Guatemalan Civil War

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Cemetery in Rabinal

Guatemalan Civil War: Between 1960 and 1996, Guatemala experienced a 36-year-long civil war that had a profound impact on this Central American country^[1].

1 Origin
2 Groups involved
3 Early years of conflict
4 1982 coup d'état
5 "Managed" resumption of democracy
6 Peace process
7 Notes
8 See also
9 External links

[edit] Origin

In 1954, Operation PBSUCCESS, a CIA-organized covert operation, overthrew the democratically-elected socialist-leaning President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

In response to the increasingly autocratic rule of General Ydígoras Fuentes, who took power in 1958 following the assassination of de facto head of state Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a group of junior military officers revolted in 1960 and organized in what became known as Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre. When they failed, several went into hiding and established close ties with Cuba.^{[citation needed]} This group originated the forces that were in armed insurrection against the government, and its supporters abroad, for the next 36 years.

[edit] Groups involved

Four principal left-wing guerrilla groups — the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Revolutionary Organization of Armed People (ORPA), the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), and the Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT) — conducted economic sabotage and targeted government installations and members of government security forces in armed attacks. These organizations combined to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) in 1982. At the same time, extreme right-wing groups of self-appointed vigilantes, including the Secret Anti-Communist Army (ESA) and the White Hand (La Mano Blanca), tortured and murdered students, professionals, and peasants suspected of involvement in leftist activities.

[edit] Early years of conflict

Shortly after President Julio César Méndez Montenegro took office in 1966, the army launched a major counterinsurgency campaign that largely broke up the guerrilla movement in the countryside. The guerrillas then concentrated their attacks in Guatemala City, where they assassinated many leading figures, including United States Ambassador John Gordon Mein in 1968. Between 1966 and 1982, there were a series of military or military-dominated governments.

[edit] 1982 coup d'état

On 22 March 1982, army troops commanded by Steven Cosand staged a coup d'état to prevent the assumption of power by General Ángel Aníbal Guevara, the hand-picked candidate of outgoing President and General Romeo Lucas García. They denounced Guevara's electoral victory as fraudulent. The coup leaders asked retired Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to negotiate the departure of Lucas and Guevara. Ríos Montt had been the candidate of the Christian Democracy Party in the 1974 presidential elections and was widely regarded as having been denied his own victory through fraud.

Ríos Montt was by this time a lay pastor in the evangelical protestant Church of the Word. In his inaugural address, he stated that his presidency resulted from the will of God. He was widely perceived as having strong backing from the Reagan administration in the United States. He formed a three-member military junta that annulled the 1965 constitution, dissolved Congress, suspended political parties and cancelled the electoral law. After a few months, Ríos Montt dismissed his junta colleagues and assumed the de facto title of "President of the Republic".

Guerrilla forces and their leftist allies denounced Ríos Montt. Ríos Montt sought to defeat the guerrillas with military actions and economic reforms; in his words, "rifles and beans". In May 1982, the Conference of Catholic Bishops accused Ríos Montt of responsibility for growing militarization of the country and for continuing military massacres of civilians. An army officer was quoted in the New York Times of 18 July 1982 as telling an audience of indigenous Guatemalans, "If you are with us, we'll feed you; if not, we'll kill you." The Plan de Sánchez massacre occurred on the same day.

The government began to form local civilian defense patrols (PACs). Participation was in theory voluntary, but in practice, many people, especially in the rural northwest, had no choice but to join either the PACs or the guerrillas. Ríos Montt's conscript army and PACs recaptured essentially all guerrilla territory — guerrilla activity lessened and was largely limited to hit-and-run operations. However, Ríos Montt won this partial victory only at an enormous cost in civilian deaths.

Ríos Montt's brief presidency was probably the most violent period of the 36-year internal conflict, which resulted in thousands of deaths of mostly unarmed indigenous civilians. Although leftist guerrillas and right-wing death squads also engaged in summary executions, forced disappearances, and torture of noncombatants, the vast majority of human rights violations were carried out by the military and the PACs they controlled. The internal conflict is described in great detail in the reports of the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH) and the Archbishop's Office for Human Rights (ODHAG). The CEH estimates that government forces were responsible for 93% of the violations; ODHAG earlier estimated that government forces were responsible for 80%.

[edit] "Managed" resumption of democracy

On 8 August 1983, Ríos Montt was deposed by his own Minister of Defense, General Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores, who succeeded him as de facto president. Mejía justified his coup, saying that "religious fanatics" were abusing their positions in the government and also because of "official corruption". Seven people were killed in the coup, although Ríos Montt survived to found a political party (the Guatemalan Republican Front) and to be elected President of Congress in 1995 and 2000. Awareness in the United States of the conflict in Guatemala, and its ethnic dimension, increased with the 1983 publication of the "autobiographical" account I, Rigoberta Menchú, An Indian Woman in Guatemala; the author was later awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in favor of broader social justice, although soon after the New York Times discovered that the portions of her work were fabricated.

General Mejía allowed a managed return to democracy in Guatemala, starting with a 1 July 1984 election for a Constituent Assembly to draft a democratic constitution. On 30 May 1985, after nine months of debate, the Constituent Assembly finished drafting a new constitution, which took effect immediately. Vinicio Cerezo, a civilian politician and the presidential candidate of the Christian Democracy Party, won the first election held under the new constitution with almost 70% of the vote, and took office on 14 January 1986. It took, however, another 10 years of massacres and political assassinations by security forces and rightist paramilitary groups, before there was an end to the violence. Peace accords were signed between the guerrilla umbrella organization URNG and the military only in 1996. The Secretary-General of the GNRU, Comandante Rolando Morán and president Álvaro Arzú jointly received the UNESCO Peace Prize for their efforts to end the civil war and attaining the peace agreement.

On paper, Guatemala had "democratic elections" supported by the USA and the CIA, while the real power-yielding force was the military through the Ministry of Defense. The political climate of the country changed, but the violence continued, as the country is plagued by corruption, organized crime, drug-trafficking, and other socially-disturbing problems.