Masacre de Santiago Atilan

Dos de diciembre de 1,990
Trece personas dsesinadas por el ejercit
Don Juam Sacaxoy (perdio´ familiares)
Communidad maya tzutuhil

This story begins with American priests coming to this area in the mid 1960´s. In the 70´s these priests began to teach liberation theology to the local people. They taught people how to read and write and how to take better care of themselves. Around 1978 Padre Francisco, de Oklahoma, came to Guatemala. He came as a missionary to spread the word of God, to help the poor, the orphans and widows. Padre gathered a group of people to become catechist and they set about doing God´s work. In 1980 the army began to have a presence in this pueblo and began terrorizing the indigenous people. Padre also bought a small farm so that the people could began to have a better life. He taught they how to farm so that their crops were plentiful and he helped them learn better methods for sanitation.

When the army arrive they began ¨discussions¨with Padre Francisco. They wanted to buy his farm and accused him of being a communist and for gathering people and spreading communism en Guatemala. He tried to explain what he was doing and they killed him. This was sometime around 27 julio de 1982. The army began killing the catechist and this is when Don Juan Sacaxoy fled to the mountain with so of the other compañeros. The army violated many men and women and children and killed many of the indigenous people. The repression went on for 10 more years before the peace accords were officially signed.

One day the army was going to execute a man in front of the church. He started screaming and all of a sudden all the church bells started ringing and everyone began hitting their pots and pans. What was so unusual about this was that the bells ringing and the clattering of pots and pans meant their was a lunar eclipse. All the towns people began to come out into the streets and said ¨we have had enough.¨ It was estimated that about 5,000 had gathered and they marched toward the army encampment. Until this time the towns people had not really fought back. But this particular day enough was enough. The army slaughtered hundreds of men and women this day. When the battle was over the townspeople would not leave the bodies for the army to claim. They remained with their people for 3 days before the international human rights people could get there. It was then verified that it truly was a slaughter and that the army was in violation of the indigenous peoples human rights.

As the men and women were fighting together Don Juan Sacaxoy told us that they were all equals. The people from the country were being taught how to read and write by their compañeros who were from the city. Many of the city men and women were univeristy professors and they were taught how to survive in the mountains by the country men and women. In order to survive they shared resources, they helped when someone was wounded, each person had weapons-they were all equal.

The U.S. government had been providing financial resources for the army to ¨fight the hundreds of thousands of guerrillas¨. As it turned out the army had thousands of solders and the guerrillas number less than 500 at any given time. The U.S.A. was considered to be a terroist country by local Guatemalans because they helped the army continue the repression for so many years.

Santiago Atitlan was the first city to sign a peace accord between the army and the guerrillas, and the United Nations officially expelled the army from this pueblo.