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In Guatemala, and in fact in Ireland decades earlier, the guerrillas depended on the support of the local population. Because the army could not identify and target the guerrillas directly, they used a strategy of collective punishment against villagers. The idea was that the local people would turn against the guerrillas if they suffered because…

“…this link between the Maya and the guerrillas eventually became an idée fixe for the government, who promulgated an ideology that perceived all Maya as natural allies of the insurrection, and thus as enemies of the state. The natural extension of this belief was the deliberate targeting of the civilian population, in order to ‘starve’…