Guatemala Genocide Essay

It happened, shamefully, under the blanket of silence. Muffled screams of pain and sorrow were unheard to the rest of the world. The blanket smothered it all: hangings, rapings, massacres, burnings, a war. They called the Guatemalan genocide “the Silent Holocaust” (“Guatemala 1982”). But it was not silent to indigenous Guatemalans of all cultures, to Mayans, or to those in the Guerilla Army of the Poor. It was violent and earsplitting. The blanket suffocated the noise and strangled these people like the nooses tied around their necks. Help would not arrive, not when they could no longer be heard, not when they could no longer speak. The Guatemalan government laid heavily on rebelling forces. In seek of a nation perfected, they wished to rid

The targets of the genocides, the Mayans in Guatemala and the Jews in Europe, were forced out of their homes. The Jews, specifically, were forced to travel long and more than uncomfortable journeys after being ripped from the homes they knew. Wiesel and his family were ordered to march from their home in the ghetto. He wrote of his younger sister, Tzipora, and how she no longer complained of the weight on her back when the Hungarian Police began striking out their truncheons (Wiesel 17). Their journeys were sometimes on cramped trains or busses as well. Similarly, victims of the Guatemalan genocide were captured from their villages during massacres and taken to walk under the harsh treatment and scrutiny of their captors. For example, in the massacre of Rio Negro, those who were not killed in their village were rounded up and were removed from their houses and forced to climb a steep hill where they would eventually be killed, raped, thrown into the ravine, or made workers (Doyle 231). If victims of both genocides survived their journey they would inevitably be taken to a new form of horrible torture, be it in the form of hard labor or

In the Guatemalan genocide, people that the government thought were rebels were taken from their homes, interrogated, and tortured. In the specific account of Victor Montego, a soldier in a Guatemalan troop, he witnessed a boy being beaten while interrogated. When he reported no known information the soldier beating him let out a firm, "Shut up, then" and proceeded to strangle him to death with rope (Montego 235). The Guatemalan soldiers thought torturing enjoyable and would not mind much when they did not get the information they had asked for. Elie Wiesel, in Night, was beaten unnecessarily so he would keep the scene of the prison guard, Idek, laying with a women to himself. "He leapt on me, like a wild animal, hitting me in the chest, on the head, throwing me down and pulling me up again, his blows growing more and more violent, until I was covered in blood” (Wiesel 50). This was one of the many mentions of vicious brutality committed by guards and soldiers. The use of beatings like this were both out of punishment for arbitrary things. For instance, Victor Montego witnessed a fatal beating in which a boy was killed for having no information to tell while Elie Wiesel suffered through one in order to keep information to himself. Beatings featured in both genocides were merciless and were used as