Guerrilla Army of the Poor
The repression reached genocidal levels in the predominantly indigenous northern provinces where guerrillas of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor operated. There, the Guatemalan military viewed the Maya, traditionally seen as subhumans, as being supportive of the guerillas and began a campaign of wholesale killings and disappearances of Mayan peasants. While massacres of Indigenous peasants had occurred earlier in the war, the systematic use of terror against the Indigenous population began around 1975 and peaked during the first half of the 1980s. An estimated 200,000 Guatemalans were killed during the Guatemalan Civil War, including at least 40,000 persons who "disappeared". Of the 42,275 individual cases of killing and "disappearances" documented by the CEH, 93% were killed by government forces. 83% of the victims were Maya and 17% Ladino.