Outside Guatemala’s supreme court at the end of May, a group of Maya Achi women laid flowers and candles on the ground before praying together.
The traditional Mayan ceremony was held to mark the conviction of three men for committing crimes against the women in the early 1980s, the bloodiest chapter of the civil war that raged across the Central American country for nearly four decades.
During the conflict the three men – Simeón Enríquez Gómez, Pedro Sánchez Cortez and Félix Tum Ramírez – joined a local branch of the Civil Self-Defence Patrol in Rabinal, a small town north of Guatemala City.
These paramilitary groups were established by the US-supported military junta with the aim of controlling and suppressing indigenous Mayan communities like the Achi, who were viewed as sympathetic to rebel forces. In some cases, local men were coerced into joining the Civil Self-Defence Patrol which was widely implicated in civil war-era massacres, enforced disappearances and sexual violence.
“The soldiers arrived late at night, threw me on to the ground and raped me,” said Paulina Ixpatá (61), one of the Achi women who gave testimony in court earlier this year.
Paulina Ixpatá gave testimony in court earlier this year.
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