Pamela Yates was a young, idealistic filmmaker when she went to Guatemala in 1982 to make a documentary about a hidden war. 200,000 people were murdered in the Guatemalan conflict, many indigenous people living in the highlands. Pamela and her colleagues met guerilla fighters, and tagged along on army sweeps…she even interviewed then President of the Republic, General Efrain Rios Montt.
Her film, "When the Mountains Tremble," awakened outsiders to the war being supported and funded in part by the US. Decades later, Pamela was contacted by a lawyer who hoped the film might help prove that the massacres carried out by the army and police constituted a genocide against the Mayan population…and that the orders for annihilation had come from the top. Pamela joined the team and began a new documentary quest, and tells the story in "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator," which begins airing on POV on Friday, but can be viewed online for the next month.
