On March 10, 1999, after the release of the report by the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), the Guatemalan truth commission created by the United Nations-brokered Accord of Oslo, President Clinton apologized to the people of Guatemala. He said: “It is important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression of the kind described in the report was wrong. And the United States must not repeat that mistake. We must, and we will, instead continue to support the peace and reconciliation process in Guatemala.” It was a stunning symbolic moment. The CEH report concluded that during Guatemala’s long and tragic civil war, 400+ villages were destroyed and more than 626 massacres perpetrated — of which 93 percent were committed by U.S.-supported military and paramilitary forces, 3 percent by the rebels, and 4 percent by unknown forces. Based on an examination of 42,275 human rights abuses, the truth commission formally concluded that genocide had occurred. It was the first and only time the UN has reached this conclusion in a Latin American country.

Beatriz Manz, a life long public anthropologist, spoke of the importance of Clinton’s apology after nearly four decades of civil war in Guatemala. In her talk, she discussed the legacy of the 1954 CIA-backed coup of Guatemala’s democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz and what it has meant in the life of one village, Santa María Tzejá in the Ixcán rainforests of northwest Guatemala.

Manz began with a discussion of the Cold War and how it was used to justify this illegal coup in Guatemala. While U.S. citizens might associate capitalism with progress, prosperity and freedom, for many in Guatemala, and in Latin America in general, capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s was more likely to be associated with repression, terror and oppression, Manz maintained. Though Guatemala had a long history of repression and exploitation, it was the confluence of two factors in the ’60s — primarily Marxism and Catholic liberation theology — that led to mass rebellion. In response, the Guatemalan elite characterized this rebellion as Soviet communism. With this rhetoric, the Guatemalan state positioned itself to receive the full support of the U.S.

Of course, many other Latin American countries received U.S. military aid during the Cold War. Why was it that in Guatemala state repression escalated to the level of genocide? Manz argued that the following characteristics were enabling factors: a) the presence of a small and rigid minority in power, b) powerful class tensions, c) a long history of impunity, and d) regular denigration and devaluation of indigenous people.

Moving the discussion from the national to the village level, Manz investigated how the civil war played out in Santa María Tzejá — an indigenous community that had “given up on the government” by settling in a site so remote it took eight days to walk there. From this community, nearly 50 men and women became combatants with the guerrillas, and the whole village aided the insurgency. They consequently suffered a massacre at the hands of the military. The village was reduced to ashes, and half the village fled to refugee camps in Mexico where they remained for twelve years. After the massacre the village was militarized, and those who remained lived in a context of fear. Throughout her long-term research in that village, Manz was confronted with changing interpretations of the civil war. For example, villagers initially told her that the guerrillas had committed the massacre and destroyed the village, though over time, she learned otherwise.

For Manz, this raised new questions about memory which she explores in her new book, Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror and Hope (University of California Press, 2004). How do people affected by terror remember what happened? How does one carry out research within a context of fear? As an anthropologist writing about war, she emphasized the importance of building trust and spending time in the community. Sometimes that meant long periods of not doing any formal research at all in the village, instead just being with the women at the river as they washed their clothes.

For the villagers, the apology by the President of the United States for what happened to them was of great symbolic importance. It has fueled their courage to participate in calling for a genocide trial against Ríos Montt, the architect of the “scorched earth” campaign of the early 1980s. In discussing this trial, the villagers offered fresh and often surprising perspectives. One leader, Manuel Canil, responded to a reporter’s question as to whether Ríos Montt should be given the death penalty if found guilty of genocide in this way: “I don’t think that more people should be killed. I would want some justice, though…” When pressed about what that justice would be, he replied, “They should be put in prison so they have time to reflect on what they’ve done and other people, too, would know they were in jail and could reflect on that, too.”

After a lively question and answer session, Manz concluded her talk with a description of the initiatives the villagers of Santa Maria Tzejá have organized in recent years after returning from Mexico. Though there was potential for conflict between those who left for Mexico and those that stayed behind, Manz explained that they have made a concerted attempt to work across those divisions. As a cooperative, they run their own elementary and high school, with teachers from the local community. One hundred young people from the village now study at the university. Despite their success, many challenges remain. Manz reflected, “You cannot create a marvelous village in a sea of devastation.”

Beatriz Manz’s work in Guatemala and a profile of Santa María Tzejá were featured in the first of a 13-part series, “Central America After the Wars” being aired on NPR’s Latino-USA program, Sunday evenings starting November 14, 2004.