Guatemala's Plan de Sánchez massacre took place in the village of Plan de Sánchez, Rabinal municipality, department of Baja Verapaz, on 18 July 1982. Over 250 people (mostly women and children, and almost exclusively ethnic Achi Maya) were abused and murdered by members of the Guatemalan armed forces and their paramilitary cohorts.
National context
1982 was one of the bloodiest years in Guatemala's 36-year-long history of internal conflict (1960–1996). (See: History of Guatemala.)
On 23 March 1982, Guatemalan army troops commanded by junior officers staged a coup d'état to prevent the assumption of power by Gen. Ángel Aníbal Guevara , the hand-picked successor of outgoing president Gen. Romeo Lucas García. The coup leaders asked retired Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to negotiate the departure of both Lucas and Guevara. Ríos Montt had been the candidate of the Christian Democracy Party in the 1974 presidential elections and was widely regarded as having been denied his own victory through fraud.
Ríos Montt was by this time a lay pastor in the evangelical protestant "Church of the Word ". In his inaugural address, he stated that his presidency resulted from the will of God. He formed a three-member military junta that annulled the 1965 constitution, dissolved Congress, and suspended all political parties. After a few months, Ríos Montt dismissed his junta colleagues and assumed the de facto title of "President of the Republic".
The country's guerrilla forces and their leftist allies denounced Ríos Montt, who sought to defeat the guerrilla insurgency with military action and economic reforms; in his words, "beans and rifles" (frijoles y fusiles). The president was quoted in the New York Times of 18 July 1982 (the exact day of the Plan de Sánchez killings) as telling an audience of indigenous Guatemalans: "If you are with us, we'll feed you; if not, we'll kill you."
Ríos Montt's government began to form local "civilian self-defence patrols" (the paramilitary forces known by the Spanish abbreviation "PACs", for patrullas de autodefensa civil). Participation was in theory voluntary, but in practice, many Guatemalans, especially in the northwest, had no choice but to join either the PACs or the guerrillas. Ríos Montt's conscript army and the PACs recaptured essentially all guerrilla territory – guerrilla activity lessened and was largely limited to hit-and-run operations. However, Ríos Montt won this partial victory at an enormous cost in civilian deaths.
Ríos Montt's brief presidency was probably the most violent period of the 36-year internal conflict, which resulted in about 200,000 deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians. Although leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squads also engaged in summary executions, forced disappearances, and torture of noncombatants, the vast majority of human rights violations were carried out by the Guatemalan military and the PACs they controlled. The internal conflict is described in great detail in the reports of the Historical Clarification Commission (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, CEH), which estimates that government forces were responsible for 93% of the violations.
On 8 August 1983, Ríos Montt was deposed by his own Minister of Defence, Gen. Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores, who succeeded him as de facto president of Guatemala.
Local context
Rabinal ()is one of eight municipalities in the central Guatemalan department of Baja Verapaz. The municipality, in 1982, was made up of the municipal seat of Rabinal town, 14 villages, and 60 hamlets. One of those villages was Plan de Sánchez, located some 9 km from the town of Rabinal. The local inhabitants were overwhelmingly Achi Maya Native Americans.
The events of July 1982
Since early 1982 the inhabitants of the area had been facing increasing pressure from the authorities. Many of the local men had refused to participate in the self-defence patrols (PACs) and, as a result, the military kept a strong presence in the area. Many men fled their homes for the mountains, leaving the womenfolk and children behind. Other had already, prior to the massacre, filed formal complaints – reporting the armed forces' constant threatening behaviour and harassment – with the justice of the peace in Rabinal, but these allegations were never investigated and, on the contrary, the men who lodged the complaints were fined.
In early July 1982 a military aircraft flew over the village and dropped several bombs on areas close to several homes. On 15 July an army detachment set up camp in the village and began house-to-house inspections, asking after the menfolk and threatening the villagers.
18 July was a Sunday – market day in Rabinal. The pathways and roads of the municipality were, from an early hour, crowded with people from local villages and farms taking their goods to market. The village of Plan de Sánchez was one of several settlements crisscrossed by the network of routes leading to the municipal seat.
At around 08:00 that Sunday morning, soldiers at the military detachment fired two 105-mm mortar shells at the village. One of these landed to the east of the main group of houses; the other, to the west. Later that same day, between 14:00 and 15:00, a military detachment numbering some 60 strong – including regular army (led by a captain and a lieutenant), PAC patrolmen, police, and civilians dressed in military fatigues and armed with assault rifles – arrived in Plan de Sánchez. Some took up stations at the village's points of entry and exit, heading off people from other settlements returning from market. Others went from house to house, gathering together the inhabitants. At this point some of the men succeeded in fleeing the round-up and took to the surrounding woods and hills.
The younger women were sent to one house, with the men, children, and older women directed to another. A group of around twenty of the younger women (aged between 12 and 20) were separated from the main group and taken to another building; there they were humiliated, accused of supporting the guerrillas, beaten, and raped. A handful of these women managed to escape and take refuge in the surrounding country, while the remainder were killed.
The children were separated from the main group and beaten and kicked to death. Then, at around 17:00, the soldiers threw two hand grenades into the house were the adults were being held and began spraying the walls with automatic gunfire. Residents of nearby villages and those from Plan de Sánchez who were observing the massacre from vantage points in the surrounding hills report that intense gunfire continued until about 20:00, when the army set fire to the buildings. The armed forces finally left the village at around 23:00.
The next morning, some of those who had fled returned to the smoking ruins of their village. None of the bodies in the houses could be identified; many of the others who had fallen in the yards adjacent to the houses had bullet holes in their heads, chests, and backs, but identification of these victims was made difficult because many of the charred corpses had already been partially devoured by dogs and other animals.
At around 15:00 on that Monday, two military commissioners and a squad of PAC patrolmen arrived in Plan de Sánchez and ordered the survivors to dig graves and bury the victims' remains, threatening them that the village would be bombarded by the air force if they failed to comply. More than 20 clandestine communal graves were dug and filled. Meanwhile, the patrolmen ransacked the houses that had not been burned down, stealing personal property and livestock and destroying identification papers.
Years later, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights would set the death toll of the massacre at 268.
Witness testimony
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They separated the children and the young women aged from about 15 to 20. Then the massacre began. First they tortured the old people, saying they were guerrillas, then they threw two grenades and fired their guns. Finally they sprayed petrol around and set fire to the house... On 19 July 1982 he dared to emerge from his hiding place to see the destruction they had caused. Along with Eulalio Grave Ramírez and his brothers Juan, Buenaventura, and Esteban, they put out the flames that were still consuming the bodies. On those that weren't totally charred they could see signs of torture, as well as on the naked bodes of the youngest women.
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– Benjamín Manuel Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgment, p. 8.
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They took the girls aged between 15 and 20 to Guillerma Grave Manuel's house, raped them, broke their arms and legs, and then killed them... The children were smashed against the floor and then thrown onto the fire, alongside their parents... At 8 o'clock that night he was able to get to his house, and he saw that his wife and three of his sons were dead. He found one of his daughters alive – she had been saved by being buried under the bodies of two of her brothers.
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– Eulalio Grave Ramírez, Inter-American Court's reparations judgment, p. 10.
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My sister went shopping in Rabinal but when she got to the hamlet of Plan de Sánchez the army was already there. There they grabbed her and raped her in a house. There were fifteen girls raped and then they were riddled with bullets. Afterward, they were buried by the people, in a clandestine cemetery.
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– Unidentified female villager, Draining the Sea (CIIDH).
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She heard her mother shouting as she walked through the village and saw how they pulled her nine-month-old nephew away from her, with his blanket, and took them to the house where they were bringing the people together... At the time of the massacre she was 13 or 14 years old. That day she lost her mother, sister, grandmother, aunts, and all her cousins, even the babies... The next day, she was able to see the bodies; but not for long, because the army gave her three hours to bury her family.
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– Narcisa Corazón Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgment, p. 17.
Aftermath
Over the ensuing months, because of regular visits by the army during which they were threatened, harassed, and intimidated, most of the survivors abandoned the village for the mountains, other villages and municipalities, or Guatemala City. In 1985 they began to trickle back and were allowed to resettle in Plan de Sánchez and work their land, provided that they served in the PACs and remained subject at all times to military oversight. By 1987 some 20 families were again living in the village, albeit under strict orders from the military not to discuss the massacre. The harassment and threats from the military and paramilitaries continued, and the requirement that they patrol with the PACs was enforced, until 1996 when the peace accords were signed and the civilian self-defence patrols were dissolved.
Witness testimony
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The militarisation of Plan de Sánchez prevented the traditions of their ancestors from continuing. Before the massacre they carried out individual, private ceremonies called devociones. There was a group of old people, responsible for officiating at those events, but many died in the massacre and their knowledge could not be handed down to the new generations... Because of the army's repression and because the young men had to do military service, they lost their faith, their devotion to tradition, the knowledge of their ancestors; they no longer wanted to continue with all that... Maya ceremonies were performed infrequently, because the military commissioners wouldn't let them, saying they were working witchcraft against their enemies.
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– Benjamín Manuel Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgment, p. 9.
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The witness was then forced to serve in the army for 30 months. On 31 October 1987 he left the barracks and asked the Rabinal authorities for permission to return to Plan de Sánchez; because of this, he was forced to rejoin the patrols... The surviving men married women from other communities, their second wives, because there were very few left in Plan de Sánchez after the massacre.
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– Buenaventura Manuel Jerónimo, Inter-American Court's reparations judgment, p. 16.
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The old folk who led the Maya ceremonies died in the massacre, and the traditions died with them, because there was no one left to teach the young ones. In addition, the military commissioners and patrolmen watched over each meeting, and so they were scared to hold their religious ceremonies. No one could speak freely or discuss the repression and violence the community was living through.
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– Eulalio Grave Ramírez, Inter-American Court's reparations judgment, p. 12.
Domestic legal proceedings
On 10 December 1992 a group of villagers reported the existence of a clandestine grave in Plan de Sánchez and, on 7 May 1993, the Procurador de los Derechos Humanos – Guatemala's newly created human rights ombudsman – lodged an official accusation with the public prosecution service reporting the massacre that had taken place 11 years earlier.
A criminal investigation was begun by an investigating magistrate in Salamá, Baja Verapaz, and, on 8 June 1994, the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Team (EAFG) began examining the clandestine graves in the community. Two months later, the forensic anthropologists had exhumed a total of 84 corpses from 21 graves. (An additional grave site was identified during the field work and, once the legal formalities had been met, the EAFG was able to examine it, and exhume four sets of human remains, in August 1996.)
On 2 September 1996 Ombudsman Jorge Mario García Laguardia issued a historic resolution denouncing the massacre of Plan de Sánchez (and two others that were perpetrated in Rabinal the same year: Chichupac and Río Negro ) as crimes against humanity, laying the blame for them firmly at the feet of the government and the military, and stating they had been committed as part of a premeditated state policy.
In May 1997 the villagers named as plaintiffs in the criminal investigation gave the authorities a list of names of soldiers and patrolmen who had been involved in the massacre. In June 1997 they requested ballistic tests on the spent cartridges found in the graves; the ballistic material was reported as "lost" by the prosecution service and did not resurface until February 2000. As late as May 2000 no formal charges had been filed in the case.
Supranational legal proceedings
In October 1996 the villagers also lodged a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), accusing the Guatemalan state of violating the victims' human rights by allowing its agents to kill civilian men, women, and children and by failing to respond to that situation with measures of judicial protection and guarantees. Guatemala replied to the petition by stating that during the armed conflict both parties committed abuses, and that events such as those in Plan de Sánchez stand as testimony to that fact. It went on to say, however, that the villagers' petition was inadmissible since it had been presented extemporaneously and since the jurisdictional remedies offered by Guatamala's domestic courts had not yet been exhausted. The petitioners countered that they had attempted to exhaust the domestic remedies but had been prevented from so doing by excessive procedural delays on the part of the state's judicial officers. Finding for the petitioners, the Commission declared the case admissible on 11 March 1999.
On 9 August 2000, during (failed) negotiations between the state, the petitioners, and the Commission with a view to reaching a friendly settlement of this case and others, President Alfonso Portillo admitted the Guatemalan state's "institutional responsibility" for the massacre. On 28 February 2002, the IACHR issued a resolution recommending that the Guatemalan government:
- Conduct a serious investigation to identify and punish those who perpetrated and masterminded the massacre.
- Make amends (including but not limited to financial compensation) to the survivors of the massacre, to the next-of-kin of the dead, and to the village as a community.
- Take steps to ensure that similar incidents did not take place in the future.
Two months later, after consulting with the petitioners, the Inter-American Commission referred the case to the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
Guatemala first lodged three exceptions, arguing, inter alia, that the case was not admissible because the available domestic remedies had not been exhausted and that the scope of President Portillo's admission of responsibility had been misconstrued. At the public hearing held on 23 April 2004, however, the state withdrew those exceptions. It then repeated the admission of responsibility extended by Alfonso Portillo in August 2000 and admitted that it had violated human rights enshrined in Articles 1, 5, 8, 11, 12, 13, 16, 21, 21, 24, and 25 of the American Convention on Human Rights. It asked the victims for their forgiveness and expressed its willingness to make full amends. Guatemala did not, however, address the charges of genocide levelled at it by the Inter-American Commission in its application to the Court, since that particular crime against humanity was not addressed by the Convention. The Court accepted the state's admission of guilt, issued a judgment to that effect on 29 April 2004, and proceeded with the reparations phase.
On 19 November 2004, the Inter-American Court issued its reparations judgment. In order to make full redress to the survivors of the massacre and to the next-of-kin of those who were killed, Guatemala was ordered to make compensatory payments to those individuals totalling USD $7,996,836 – the highest award ever given by the Court.
In addition to the monetary redress, the Court ordered the state to fulfill its legal duties, undertake various infrastructure projects in the locality, and realise various symbolic acts of reparation and reconciliation:
- Conduct a proper investigation of the massacre, and identify and punish the guilty.
- Organise a ceremony in Plan de Sánchez at which high-ranking government officials would recognise the state's responsibility and honour the memory of the dead – to be covered by the media and conducted in both Spanish and Achi Maya.
- Translate the American Convention on Human Rights and the Court's two judgments into Achi Maya.
- Publish key sections of those judgments in its official gazette and in a major national newspaper (in both languages).
- Pay USD $25,000 for the upkeep of the village's memorial chapel to the massacre victims.
- Build houses in the village.
- Provide the survivors with any medical and psychological care they require – free of charge, including medicines and supplies.
- In addition to regular budgeted government spending:
- Promote the study and awareness of the Achi Maya language and culture in the affected communities.
- Improve the municipality's road network, drinking water supply, and sewerage systems.
- Provide the communities with qualified, bilingual schoolteachers.
- Set up a health clinic in Plan de Sánchez and a health centre in the town of Rabinal.
All these items were to be completed within five years of the Court's judgment, with the state submitting annual progress reports until completion.
Guatemala was also ordered to pay USD $55,000 in costs.
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Last updated: 06-02-2005 12:04:05
