Guatemala is undertaking urgent efforts to safeguard approximately 60,000 case files containing testimonies of abuses committed during the country’s armed conflict, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. The files contain accounts of extrajudicial executions, murders, sexual abuse, forced disappearances, and forced recruitment of civilians. The conflict resulted in more than 200,000 deaths and approximately 45,000 disappearances, with a United Nations truth commission concluding that the Guatemalan military was responsible for most abuses and that the state carried out acts of genocide against Indigenous populations.
The archive preservation initiative is being conducted under the current administration of President Bernardo Arévalo, whose term ends in January 2028. The project is funded by UNESCO and aims to eventually have the collection designated as part of the Memory of the World Program to ensure long-term protection and accessibility. Workers restoring the archive have discovered significant deterioration, finding damp boxes with incomplete and torn files stored in large blue plastic containers organized by geographic department.
The preservation effort reflects concerns about the fate of documentation under previous administrations. Under Presidents Jimmy Morales and Alejandro Giammattei, the National Reparations Program, which originally collected the testimonies, was largely abandoned and subsequently ordered shut down with no measures to preserve the contained records. According to Elvin Díaz, the presidential commissioner for human rights overseeing the archives, these prior governments pursued what he described as a deliberate effort to erase collective memory.
The restoration project includes plans to digitize the archive for broader public access. The files are expected to become part of the Reparation and Dignity Plan for Victims of the Armed Conflict, which the Arévalo administration announced recently. This comprehensive effort seeks to integrate information from public institutions and civil society organizations to continue reparations work and maintain a government database of people still unaccounted for from the conflict period.
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