> McSherry 134.</ref> Sociologist Jeffrey M. Paige writes that Arana Osorio "earned the nickname "The Butcher of Zacapa" for killing 15,000 peasants to eliminate 300 suspected rebels." <ref>Jeffery M. Paige, Social Theory and Peasant Revolution in Vietnam and Guatemala, Theory and Society, Vol. 12, No. 6 (Nov., 1983), pp. 699-737 </ref>
McClintock argues that “counter-insurgency doctrine, as imparted by the United States civil and military assistance agencies, had a tremendous influence on Guatemala’s security system and a devastating impact on Guatemala’s people.”<ref>McClintock 75.</ref> He writes:
{{quote|United States counter-insurgency doctrine encouraged the Guatemalan military to adopt both new organizational forms and new techniques in order to root out insurgency more effectively. New techniques would revolve around a central precept of the new counter-insurgency: that counter insurgent war must be waged free of restriction by laws, by the rules of war, or moral considerations: guerrilla “terror” could be defeated only by the untrammeled use of “counter-terror”, the terrorism of the state.|Michael McClintock<ref>McClintock 54.</ref>}}
McClintock writes that this idea was also articulated by Colonel John Webber, the chief of the U.S. Military Mission in Guatemala, who instigated the technique of “counter-terror.” Colonel Webber defended his policy by saying, “That’s the way this country is. The Communists are using everything they have, including terror. And it must be met.”<ref>McClintock 61.</ref>
According to the Center for International Policy, "The CIA established a liaison relationship with Guatemalan security services widely known to have reprehensible human rights records, and it continued covert aid after the cutoff of overt military aid in 1990. This liaison relationship and continued covert aid occurred with the knowledge of the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Congressional oversight committees. Contrary to public allegations, CIA did not increase covert funding for Guatemala to compensate for the cut-off of military aid in 1990."<ref name="guat">[http://www.ciponline.org/iob.htm Report on the Guatemala Review] Intelligence Oversight Board. [[June 28]], [[1996]]. In 1995 CIA aid was stopped. </ref> [[Robert E. White]], a former ambassador to El Salvador and Paraguay, and president of the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. writes, that the human rights report makes "grim reading", and that:
{{quote|"the United States was not backing one side in a civil war but rather a campaign of official terror. Of the more than 200,000 victims, the commission found that the army and other state agents killed 93 percent. With direct orders from the government's highest echelons and the military high command, soldiers carried out a scorched-earth policy burning Mayan villages and throwing the still-living victims into common burial pits. Declassified documents reveal that Washington knew of these acts of genocide yet our government continued its assistance to the Guatemalan military."<ref>{{cite news|article=Rethinking Foreign Policy: Lessons from Latin America |publisher=Commonweal |date=June 4, 1999 |author=White, Robert E.}}</ref> |}}
He further states that {{quote|"the Guatemalan truth commission was right to single out the CIA for special mention. Between 1965 and 1981, I served in our embassies in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. I watched as the CIA recruited dozens of paid informants from the right-wing fringes of Central American society. These ideologues regarded labor union leaders threatening a strike or student activists protesting the closing of a newspaper as agents of subversion. I watched as CIA reports to Washington characterized as Communist or Communist sympathizers, brave men and women whose only crime was to work for the restoration of democratic government and against the U.S.- supported military dictator. Worst of all, I watched as the CIA shared its "intelligence" with the leaders of these military regimes. Not unnaturally these authorities regarded any person fingered in an official CIA report as a legitimate target for persecution, even death."[http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-55707739.html]<ref>{{cite news|article=Rethinking Foreign Policy: Lessons from Latin America |publisher=Commonweal |date=June 4, 1999 |author=White, Robert E.}}</ref>|}}
Utilizing declassified government documents, researchers Kate Doyle and Carlos Osorio from the research institute the [[National Security Archive]] document that Guatemalan Colonel Byron Lima Estrada took military police and counterintelligence courses at the [[School of the Americas]]. He later served in several elite counterinsurgency units trained and equipped by the U.S. Military Assistance Program (MAP). He would eventually rise to command [[D-2]], the Guatemalan Military Intelligence services who were responsible for many of the terror tactics wielded throughout the 1980s.<ref name="NSAArchive-Guatemala03">
{{cite web|url=http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB25/index.htm|title=Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada |publisher=George Washington University NSA Archive (Republished)}}</ref>
In 1999, the Guatemalan Truth Commission (the "[[Historical Clarification Commission]]") issued a report which, among other things, stated that "The CEH recognises that the movement of Guatemala towards polarisation, militarization and civil war was not just the result of national history. The cold war also played an important role. Whilst anti-communism, promoted by the United States within the framework of its foreign policy, received firm support from right-wing political parties and from various other powerful actors in Guatemala, the United States demonstrated that it was willing to provide support for strong military regimes in its strategic backyard. In the case of Guatemala, military assistance was directed towards reinforcing the national intelligence apparatus and for training the officer corps in counterinsurgency techniques, key factors which had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation."[http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc1.html]
In their 1998 "Report On Guatemala" Rolando Alecio and Ruth Taylor condemn the "legacy of state terror" the nation has inherited from the U.S.-backed and -trained military.{{Nonspecific|date=March 2008}}
Minor Sinclair writes in the Sojourner that:
{{quote |Recent disclosures have revealed the extent of U.S. support for the Guatemalan army despite its reputation as the most repressive military in Latin America. For years Guatemala's elite military officers have been trained in the United States, and at any given time dozens are on the CIA payroll.<ref name=Guat_Sinclair>{{cite web |title =Sorrow Lifted to the Heavens
|url =http://www.sojo.net/
|accessdate=2007-06-23
|author =Minor Sinclair
}}</ref>}}
Writing for ''[[The Nation]]'', in 1995 [[Allan Nairn]] argued that "North American C.l. A. operatives [were] work[ing] inside a Guatemalan Army unit that maintain[ed] a network of torture centers and ha[d] killed thousands of Guatemalan civilians." Nairn stated that Gramajos was a CIA asset and receiving pay from them, and he linked Gramajos to the early 1980s highland massacres.<ref name="Nairn">{{cite news|title=C.I.A. Death Squads |publisher=The Nation |date=April 1995 |author=Allan Nairn}}</ref><ref name="Nairn2">{{cite news|title=The country team |publisher=The Nation |date=June 5, 2005 |author=Allan Nairn}}</ref><ref name="Arnove1">{{cite news|title=An Interview With Allan Nairn |publisher=Znet Magazine |date=June 2005 |author=Anthony Arnove}}</ref>
Gramajos allegedly said that "We aren't renouncing the use of force. If we have to use it, we have to use it, but in a more sophisticated manner. You needn't kill everyone to complete the job. [You can use] more sophisticated means; we aren't going to return to the large-scale massacres. We have created a more humanitarian, less costly strategy, to be more compatible with the democratic system. We instituted Civil Affairs [in 1982] which provides development for 70 percent of the people while we kill 30 percent. Before the strategy was to kill 100 percent."<ref>Jennifer Schirmer, "The Guatemalan military project: an interview with Gen. Hector Gramajo," Harvard International Review, Vol. 13, Issue 3 (Spring 1991).</ref>}} When the Harvard Crimson asked if these statements accurately represented his views, he retreated, suggesting that the transcript reflected a certain lack of linguistic dexterity, his characteristic use of "broken English." "I really did not mean exactly 'kill,'" but rather that soldiers cannot "renounce coercive action" and that the military is now "going to make a very clear distinction between [civilians and insurgents]." The article also stated:
{{cquote|During his tenure as Guatemalan minister of defense from 1987 to 1990, Gramajo oversaw a military accused of butchering dozens of university students, provoking Anne Manuel of Americas Watch to find "a sort of tragic irony" in Harvard's ardor for educating him. Gramajo is believed to have chosen to come to Harvard as part of his plan to run for Guatemala's presidency in 1995. And Harvard, as U.S. Representative [[Chester G. Atkins|Chester Atkins]] (D-MA) observed, appears to be in the business of "laundering reputations."<ref>[http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/3/25/23249/5204 The NarcoSphere || In Oaxaca, Harvard Comes to the Rescue<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>}}
From the 1984 Human Rights Watch report on Guatemala in a section entitled “The U.S. Role,":
<blockquote>
“On December 4, 1982, President Reagan met with Guatemalan President Rios Montt in Honduras and dismissed reports of human rights abuses in Guatemala published by Americas Watch, Amnesty International and others as a “bum wrap” The following month the Reagan administration announced that it was ending a “five-year embargo on arms sale to Guatemala and had approved a sale of $6.36 million worth of military spare parts to the country. This sale was approved despite U.S. law forbidding arms sales to governments engaged in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. “ (Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984,p. 135)
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“During most of 1983, the Reagan Administration continued to dispute reports of human rights abuses in Guatemala. When Americas Watch published its May 1983 report on Guatemala, Creating a Desolation and Calling it Peace, Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, attempted to discredit it publicly. (Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984, 135)
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
“In light of its long record of apologies for the government of Guatemala, and its failure to repudiate publicly those apologies even at a moment of disenchantment, we believe that the Reagan Administration shares in the responsibility for the gross abuses of human rights practiced by the government of Guatemala."<ref>Guatemala: A Nation of Prisoners, An Americas Watch Report, January 1984</ref>
</blockquote>
[[Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed]], Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development states: "In particular, the U.S. client regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala regularly massacred their own populations, slaughtering over 100,000 civilians during the 1980s and into the beginning of 1990s. Yet the U.S. continued to sponsor such terrorism, propping up the dictatorships responsible for such violence while actively helping them carry it out..."<ref name="Nafeez">{{cite book|title=A Critical Review Of The Objectives Of U.S. Foreign Policy In The Post-World War II Period |author=Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed |publisher=Media Monitors |date=September 24, 2001}}</ref>
A 1996 report on CIA's action in Guatemala by the ''Intelligence Oversight Board'' mentioned that the US helped stop a military coup in 1993, further stating that:
{{quote|"The CIA's successes in Guatemala in conjunction with other U.S. agencies, particularly in uncovering and working to counter coups and in reducing the narcotics flow, were at times dramatic and very much in the national interests of both the United States and Guatemala."}}
The report goes on to state:
{{cquote|"Relations between the U.S. and Guatemalan governments came under strain in 1977, when the Carter administration issued its first annual human rights report on Guatemala. The Guatemalan government rejected that report's negative assessment and refused U.S. military aid." "Relations between the two countries warmed in the mid-1980's with gradual improvements in human rights and the Reagan administration's emphasis on curbing the spread of communism in Central America. After a civilian government under President Cerezo was elected in 1985, overt non-lethal US military aid to Guatemala resumed. In December 1990, however, largely as a result of the killing of US citizen Michael DeVine by members of the Guatemalan army, the Bush administration suspended almost all overt military aid."
"The US worked with the De Leon government in attempting to strengthen democracy and human rights ... The US also joined the "Group of Friends of the Peace Process," which continues to work to bring an end to Guatemala's 35-year-old internal conflict ... There has been some improvement over time in the Guatemalan military's accountability with regard to human rights violations. Whereas in the 1980's the army acted with total impunity, in the 1990's military personnel were for the first time charged, convicted, and imprisoned for some of their crimes. Senior officers, however, are still rarely charged for their roles in ordering or covering up such crimes. Human rights problems, including cases involving US citizens, remain a serious concern in US-Guatemalan relations."
"US policy objectives in Guatemala since 1984 have included supporting the transition to and strengthening of civilian democratic government, encouraging respect for human rights and the rule of law, supporting economic growth, combating illegal narcotics trafficking, fighting the communist insurgency, and, in recent years, advancing the peace process."}}
The report also goes on to highlight:
{{cquote|"The human rights records of the Guatemalan security services — the D-2 and the Department of Presidential Security (known informally as "Archivos," after one of its predecessor organizations) — were generally known to have been reprehensible by all who were familiar with Guatemala. U.S. policy-makers knew of both the CIA's liaison with them and the services' unsavory reputations. The CIA endeavored to improve the behavior of the Guatemalan services through frequent and close contact and by stressing the importance of human rights — insisting, for example, that Guatemalan military intelligence training include human rights instruction. The station officers assigned to Guatemala and the CIA headquarters officials whom we interviewed believe that the CIA's contact with the Guatemalan services helped improve attitudes towards human rights. Several indices of human rights observance indeed reflected improvement — whether or not this was due to CIA efforts — but egregious violations continued, and some of the station's closest contacts in the security services remained a part of the problem.<ref>[http://www.ciponline.org/iob.htm Report on the Guatemala Review] Intelligence Oversight Board. June 28, 1996.</ref>}}
====Sister Dianna Ortiz ====
{{main|Dianna Ortiz}}
Sister Dianna Ortiz is a [[U.S]] citizen and [[Roman Catholicism|Roman Catholic]] [[nun]] who was serving as a [[missionary]] in [[Guatemala]] in [[1989]] when she was abducted and brutally tortured. Among other torments she was [[gang-rape]]d and suffered over 100 [[cigarette burn]]s.
In early 1995 Sister Ortiz won a U.S. civil court case against the former Minister of Defense of Guatemala and graduate of the [[School of the Americas]]— General [[Héctor Gramajo]].[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEEDE143EF930A25757C0A963958260]<ref name="ratner">{{cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/wnet/justice/law_background_torture.html|title=Civil Remedies for Gross Human Rights Violations|last=Ratner|first=Michael|accessdate=2007-07-09}}</ref> In its ruling, the judiciary stated that "[Gramajo-Morales]...was aware of and supported widespread acts of brutality committed under his command resulting in thousands of civilian deaths...." <ref name = "Cambridge-0521580668">[http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521580668 International Law Reports - Cambridge University Press<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> and further stated that Gramajo-Morales “devised...[and] directed...[an] indiscriminate campaign of terror against civilians.”<ref name = "Cambridge-0521580668"/>
Sister Ortiz suspects some involvement by US government personnel. According to Allan Narien's article "Murder as Policy" published in the The Nation, Vol. 260, April 24, 1995, the former United States Ambassador to Guatemala, Thomas F. Stroock (1989-1992), claims that Sister Ortiz's various claims amount to an allegation of U.S. involvement in her rape and torture by right wing para military forces. In the "The Struggle against Impunity in Guatemala," published by the Journal of Social Justice, Vol. 26, 1999, by Raul Molina Mejia, author describes, the sister Oriz incident as an example of State Terrorism. He writes: "impunity as concrete legal or de facto actions taken by powerful sectors to prevent investigation or prosecution, such as amnesty laws, pardons, thwarting investigations, the hiding of documents, and tampering with legal samples were abundant in Guatemala. He also mentions the cases of Michael Devine, the El Aguacate massacre, the 1990 surge of killings at the National University of San Carlos, as well as the detention and torture of Sister Dianna Ortiz. The author explains the "political/psychological" aspect of this impunity, is "a dimension resulting from state terrorism, by which political options in a polity are restricted and controlled through the state's manipulation of fear."
Professor Farmer argues significant US involvement with state terrorism, and cites this particular case of [[Hector Gramajo]], claiming that U. S. complicity contains "deep roots." (Farmer, "Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor" 1994, pp. 237–46. University of California Press).