For those of you who read about the genocide and want to understand more of the background, I highly recommend "The Art of Political Murder." It starts in 1998, when a Catholic Bishop was found bludgeoned to death in his own garage two days after publishing the report that detailed the Guatemalan army's role in the genocide. It covers a lot of the political and racial history, the efforts of the army to cover up the genocide, and the ensuing trial. http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Political-Murder-Killed/dp/080...

This is still very relevant today since the dictator from the 1980's, Rios Montt, was recently on trial for human rights abuses, and his daughter just announced that she is running for president: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Guatemalan-Ex-Dictator...

EDIT: another good book is Popular Injustice, which is about what happens when a whole part of society loses faith in the criminal justice system and starts resorting to lynchings: http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=10027

(Disclosure: I took Professor Godoy's classes in college and traveled to Guatemala in a study-abroad that she organized: http://faculty.washington.edu/agodoy/Guatemala%20study%20abr...)