As the culmination of her Guatemala trilogy (starting with When the Mountains Tremble and Granito: How to Nail a Dictator), Pamela Yates’s 500 Years chronicles the populist uprising in 2015 that led to President Otto Pérez Molina’s resignation and imprisonment. Beginning with the 2013 trial of former president Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity, the film weaves between history and present to illustrate Guatemala’s current political situation. However, the true story lies in the Mayan narratives, whose protagonists have long been oppressed, criminalized, and dehumanized by the Guatemalan elites who hold power over the country. It is their struggle—one that began 500 years ago with the colonization of Guatemala by the Spanish—that finally achieves a victory with Pérez Molina’s incarceration, as well as slight justice for years of pillaging and slaughter by the government. There is still much work to be done, but after 500 years, there is finally hope. BD