This work discusses the period now known in Guatemala as la violencia, when the military government under General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) prosecuted a scorched‐earth campaign against the Mayan people in the name of anticommunism. Although tens of thousands of people died in the “Mayan holocaust,” Ríos Montt was, and is, a born‐again Pentecostal, a fact that would seem to be at odds with the atrocities that took place on his watch. This book explicates the narrative of what happened during this period of history and seeks to explore some larger and more universal themes, such as issues of ... More

This work discusses the period now known in Guatemala as la violencia, when the military government under General Efraín Ríos Montt (1982–1983) prosecuted a scorched‐earth campaign against the Mayan people in the name of anticommunism. Although tens of thousands of people died in the “Mayan holocaust,” Ríos Montt was, and is, a born‐again Pentecostal, a fact that would seem to be at odds with the atrocities that took place on his watch. This book explicates the narrative of what happened during this period of history and seeks to explore some larger and more universal themes, such as issues of historical memory, how violence alters a society, and how the Guatemalan case may fit into our understanding of what constitutes genocide. Although this period is a critical vortex in Guatemalan history, this is the first historical study of it in English. Through the use of newly available primary sources such as guerrilla documents, evangelical pamphlets, speech transcripts, and declassified U.S. government records, the work helps to complicate our understanding of what happened during Ríos Montt’s rule. It suggests that three decades of war engendered an ideology of violence that cut not only vertically, but also horizontally, across classes, cultures, communities, religions, and even families. This study examines the causality and effects of the ideology of violence, but it also explores the long duration of Guatemalan history between 1954 and the late 1970s that made such an ideology possible.