Guatemala to search for bodies of Indigenous children believed killed in civil war massacre
September 27, 2021
10:35 PM CDT
Last Updated 3 hours ago
Americas
By Sofia Menchu and Enrique Garcia
2 minute read
A vendor (L) and a woman walk past a poster on the streets of Guatemala City May 15, 2013. A Guatemalan court ordered the government on May 13, 2013 to apologize for atrocities committed against indigenous people in the country's civil war after former dictator Efrain Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity.The poster reads, "We have genocide." REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez
GUATEMALA CITY, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Guatemalan authorities will begin efforts on Tuesday to recover the bodies of dozens of Indigenous children believed to have been buried clandestinely at a former military garrison in the 1980s during the country's civil war.
Excavations at the site will be led by the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation and the Human Rights Prosecutor's Office - part of efforts to seek justice for the hundreds of thousands of victims of the armed conflict that lasted from 1960 to 1996.
The massacre, one of many targeting Mayan communities during the civil war, occurred on May 21, 1988, in the remote Chiul Indigenous community. Witnesses say members of the armed forces captured hundreds of residents and took them to the military garrison, where they separated the children from their parents.
According to Arnulfo Oxlaj, a survivor of the massacre, 116 children between the ages of two and 15 were tortured and thrown into what was then a well inside the facility, where they drowned.
"Those children were thrown into that well with the worst violence and hatred simply because they were Mayans," he told a news conference on Monday.
More:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/guatemala-search-bodies-indigenous-children-believed-killed-civil-war-massacre-2021-09-28/?rpc=401&
(Throwing indigenous people, dead and alive both, down wells was a practice in Guatemala during massacres under right-wing Christian fundamentalist preacher and Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. His death squads seemed so fond of it. Here he is with Ronald Reagan who whitewashed ALL his murderous acts.
Memory Lane.
