Resources used in this project

Creating this project necessitated the use of numerous resources and different kinds of media. This purpose of this page is two-fold:
  1. List the sources that were used in creating the content on this website
  2. List further readings, files, and videos that are important to further inform consumers of this content about finer-grained details and topics that are not fully discussed on this website
Hopefully these resources will benefit you as the audience, and help bring more attention to these issues.


Book and journal articles

  • Falla, Ricardo. "Massacres in the jungle: Ixcan, Guatemala, 1975-1982 (J. Howland, Trans.)." (1994).

  • Fein, Helen. Human rights and wrongs: Slavery, terror, genocide. Routledge, 2015.

  • Gasparre, Anna, Serena Bosco, and Guglielmo Bellelli. "Cognitive and social consequences of participation in social rites: Collective coping, social support, and post-traumatic growth in the victims of Guatemala genocide." Revista de Psicología Social 25.1 (2010): 35-46.

  • Gleijeses, Piero. "Grappling with Guatemala's horror." (1997): 226-235.

  • Higonnet, Etelle, ed. Quiet Genocide: Guatemala 1981-1983. Transaction Publishers, 2011.

  • Hinton, Alexander Laban, ed. Annihilating difference: the anthropology of genocide. Vol. 2. Univ of California Press, 2002.

  • Ibarra, Carlos Figueroa. "The culture of terror and Cold War in Guatemala." Journal of Genocide Research 8.2 (2006): 191-208.

  • Jonas, Susanne. "Guatemala: acts of genocide and scorched-earth counterinsurgency war." Centuries of Genocide: Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (2012): 355.
  • Lykes, M. Brinton. "Terror, silencing and children: International, multidisciplinary collaboration with Guatemalan Maya communities." Social Science & Medicine 38.4 (1994): 543-552.

  • Oglesby, Elizabeth. "Educating citizens in postwar Guatemala: Historical memory, genocide, and the culture of peace." Radical History Review 2007.97 (2007): 77-98.

  • Oettler, Anika. "Guatemala in the 1980s: A Genocide turned into Ethnocide?." (2006).

  • Oglesby, Elizabeth. "Educating citizens in postwar Guatemala: Historical memory, genocide, and the culture of peace." Radical History Review 2007.97 (2007): 77-98.

  • Rodman, Debra. "Forgotten Guatemala: Genocide, Truth and Denial in Guate-mala’s Oriente." Genocide: Truth, Memory, and Representation. Alexander Laban Hinton and Kevin O'Neill, eds (2009): 192-215.

  • Totten, Samuel, and William S. Parsons. Century of genocide: Critical essays and eyewitness accounts. Routledge, 2008.

  • Whitehead, Neil L., Jo Ellen Fair, and Leigh A. Payne. Genocide: truth, memory, and representation. Duke University Press, 2009.


Links to government documents (both foreign and domestic)

Since the end of the physical events of the Silent Holocaust, multiple documents have surfaced that indicated the nature of the acts of violence (both physical and social) that took place during these terrifying times.
Each item listed will be accompanied with a brief description of the contents that lie therein and a corresponding link to where these can be found. Since these documents are not content originating from this wite, and since the host websites have much more information than is currently on this site, it was decided that links to the sites containing the documents, rather than pdf versions of the documents themselves, should be available here.


The Death Squad Dossier

Known as "The Death Squad Dossier" this document was a record of activities by Guatemalan intelligence agents covering an 18-month period from August 1983-March 1985. Although the content of this document mostly covers a time period not discussed on this site, the details within these pages showcase the horrors that were dictated by the Guatemalan government, the details (including personal headshots) of over 150 people who were "disappeared", and the intel they collected in certain areas.
Housed on the National Security Archive run by The George Washington University, these documents, including declassified US federal documents, are publicly housed and downloadable for anyone to use. They were made public on May 20, 1999 through the combined work of Kate Doyle (National Security Archive), Patrick Ball (American Association for the Advancement of Science), Hugh Byrne (Washington Office on Latin America), and Ann Manuel (Human Rights Watch). Click here to view the pdf copy of "The Death Squad Dossier" or here for the main page on the National Security Archive's website discussing the document.


Operation Sophia

Also housed by the Nation Security Archives at The George Washington University is full color-copy of Operation Sophia, the official government plan to deal with the indigenous Maya and Ladino/a people if Guatemala. With over 350 pages of notes, maps, and instructions, this large document was crafted and put into action during the Montt's tenure as President of Guatemala. It outlines the plans for the scorched-earth campaign and policies against the Maya of Quiche, the hardest-hit and most devestated state/department during the genocide.
Apart from the specifics of the plan itself are hand-written patrol reports near Maya villages as well as accounts of military personnel commiting heinous crimes such as killing unarmed men, women, and children, burning down homes, conducting air-raids on refugees trying to escape the violence, the destruction of crops, the slaughtering of animals, and many more. This is one of the most valuable documents that gives insight into the military's inner-workings and how they carried out these atrocities. Click here to view a pdf version of Operation Sophia and here for general information about the document itself and the resulting consequences once it came into the hands of the National Security Archive.


Historical Clarification Commission

Although the Guatemalan Civil War officially ended in 1996, a commission was formed in 1994, called the La Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH or Historical Clarification Commission in English), in order to uncover and report all of the human rights violations that had occurred since the beginning of the civil war in the 1960s. The report was designed to objectively state what happened and what was reported to have happened without taking sides or having any sort of agenda. The CEH was comprised of three primary individuals: one Maya woman, one Guatemalan man, and one non-national male.
The CEH was given a two-year mandate to complete its work, starting in 1997 and ending in 1999, when an official report was published. Originally published in over 12 volumes and equalling to over 4000 pages, the manuscript which was officially titled Guatemala, memoria del silencio (Guatemala: Memory of Silence or Tz'inil Na'tab'al in a Mayan dialect). These pages are filled with testimonies of eye-witnesses to the atrocities committed during the war, especially in the early 1980s, off-handed reports that traveled via word-of-mouth, and case examples of specific targeting of individuals. The findings were presented to the Guatemalan government, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG - started out as the guerilla groups but formally organized and became a part of the political system in 1996 with the ceasefire agreement), and the UN Secretary General. Click here to view the the original report in Spanish or here for an abbreviated English version.