"I was just arriving when a helicopter stopped above the village like this, and then they left" "The soldiers were already close..." "GUATEMALA:" "THE DEVASTATED LAND" "With 11 million people and more than the half of its population Indian" "Guatemala is basically an agrarian country" "In the middle of the 20th century 0.2 % of the population controlled 40% of the cultivated land." "This situation changed between 1944 and 1954 a revolutionary period with Arévalo's and Arbenz's governments" "The last one promoted the land reform." "The landowners together with the United Fruit Company and other multinational corporations that weren't happy with this policy ally with the US President, Eisenhower" "for the military invasion that led to the overthrow of Arbenz in 1954" "As a result of the big inequalities and the general unrest in the population in 1960 some soldiers together with the peasants rose up against the "puppet" government, causing the upsurge of guerrilla warfare and consequently of the war." "The repression of the rebels was brutal at the beginning of the 80s, when the big massacres started." "Juan Gaspar;" "Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of People in Resistance of Ixcan)" "Efrain Ríos Montt was the president and who unleashed the devastated against the civil population." "It was then when that the biggest massacres took place, the Cuarto Pueblo massacres." "Cuarto Pueblo is located here, in this area, in Ixcan." "Federico Tomas;" "Witness of the Cuarto Pueblo massacre (350 people murdered) I was scared because the soldiers where over there," "I hid again 5 or 10 meters away, I hid there again." "Comandante Tomás;" "Chief of the General staff of the EGP (guerrilla army of poor people during the war) in the church and in the school and then burn up the church and the school with all the people inside." "Efraina Camposeco;" "Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of People in Resistance of Ixcan) they locked up those who were still alive, children, men and women, they put them inside that house, men and women, they put them inside that house," "and burnt them up alive inside the big church." "There's where they burnt them." "They throw them there while the fire is burning, some go in and others come out,..." "They are throwing them into the fire, I think that perhaps they pick up the corpses in pieces and go there to throw them away." "Comandante Tomás;" "Chief of the General staff of the EGP" "(guerrilla army of poor people during the war)" "Federico Tomas;" "Witness of the Cuarto Pueblo massacre (350 people murdered)" "Right now they have to start firing Joy, they say, and then they started firing, shooting, and so they shoot over there." "They keep shooting non-stop with machine guns, the way the Nazis did, they don't stop shooting" "The last day they made them run, after running, after doing whatever they wanted to the women, they killed them, they put them inside a well, put petrol in and burnt them up." "This is what Cuarto Pueblo massacre was like." "But as it usually happens in cases like this, some people manage to run away some little children, some adults escape, and that's how this gets to be known, because at that moment there were no other witnesses" "but them there." "That's how they killed everyone who stayed in the centre, they killed them all, and did it like that." "It could look different from abroad, but the only truth is that we won a 20- year and that's the biggest failure of some of the media." "36 year of war" "200. 000 m u rd e red" "45.000 missing" "Frank Larue;" "Director of the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) and established Ríos Montt's." "Rios Montt governs just for two years, but it's the bloodiest period Guatemala's history, only comparable with the Conquest. 440 villages destroyed, as the army itself admits:" "people murdered, animals burnt and dead, it was total destruction." "Jose Suasnavar Forensic anthropology Director of Guatemala" "Jose Suasnavar Forensic anthropology Director of Guatemala are known." "Juan Gaspar;" "Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of People in Resistance of Ixcan)" "They went up to Pueblo Nuevo with the purpose of exterminating the people, had fled to the mountain." "And so we are witnesses of all the massacres, of all the devastated land policy that the army has carried out in Ixcan." "We've suffered in our own flesh the days of the persecution by the army." "Some members of the cooperatives were killed, they couldn't survive the torture, some of them were murdered that same day and others" "Celso Cuxill;" "Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of peoples in resistance) in Peten information about some members of the cooperative who had just arrived to Petén looking for land." "This is why the army started checking checking all the communities." "Jose Suasnavar Forensic anthropology Director of Guatemala at that moment." "According to what we see in the regenerative processes, we know the person was still alive." "We find cases like these mainly mainly in the places that were used as detention centres then and also had pits inside them." "Mercedes Salado Laboratory of forensic anthropology Coordinator" "This little child is between 4 and 8 years old, and this one, a little younger, could be around 3 to 5 years old." "There are 23 corpses in this pit, all of them women and children." "They appear to have been tortured for some time." "We don't know for sure what they died of, but we've found wounds, above all gunshot wounds." "In most of the communities people are still living with those who killed or raped their families." "One's neighbour could be the one who killed one's husband." "By remembering everything that happened in the past, one re-lives it all." "Luisa Xinico;" "Spokeswoman for the CONIC (National Committee of Peasant and Indigenous Coordination)" "I remember that everything was quiet in the community when at around midnight all the people woke up and crowded outside, saying that something was going on in the community's meeting-room." "That was in the village of Xipia cutl, Atzun Tximaltanango, where some people kept watch during the night." "And then, about midnight, the soldiers came and killed them." "They locked them up in the meeting-room, and there they killed them." "But we couldn't see anything because it was dark." "The following day everyone was at home scared." "I was very young and and I was not afraid because nothing had ever happened before." "So I went out to see what was going on in the meeting-room and when I arrived" "I found 14 or 15 dead bodies on the floor." "That same day, the soldiers called us and put us together in the meeting-room." "There was a lieutenant with his face painted black and carrying a bomb in his hand." "He told us to pray if we believed in God because they were going to kill us." "Celso Cuxill;" "Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of peoples in resistance) in Peten" "They come every month to our communities, put us together separating men from women and always threaten us by saying they're" "going to put us in the list if we don't collaborate and those in the list are going to be killed because they collaborate with the guerrilla." "One day they captured some people, I don't know if they were members of the guerrilla or what." "They caught them, tortured them and took them away." "They keep going from one community to the next, threatening to kill people." "They singled out some people by force and accused them, that's how they did it." "The day came when we had to leave our homes and go into the Lacandon forest." "In that time, when people lived in that colony, thousands of people, who knows how many, in a week, in two weeks, a children's disease broke out," "Magdalena Perez, Person in charge of the Mama Maquin Women Cooperative, and refugee in Mexico during the war." "One died in the morning, another one at two and one more in the afternoon." "We just kept on burying dead people." "It's not that we weren't strong, but with all the fear, more and more people kept dying, more women and children because of that disease." "It is in this period, with Benedicto Lucas, that guerrilla warfare increases," "Frank Larue;" "Director of the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) territories, and the Indian population starts to get on well with the guerrilla because of their desperate need to get out of the crisis." "And so Benedicto designs some of the elements of a strategic plan." "First, the devastated land policy, secondly, the establishment of model villages, that is to say, the urbanization of the rural population to perform a public service of military control, creating civil self-defence patrols." "These patrols are basically conscripted into military service but at a local level." "Every citizen over 18 years old was forced to patrol one day a week, at least." "By 1982 the paramilitary groups had grown to include a million people, almost 80% of the male population in agricultural and Indian regions." "Jacinto Raimundo, Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of peoples in resistance) in La Sierra manage the area well, they know the roads and everything well and it's not difficult for them." "A lot of patrol chiefs are being reported for raping women, extorting people, setting people's homes on fire because, as they did it under the protection of of the army, nobody could defend himself against them." "And so they started a chain of abuses that became atrocities, and there are patrols that even committed massacres." "For example, in the case of Rio Negro, we have three chiefs, each one sentenced to 30 years in jail for ordering a 180-people massacre, most of them women and children." "Some patrols went too far, and that's the little Frankenstein the government created." "With the support the government had from the US, Israel and other very repressive governments, puppets of the US, like Argentina's." "For example, here came Argentinian advisers to support military units directly in combat." "Jacinto Raimundo, Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of peoples in resistance) in La Sierra army dug everything up to force us to surrender by starving us to death." "That's what we call the devastated land policy." "They killed children by holding them from one leg and beating them in the head, leaving them dead." "They cut pregnant women open and impaled them with sticks as if they were roasted chicken, with their children inside." "We realized they didn't respect us." "They cut off the men's heads and left their" "corpses hanging from their testicles." "So we saw they didn't respect us and that they were going to kill us unless we did something, and so we had to defend ourselves, just defend ourselves because they didn't respect us." "In some areas, there was an exodus of 80% of the population." "One million people migrated to a different part of the country 400.000 people in exile" "200.000 refugees fled to Mexico 200.000 to th e U S" "20.000 people organize themselves in the Communities of peoples in resistance" "Collective work means working for everyone." "We made no distinction when we were in the mountains." "We worked for those orphans that survived, for those widows that survived, for everyone who survived the repression." "The Communities of peoples in resistance, during the years of resistance, have been thinking of improving education, health, food, civil life, in addition to looking for sustainable integral development." "We've never left aside school education, we've always kept on teaching people how to read and write, children, women and men alike." "A lot of people learnt to read and write in the forest." "We've been doing this work since through 1983, 1984, 1985, there's always been a person in charge of the literacy program." "We've suffered, but we've also managed to develop." "We got the idea of using natural medicine." "We couldn't use pharmaceutical products very much because we had no way to get them, but there were some kinds of plants that we knew were useful to heal these wounded people." "How do we manage to keep discipline, good manners and respect for one another?" "First, we started creating a culture of respect between men and women." "Not just women work in the kitchen, that's also a men's work," "in order to give women some free time to rest and other activities such as learning to read and write." "This is what we learnt about education and also about organization." "If there's a decision to make, a consultation is carried out and what the assembly decides becomes binding for everyone." "If anybody does something wrong, he will be punished, but not to pay a fine or money, he will have to work for the community." "They still dug out our cornfields in 1991, because then we already had cornfields, chickens, pigs, we had animals in the community." "That time they took us away at about three in the afternoon and we had to leave with nothing." "When we went back 8 days later there was nothing, not even a chicken or a pig, they had eaten everything, they had killed everything." "We saw that they never leave anything for us, they finished everything up." "So, as we can see, they never respected our work." "In 1996, the government of Arzú signed the lasting peace accords with the different guerrilla groups, putting an end to the internal armed struggle." "As you see, we have an historical progress that has been quite clearly designed and controlled by the army, and beginning with the murders campaign of Lucas Garcia, the devastated land policy with Rios Montt, the creation of the civil self-defence patrols as a control measure, until the" "establishment of a new Constitution than helps transition to civil governments, but without threatening their interests." "Raúl Archilla, Energy and mines minister of FRG" "Peace was signed in December 1996 and what we have now is the process of fulfilment of the peace accords." "Luisa Xinico;" "Spokeswoman for the CONIC (National Committee of Peasant and Indigenous Coordination)" "Why so much corruption right now in Guatemala?" "If peace accords our lives would be happy and full of joy." "Comandante Tomás;" "Chief of the General staff of the EGP (guerrilla army of poor people during the war)." "the Indian identity and Indian rights accord, the accord that has to do with the army and the part it has to play in a democratic society, and other accords." "If these four had been carried out since the beginning with the Arzú government, this society would have progressed a lot." "Seda Pumpyamkaya;" "Spokeswoman for Minugua (United Nation Mission in Guatemala) of the peace accords, and one of the reasons for this is social." "Guatemala is an extremely poor country." "If I'm not mistaken, according with the data of the Report on Human Development, Guatemala is one of the last in the list, that is to say, its poverty situation is one of the worst in Latin America." "We are now at the stage of fulfilling the peace accords that step by step have been fulfilled under the established program." "Archbishop Mario Rios Montt, Person in charge of human right at the Aschbishopric and General's brother that's the important issue." "Peace starts by signing the accords, but the conflict doesn't get sorted out just by signing." "Actions have to follow the signing." "We are waiting for that." "Unless peace accords become government policy, it's impossible to have peace." "The political crisis caused by this government is creating an atmosphere of anarchy, and therefore a very explosive situation." "There are a lot of municipalities where peopletake the towns, burn down the city halls or the mayors' houses, overthrow them, because they are members of the FRG party, and so they are corrupt mayors." "This may become the spark that can set off the explosion at any moment." "Raúl Archilla, Energy and mines minister of FRG the infrastructures that will benefit our people." "If we add to all this the coffee exportation crisis and the fall of prices,that creates and the drought that has created ravenous hunger areas thatnever existed before there have been times of hunger, but never of ravenous hunger with children starving to death," "I think this is a moment of deep crisis for the country, but every crisis also means a chance." "The appropriate things are happening to reorganize the land's subject, because the coffee crisis implies a change of the economic model in agrarian areas, and implies a change in land's property." "This is a big opportunity to favour these changes and peasants are pressing for it" "where do we want the yankees to go?" "Go down" "where do we want the people to go?" "go up, go ahead!" "What we demand right now as Mayan people of Guatemala is an integral land reform." "For who decides this, we don't just want the land to be divided up between each peasant, but to complete that with technical advise and economic support in order to have some production, and that's how we're going to have" "some security and self-sufficiency." "Daniel Pascual CNOC spokesman (The National Coordination of Campesino Organizations) and member of the CUC (Committee of Peasant Unity)" "To redistribute the wealth in all aspects, but focusing on land reform." "It follows food security, then education, housing and health." "Economic policy is crossed too by two important axes as there are gender and Indian identity inside rural development, and also we have the question of governing, the human rights and about ten axes more." "And our proposal is the politic and vindicate platform of Guatemalan Indian movement, that's politically, technically and economically for the viability of the country." "We've having negotiating spaces for raise clearly." "No answer has come from the government to resolve specific subjects around land needs, than 60 occupied lands right now, setting this government and but even less to design the country's rural development at short or long-term." "As we are talking some things go out like that there are more businessmen into crisis, and that's the way we're starting land reform." "The occupations in the Coban area are from necessity." "People lived and had their own lands, but when the war started,people had to run away and landowners got the benefit, and as there was nobody in the lands, they took them." "And now people is coming back and finding they have no land." "What these people want is to get back to their own lands." "Daniel Pascual CNOC spokesman (The National Coordination of Campesino Organizations) and member of the CUC (Committee of Peasant Unity) and that's why lands are being occupied to recover them, but private lands are being occupied too, just from general unrest." "It's not fear that land's not being cultivated and it's not even complying with its social function, established by laws and agrarian rights around the world." "There's unrest, I insist, there's no employment, there's hunger, and no solution comes from the State, neither specifically, nor structurally." "They don't see us as workers and only occupations are useful." "But this can't be seen just as we're taking the land to eat, it's also a question of dividing up the land and the wealth of this country, which are the causes of misery and poverty." "Hurry up, peasant, hurry up, the cock has already sang, your owner will be angry if you don't arrive early to sow well." "As they don't have land they sow in their owner's land." "Seda Pumpyamkaya;" "Spokeswoman for Minugua (United Nation Mission in Guatemala)" "The army came then and removed 260 families, and those people found themselves out of money, of jobs, of rights and almost out of prospects of resolving their situation." "This is a typical case in Guatemala that shows us what's going on." "At the same time they have paid the army giving it that budget because only the army can do a Coup d'état here in Guatemala, of course with the support of US embassy, because there's not much to do without US embassy support." "And so we have a difficult situation because we don't know when are we being attacked by the government and when by another powerful economic group, because both have their paramilitary groups." "Miguel Sandoval Expert of the Agrarian Subject saying that the State hasn't carried out with its obligation." "We think it's not fair in a country like Guatemala that has ravenous hunger knocking at its door to keep private property lands without setting them to produce." "We see this as an offence to national intelligence and must not be allowed." "I say that if the situation keeps the same, occupations will increase." "This demand increases for each moment, the land's access demand, and we believe 1 million families need to accede to land." "96% of the self-subsistence producers have 20% of the farming land." "0.15% of the commercial producers have 70% of the land" "Miguel Sandoval Expert of the Agrarian Subject the landowners don't carry out with their working responsibilities, and they are the causers and the authors of the country's un-governing situation, not the peasants that just want a little piece of land to go through hunger." "That's it." "the peasants that just want a little piece of land to go through hunger." "That's it." "Luisa Xinico;" "Spokeswoman for the CONIC (National Committee of Peasant and Indigenous Coordination)" "Central America, needs a land reform, and so we could say there's an agreement, there's a peace." "Some lands that once were communal are also being occupied, these lands were of Indian people before, but they have no title deed, because historically" "one belongs to land here and Indian communities don't have them registered." "The indigenous question can't be separated from the land question." "Roberto Carreton UN Commissioner for human rights in Latin America land loose part of their essence, of their raison d'étre, of what gave them life." "I think this is a point to insist." "For good or bad luck I have to represent Guatemala in front of Central America region for fires' management." "For catastrophes and the way to reduce them." "Right now the Communities of people in resistance is taking part in this community organization working at Peten to develop a 15-communities net for catastrophes prevention." "Right now we are trying to prevent forest fires." "The forest of Peten is the last one left in Central America, and it's the third lung of the continent and the fifth of the planet. lt's the one that purifies the air and produces oxygen." "This is one of our worries and that's what we learnt at the forest." "While we were there, the forest protected us, fed us, and helped us" "and helped us to survive, and that's why we want to preserve environment and nature." "This is what we're working at until now." "Hurry up, friend, hurry up we're at down." "Don't keep behind and come together with me." "We have something that led us to freedom, because unity" "is ours, man, and it's not your patron's." "If fact after the war, with peace accords signed a lot of big agreement have been done in Guatemala, basically by European companies that have invested more than 1000 million dollars just in the electric sector, for not mentioning other ones." "Oscar René." "Syndicalist in hunger strike and so what can we hope for the Guatemalan people?" "We have no hope." "Raúl Archilla, Energy and mines minister of FRG of big chances." "It's easier to carry out plans here in Guatemala than in any other developed country." "I believe it's a great chance for investors to come here." "Archbishop Mario Rios Montt, Person in charge of human right at the Aschbishopric and General's brother possibility for getting out like this." "It's a shame." "There's a democratic way by elections, but politic parties have been a real shame for Guatemala and there's no chance to go ahead with this way of life." "Oscar René." "Syndicalist in hunger strike he wants because he has money to buy justice, judges are to sell and corruption stands out" "It's confirmed by history that governments don't make voluntary changes, and faith and trust don't have to be put on politic parties or" "governments because changes almost never have come from them." "Efraina Camposeco;" "Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of People in Resistance of Ixcan) are so many massacres, so many deaths, so many missing, so many murders, who knows why?" "And what if he comes in again and as he is in power he can do whatever he wants?" "That's what we're worried about." "We have the situation of the actual Congress President Rios Montt, being recognized as a genocide criminal throughout the world and still wanting to be the President of our country." "Things like this only happen here." "Roberto Carreton UN Commissioner for human rights in Latin America" "Magdalena Perez, Person in charge of the Mama Maquin Women Cooperative, and refugee in Mexico during the war what he once did." "I wish other countries could help us to stop him from being again the president of Guatemala." "How could it be possible that a tax is been created to favour the civil patrols that the same people that were massacred by these patrols have" "to pay them for the pain they caused them." "I repeat, these things only happen in our country, it's incredible." "Because at the FRG party and also at the PAN party." "But even more at FRG, there are concentrated the biggest number of active and retired soldiers that have been responsible of all what happened in our country during the war." "There they are concentrated and they have the control." "Behind Ríos Montt, Lucas García, Vítores, Chupina, Eugenio Lauro García who were the soldiers heading genocide policy, there also are politic" "and economic interests." "Seda Pumpyamkaya;" "Spokeswoman for Minugua (United Nation Mission in Guatemala) that's less known throughout the world, they talked less about it." "The struggle got stopped, but the principal task of building a democratic society is already far from here." "We're sure that devastated land army policy done by the systematic massacres that can even be followed from a geographic point of view, was a policy designed from a racist vision of the country." "As they were indigenous communities of Mayan origin that started to get on well with the opposition, with the rebel movement, they could be removed as a social group." "Genocide crime is defined as the proposal of removing some group for ethnical, racial, cultural or religious reasons." "We are sure at the Commission for historical clarification, and it's established in our inform, that there was a genocide crime in Guatemala since October of 1981, to 1983, that is to say, during the last 6 months of Lucas Garcia's government and the two years" "or year and a half of Rios Mont's government." "And it's important to establish this with documentary evidence." "Murders' statistics" "People responsible of human rights violations and acts of violence" "Percentage of victims identified accordingto their ethnic origin" "If no justice gets done here in our country or in other ones around the world, this sets up a precedent for anybody who thinks about doing such" "atrocities like genocide crimes feeling that the liberty can be taken of doing it." "And also what permits reconciliation is allowing justice to be done." "Frank Larue;" "Director of the Centre for Human Rights Legal Action (CALDH) 200.000 victims, 45.000 missing according to the Commission for" "Historical Clarification, there cannot be pretended to do justice for all cases, but there may be justice done for the most documented and meaningful cases." "21 communities have taken the step for it, but there's still too much fear at many communities because of self-defence patrols and army's threatens." "But 21 communities, 10 for Lucas García and 11 in the case of Rios Montt that suffered of genocide crimes were able to create a victims association, the Association of Justice and Reconciliation, and have reported" "Lucas Garcia in July of 2000 and Rios Montt in May of 2001." "Horror lives here, in Guatemala." "Clandestine cemeteries, missing are beard in mind." "That is to say this isn't a story from the past, but it's" "Rigoberta Menchu Nobel Preace Prize" "Roberto Carreton UN Commissioner for human rights in Latin America" "But is reconciliation a moral draw where human rights offenders walk like everyone else along the street, or are members of parliament, senators or ministers and could even get to be in power some day, or be judges or" "teachers as if they were honourable people like those who never tortured?" "There's justice to do first, and that's the basis for reconciliation." "Jacinto Raimundo, Person in charge of the CPR (Communities of peoples in resistance) in La Sierra who killed CPR's people?" "Rios Montt and Lucas Garcia did it, but now they are still in power." "The day we'll be able to punish the genocide criminals, clear justice and" "Rigoberta Menchu Nobel Preace Prize" "Susana Villagran;" "Representative of the Organization of American States (OAS) is impunity." "This commission has repeatedly drawn attention in our information about Guatemala to the structural impunity at justice system, and this has a serious effect on the operation of the State of Right." "Things look like they're going back to the same, as they were before 1980." "That's how everything started, with threatens, a lot of people appearing dead who knows why." "Then we thought there were half-civilized people who did those things, because we had no experience." "But now they can't deceive us because we know they come from the army." "The great measure to take is end impunity." "As Latin America people say, judgement and punishment for those who are guilty, otherwise here we have the germ for violence in the future." "We didn't do what they liked otherwise we did what we had to." "We didn't murder or kill, otherwise we told the truth, and truth is painful and annoying." "But in 16 months nobody gave us any money and we stayed in peace." "They take and keep the money while civil society dies." "Today we are fighting for a home, for a repayment, for an indemnification, because we are communities that were and still are victims of violence." "I also think there's a lot of work to do throughout the world." "And if we don't do this work, this will happen again." "All profits or income arising from this documentary will be handed over to Indian and peasant"