Tierra arrasada (Scorched Earth)
24th Paiz Art Biennial, Fundación Paiz, Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Curated by Eugenio Viola
The Case of Genocide in Guatemala arises from a period of the country’s civil war, in which the violence of the Guatemalan state, supported by the United States, against the Maya indigenous people reached levels of genocide.
More than 200,000 defenseless civilians were killed or disappeared between 1960 and 1996, during the internal conflict, at the hands of the army and paramilitary groups. The worst period of violence occurred between 1981 and 1983, when counter-insurgency forces carried out a systematic and repressive campaign against the Maya people. More than 600 villages were attacked under the policy known as “scorched earth”: communities were devastated, indigenous people tortured and brutally murdered, women raped, children beaten to death or thrown alive into mass graves, or even abducted to be enslaved.
This work draws on the genocide of the Maya people in Guatemala to denounce the injustice, genocidal practices, cruelty, state terrorism, and crimes against humanity, and human dignity is currently taking place in Sudan and Palestine, primarily affecting the civilian population, especially women and children.
I stand naked next to an iron sculpture that forms the word GENOCIDE. I invite visitors to lift it with me and share the weight of this burden.
This work was supported by Dave Aronowitz.