Maya Ixil - Guatemala

“From March 1982 until August 1983, a military dictator named José Efraín Ríos Montt ruled Guatemala. In an effort to defeat a guerilla movement in the countryside, he unleashed a brutal counterinsurgency campaign. With the intent of cutting the guerillas off from any source of social support, he implemented a ‘scorched earth’ policy, targeting the Mayan indigenous population known as the Ixil. The result was bloodshed and suffering on an unimaginable scale: massacres, assassinations, torture, rape, burning of homes and crops, and the complete eradication of villages. Between 70 and 90% of Ixil villages were razed between 1981 and 1983 and thousands of innocent men, women and children were killed – an estimated 5.5% of the entire Ixil population.”

source: Guatemala Human Rights Commission, http://www.ghrc-usa.org/