Guatemala struggles to find war crimes justice
Nearly 23 years ago, her son Fernando -- a 26-year-old union leader at a local bottling plant -- disappeared after being stopped at a police checkpoint."We canvassed the hospitals, morgues, the police stations, and never got answers," said Garcia."We were supposed to accept that he vanished into thin air."
Ten years have passed since Guatemala's peace accords ended a 36-year civil war between leftist guerrilla groups and right-wing, military-led governments that left more than 200,000 people dead or missing. Most victims were Maya Indians living in the countryside, massacred by government-backed death squads. In urban areas, thousands of academics, leftists and labor activists like Fernando Garcia vanished.
Some results of the accords are visible today: The military is less powerful, the press is freer, and last month, survivors of an infamous 1982 army-led massacre in Plan de Sanchez, a remote Maya village, began receiving government reparations.
But there has been little progress in convicting those responsible for some of the war's most brutal crimes...
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