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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 May 2018
Modern-day Guatemalan history is marked by the thirty-six-year-long civil war that ravaged the nation. The 1954 CIA-backed military coup of President Jacobo Arbenz led to an extended period of violence and armed conflict, the longest in Central American history. The civil war began in 1960. Military strategies included kidnappings, torture, disappearances, and death lists. More than 245,000 civilians were disappeared or killed and over 400 villages destroyed. In addition, over 1 million people were displaced from their homes. The armed conflict thus damaged the people, the environment, and the very psyche of Guatemala, creating a culture of corruption, fear, and silence. The civil war ended in late 1996 with the signing of the Peace Accords. However some scholars and activists argue that while the Accords were signed, peace has yet to be established in present-day Guatemala.
20 “Accompanying these massive population displacements was the deliberate destruction of huge areas of the highlands (burning forests, etc.) to deny cover to the guerillas and to assure that the region would never again serve as a theater to revolutionary operations. The environmental devastation was irreversible, even modifying climate and rainfall patterns.” Jones, Susanne, The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 149Google Scholar.
21 Jeffrey Klaiber outlines several characteristics that distinguish Guatemala from its Central American neighbors: it has the largest Indigenous population; it is the site of the longest guerilla war in Latin American history; it experienced the greatest violence in Central America; and it has the fastest-growing Protestant population. Klaiber, Jeffrey, SJ, The Church, Dictatorships, and Democracy in Latin America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998)Google Scholar.
22 A dramatic moment in this anticlerical period occurred during the 1831–38 liberal presidency of Mariano Gálvez. “Among his most sweeping anticlerical measures were the economic reforms, enacted in 1832, that abolished the tithe, placed strict limitations on the size and future acquisition of Church landholdings, and expropriated the national diocesan treasury for the national treasury. The same year, Gálvez secularized the cemeteries, made civil marriage compulsory, and put legislation into effect to gradually decrease the number of ‘religious' in Guatemala while turning the orders' assets over to the state. Finally, in what was intended to be a lethal blow to Catholic authority, in May 1832 Gálvez endorsed an amendment to the federal constitution that called for ‘freedom of conscience and religious freedom’ for all religious sects in Guatemala.” Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 3–4Google Scholar. This is in contrast to the 1824 constitution, which declared the region as exclusively Catholic. After the expulsion of the clergy, the 1830s conservative dictatorship of Rafael Carrera reinstated some church privileges. However, as a whole the century is marked by the increased marginalization of the church from the public sector of society. As an institution that is marked by its historical ties to Spain, in postindependence Guatemala, as in the rest of Latin America, the institutional church is pushed increasingly into the shadows of the social order. In 1871 liberals came to power and unleashed yet another campaign against the church, one that is recognized by some scholars as creating the worst anticlericalism in Central America. Among those expelled were the archbishop, his auxiliary bishop, the Jesuits, and other religious orders.
23 The Guatemalan church played a significant role in the peace process, at both the formal and the grassroots levels. This participation transformed the nature of the Guatemalan church itself, placing issues of social justice at the center. In particular, CONFREGUA (Conference of Religious in Guatemala) played a pivotal role at the level of grassroots participation and organizing.
24 The Oslo Accord was signed by the government and the URNG (Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca) in 1994.
25 The questions posed by the 700 volunteers for the REMHI project focused not only on the violence, but also the aftereffects of that violence. Also significant was the gathering of testimonies in Mayan. “Two-thirds of the testimonies were collected in Mayan languages, a concrete sign of change in Guatemala, to hear the excluded majority in their mother tongue; to hear those whose history and memory are known among themselves but did not form part of the collective history of Guatemalans.” Levy, Marcela López, “Recovery: The Uses of Memory and History in the Guatemalan Church's REMHI Project,” in Truth and Memory: The Church and Human Rights in El Salvador and Guatemala, ed. Hayes, Michael A. and Tombs, David (Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2001), 108Google Scholar.
26 The REMHI report attributes the growth of Protestantism in Guatemala to the denunciation of Catholicism during the Civil War and the military's support of certain Protestant groups. Participation in these groups, which were smaller and thus lest apt to mobilize on a large scale politically, was seen as a certain refuge from violence. As noted by David Martin, “Those who have analyzed evangelical expansion in Guatemala have attributed its dynamism partly to a special appeal for the large and depressed native population, and partly to the political and natural disasters overtaking the country. The evangelical churches offer relief and healing, and they also act as apolitical shelters in time of vengeance and civil strife.” David Martin, “Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America,” in Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, ed. Karla Poewe (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 83.
27 For a relatively comprehensive history of the parish, see Ajcot, Encarnacíon and Maldanado, Myra, Maltiox Tat “Thank You Father”: A History of Father Gregory Schaffer and the San Lucas Tolimán Mission (New Ulm, MN: Diocese of New Ulm, 2000)Google Scholar.
28 For Maximón, see Pieper, Jim, Guatemala's Folk Saints: Maximón/San Simon, Rey Pascual, Judas, Lucifer, and Others (Los Angeles: Pieper and Associates, 2002)Google Scholar.