Acceso usuarios
Myrna Ivonne Wallace Fuentes
This essay recounts the occupation of the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala in 1980 by an indigenous delegation and its urban allies and the subsequent assault by security forces which ended with a fire that killed 37 people trapped inside. It explains why the event unfolded as it did by fleshing out the operative political context constraining and informing people’s actions and striving to understand the changing logic behind the Guatemalan military regime’s decisions between 1978-1981. It then traces the tragedy’s afterlife, charting how this contentious memory was fought over during the next thirty years and how it was transformed into an emblematic battleground for explaining and processing the violence of Guatemala’s civil war and mobilized in battles over the country’s political future.
