Guatemala - Ixil Genocide

In the early eighties, the Ixil Community was one of the principal targets of a genocide operation, involving systematic rape, forced displacements and hunger during the Guatemalan civil war.

According to a 1999 United Nations truth commission, between 70 and 90% of Ixil villages were razed and 60% of the population in the highland region were forced to flee to the mountains between 1982 and 1983.

By 1996, it was estimated that some 7,000 Maya Ixil had been killed. The violence was particularly heightened during the period 1979–1985 as successive Guatemalan administrations and the military pursued an indiscriminate scorched-earth.

Nowadays, many survivors are still searching for the remains of their deceased relatives from the civil war. Exhumations make up an important part of the process of clarification and evidence gathering of Guatemalan justice, with respect to massacres against civilians. The forensic inquiry tries to reconcile the grief of survivors, who can then give a dignified burial to their loved ones.