[28] The Truth Commission writes that their activity included the "use of illegal detention centers or 'clandestine prisons', which existed in nearly all Army facilities, in many police installations and even in homes and on other private premises.

The use of such tactics increased dramatically after the inauguration of President Julio César Méndez Montenegro, who – in a bid to placate right-wing elements in the military – gave it carte blanche to engage in "any means necessary" to pacify the country.

"[38] With increased military aid from the United States, the 5,000-man Guatemalan Army mounted a large pacification effort in the departments of Zacapa and Izabal in October 1966 dubbed "Operation Guatemala".

[39] Under Colonel Arana's jurisdiction, military strategists armed and fielded various paramilitary death squads to supplement regular army and police units in clandestine terror operations against the FAR's civilian support base.

[34] The civilian membership of the army's paramilitary units consisted largely of right-wing fanatics with ties to the MLN, founded and led by Mario Sandoval Alarcón, a former participant in the 1954 coup.

[45] Government forces often dumped the bodies of victims publicly to foment terror; the press regularly contained reports of unrecognizable corpses found floating in the Motagua River, mutilated by torture.

[55] This new security agency – working in tandem with special commandos of the military and units from '4th Corps' of the National Police – abducted and murdered thousands of suspected subversives in Guatemala City during the 'state of siege.

[60] Amnesty International mentioned Guatemala as one of several countries under a human rights state of emergency, while citing "the high incidence of disappearances of Guatemalan citizens" as a major and continuing problem in its 1972–1973 annual report.

Due to the fact that cooperatives had been largely drawn out into the open, the names of cooperativists were relatively easy for the intelligence services (G-2) to collate in order to designate targets for the subsequent extermination program.

In Panzos, Alta Verapaz natives began to be subjected to human rights abuses which accompanied their eviction from their land by farmers and local authorities who supported the economic interests of the Izabal Mining Operations Company (EXMIBAL) and Transmetales.

Some of these landlords requested protection from the governor of Alta Verapaz, including Flavio Monzón, who stated: "Several peasants living in the villages and settlements want to burn urban populations to gain access to private property.

"[c] On 29 May 1978, peasants from Cahaboncito, Semococh, Rubetzul, Canguachá, Sepacay villages, finca Moyagua and neighborhood La Soledad, decided to hold a public demonstration in the Plaza de Panzós to insist on their claims to the land and express their discontent which was caused by the arbitrary actions of the landowners and the civil and military authorities.

On 8 September 1978 the Mobile Military Police of Monteros, Esquipulas, acting on orders from local landowners César Lemus and Domingo Interiano, abducted eight campesinos from Olopa, Chiquimula Department.

[72] "The Command of the Secret Anti-Communist Army [ESA] is presenting by means of this bulletin an ‘ultimatum’ to the following trade unionists, professionals, workers and students: ... [it] warns them all that it has already located them and knows perfectly well where to find these nefarious communist leaders who are already condemned to DEATH, which will therefore be carried out without mercy..." At the same time in Guatemala City, the situation of abductions and disappearances at the hands of the judiciales worsened after Col. German Chupina Barahona was appointed as the chief of the National Police.

The protesters were then met by the Pelotón Modelo (Model Platoon) of the Guatemalan National Police, then under the new director-general, Colonel Germán Chupina Barahona (like Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia, a member of the "Zacapa Group" and former commander of the PMA).

Wary of the possibility that the scenario unfolding in Nicaragua at the time would occur in Guatemala, the government of General Romeo Lucas Garcia began a large-scale covert program of selective assassination, overseen primarily by Interior Minister Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz and National Police chief Col. German Chupina Barahona, who together controlled all of the military and paramilitary security services.

The deaths of these people, labeled as "subversives" by the government, were largely attributed to a new vigilante organization calling itself the "Secret Anticommunist Army" (ESA), a group linked to the offices of Col. Germán Chupina.

Statistics reported in the domestic press (often originating from government spokespersons) and by human rights organizations suggest that a minimum of 8,195 persons were assassinated in Guatemala in 1979–80, a rate which exceeds Col. Arana's "state of siege" in 1970–71.

In 1981, General Benedicto Lucas Garcia (the president's brother) became Chief of Staff of the Guatemalan Army and implemented a new counterinsurgency campaign with the help of the US MilGroup and advisors from Israel and Argentina.

In Rabinal, Baja Verapaz on 20 October 1981, the military seized and armed 1,000 Indigenous men and organized them into one of the first "civil patrols" of the decade,[93] a feat which was illegal under the Guatemalan constitution at the time.

[95][96] Under the leadership of Benedicto Lucas Garcia, what had begun as a campaign of selective repression targeting specific sectors of Guatemalan society began to metamorphose into a policy of extermination.

[100] A major part of Ríos Montt's pacification strategy in El Quiché was "Operation Sofia", which began on 8 July 1982 on orders from Army Chief of Staff Héctor Mario López Fuentes.

'"[13] Montt was an Evangelical Christian, and his religious zealotry gave a theological justification to the massacres, the logic of which has been summed up by journalist Vincent Bevins as follows: "they are communists and therefore atheists and therefore they are demons and therefore you can kill them.

[107] Intelligence was "extracted through torture" and used by the CRIO to coordinate joint military and police raids on suspected insurgent safe-houses in which hundreds of individuals were captured and "disappeared" or found dead later.

In 1977, Ramon, a guerrilla commander, regularly visited the village of La Llorona and after he found out that the issue of land ownership was causing many problems in the community, he taught people to practice new measurements, which spread fear among landowners.

[143] The footage from Pamela Yates’ 1983 documentary When the Mountains Tremble, about the war between the Guatemalan Military and the Mayan Indigenous population of Guatemala, was used as forensic evidence in the genocide case against Jose Efrain Ríos Montt.

[150] On 21 August 2015, Guatemalan prosecutors presented evidence of Pérez's involvement in the corruption ring and on 1 September, congress voted to take away his immunity, which prompted his resignation from presidency the next day.

17 senior officers Francisco Luis Gordillo Martínez and Hugo Ramiro Zaldaña Rojas were found guilty of not only crimes against humanity, but also aggravated sexual violation related to the Molina Theissen case.

[154] Luis Enrique Mendoza García, who was third in command of the Guatemalan army during the government of Efraín Ríos Montt, would be charged genocide and crimes against humanity against the Maya Ixil population soon afterwards as well.

[156] In January 2022, five former paramilitary officers of the pro-government Civil Self-Defense Patrols militia were sentenced to 30 years in prison for the rape of several Indigenous women during the time the genocide progressed in the early 1980s.