Civil Defense Patrols

The so-called Civil Defense Patrols were an integral part of military's counter-insurgency plans. All able-bodied males in a given village were forced to go on patrol for 24 hours, once each week. Ostensibly, this was to protect the villages from guerrilla attack. Often, civil patrollers were forced to beat or kill neighbors, for fear of themselves being branded a "subversive". Some of the worst human rights violations, including massacres of entire villages, were committed by civil patrol members.

Though the Guatemalan Constitution of 1985 declared that un-paid, forced military service is illegal, civil defense patrols have persisted, even through the present period.