Was Rios Montt responsible for Guatemala's genocide?
I was asked to contribute to a "debate" on whether Efrain Rios Montt was responsible for genocide in Guatemala for the PanAmPost. Here is the link to the English and Spanish versions.
However, when participants in the experiment were given additional information that discussed other violence and context to what happened in Guatemala (there was also a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group operating in the county; the US was involved; the conflict was part of the Cold War confrontation between the East and the West), support decreased below the baseline. I kept this paper in mind, to a certain extent, while writing my take on how genocide occurred in Guatemala and how Rios Montt was responsible.
As you can also read in my response, I focused on what was known about the genocide in the 1980s and 1990s. I wanted to push back against revisionist arguments of some genocide deniers who claim that the charge of genocide was somehow a recent invention of the Guatemalan and international left.
There has been no evidence since the CEH’s 1999 publication to refute its findings. We know a great deal more about the genocidal campaign in Guatemala today than we did back in the late 1990s when the report was first compiled. The additional evidence includes witness testimony, military documents and plans, police archives, statistical analyses, video documentation, declassified US documents, and forensic reports from numerous exhumations of mass graves. They confirm what survivors and witnesses reported in the early 1980s.
Genocide was deliberate state policy.I read an academic paper a few months ago that showed people were more likely to accept the fact that genocide occurred in Guatemala and that Rios Montt was responsible if the participants in the study simply were given the facts of the case. Support increased if the facts were supplemented with a legal framework demonstrating that genocide did occur.
However, when participants in the experiment were given additional information that discussed other violence and context to what happened in Guatemala (there was also a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group operating in the county; the US was involved; the conflict was part of the Cold War confrontation between the East and the West), support decreased below the baseline. I kept this paper in mind, to a certain extent, while writing my take on how genocide occurred in Guatemala and how Rios Montt was responsible.
As you can also read in my response, I focused on what was known about the genocide in the 1980s and 1990s. I wanted to push back against revisionist arguments of some genocide deniers who claim that the charge of genocide was somehow a recent invention of the Guatemalan and international left.
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