Guatemala March Honors Civil War Victims

Survivors and relatives of victims of the civil war in Guatemala marched in the capital to remember the thousands of dead from the conflict and ask for the attention of the new government of social democratic president Bernardo Arévalo.

With flowers, small wooden crosses and photographs, dozens of people, mostly indigenous, walked in the historic center of Guatemala City in commemoration of the National Day of Dignity of Victims of the Armed Conflict.

The national day has been commemorated for 20 years on the date on which in 1999 the report Memory of Silence of the Historical Clarification Commission, sponsored by the UN, was presented, which held responsibility for 93% of human rights violations during the war. to the State security forces, mainly the Army.

According to the report, the war left some 200,000 dead or missing, many of them in massacres committed by the military in indigenous communities.

"History is presenting us with an opportunity to rebuild the path of peace," said the representative of the victims, Miguel Itzep, in an event at the National Palace, where the walk reached and in which the vice president, Karin Herrera, participated.

Itzep asked the new government, which took office on January 14, to create comprehensive care programs that include the search for missing people. The leader denounced that in the last 12 years right-wing governments "trampled" the "path to peace."

Herrera pointed out that the march is a "fair claim" and assured that they will be different from their predecessors. "This government will take another path," said the vice president.

"The problem is that much of the dignified reparation has not been fulfilled and I think it is a good time. The new government is going to take up this," indigenous leader Rigoberta Menchú, Nobel Prize winner, said.