Complete Thesis_double spaced abstract.pdf

Colonel Peralta replaced General Ydígoras in a coup in 1963 and immediately tightened the
restrictions on behaviors deemed subversive; such as the generation of communist propaganda,
participating in communist activities, or any crimes that could be considered terrorism.
Underpinning the intensification of political violence was the growth of rebel and guerrilla
groups, the tightened restrictions on civil liberties, and significant increases to the funding,
training and absolute numbers of military personnel.
Between 1960 and 1973 the REMHI records over five hundred instances of state
sponsored violence in Guatemala. 26 Often one incidence of violence involved multiple victims,
as was the Case of the 28, which actually involved 32 individuals. In March of 1966 thirty two
members of the Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT), Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), and MR-13 were
forcibly disappeared by the Guatemalan military. 27
The FAR retaliated by kidnapping the vice
president of the National Congress, the president of the Supreme Court, and one more
government official. The FAR then ransomed the kidnapped government officials for
information on the disappeared guerrillas. The fate of the disappeared guerrillas was not known
until July 1966, when two government officials stated the 32 rebel leaders and party members had
been tortured and murdered, their bodies dropped in the Pacific Ocean (REMHI, 1999, 196).
During the same month an additional twenty-eight union leaders were captured and killed by the
military (Dunkerly, 1988, 452). The perpetrators acted with impunity, as was most often the case.
State sponsored violence intensified during 1966 when the death squads, such as Mano
Blanca and Ojo por Ojo, began their campaigns of terror throughout Guatemala. The paramilitary
death squads would publish and circulate death lists with the names of PGT party members and
the names of labor and peasant leaders. The death squads would then kidnap, torture, and execute
26 As noted by the REMHI, “each event may produce more than one victim, and a single victim may suffer
more than one human rights violation” (302).
27 The disappeared are referred to as the Case of the 28, but were actually numbered 32.
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