The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. By Greg Grandin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Pp. xviii, 311. Illustrations. Appendix. Glossary. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $22.00 paper.
The Guatemalan civil war that began in the early 1960s and ended with a peace treaty in 1996 became a one-sided affair. The armed forces and their paramilitary allies won, not just by killing guerrillas but almost anyone suspected of supporting them. Tens of thousands of civilians, including many Mayan Indians, were the victims of an unpardonable crime that is often classified as genocide. "This book," Grandin writes, "documents the nearly century-long intermittent mobilization leading up to the Panzos massacre [of some 35 Mayan demonstrators in 1978], focusing on the lives of a number of Q'eqchi' Mayans, mostly members of the Communist Party but not exclusively so" (pp. 3-4).