Victims of Guatemala's "model villages"

(AP Photo/Luis Soto)

Moises Gallindo has an interesting story on some of the exhumations taking place in Guatemala. The exhumations are taking place in areas where "model villages" were established by the military. The military built these wartime villages to control the civilian population and to isolate the guerrillas. Not that civilians had a choice, but they were promised health care and other services in addition to "protection" from the guerrillas. They just had to stay in the villages.

Instead, model villages produced more victims. Young victims often died of malnutrition and treatable diseases, including measles.

In 1980 the army formed one of the first model villages in Santa Avelina, located in the heart of Ixil territory in Quiche department. But without access to doctors, a healthy diet and freedom, people began to die.

Exhumations in Santa Avelina started in 2014 and in late November forensic anthropologists handed over the remains of 172 people who perished during the years of military control. Their bones and tattered bits of clothing were re-buried individually by surviving family members after over more than three decades in anonymous mass graves.

Nearly half of the remains from Santa Avelina were children age 12 and younger.

If you fled the army and hid in the hills, you often died of hunger. If you stayed behind in model villages, you apparently died of hunger as well.