10 their absence of conscience by refusing to extract the juridical consequences from such facts. Their blind dogmatism has hindered the evolution and humanization of international law. State crimes – it cannot be denied – have been planned and perpetrated by State agents and collaborators, recurrently and on different continents. International jurists have the obligation to rescue the concept of State crime, merely to maintain the credibility of their profession. 31. There have been occasions – and this cannot be ignored – on which some States, in a frenzy of criminality, have cooperated among themselves to kill human beings under the pretext of State security. An example of this was the so-called “Operation Condor” between South American dictatorships (especially in the 1970s, and which today some people dare to discredit). In operations of this type, the States in question coordinate to ensure the effective extermination of segments of one of the elements that constitute the State, precisely the most important one: the population. In addition, the State machinery has sought, subsequently, to ensure the impunity of those responsible for the execution of its criminal policies - set up to perpetrate the extermination – in a monstrous inversion of values as regards the purposes of the State. 32. The extensive and significant report of the Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) proved unequivocally that the State’s security forces acted “in coordination with the Civil Self-Defense Patrols” within the framework of a “counterinsurgency strategy” drawn up by the Army in 1982, which formed the basis for the militarized repression of the Mayan communities; “the CEH reached the conclusion that it was not a case of isolated acts and sporadic excesses, but rather, above all, of a strategic plan.” 37 The State policy of repression and extermination led to massive human rights violations, such as “scorched earth operations, in which entire communities were massacred and eliminated; “in different ways, [these] massacres forced many thousands of Guatemalans to displace from their homes, as the only alternative to protect their lives.” 38 33. In addition, the massacres affected “severely the collective right of these peoples to their own cultural life and to conserve and develop their own institutions and their customary law, to appoint their own authorities, and to have their own mechanisms of social control and response to illegal acts.” 39 The same report of the CEH stated that: "Even though each massacre had its own characteristics, the recurrence of certain characteristics during several years (especially over the period 1978-1983) and in all the regions where many operations of this type took place, are factors which indicate that they did not respond to the mere excesses of a few officers, but formed part of a dulyplanned strategy directed at the physical annihilation of thousands of defenseless persons and the terrorization of the survivors. The massacres were doubtlessly the most cruel and disproportionate element of the counterinsurgency war.” 40 [In Spanish in the original.] 37 . Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH), Guatemala - Memoria del Silencio, tome III, 1a. ed., Guatemala, CEH, 1999, p. 27, and cf. pp. 29 and 100-101. 38 . Ibid., p. 212. 39 . Ibid., p. 211. The Informe adds that “the Army systematically attacked cultural, spiritual and religious elements of profound significance for the population”; ibid., p. 272. 40 . Ibid., p. 272.