MASSACRE IN COCOP

When the soldiers came, Maria Brito and her husband ran for the mountains. It was Easter Weekend 1981, two decades into the bloody Civil War ignited by the U.S. overthrow of Guatemala's democratic government.

The next morning, the Britos could see cooking fires smoldering in Cocop, their community of 60 Ixil Mayan families. But as they drew closer, they realized the smoke was rising from piles of their neighbors' bodies, their flesh eaten by dogs. Among the 68 people massacred by the Guatemalan Army were Maria's parents, brothers, and sisters, whom she found locked inside their home and burned to death.

“Everyone was campesinos (farmers),” says Maria's husband, Andres. “The Army didn’t ask if we were guerrillas, they just killed everyone, even the little babies.”

Last year, former army general Rios Montt was put on trial for committing genocide during his scorched earth campaign to crush Communist rebels hiding in the mountains. During his presidency in the 1980s, Montt had been hailed "a man of great personal integrity" by Ronald Reagan, receiving millions of dollars worth of military supplies from the Reagan administration.

Montt was convicted of the murders of 1,771 Ixil Mayan people, including Maria's family. A week later, the conviction was overturned because of a legal technicality. He had been sentenced to 80 years in prison; he served only one day.