Guatemala's Refugees

The Mayan people did not only suffer through numbered deaths during the army's Genocide, but the had to deal with oppression and fear worse than what they had been dealt for centuries by Europeans. During the horrors, many Mayans had to hide in fear just to survive. In The Return of Guatemala’s Refugees, a Mayan man remembered how he survived during the attacks. “We were always afraid, because at the time, if they thought a family was hiding out in their parcela (tract of land), the army would come look for them from a helicopter” (Taylor 24). The tone of constant fear and death was unexpectable to happen to any innocent people, especially from their government who claims to be just. Many fled the country into exile, just escaping with their …show more content…
The Guatemalan Military Government had a iron grip on the nation for decades, and they were willing to use any means to keep it. The Marxist Guerrilla groups, later formed as the U.R.N.G., wanted to return the prosperous Communist led era of the 1940’s, before the 1954 coup replaced the Democratic Communist Jacobo Árbenz with the first military dictator Castillo Armas. The United States Government orchestrated the 1954, and funded the Guatemalan Government for decades even during the most questionable moments to quell the fear of neighboring Communist states during their divisive Cold War with Soviet Russia. Caught in the middle of this conflict were he indigenous Mayan tribes of the highlands, who were targeted by the army in the later stages of the war due to their neighboring with the Guerrillas and population overlaps with the Guerrillas. This targeting lead to a Genocide in the early 1980’s slaughtering over 150,000 innocent Mayans dead, and leaving the minority of survivors homeless and in great poverty. When reflecting on what caused the war and the tragedy that came with it, there are no real winners. The U.S. now had the guilt of all the deaths that happened on their watch, the Mayans were nearly wiped out to extinction, the Marxists never actually overthrew the government while taking heavy losses, and the Guatemalan Government and Army became international monsters. The Guatemalan and U.S. governments tried to justify their actions at the time by painting the Marxists as the problem, dangerous commie threats who would if in charge would turn Guatemala into a Cuban Missile Crisis version 2. On the contrary though, the facts prove the opposite not just in