San José Poaquil is a town and

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in the

Chimaltenango department Chimaltenango is a department of Guatemala. The capital is Chimaltenango. Geography Located to the east are Guatemala Department, home to Guatemala City, and Sacatepéquez Department, while also bordered by Quiché Department and Baja Verap ...

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

. San José Poaquil, like many other Mayan indigenous towns throughout the western highlands, suffered greatly under the severe military repression of the early 1980s. In 2002, 76 human remains were exhumed from mass graves by the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG). According to locals, the 76 bodies that FAFG recovered represent a minimal portion of the municipality's residents that were killed or disappeared in the violence. Like other parts in Guatemala, reconciliation in Poaquil is complicated by the fact that the perpetrators of the violence, many of whom were forcibly conscripted into the military's Civil Defense Patrols (PAC), still live amongst their victims.

References

Municipalities of the Chimaltenango Department {{Guatemala-geo-stub