On December 10, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted on social media:
“Last Friday, #PBI accompanied the Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) in a meeting with the Ixil people.
Lawyers from the Human Rights Law Firm presented an update on the #Genocide case, within the framework of the opening of the oral and public trial against Luis Enrique Mendoza García. The first hearing, initially scheduled for September 2025 and later rescheduled for December 10, 2025, was postponed until 2026.”
On December 10, EP Investiga reported: “The hearing was scheduled for this day; however, it was again postponed and rescheduled for April 27, 2026.”
That article highlights: “Within the framework of International Human Rights Day, which is commemorated on December 10, organizations of victims and survivors of the Internal Armed Conflict, together with social and human rights groups, denounced the suspension of the hearing to begin the oral and public debate against the military officer Luis Enrique Mendoza García.”
Mendoza Garcia
The International Justice Monitor has explained that Mendoza Garcia, the third in command of the Guatemalan army from April 1982 to July 1983 during which time he oversaw counter-insurgency operations, was first accused of crimes in 2011, but eluded arrest until June of 2019. He was indicted in September 2019 on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil peoples.
After he was arrested, Democracy Now! reported: “He will be tried in March for his involvement in an operation that killed over 1,700 Maya Ixil people and displaced thousands more in the early 1980s.”
The Centre for Human Rights and Legal Action (CALDH) documents here the charges against Mendoza Garcia.
Context
This week, the Washington Post reported: “A CIA-backed coup in Guatemala saw the ouster of the country’s democratically elected leftist president, Jacobo Árbenz, in 1954. …The land reforms implemented by Árbenz — involving the seizure and redistribution of uncultivated portions of large plantations, for compensation — threatened the interests of the Boston-based United Fruit Company, which owned vast banana plantations in the country. …Guatemala endured oppressive military regimes before the country plunged into a civil war in 1960 that lasted 36 years — with the Indigenous Mayan population bearing the brunt of the toll.”
Aljazeera has previously reported: “A civil war between leftist guerrilla forces and the Guatemalan military from 1960 to 1996 left an estimated 200,000 people dead and another 45,000 people disappeared. More than 80 percent of victims were Indigenous Maya civilians. Military forces were responsible for 93 percent of killings, according to a United Nations-backed truth commission. The Commission for Historical Clarification determined state actors committed acts of genocide, and Guatemalan courts have since come to the same conclusion. The commission presented its report on February 25, 1999, and the date was later recognised as the annual day of dignity for victims.”
The Progressive Magazine has reported: “Israel began selling weapons to Guatemala in 1974: armored personnel carriers, military communications equipment, light cannons, machine guns, Uzis, and thousands of Galil assault rifles, which became the Guatemalan troops’ standard weapon. In the 1980s Israel built a factory inside Guatemala to produce the Galils and bullets to go with them. …’Israeli advisers—some official, others private—helped Guatemalan internal security agents hunt underground rebel groups,’ reported correspondent Ed Cody for The Washington Post [in 1983].”
Accompaniment
The Association for Justice and Reconciliation (AJR) is a coalition of survivors from 22 communities in five regions of the country that suffered the scorched earth policy between 1978 and 1985.
PBI-Guatemala began accompanying the AJR Board of Directors in April 2024 and will continue to do so for the duration of this judicial process.
