Historical Clarification Commission

In 1994 Guatemala’s Commission for Historical Clarification - La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH) - was created as a response to the thousands of atrocities and human rights violations committed during the decades long civil war that began in 1962 and ended in the late 1990s with United Nations-facilitated peace accords. The commission operated under a two year mandate, from 1997 to 1999, and employed three commissioners: one Guatemalan man, one male non-national, and one Mayan woman. The mandate of the commission was not to judge but to clarify the past with “objectivity, equity and impartiality.”

Among other things, the commission revealed that over 200,000 people were killed or disappeared during the conflict and attributed 93% of the violations to state forces and related paramilitary groups. The commission noted that during the conflict the distinction between combatant and non-combatant was not respected and as a result many children, priests, indigenous leaders, and innocent women and men were killed. The CEH aimed to instill national harmony, promote peace, foster a culture of mutual respect regarding human rights, and preserve the memory of the conflict’s victims.

Guatemala is a multiethnic, pluricultural and multilingual nation and has been plagued by violence and exclusion directed at the poorest and most vulnerable, specifically the indigenous (Mayan) communities. A colonial legacy left power in the hands of an elite minority, much like many other Latin American countries. Repression was omnipresent — specifically with regards to insurgent groups.

In 1954 Guatemala’s democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz was overthrown by a U.S.backed right-wing military dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, in a military coup d’etat. The 36 year Guatemalan civil war began in the early 1960s with a military rebellion by left-wing insurgency groups against the new regime. In response, the Guatemalan government employed counter-insurgency tactics, and state-based violence and terror began to escalate. The conflict intensified in the 1970s and saw the height of its destruction and casualties in the 1979 - 1984 period. Guatemala’s civil war concluded with the 1996 Oslo Agreement which declared a formal ceasefire between the Guatemalan government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, URNG) forces.

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