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 / The long road to justice

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of foreign policy that gave unrestricted support to military 
regimes across Latin America so that they could fight 
communist guerrilla groups, regardless of whether this meant 
razing entire villages, committing torture and disappearing 
innocent civilians.

Under this doctrine, anyone who tried to change the status 
quo was considered to be an enemy of the State, something 
that is clearly stated in the policies adopted under the Efraín 
Ríos Montt dictatorship (1982-83), a period in which the 
Army launched a counterinsurgency campaign to annihilate 
the guerrillas, as well as the communities that supported 
them, a strategy known as “draining the fish from the sea”

. 

Under the Ríos Montt regime the Victory ’82 
counterinsurgency campaign was launched, in a tandem 
with a specific campaign for the highlands named Plan Sofia, 
which established that any town where signs of guerrilla 
activity were detected – weapons caches or communist 
propaganda – should be considered to be “subversive” and 
their entire population ought to be destroyed. The villages 
that were abandoned after the terrified peasants fled to the 
mountains were razed by the army, a practice known as 
“tierra arrasada” or “scorched earth”. 

According to the Commission for Historical Clarification 
(CEH), Guatemala’s truth and reconciliation commission, 
the army and paramilitary groups committed a total of 626 
massacres during the Ríos Montt dictatorship.

Robles’ testimony demonstrated that the inhabitants of Dos 
Erres were murdered by the same state that had brought 
them there in the first place in order to colonize the remotest 
areas of Petén, where they had planted flourishing corn 
fields.