A War of Victims. Guerrilla and Counter-Insurgency Campaigns in Guatemala and Peru in Comparative Perspective

In both countries, the "revolutionary wars" and "people's wars" have been waged in the remote, rural, and indigenous areas of Quiché and Petén in Guatemala, and in the departments of Ayacucho and Junín in Peru. There is a justification for interpreting these "low-intensity wars" as ethnic civil wars, originated in the name of indigenous ethnic groups, incorporating ever-larger segments of the indigenous population into the guerrilla columns and paramilitary "self-defense" organizations, and whose result has ultimately been a slow sacrifice of the indigenous population. The analysis of the Guatemalan and Peruvian cases will begin at the moments when the "military revolutions" of Arbenz and Velasco were brought to a halt. In both countries these were periods of nationalist-leftist governments attempting to implement an agrarian reform and a program of other economic and social reforms, in order to liquidate the economic and political bases of the dominant national oligarchies, to integrate indigenous ethnic groups into the nation-state, and to modernize the economy, society, and political order, building a strong state and a competent social development public sector with a presence in the most remote regions of the national territory. (Excerpt from the foreword).