When an angry mob stoned and burned seven people to death on suspicion of theft last month , it was hardly unusual for Guatemala.
Psychologists and social experts say lynchings, about two a week, are a direct legacy of 36 years of a civil war that made bloodshed commonplace and violence the preferred method of settling scores, seeking justice or defending one's home.
"We've had plenty of bad examples that the population has adopted," said Edgar Gutierrez, secretary of strategic analysis in the President's office. "Lynchings soared after the peace accords were signed in 1996. From then to 1999, there were two lynchings a week."
In the civil war between right-wing regimes and leftist insurgents, about 200,000 people died, the majority of them assassinated by the army right-wing death squads.
Apart from hardening Guatemala's 10 million people to death and destruction, psychologists say, it left the police and justice systems in such a shambles that few people see much point in holding out for justice through the courts.
Superstitions also came into play in May when villagers attacked a group of Japanese tourists and smashed 40-year-old Tetsuo Yamahiro's head in with a rock in Todos Santos Cuchumatan, in the northwest of Guatemala.
The villagers apparently had heard rumours that kidnappers were stealing children to use their hearts in satanic rituals.
"The lynchings are the best example of the fact that we do not live in a democratic culture and that fear remains the main recourse," Mr. Gutierrez said.
Alejandra Flores, a psychiatrist working with the Guatemalan archbishop's office, agreed.
"Lynchings occur when the state is totally absent, when Guatemalans feel totally defenceless against violence and crime and decide to take justice into their own hands," she said.
The July 9 incident is a good example. An 11-year-old boy and an adult escaped a mob in Salvaquiej, a village of 300 people in the largely Indian province of Quiche, about 200 kilometres west of the capital. Seven others were not so lucky.
The victims, whose ages ranged from 16 to 60, were accused of stealing by neighbours, who held them for six hours before dousing them with gasoline and burning them.
The killing of the Japanese visitor in May brought Guatemala's lynching epidemic to international attention. The Japanese were shopping and taking pictures in the colourful market of Todos Santos Cuchumatan, a popular tourist day trip, when they were attacked.
The attack has raised concern among tourism officials that the killings will deter visitors from coming to Guatemala.
About 636,000 tourists visited Guatemala in 1998, lured by the Central American country's pre-Columbian ruins and vibrant Mayan villages. Since the end of the civil war in 1996, Guatemalan officials have promoted tourism as an economic alternative to the country's traditional agricultural industry.
In 1998, tourism brought in almost $400-million (U.S.), making it the second source of hard currency after coffee.
Tourism officials characterized the attack on the Japanese tourists as an "exceptional" and "unfortunate" incident. But it was not the first such attack on a visitor.
In 1994, U.S. journalist June Weinstock was beaten almost to death by hundreds of angry peasants in the remote village of San Cristobal Verapaz who thought she wanted to steal a baby.
Although no cases have been documented, the rumour persists in some Mayan communities that foreigners come to steal children to sell them or their body parts abroad. But some investigators suspect more sinister motives behind the lynchings.
Nery Rodenas, head of the archbishop's human-rights office, said they had found evidence in several cases of former soldiers inciting the crowd, perhaps nostalgic about the bloody days when other Guatemalans cowered before them in fear.