Guatemala Genocide Research Paper

Genocides occur, but why? What happens during genocides? Many people believe that genocides can’t be stopped, but there are many ways that we can stop a genocide.

In genocides, many things occur. For example, during Guatemala’s genocide, many things occurred houses and buildings were destroyed. Women were raped, and many people died. During a genocide, there are ten different stages. The first stage of a genocide is classification. This stage is when the government classifies people and puts them into separate categories. Next, they give names and symbols to the people being classified. One group then denies the humanity of the other, which is discrimination. The plans for genocidal killings are organized to carry out genocide

One of the reasons is hatred towards others. Edward Kissi, who studies genocides, stated in a PBS.org dicussion that, “Genocide happens through a combination of factors: 1) ethnic prejudice, racism, and other forms of hatred; 2) fear of the other; 3) extreme forms of nationalism...” In this quote, Edward Kissi is stating that the reason for genocide is because of many forms of hatred. Two of them being racism and ethnic prejudice. In another quote, Ben Kiernan, a director of genocides studies at Yale states that “racism, religious prejudices, revivalist cults of antiquity...and idealization of social classes” are the roots of genocide.

There are many different ways that people respond to violations and genocides. Many people respond with fear but others respond with anger and try to fight back. In a testimony from the Guatemalan genocide, it states that many people feared the army. Many kids saw their parents die and were left with nothing. I think that if a genocide were to happen today people would try their best to protest to not start killings. The most important thing that people should know is to learn everything they can about genocide. This way we are prepared for