U.S. Involvement in Guatemalan Civil War.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/19/genocide_trial_of_former_dictator_ros

For the first time anywhere in the world, according to the United Nations, a former head of state is being tried for genocide by his own nation's justice system.  That man is Efrain Rios Montt, an ex-military dictator who ruled Guatemala from 1982 to 1983.  The military, under Montt's rule, used the rebel threat as a guise to exterminate rural Ixill Mayan villages accussed of harboring insurgents, this campaign to kill insurgents led to the genocide of more than 1,700 Ixill Mayan's.  Characteristically, accusations of genocide have been presided over by international judges.  The Guatemalan attacks are considered by many experts as the only incident of genocide in the western hemisphere during the Modern Era.

U.S. involvement at the time the attacks were occurring is seen as controversial.  We all associate Ronald Reagan with this image of nostalgia and jelly beans, but behind this image lies the fact that he supported and supplied the right-wing military regime that slaughtered thousands of Guatemalan Indians in the early 1980's.  In the name of exterminating "Marxist guerrilla's" and the people associated with their "civilian support mechanisms", Ronald Reagan agreed to supply military support and aid to Montt's brutal right-wing regime.  The Reagan administration expressed no problem with killing civilians if they were considered supporters of the guerillas who had been fighting against the countries oligarchs and generals since the 1950's.