Claudia Paz Y Paz
Burden of Peace and the pursuit of justice in Guatemala
By Francis Churchill It has been almost 20 years since Guatemala emerged from a civil war that saw 200,000 native Mayans systematically murdered by Government troops. Today the country is still rife with crime and corruption. Nearly 6,000 people are murdered in the country each year, and very few cases result in prosecution. Burden of […]
Screening: Burden of Peace + Q&A
This screening will be followed by a Q&A with director Joey Boink.
Burden of Peace tells the impressive story of Claudia Paz y Paz, the first woman to lead the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Guatemala. Ravaged for years by a devastating civil war, in which nearly 200,000 Mayan Indians were systematically massacred, the country today is one of the most crime-ridden in the world. Paz y Paz starts a frontal attack against corruption, drug gangs and impunity and does what everyone had hitherto held to be impossible: she arrests former dictator Efraín Rios Montt on charges of genocide against the Mayan Indians.