200,000 deaths estimated.
Numbers .... But Before : people .
Quantifying war victims is always a complex issue: how to avoid simplifications and yet attribute responsibilities that make a conflict interpretable?
It is common practice to identify war victims with the number of deaths: a valid approach that however leaves out important and peculiar aspects of a conflict.
War has a much deeper and prolonged impact on civil society than the mere death toll. It effects also the structures and the trends in society, economy, demography, and culture: it produces refugees, alters social equilibrium, destroys resources and infrastructures, modifies population composition and reproductive habits, causes shock and traumas.
War is an evil way beyond the quantitative balance of its immediate effects. However an analysis of the number of deaths and of the composition of the victim and perpetrators groups does offer a first tool to understand more complex dynamics.
The following data visualizations have been produced as means to aid in individualizing the main trends in these 36 years of conflict, demonstrating the gravity of the State's responsibilities in the Civil War and in conducting the Maya Genocide.