In early October, the military government of Guatemala’s
president Otto Perez Molina massacred a peaceful protest held by
Indigenous K’iche protestors from Totonicapán, resulting in the
death of seven men and leaving thirty-four others injured.
Totonicapán, a department in the western highlands of Guatemala,
holds an Indigenous K’iche majority population. Despite being
one of the poorest and most malnourished of the departments in
Guatemala, it also has been ranked as one of the most peaceful,
ranking third to last for rates of violent crime. Military and
national police arrived to the Cumbre de Alaska, a stretch of
the Inter-American highway in the Guatemalan highlands, at 9:30
the morning of October 4th. There, hundreds of K’iches from the
department of Totonicapán had gathered to protest three issues:
elevations in the costs of electricity, changes to the education
system, and constitutional reforms that would eliminate
government recognition of Indigenous ancestral authorities.
Recounts of what happened t