Timeline: The Dos Erres Massacre and the Hunt for Oscar

by Krista Kjellman Schmidt and Sebastian Rotella

May 25, 2012, 6 a.m. EDT

In December 1982, one of the worst atrocities in Guatemala’s 36-year civil war occurred when the army wiped out the hamlet of Dos Erres. A commando, Lt. Oscar Ovidio Ramírez Ramos, abducted a 3-year-old village boy he named Oscar. | Related story »

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CIA Operation

A portrait of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán just over a month before he was ousted in a coup. (AP Photo)

Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán steps down after a coup -- codenamed "PBSUCCESS" -- orchestrated by the CIA and United States government, which feared that Arbenz's policies bordered on communism and threatened U.S. commercial interests.

June 27, 1954

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