Between 1960 and 1996 a civil war, in which the interests of the urban wealthy classes, descendants of the colonizers, and those of the poor and campesiños of Mayan ethnicity, scattered in the villages of rural areas, clashed.
In the 1980s the violence intensified, culminating in the extermination of the Mayan community by the army, led by the dictator Efrain Rios Montt.
