The Guatemala Project

Featured Posting

Invisible, Silenced, and All but Abandoned:
The Guatemalan Historical Archive of the National Police on Its 20th Anniversary

Washington, D.C., August 20, 2025 - Twenty years ago, a group of human rights investigators in Guatemala stumbled upon an…

Aug 20, 2025

Previous Postings

Guatemala: Arrests Create First Possibility of Justice for Death Squad Dossier Victims

Jun 4, 2021

Joint Declaration on the Guatemala Police Archive

Nov 18, 2019

Imminent Threat to Guatemala’s Historical Archive of the National Police (AHPN)

May 30, 2019

Guatemala Police Archive under Threat

Aug 13, 2018

The Guatemala Genocide Ruling, Five Years Later

May 10, 2018

From Silence to Memory

Dec 3, 2013

Guatemalan Court Convicts National Police Chief

Sep 24, 2013

The Final Battle: Ríos Montt's Counterinsurgency Campaign

May 9, 2013

Dos Erres Massacre Radio Show Wins 2013 Peabody Award

Mar 28, 2013

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Blog Posts

Why Does Sen. Rubio Want to Stop U.S. Funding for Crime-Fighting Commission in Guatemala?

Jun 5, 2018

Exemption 5 Can’t Go International: FRINFORMSUM 3/30/2017

Mar 30, 2017

New Identification of Guatemala’s Disappeared

Dec 13, 2016

The New York Times Magazine Highlights Archive Partner Fredy Peccerelli

Jul 1, 2016

Oscar Mejía Víctores Dead at 85: Guatemalan dictator dies as human rights trials resume

Feb 8, 2016

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DOCUMENTARY FILM

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator
A documentary by Skylight pictures.

In 1982, Guatemala was engulfed in an armed conflict during which a genocidal “scorched earth” campaign by the military killed nearly 200,000 Maya people including 45,000 disappeared. Now, as if a watchful Maya god were weaving back together threads of a story unraveled by the passage of time, forgotten by most, our characters become integral to the overarching narrative of wrongs done and justice sought that they have pieced together, each adding their granito, their tiny grain of sand, to the epic tale.
Sundance Premiere of Granito Highlights Guatemala Human Rights Work (Jan 2011)

The Echo of the Pain of Many
A documentary by Armadillo Productions

When Carlos Cuevas was disappeared in 1984, his family was forced into political exile. Years later, his sister Ana Lucía Cuevas learned while scouring the Internet for news from Guatemala that an enormous secret police archive had been discovered in Guatemala City. Ana Lucía decided to return to her country in search of information about Carlos – one of the victims of the notorious Diario Militar (death squad dossier). She also decided to document her journey and what she found.

Finding Oscar

FINDING OSCAR is a feature-length documentary about the search for justice in the case of the Dos Erres massacre in Guatemala in 1982.

About the project

The National Security Archive launched the Guatemala Documentation Project in 1994, after peace negotiators seeking to end Guatemala’s 36-year armed conflict agreed to establish a truth commission. The project's first objective was to support the human rights investigations of the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission by forcing the declassification and release of secret U.S. government files on decades of repression and state violence in Guatemala.

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