Room 002.19
Pamela Yates is a film-maker and human rights activist. Her films condemn war crimes and cases of racism and genocide in the USA and Latin America, in addition to the North’s interests interfering in the establishment of dictatorships in countries from the South.
The documentary 500 Years is concerned with the events that took place in Guatemala from the Civil War (1962–1996) to the present day, following a route that searches for justice, truth and memory. The film constitutes a journey between the past and present of Guatemala and follows the trajectory of two professional women, Andrea Ixchíu Hernández and Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj, Indigenous Mayan community representatives whose struggle for justice is coupled with the work of other activists and attorneys to bring the Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt to justice for genocide crimes. Scenes shot by Yates in Guatemala in 1982 were used as legal evidence to determine Ríos Montt’s hand in the mass killings of Indigenous populations.
The background to the film also lies in other documentaries made by Yates: When the Mountains Shake (1983), a story of the life of Nobel Prize Winner Paz Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan K’iche’ Indigenous leader, and Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011), following the request for Ríos Montt’s extradition to be tried for genocide in Spain.