Local residents listen to a Guatemalan army officer, center, speak about forming civil defense patrols to secure their villages against leftist guerrilla attacks near Huehuetenango, Guatemala, September 1, 1982. The Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil, civil defense patrols, PAC, were composed of members of rural communities particularly in the heavily indigenous northwest of the country and were directed with coercion and force by the Guatemalan Armed Forces. PACs effectively institutionalized military power at the local level by infiltrating and dissolving community loyalties and reorienting them to serve counterinsurgency efforts. The state regime was able to effectively recapture all guerrilla territory at an enormous cost in civilian deaths.
