Maguire, Gerard (2020) The unacknowledged genocide: The Guatamalan Maya’s quest for justice. NPPSH Reflections, 3. pp. 9-32. ISSN 2565-6031

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Abstract

The era from the start of World War II through to the 1960s... was an era of unprecedented aggression in the occupation of indig-enous lands, and backed by the equally unprecedented wealth and power of the industrial world and the systematic dislocation of thousands of indigenous peoples around the world. [Coates, 2004. p. 226/7] The indigenous peoples of the Americas stood little chance of survival when faced with the strategic western military force they were met with and as a population, they share a sad collective history of exploitation and social condemnation. This paper aims to open up further discus-sion on the lack of justice achieved to date while assessing the true extent of damage caused to the indigenous society, how their customs and tra-ditions were upset, disjointed and in essence, erased. Drawing on the unquestionable relationship between indigenous peoples and land, this work will offer further insight into how the military-backed scorched earth policies not only destroyed important indigenous lands, but the forced removal of the indigenous population from these lands to the government designed ‘model villages’ completely upset indigenous custom, tradition and lineage, and hindered the transfer of said traditional practices and customs from one generation to the next. This paper will further hypoth-esise if the case would have been better suited to an international criminal tribunal like those instances of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY], International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [ICTR], The Special Court of Sierra Leone [SCSL] and The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia [ECCC].It has been over 20 years since the end of the civil war in Guatemala yet those responsible for some of the gravest crimes commited during the war have not been brought to justice. The crimes of Ríos Montt and his government remain unpunished and there is no closure for the indigenous peoples who were most affected by violence of the regime. The indigenous peoples of Guatemala still face uncertain hardships while enduring this perpetual quest for acknowledg-ment of the atrocities, recognition of victimhood and justice.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	unacknowledged genocide; Guatamalan Maya; quest; justice; NPPSH;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > History
Item ID:	13353
Depositing User:	NPPSH Editor
Date Deposited:	17 Sep 2020 09:17
Journal or Publication Title:	NPPSH Reflections
Publisher:	Maynooth Academic Publishing
Refereed:	Yes
URI:
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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