Introduction

Jorge Silva/Reuters

Guatemala’s former dictator, Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt, has been convicted of genocide in the slaughter of as many as 200,000 members of indigenous groups during the 1980s in a long bloody fight against the left.

But little was said at the trial about U.S. involvement in Guatemala. A United Nations truth commission in 1999 said the United States bore much responsibility for advising, training, arming and financing the troops, even teaching torture, as part of the Reagan administration’s campaign against communism.

What guilt does the United States bear in Guatemalan atrocities?