Guerrilla Army of the Poor
Following the coup, hundreds of peasant leaders were rounded up and executed. Historian Greg Grandin has stated that "There is general consensus today among academics and Guatemalan intellectuals that 1954 signaled the beginning of what would become the most repressive state in the hemisphere". Following the coup and the establishment of the military dictatorship, a series of leftist insurgencies began in the countryside, frequently with a large degree of popular support, which triggered the Guatemalan Civil War that lasted until 1996. The largest of these movements was led by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, which at its largest point had 270,000 members. Two-hundred thousand (200,000) civilians were killed in the war, and numerous human rights violations committed, including massacres of civilian populations, rape, aerial bombardment, and forced disappearances. Historians estimate that 93% of these violations were committed by the United States-backed military, which included a genocidal scorched-earth campaign against the indigenous Maya population in the 1980s.