Guatemala case casts spotlight on indigenous group
Guatemala case casts spotlight on indigenous group
Published: July 3, 2013
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In this May 24, 2013 photo, a forensic anthropologist exhumes the remains of 9-year-old Ixil Mayan
Diego Juanito Chavez from a mass grave near Ixtupil, Guatemala. Forensic experts continue to
exhume bodies from clandestine graves. Lesser known are the mass graves that the Ixil people
themselves dug to bury loved ones who died of starvation and hypothermia, while they hid in the
mountains from the soldiers who razed their villages and killed thousands.
RODRIGO ABD — AP Photo [/font]
By SONIA PEREZ DIAZ — Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY — Life for the indigenous Ixil Mayans in the mountains west of Guatemala City is worn and static like an old photograph.
Seventeen years after the end of a civil war that saw hundreds of their villages razed and thousands of their loved ones killed, the Ixil people still live in mud-and-wood houses in the most rugged and isolated parts of northwestern Guatemala. Most of them have no drinking water, paved roads or basic services such as health and education.
Largely ignored by authorities for centuries, the Ixil came under the spotlight after a Guatemalan court found former dictator Efrain Rios Montt guilty of genocide on May 10 for the scorched-earth policies used against the Ixil during his 17 months in power in the 1980s. The conviction was annulled 10 days later following a trial that did nothing to change their lives of the Ixil people.
Byron Garcia, a social anthropologist who has worked in the area for a decade, said Ixil Mayans live in the same poverty as always. "People have been relegated to less productive places, places where you can't grow food, to the mountains made of stone," Garcia said. "The young people who can, sow plots of land. And when they can't, they migrate."
More:
http://www.thestate.com/2013/07/03/2845852/guatemala-case-casts-spotlight.html#storylink=cpy
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