For the first year following the Peace Accords, police registered more than 2,500 deaths by firearms and other weapons - about 7 a day. Although police claim that they are chipping away at the problem, only 278 persons were arrested for homicide in that period. Although rampant crime is the subject of daily public scrutiny and discussion, official explanations, public opinion and the media tend to reduce the problem to a simple lack of punitive actions against offenders. Reference is rarely made to this situation being a consequence of terror. The Deep Roots of Terror Beginning in the mid-1970s, in response to rising pressure from below for radical change, Guatemala's rulers built a state anchored in illegality and impunity, and armored it with one of the most efficient and feared machines of terror in the history of Latin America.
Terror is government by intimidation, coercion and fear.
In such a scenario, suffering regulates political conduct. In general terms, the effects of terror on individuals, social groups, and society as a whole can be observed immediately and in the long run. In Guatemala, the most evident immediate effects were displacement, disappearance and the destruction of tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of communities. The long run effects, while less visible, are no less dramatic. One outcome of the end of the counterinsurgency war has been the shift from state-sponsored to privately financed terror.