The Unabridged Electronic Text of Marshall Bennett Connelly's Epic Narrative of Guatemala

About the Novel
Requiem Guatemala tells the story of the epic struggle of María Xquic, a fictional Mayan Indian woman whose family is caught up and destroyed in a vortex of violence that sends her fleeing into exile from her war-torn country.  An historical novel, Connelly's tale is based upon a number of events from the later stages of the Guatemalan Civil War and the complex international relationships that stretched from the Guatemalan highlands to Mexico City, to Washington, D. C. and to even the Vatican.  María's saga is , in many respects, a composite of the accounts of many Guatemalan survivors who, living to tell their stories, have found sanctuary abroad.

Background of the Narrative
American author Marshall Bennett Connelly wrote Requiem Guatemala in the early 1990's as a tribute to the people of Guatemala who died during the longest civil war in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere, 1954 - 1996.  More than 200,000 people died, primarily between 1978 and 1985, during the Guatemalan army's attempt to eliminate a growing guerrilla insurgency that drew strength from the Mayan communities.

Peace negotiations ended a long stalemate between four guerrilla groups, collectively known as the URNG, the Guatemala National Revolutionary Unity, and the Guatemalan army that had long enjoyed support of the United States that funded Guatemalan military general after general from 1954 until international pressure forced a return to at least a semblance of democracy with the election of a popularly elected president in 1985.  Even after 1985, the army remained in charge and continued its campaign against the insurgency.  Death squads, composed of non-uniformed military units and paramilitary groups, were coordinated by G-2, the Guatemalan army's infamous intelligence apparatus.  Numbering sometimes as many as 200 members, their records computerized and networked through many different government agencies, the death squad operatives roamed the cities and towns in unmarked and unlicensed vehicles, kidnapping thousands of Guatemalans suspected of anti-government activity.  Over the period, more than 50,000 Guatemalans simply disappeared.  Others were brutally tortured, their bodies dumped in public places as warnings to others.

The URNG was composed primarily of members of the 22 different Maya ethnicities in Guatemala, although toward the close of the civil war, it enjoyed increasing support by students, educators, church leaders, government officials, and civil rights workers in Guatemala as well as international attention from human rights organizations in the United States and Europe.  The first group, the Rebel Armed Forces, was organized as an insurrection within the military itself.  Three other groups, the remnants of the Guatemala Workers Party (EGP), the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, and the Organization of People in Arms (ORPA), came together in 1982 to form a "comandancia" that coordinated operations, often assigned to specific regions of the country.  The URNG targeted primarily military installations, personnel, and Guatemalan enterprises and their owners for supporting the military and for abuses of the Indian populations.

Many of those targeted by the military and paramilitary death squads were internationals working in a variety of positions in the country.  Church workers were particularly singled out.  Journalists, visiting scholars, human rights observers, United Nations collaborators--all were targeted during a reign of terror that, on a much lower scale, still continues.  Guatemalans, for example, who have fled abroad in order to testify about atrocities have suffered the deaths of their family members who have remained behind.  Some have been traced as far as the United States and even Canada by paramilitary "orejas" or "observers" who continue to track high-profile Guatemalan exiles, some of whom have been awarded political asylum in other countries.

Since the first appearance of Connelly's novel in 1997, scholars, human rights workers, and Guatemalan observers have pieced together quite a bit of information regarding those responsible for the thousands of deaths.  In 1998, the Roman Catholic Church completed its REMI report, an investigation of more than 25,000 cases of alleged atrocities and war crimes.  In its formal presentation of findings in April, 1998, before a joint convocation of the Guatemalan Congress, the Army, and international observers in the National Cathedral, Archbishop Gerardi assigned more than 90% of the blame to the Guatemalan Army, its mandated "Civil Defense Patrols," and its paramilitary death squads.  The same report blamed the insurgency for about 6% of the war crimes and atrocities.  Less than a month later, the Archbishop was bludgeoned to death with a concrete block in the garage of his house.  Three members of the Presidential Guard from the National Palace were later convicted and sentenced for committing the crime but released on technicalities after serving only minimal time.

About Rita Navarro
Marshall Bennett Connelly dedicated Requiem Guatemala to Rita Navarro Barberena, a 26 year-old professor and part-time administrator at the National University of San Carlos.  She was brutally assassinated on July 5, 1980, in her car at an intersection in downtown Guatemala City as she was returning home from the University.  Members of a paramilitary group sealed off her car as she waited at the stop and shot her 25 times.  She was one of five University personnel murdered during the 17-day tenure of the interim chancellor of the University of San Carlos, Dr. Raul Molina, forced to flee in exile after continued hourly death threats and attacks on both students and staff of the University.

Warning!
This novel contains scenes of graphic violence and harsh language and is not appropriate for children or for those adults who may find such material offensive.

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