Guatemala has the distinction of inventing the political condition of “disappearance” in late 20th century Latin America. In Guatemala’s long history of repressing its citizenry, forced disappearance is rooted in the 1954 US-backed overthrow of democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz and was used throughout the military dictatorships that followed. Driven by a Cold War ideology that conflated group identity with real or imagined political beliefs, three decades of successive military regimes expanded their repressive practices to include massive forced disappearances leading to a deliberate campaign of extermination of ladino (non-Maya) political activists and ultimately genocide of the Maya. This talk traces state deployment of forced disappearance of opposition leaders in Guatemala from the 1966 mass disappearance of members of the Guatemalan Workers Party to the 1980 mass disappearance of union leaders in order to understand the systematic use of forced disappearance by a state so fragile that it disappeared children in the 1980s. Specifically, I consider the case of Dr. Marvyn Perez, who was forcibly disappeared and tortured by Guatemalan security forces when he was 14. More than 30 years later, he continues to seek justice for himself and others who did not survive.
