How Can We Quantify the Immediate and Lingering Impact of Genocide on Local Populations?

Mass killings generally occur in settings of armed conflict where it is very difficult or impossible to collect official data on births, deaths and marriages. In this video, DIEGO ALBUREZ-GUTIERREZ confronts this challenge by focusing on the mass killings of the Maya Achi people which took place during the Guatemalan Civil War in the 1980s. Using a novel approach, the “Extended Genealogy Method”, Alburez-Gutierrez reconstructed the demographic history of the affected population over the last 60 years from interviews with relatives of the victims. This project, the first in-depth quantitative study of the genocide in Guatemala, has evident historical significance. It also provides empirical insights into the effects of mortality shocks on population dynamics and introduces a scalable data collection tool.