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On 6 December 1982 , during the ''de facto'' presidency of General Efraín Ríos Montt , over 200 people – including women, the elderly, and children – were massacred there by government forces as a part of the government's Scorched Earth policy, in which up to 200,000 Indigenous and Maya n people died. DOS ERRES MASSACRE In October . They forced the inhabitants out of their homes, corralling the men in the schoolhouse and the women and children in the hamlet's two churches. A subsequent search uncovered no sign of weapons or guerrilla propaganda. At 06:00, officers consulted superiors by radio, then informed the commandos they would be "vaccinating" the inhabitants after breakfast. In the early afternoon, the Kaibiles separated out the children, and began killing them. They bashed the smallest children's heads against walls and trees, and killed the older ones with hammer blows to the head. Their bodies were dumped in a well. Next, the commandos interrogated the men and women one by one, then shot or bashed them with the hammer, and dumped them in the well. They raped women and girls, and ripped the foetuses out of pregnant women. The massacre continued throughout 7 December . On the morning of 8 December , as the Kaibiles were preparing to leave, another 15 persons, among them children, arrived in the hamlet. With the well already full, they took the newcomers to a location half an hour away, then shot all but two of them. To maintain the pretence that they were a guerrilla column, they kept two teenaged girls for the next few days, raping them repeatedly and finally strangling them once they were no longer useful. (CEH, §31) In 2000 , President Alfonso Portillo admitted government responsibility for the massacre. He acknowledged the deaths of 226 victims at the hands of state agents, humbly asked for forgiveness on behalf of the state, and presented survivors' groups with a cheque totalling USD $1.82 million. {Link without Title} REFERENCE The earliest version of the massacre narrative was modified and edited from Guatemala: Kaibiles and the Massacre at Las Dos Erres , a public domain information request response document of the U.S. Citizenship And Immigration Services . EXTERNAL LINKS
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