Island Hopping Guatemala History

ISLAND HPPING

A Brief History of Guatemala

The history of Guatemala is thick with conflict, racism, strife, revolution, coups, counter-coups, civilian massacres, and even a U.S./CIA backed invasion. Guatemala has only recently, within the last decade, made progress towards peace, and the tale begins long, long ago.

The earliest settlers of Mesoamerica, that part of the North American continent known as Central America stretching from north central Mexico to Panama, were the descendants of the first arrivals in North America, Stone Age hunter-gatherers who came to this continent via the Bering land bridge between Siberia and Alaska some 25,000 years ago.

The fist settlers of which there is any physical proof were the Clovis named after the location of a find of stone spear tips at Clovis, New Mexico, who settled in the central highlands of Guatemala somewhere between 11,000-9,000 BC. The physical proof, a collection of stone tools and spear tips, is dated to 10,000 BC-9,000 BC, but it is speculated the Clovis had actually been residing in Guatemala for some 1,000-2,000 years prior to that. A recognizable pattern of settlements have been traced to as early as 8,000 BC, just as mankind was making the shift from hunting to a more agrarian way of life as the ice age was retreating and larger game was rapidly becoming scarce with the warming climate. This period, known as the Archaic, was to last until about 1,800 BC and saw the development and domestication of plants such as corn, peppers, beans, and squash. At this time, the Petén, now a rainforest, was an area of savannahs and woodlands, a perfect land for the bourgeoning Mayan culture’s Pre-Classic period (2,000 BC to 1500 BC). For a more detailed history of the Maya, see the section on the Maya.

By 2,000 BC, fishing and farming villages were prevalent on Guatemala’s Pacific coast and were the forerunners of the great Mayan civilization which dominated Central America for centuries. By 1,000 BC, the Olmecs, Mesoamerica’s “mother culture”, began constructing ceremonial pyramid-like structures in Central America and their work has been found along Guatemala’s Pacific Coast as well as at Copán in Honduras and even as far south as El Salvador.

During the Maya’s Middle Pre-Classic Period, from around 1,000-300 BC, the Mayan population was growing, particularly in the Petén, and what may have been the first Mayan city was built at Nakbé, which dominated the Mayan civilization until about 100 BC when the focus shifted to El Mirador in the northern part of the Petén. The only rival El Mirador had was Kaminaljuyú, a city built on the site where modern day Guatemala City is located.

The greatest question concerning the Maya themselves, is what happened to them? Towards the end of the Late Pre-Classic Period (200-300 AD), El Mirador, the greatest city in the Mayan world was abandoned sometime around 250 AD and conjecture as to why is all we have. Was it disease, famine, warfare? Nobody knows for certain but evidence points to a long, dry climatic period. To the south the Ilopango volcano in El Salvador erupted and covered much of that region in ash forcing the abandonment of Kaminaljuyú around the same time as El Mirador. The Pacific trade routes were disrupted and normal trade now focused more to the north bringing more of a Mexican influence to the cities of the Petén.

At this time Mesoamerica enters the Mayan Classic Period, their greatest period of achievement which is introduced by the creation of a calendar and a system of writing. Northward, in Mexico, sat Teotihuacán, a city of some 250,000 people with a dominant, and sometimes violent nature. Teotihuacán spread her influence from Mexico southwards into Honduras and even rebuilt Kaminaljuyú in Teotihuacán style. But even for all that, the two truly dominant Mayan cultures at that time were centered at Tikal in Guatemala’s Petén, which had aligned itself with Teotihuacán, and Calakmul located in the Campeche region of Mexico. These two cities dominated the region around the 500 AD and struggled with each other for trading rights which eventually led to open warfare. Calakmul finally made an alliance with the Maya at Caracol (in present day Belize) and defeated Tikal in 562 AD. But Tikal was not through and in 695 AD they managed to defeat and overrun Calakmul and once that was done the Mayan culture under Tikal began to flourish as never before with new cities springing up all across Mayan territory, but within a century, by about 750 AD, social and political changes were being felt as trade declined and more and more cities were abandoned. The collapse of Teotihuacán in the 7th century sent shock waves through the peoples of Mesoamerica as cultural and scientific advancement became mired in what is known as the Middle Classic Hiatus. New kings and warlords strove to make their cities the dominant centers of the Mayan civilization after the loss of the Teotihuacán culture as the Mayan culture flourished despite broad-based internal conflicts and revolts.

By 850 AD, militaristic outsiders had set up their own settlements along the Río Usamacinta on what is today the border between Mexico and Guatemala. These were the years of the Mayan decline, the end of the Classic Period, and the emergence of the Post-Classic Period which spanned the years from 900 AD until the time of the Spanish Conquest in the 1500s. At this time some of the Petén Maya fled into nearby Belize and the Yucatán, while most headed south into the Guatemalan highlands to the south. These areas were made up of many fragmented groups of Maya and strife and disorder was rampant in the numerous small, scattered Mayan settlements.

By the end of the 1200s, the once-great Mayan cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal in the Yucatán, which were inhabited by the Toltec-Maya, were abandoned. Shortly thereafter the Guatemalan central highlands were invaded by a group of Toltec-Maya which radically altered life in the region. The highlands had been populated by a peaceful, spiritual group of Maya and the militaristic Toltec-Maya soon set up a series of competing “empires” dominated by the K’iché Maya, who were located in the central highlands and still abound today (you’ll sometimes see K’iche spelled Quiché, this is because the area they settled in is called Quiché-there are many Mayan dialects spoken amongst today’s Maya in Guatemala, but K’iché is the most common, especially along the Río Dulce). The Toltecs controlled the more dominant tribes such as the K’iché, the Mam, the Kaqchikel, and the Tz’utujil establishing a new hierarchy and bringing with them new gods and a new language that blended with those of the Guatemalan Maya. Beginning around 1400 AD, the K’iché, under the direction of the Toltec-Maya, began to exert their influence in the area and by the latter part of the 1400s controlled some one million people, completely dominating the once powerful Mam and Kaqchikel. In 1475, the great K’iché king Cuicab, the man who has been described as the mastermind of the K’iché expansion, passed away and with him went much of the K’iché authority. Soon various conquered tribes of Maya began to break away from K’iché control and for the next half-century the various Mayan tribes in Guatemala were locked in constant conflict with one another as their settlements reflected defensive positions as opposed to a setting better suited to an agrarian subsistence.

In 1521, Spanish invaders under the leadership of Hernán Cortés took the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán in Mexico and in 1523, Cortés dispatched Pedro de Alvarado to Guatemala to use “minimum force” and to “preach matters concerning our Holy Faith.” De Alvarado and his army of over 600 soldiers and horsemen engaged a huge K’iché force estimated at 30,000 under the command of Tecún Umán near the deserted Mayan city of Xelajú. The well-armed warriors of de Alvarado were decimating the Mayan fighters when the battle suddenly ended as de Alvarado killed Tecún Umán in hand-to-hand combat. The K’iché were defeated but the Kaqchikel decided to form an alliance of sorts with the Spanish allowing the Spanish to establish their first base in Guatemala next to the Kaqchikel capital of Iximché In 1526, the Kaqchikel broke away from their Spanish allies and moved deeper into the mountains and began to wage a guerilla style war forcing the Spanish to move their base to present day Antigua where they established the first capital of Guatemala, Santiago de los Caballeros on St. Cecelia’s Day, November 22, 1527.

De Alvarado’s army continued to fight battle after battle with the highland Maya but the Spaniards never gained control over the more remote regions. In 1537, the Church stepped in and succeeded where de Alvarado failed. Missionaries under the guidance of Bartolemé de las Casas convinced the renegade Maya to accept both Christianity and Spanish sovereignty and by 1540 the last of the highland Maya were brought under Spanish control. Years later de Alvarado, who had controlled Guatemala like his personal fiefdom, enslaving and abusing the Maya and turning their lands into Spanish estates, was killed beneath a rolling horse during a battle in Mexico.

As Guatemala entered her period of Spanish Colonial rule, the capital city of Santiago de los Caballeros entered a prolonged period of mourning initiated by de Alvarado’s widow, Beatriz de la Cueva (de Alvarado’s first wife’s sister), who had herself appointed the new governor and then painted the entire palace black, inside and out. On September 10, 1541, a huge mudslide flowed down the sides of the Aqua volcano and buried the city. The survivors moved the city a short distance away and the new Santiago de los Caballeros became the administrative center for six provinces, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Chiapas, now part of Mexico (Santiago de los Caballeros was to rule Guatemala until 1773 when it was destroyed by a series of earthquakes and the capital again moved, this time to what is now known as Guatemala City).

Along with the Spanish, the most powerful force in Guatemala was the Catholic Church whose Franciscan friars first arrived here with de Alvarado in 1523. By 1532, the Franciscans had company, the Jesuits, the Dominicans, and Mercedarians. Guatemala’s first Bishop, Francisco Marroquín, awarded these early missionaries huge tracts of land and indigenous peoples as slaves to farm those lands and earn huge tax-exempt incomes for their owners. This was just the beginning of the exploitation of the Maya which has endured even until this century. In the highlands, scattered Mayan villages were relocated and between 1543 and 1600, some 700 new settlements were constructed, each centered around a Catholic church. Local farmers were pressed for tithes and the new Mayan converts to Catholicism found that their labor was exploited and would remain so for centuries.

The office of the Inquisition was set up in Santiago de los Caballeros, and between 1570-1582, religious persecution was at its height, but little is known of the exact nature of the Inquisition in Guatemala as no records were kept. By the latter part of the 1700s, the Spanish Crown grew tired of the Church’s uncontrolled abuse of power and wealth in her lands and began to limit the Church’s power and impose taxes on her religious orders and the conflict reached a climax in 1767, when Carlos III ordered the Jesuits banned from all Spanish colonies

Finding little silver and no gold in Guatemala, the colonial economy here was agrarian based with the largest crops being tobacco, cacao, chicle, cotton, and the most valuable of all, indigo, while on coastal ranches a few cattle were raised. The labor force for the Spanish ruling class came by way of a system of repartamientos whereby indigenous Maya were transported to the plantations of the Pacific coast as slave labor. In the central highlands, the Maya were going through many cultural changes dictated by their Spanish lords even as diseases brought to Guatemala by the Spaniards ravaged the Mayan population, in some places taking 50%-90% of the people. All in all, the two centuries of Spanish colonial rule transformed Guatemala and her people, creating a new economy, new cities, a new religion, and an extremely racist hierarchy, but in all fairness to the Maya, their culture persevered, they refused to be wiped out, they absorbed what the Spanish dealt to them and came out as strong as ever.

During the Spanish colonial period, Guatemala’s wealth and power was concentrated in the hands of those who were actually born in Spain, the chapetones, while those born of Spanish blood who were born in Guatemala, the Creoles, and those of mixed blood, the Mestizos, were left wanting, and the indigenous Maya were so far removed from wealth and power as to be non-existent. But change was in the air.

In the chaos that followed Napoleon’s invasion of Spain an air of reform swept through the Spanish colonies, but the chapetones and the Church resisted change, they wanted to maintain the status they so enjoyed. On September 15, 1821, Brigadier Don Gabino Gainza, the last of Spain’s Captain Generals in the New World, signed a formal Act of Independence which maintained the status quo under new leadership and even recognized the power of the Catholic Church (the first of many Declarations of Independence that Guatemala was to endure). Hearing of this, the Emperor of Mexico, Augustín de Iturbide, sent troops into Guatemala to annex the new nation, but this union lasted less than one year. In 1823, a second Act of Independence (which sought to abolish slavery and create new, liberal reforms) joined together several Central American states into a rather loose federation modeled after the United States of America. The first president was a Salvadorean General named Manuel José Acre, who, after a bitter feud with his own party, broke away to try to form his own government which inspired others to do the same as a group of liberals from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala united under the leadership of Honduran General Francisco Morazán. Under Morazán’s leadership, Mariano Gálvez became the leader of Guatemala and many reforms took place during his watch; religious orders were abolished, the death penalty was dropped, and Gálvez instituted trail by jury, a school system, and a new law code.

While all this was going on rebellion was brewing in the mountains. While Guatemala was struggling for independence and those of Spanish blood were finding new prosperity, the Maya in the highlands were struggling for their very survival. Besides having to bear the burden of two centuries of harsh Spanish colonial rule, a cholera epidemic in 1823 killed thousands and only added to the Maya’s misery. A young leader emerged, the illiterate but charismatic Rafael Carrera, who led the Maya on a march on Guatemala City. Now in command, Carrera recognized only one authority, the Church, and his reforms cast aside the more liberal reforms of Gálvez as religious orders were restored and the more traditional Spanish titles were reinstated. The conservatives sided with Carrera for they knew he would support their unpopular positions. Under Carrera, Guatemala fought a long and costly war with Morazán and his federation eventually proclaiming Guatemalan independence in 1847. For a short period in 1867, Carrera had to deal with an internal uprising as the western state of Los Altos declared their independence in defiance of the new Guatemalan leader; the revolt ended in a short while and Los Altos returned to the republic.

Following Cerrera’s death in 1865, several liberal uprisings took place under the leadership of men such as Serpio Cruz (who was captured and executed in 1870), Francisco Cruz, and the very successful Justo Rufino Barrios who was active in suppressing the Los Altos revolt of 1867. Barrios left Mexico and entered Guatemala in early 1871, with an army of 45 men which grew day by day until Barrios took Guatemala City on June 30 of that year. Miguel García Granados became the new leader of the republic and Barrios the Commander in Chief. Granados was soon overthrown by a revolt and Barrios returned to Guatemala City in 1872 and installed his troops in the local barracks and set up elections which Barrios himself won.

A bit of a tyrant and egotist, Barrios set out to revitalize the school system and clamped down on the Church and her activities prompting his excommunication and Barrios’ subsequent expulsion of the Archbishop from Guatemala. The military and police thrived under Barrios as the railroad and telegraph were introduced to Guatemala, but his greatest reform was the restructuring of Guatemala’s agricultural economy and the emergence of coffee as a principal export (which brought a huge boom to the economy and in turn helped to reshape the country).

Most of the new coffee plantations were owned and operated by Germans and most of the coffee was exported to Germany. The new German society was welcomed with open arms while the Maya were still considered little more than a labor force. Although most of the Germans were forced to leave Guatemala during World War II, their impact can still be felt today in the Verapaz highlands.

As a result of the coffee boom, many Mayans lost their lands, and some their freedom, as the government began to confiscate unused or communally owned lands in 1873, to sell to the highest bidder. If that were not bad enough, in 1876, Barrios ordered community leaders to supply a work force for the plantations, up to ¼ of the local male population were sent to the plantations as little more than slave labor. Soon, highland villagers rose up in revolts that lasted into the early years of the 20th century, and many Maya had their villages burned to the ground while their leaders were executed, and isolated incidents like this were to re-occur periodically even until more recent years.

Barrios sought US assistance in solving the border dispute with Mexico, a dispute that some of Barrios’ detractors claimed was centered more on Barrio’s personal holdings than Guatemalan territorial rights. Even as Mexican troops entered Guatemala to seize the disputed lands of Chiapas and Soconusco, Barrios was leading his army into El Salvador where he was killed at Chalchuapa on April 2, 1885 while attempting to realign El Salvador with his views of a unified Central America.

Barrios tenure was followed by several shorter terms while the next major player on the Guatemalan power scene was Manuel José Estrada Cabrera, who was elected in 1898 and overthrown in 1920 after a financial crisis and several assassination attempts. However, during the years under Carbrera, Guatemala made advances in public health, construction, agriculture, and education (although teachers were forbidden to criticize Carbrera’s administration), but by the time of his downfall Cabrera was on the verge of insanity and was forced to leave the country.

The most important event to occur during the Carbrera years was the emergence of the United Fruit Company in Guatemala. The United Fruit Company had its origins in Costa Rica years before when Minor Keith was contracted to build a railroad from San José to the Pacific coast. Short on funds Keith sought to raise capital by growing bananas on land granted to him for the railroad. So profitable was his newfound business venture that he soon merged his Tropical Trading and Transport Company with rival Boston Fruit Company and thus was born the United Fruit Company. In 1901, United Fruit bought a small tract of land in Guatemala and in 1904 was awarded a contract to complete a railroad from Guatemala City to Puerto Barrios with provisos granting the company 100’ on either side of the railroad tracks, no taxes for 99 years, a promise that the government would not interfere with United Fruit Company activities, and company acquisition of the Pacific railway in 1912 (although United Fruit did help build some schools in Guatemala, the company was opposed to building highways because they would compete with their railroad monopoly). In this manner United Fruit gained a monopoly over transport in Guatemala as they already controlled the port at Puerto Barrios. Suddenly banana cultivation boomed and by 1934 United Fruit controlled massive amounts of land in Guatemala (UFC controlled over 40% of the country's best lands) and was exporting 3.5 million bunches of bananas annually while employing some 25,000 Guatemalans. But United Fruit was not just a banana exporter, their reach extended into many layers of Guatemala’s economy and political circles as well as neighboring Honduras and was soon the largest coffee exporter as well. So long were United Fruit’s many arms that they were known as el pulpo, the octopus. United Fruit was exempt from almost all taxes and completely controlled the roads in Guatemala along with the country’s only Caribbean port. So successful was United Fruit from an economic standpoint that in the years from 1900-1930, their profits doubled 14 times.

Cabrera’s successor, Carlos Herrera, sought to terminate United Fruit Company contracts which as you may suspect did not go over well. Herrera’s tenure lasted little more than a year before he was replaced by General José María Orellano in December of 1921. Orellano had an ambitious young man as his Minister of War, Jorge Ubico, who had some 290 political opponents killed in 1926, the same year Orellano died of a heart attack. Following Ubico’s death a fierce power struggle ensued between Ubico and Lazaro Chacón which the radical Chacón won handily. Chacón was soon caught in a bitter fight between Guatemala’s farmers and the United Fruit Company and eventually died of a stroke in 1930 setting the stage for the re-emergence of the charismatic Jorge Ubico, the godson of Rufino Barrios.

Ubico’s first crisis was Guatemala’s economy which was hit hard by the depression and he opened tariff-free trade agreements with the United States who pressured him to expel Guatemala’s German population in the years leading up to World War II. Ubico initiated sweeping internal reforms including a massive road building program as well as crackdown on corruption and as he was known to be a friend to big business, he also assisted the United Fruit Company in their times of need by replacing the debt peonage system with a new vagrancy law the required landless peasants to work 150 days a year. Further laws that benefited the landowning elite included the right to shoot vandals and poachers on their properties which helped lead to more working class uprisings in the 1930s and 1940s.

It is suggested that Ubico had some mental problems, that he was paranoid and claimed he was the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ubico set up an intricate network of spies and informers who were especially active in the prelude to an election year. When an assassination plot was discovered in 1934, Ubico had some 300 people killed in just two days. Unable to stem the rising tide of discontent, Ubico was forced to resign in 1944 after a series of violent uprisings by the October Revolutionaries, a group of young, dissident military officers, students, and liberal professionals. Ubico was succeeded by Juan Frederico Ponce Viades who he was hardly any better than his predecessor and within a year faced a violent revolt and fled the country along with Ubico as Guatemalans demanded democracy and freedom. A joint military/civilian junta took over power in what was called “the handover” and in March, 1945, a new constitution was introduced which included suffrage for all adults while prohibiting all future Presidents from a second term. This began what was known as the Ten Years of Spring, a period of free speech and political activity, land reform, and forward progress for the republic.

A civilian president, Juan José Arévalo, was elected in 1945 and held the presidency until 1951 (surviving some 25 coup attempts) establishing a social security system in Guatemala as well as health reforms. There were two rivals for power following the Arévalo years, Colonel Francisco Arana and Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, both of whom were members of the military junta that took power after Ubico’s years. Arana was assassinated and of course suspicion fell upon Guzmán, but no charges were brought against him. Guzmán won the election with 65% of the vote and soon set in place his own socialist reforms, not the least of which was a new roadway to compete with the United Fruit railroad, and the design of a new port next to Puerto Barrios (to also compete with United Fruit who owned the Puerto Barrios). Guzmán also initiated a series of lawsuits against foreign firms in Guatemala for unpaid taxes, irritating the Unites States and the major corporations that had a huge stake in Guatemala. Guzmán further antagonized foreign interests with his Law of Agrarian Reform in 1952, which allocated unused lands owned to be distributed to the landless peasants causing the United Fruit Company to lose some 15% of their land holdings in Guatemala, the first time since the arrival of the Spanish that a Guatemalan ruler offered something back to the masses. But the final nail in Guzmán’s coffin came about when he granted the communist Guatemalan Labor Party legal status (in all fairness, Guzmán’s government was not Communist, but it was certainly anti-American). This greatly upset the U.S. government who denounced the communist tendencies of the Guatemalan government and decided that the Guzmán government had to be overthrown. In 1953, President Eisenhower okayed plans to overthrow the Guzmán government and the CIA hastily put together a small army of mercenaries in Honduras (Operation PBSUCCESS) with plans to invade Guatemala (as if it were a coincidence, the new CIA director, Allen Dulles, was also a member of the board of the United Fruit Company, who helped in their own way to engineer the coup). Many Guatemalan civilian and military leaders backed the U.S. stance and recognized Guzmán as a menace and the Guatemalan Army refused to defend the Guzmán government when the U.S. backed coup led by Col. Carlos Castillo Armas succeeded in taking control of the government from Guzmán. Guzmán knew the Guatemalan Army would not come to his aid so he purchased a huge supply of Czech arms that he was going to use to arm the people who supported him, but the arms shipment was intercepted at sea before it could arrive at Puerto Barrios. On June 27, 1953, Guzmán relinquished the presidency to Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz the Guatemalan Army Chief of Staff, just as the CIA backed forces approached Guatemala City.

The military took control of the Guatemalan government after the overthrow (and immediately began receiving U.S. aid) and was to retain control for some thirty years as the economy dwindled and violence grew. In 1954, the U.S.-backed Castillo Armas was elected President and the gains the Mayans made were wiped away as Ladinos returned to the power structure. Armas revoked the constitution of 1945 and replaced it with a more restrictive version that outlawed left-wing parties, which in turn brought about the execution of large numbers of unionists and reformers. Armas surrounded himself with old-style Ubico supporters and all the lands that had been taken from United Fruit and given to the Maya were returned. Periodic rumors of coups plagued Armas’ term until finally he was shot by his own bodyguard in 1957.

After a few months of turmoil General Ydígoras Fuentes took power and his extremely autocratic rule led to a failed coup by junior military officers in 1960. The officers, led by Marco Yon Sosa and Turcios Lima, escaped and went into hiding in the eastern highlands, establishing close ties with Cuba and forming the nucleus of the armed revolts that were to plague the Guatemalan government for the next 36 years. Ydígoras Fuentes was overthrown in 1963 and the U.S. (with the approval of JFK), fearful of another socialist government taking control, backed another military coup in which the Army again took over control under the leadership of Peralta Azurdia.

Azurdia was to rule for only three years, but during that time the Army came under nearly constant attack from guerilla fighters led by Sosa and Lima who had been trained in counterinsurgency by the U.S. when they were still in the fold. The PGT, the Guatemalan Labor Party aligned itself with a new party, the FAR, Rebel Armed Forces, Sosa and Lima’s guerilla army representatives who advocated a return to the rule of Juan José Arévalo. The elections of 1966 were won by Julio César Méndez Montenegro who was forced to sign a pact with the Army agreeing to stay out of their affairs, follow Army instructions, and allow the military a free hand in all matters of national security. Montenegro’s first act as President was to offer a general amnesty for all guerillas which was immediately rejected by Sosa and Lima and new anti-Army campaigns begun. Failing to quell rebel activity in that manner, the Guatemalan Army developed a unit that terrorized the local peoples who were suspected of aiding the rebels. That, combined with the death of Lima in a car crash was the killing blow to the rebels in the eastern highlands and their focus shifted to the area around Guatemala City where the U.S. Ambassador, John Gordon Mein, was assassinated by FAR rebels in 1968. Although the government of Montenegro was aligned with the more socialist views of Arévalo and Arbenz, the Army had true control and when the military joined with the right-wing MLN, political assassinations became commonplace as death squads such as the Mano Blanco and the Ojo por Ojo had free reign to kill peasants, students, unionists, and academics as Guatemala entered another two decades of political strife, electoral fraud, and violence.

During the years from the late 1960s to the early 1990s Guatemala’s economy prospered but little wealth trickled down to the poorer classes. There was no fine line between the ruling elite and the poor who had no access to health care or education but were still being pressed into labor in the plantations. In 1970, right-winger Colonel Arana Osorio was elected President by a vote estimated to be only 4% of the entire voting-age population. Osorio’s first act as President was to go on an anti-guerilla campaign stating “…if it is necessary to run the country into a cemetery in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so.” Before long the death squads reached new heights of violence in retaliation for rebel attacks on government installations and even members of the government. A new group surfaced at this time, the URNG, Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity, which was countered by a group of right-wing vigilantes called the ESA, the Secret Anti-Communist Army, which was responsible, along with the Blanco Mano, for the torture and murder of thousands of students, professionals, and peasants suspected of leftist activities, an estimated 15,000 during Osorio’s first three years as President. Election fraud was rampant in the 1974 elections when the right-winger Kjell Laugerud was declared the winner while the FNO, the National Opposition Front claimed their candidate, General Efraín Ríos Montt was the true winner. Montt was finally persuaded to withdraw his claim in favor of an Ambassador post in Spain despite the backing of several members of the Army.

Laugerud’s term in office was not as severe as his predecessors and he offered limited reforms and plans to colonize the Petén. His tenure was marked by a catastrophic earthquake on Feb. 4, 1976, which killed over 23,000 people and almost completely destroyed Puerto Barrios, cutting off the port from the rest of the country for months. A new group, the EGP, Ejército Guerillero de los Pobres, the Guatemalan Army of the Poor, surfaced in the Ixil area and soon new armed conflicts erupted prompting U.S. President Jimmy Carter to cut off all aid to Guatemala due to “…the country’s appalling human rights record.” The EGP was formed around 1972 by some experienced guerilla fighters from the 1960s who crossed the border into Mexico and began to build a network of supports as there was little if any military presence in Ixil at the time. The EGP’s first armed assault was the execution of Luis Arenas, the owner of Finca la Perla, just north of Chajul. Arena, notorious for keeping hundreds of his employees deep in a system of debt/bondage, was shot in front of his laborers as he was counting out the payroll. That day the slogan of the EGP was born: “Long live the poor, death to the rich.” This act brought an immediate and very bloodthirsty retribution from the military who began slaying and torturing suspected guerillas and sympathizers.

The 1978 elections were doctored by the Army and their candidate, the newly elected President, Brigadier General Fernando Lucas García which only served to bring about a new wave of violence across the country as the economy went downhill rapidly and guerilla bases in the mountains were being strengthened. Some of the worst massacres in Guatemalan history followed over the next decade. In that same year a group of villagers in Panzós arrived for a town meeting to solve land disputes only to find a group of soldiers waiting on them. The soldiers opened fire and within a few minutes over a hundred men, women, and children lay dead. What was not known to the villagers was that the Army had arrived in Panzós the day before the atrocity and with bulldozers had created two mass graves just outside town. Another fact that was not known to the villagers was that President García owned over 78,000 acres of disputed land outside Panzós. Panzós was the end of the Caribbean railway and a loading point for produce and goods to pass down the Río Polochic into and across Lago Izabal, making Panzós an important transshipment point where profits could be made.

In 1979, the EGP executed Enrique Brol, owner of Finca San Francisco located near Cotzal and that same day took the town of Nebaj and held a huge meeting in the town square. The EGP forced locals and tourists alike to attend and listen to their speeches denouncing the government of Guatemala and its policies. This soon brought a new wave of military attacks to the area and a fortification of Nabaj.

Political conditions in the capital city deteriorated so badly that political groups went underground as two opposition leaders were murdered and as well as more than a hundred members of the Christian Democrats. In January of 1980, a small group of Mayans joined with student activists and occupied the Spanish embassy in Guatemala City just as a meeting was taking place between the Spanish Ambassador and a group of prominent Guatemalan citizens. Government forces surrounded the embassy and a fire broke out inside the compound killing everyone but the Ambassador who managed to escape but was badly injured. In all, thirty-nine people died and some reports of that event suggested that the activists deliberately started the fire.

Stuck in a never-ending war against the rebels, the Army was suffering losses to the tune of 250 per month while the rebels were estimated to have 6,000 armed members and over 250,000 unarmed collaborators. As the guerillas widened their campaign across the country the Army set up civilian vigilante groups, Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil, Civilian Self-Defense Patrols (PACs) to assist in keeping “subversives” in check. Until the Peace Accords are signed in 1996, an estimated 600,000-1,000,000 Mayan were forced into the patrols. In the PACs, participation was considered voluntary but many Guatemalans, especially those in the northwest, had no choice but to join either the PACs or the guerillas. The Army also established Iximche, a special military unit that carried out various mass murders from during 1981-1982, this was one of the first named “death squads” to wreak havoc on the population of Guatemala. Conflicts continued as the death squads took their tolls on the Guatemalan people and it is estimated that over 25,000 people lost their lives during the four years García ruled the country.

On May 24, 1981, 15 residents of the K’iché village of Los Cimientos, a small mountain community, went to the market in Finca San Francisco to sell their produce. Fourteen of them lost their lives as the Army surrounded the market and slaughtered nearly all of the men, women, and children who were there. The only Los Cimientos survivor was a nine year old child who had hidden under the bodies. After the attack the Army invaded Los Cimientos and accused the people there of being leftist sympathizers. The Army found two of the village elders, Mayan priests well into their 70s, lighting candles and praying in the local cemetery. The soldiers brutally killed the priests in from of the townfolk. The rest of the population of Los Cimientos were warned to leave before the Army commenced bombing the village. The people of Los Cimientos fled immediately, leaving all their worldly possessions behind and their last view of their village was of flames destroying their homes as some of their friends and neighbors being tortured. The people of Los Cimientos began 13 years of living as refugees while being exploited as a labor force in the nearby plantations. In August, 1994, receiving no help from the Government, the people of Los Cimientos returned to their old homesteads, two-thirds of which had been occupied in the intervening years. The K’iché petitioned the government time and again to restore their lands as their quarrel with the Ixil, who had inhabited Los Cimientos in the absence of the K’iché, escalated. The Ixil destroyed K’iché crops, killed their horses, and installed a water system whereby they could shut off water flow to the K’iché. On June 15, 2001, the K’iché families in Los Cimientos were awoken at dawn by a group of men armed with baseball bats, machetes, sharpened sticks, and guns, and were told that they had two hours to leave Los Cimientos or they would be killed. To prove their deadly intent some of the armed men raped two K’iché women in front of their young children. Once again the K’iché fled their homes in Los Cimientos for the lands of Xeputul near Cotzal and six months later moved to Batzula Churrancho where they felt safer. To date, nobody has been arrested for the events of June, 2001, nor has anyone offered to help the K’iché return to their land even though Ixil leaders admitted that their people were responsible for the crimes and that the K’iché are the true owners of the land, but some Ixil vowed further violence if the K’iché tried to return. In 2002, the Los Cimientos Maya gave up their hope of returning to their homes in Los Cimientos and were relocated to San Vicente. They lost 6,000 acres in Los Cimientos, with 5 pure water rivers, and 3-4 harvests a year of organically grown crops, for 2,000 acres in San Vicente, with one polluted river, and the chance of 2-3 harvests per year with the use of agricultural chemicals. The government of then President Alfonzo Portillo proclaimed this to be a great victory, second only in importance to the 1996 peace accords. The government promised the K’iche (in signed agreements) food support until their crops were established, new infrastructure and houses for those destroyed by the Ixil, as well as on-site health care. The Portillo government never fulfilled their obligations to the Los Cimientos K’iche causing the loss of several children to malnutrition and lack of medical care.

The 1982 presidential election was won by Aníbal Guevara, but on March 23, 1982, was overthrown in a coup staged by a group of junior military officers. The coup leaders asked retired General Efraín Rios Montt, who had lost the fraudulent election in 1974, to take command of the country. Huehuetenango born Montt, who had the backing of the Reagan administration (President Reagan said that Montt is “…a man of great personal integrity...”, and even as Reagan spoke these words Montt's troops marched on La Dos Erres where, by the time the army left the village, five young women were raped, children were bludgeoned to death, and 160 people were dumped into the village well while still alive), formed a three-member junta to rule Guatemala, but within two months had dismissed his junta colleagues and assumed the Presidency. Montt offered the rebels an amnesty in June, but when the month passed and there were no takers, he vowed to rid Guatemala of the rebels by Christmas. Montt told an audience of poor Guatemalans that “If you are with us, we will feed you; if not, we’ll kill you.” The report of this appeared in the New York Times on July 18, 1982, the same day as the massacre at Plan de Sanchez.

On July 18, 1982, Guatemalan soldiers aided by PACs entered the community of Plan de Sanchez, about 95 miles north of Guatemala City, in search of leftist guerillas. The soldiers used machine guns and machetes to kill the villagers, some of whom they had forced into their homes only to set their houses on fire or toss in a hand grenade. When it was all over 226 people had been murdered. On July 18, 2005, current Guatemalan Vice-President Eduardo Stein visited Plan de Sanchez to formally accept government responsibility for the massacre. Stein’s trip was prompted by a historic ruling by the Inter-American Human Rights Court who had decreed that Guatemala pay the survivors and relatives $7.9 million in damages. But in all fairness, one has to mention that the massacre at Plan de Sanchez came only weeks after two deadly guerilla attacks. On June 6, 1982, guerillas stopped a bus near Cotzal and executed 13 PAC leaders and their wives, and on June 17, 1982, guerillas entered the village of Chacalté (a community where the PAC had been very active) and killed over 100 people and wounded another 35. As if in further retaliation, on the evening of Oct. 13, 1982, Guatemalan soldiers entered the town of Santa Anita las Canoas and gathered up 14 suspected guerillas. The soldiers tied the men to fence posts and tortured them all night, their screams still haunt their family members in the village to this day. Finally, at dawn, the soldiers fired upon the men, killing them all.

Montt was successful in going after the rebels; the Army and the PACs recaptured nearly all guerilla held territory and under Montt’s Victoria 82 (Victory 82) “scorched earth” policy, guerilla activity lessened, but at a huge cost in civilian deaths as the campaign, which was designed to destroy the support base for the rebels made no distinction between guerilla combatants and the innocent Mayan population in targeted areas. Montt ordered the Army’s Archivos intelligence unit to “…apprehend, hold, interrogate, and dispose of suspected guerillas as they see fit.” Montt’s brief presidency has been described as the most violent period of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war which took some 200,000 lives, mostly unarmed indigenous civilians, Mayans, some 70,000 alone during Montt’s 14 months in office. To be perfectly honest, both sides engaged in executions and torture, but vast majority of human rights violations were carried out by the Guatemalan Army and the PACs. In 1999, a report entitled Memory of Silence, revealed that the Army and the PACs were responsible for 93% of the reported human rights abuses.

During these years the Army abused the citizens of Guatemala in schools as well as on the killing fields. Members of the Army would often go to select schools where teen-aged young men were in attendance and wait for the students to head for home and “induct” the older, male students immediately into the Army, the students simply did not come home from school and the family knew what had happened. I’m told by men who were students then that they often had to hide from the soldiers, waiting inside school until the Army left before the students could depart for home.

On August 8, 1983, Montt was ousted by his Minister of Defense, General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores who clamed that “religious fanatics” were abusing their government positions (it has been suggested that this coup was backed by the U.S. government who wanted Guatemala back on the road to democracy). Although seven people were killed in the coup Montt survived to found his own political party, the Guatemalan Republic Front, and to later be elected President of Congress in 1995 and again in 2000.

Víctores allowed a gradual return to democracy starting with a 1984 election for an Assembly to draft a democratic constitution. The first free elections in Guatemala in three decades were held on May 30, 1985, when Cinicio Cerezo, a Christian Democrat won with almost 70% of the vote. Cerezo’s top priorities were an end to the violent civil war as well as legal and human rights reforms (although the government was criticized for failing to action on human rights violators). Cerezo was successful in moving the military away from the political zone (although Cerezo admitted that the Army still had 75% of the power in the country) and into the more traditional role of providing internal security, specifically by fighting the rebels that still plagued the countryside. Although Cerezo’s first two years were characterized by a stable economy and a marked decrease in political violence, dissatisfied military members made two coup attempts in May of 1988 and again in May of 1989, but Army leadership supported the government. But Cerezo was a bit of a fence sitter, accused of being both Communist and right-wing at various times, “non-confrontational” has been used to describe his term and people gradually became disappointed in his administration. During the latter years of Cerezo’s term it became increasingly clear that the Army still ran the show, that the wealth was still controlled by the elite (at this time 65% of Guatemala’s people lived below the poverty line), and that political violence was again on the upswing with 85 politically motivated murders in February of 1989 alone. Even the leaders of GAM, Guatemala’s human rights support group, became victims of Cerezo’s death squads.

On November 11, 1990, elections were held which were mired in controversy and an eventual runoff ballot gave the Presidency to Jorge Antonio Serrano (a former minister in Montt’s administration), and Guatemala enjoyed the first transfer of a democratic civilian government to a democratic civilian government. Serrano’s record was mixed, he some success in consolidating civilian control over the Army, replacing a number of senior officers and persuading the military to engage in peace talks with the URNG, although it has been suggested many times that Serrano was just a front man that allowed the Army to take care of their real business of running the country. Serrano took a politically unpopular step when he recognized the sovereignty of Belize however he made up for that by stopping the fiscal slide that Guatemala was mired in and reducing inflation while creating real economic growth. In May of 1993, Serrano created his own coup claiming he must lead the country due to corruption in his own administration. Serrano illegally dissolved both Congress and the Supreme Court and tried to restrict civil freedoms in the name of fighting corruption. Suspected of being influenced by Columbian drug cartels and facing a coup of his own, Serrano fled the country and on June 5, 1993, Congress chose Ramiro de León Carpio to complete Serrano’s term.

De León was not a member of any political party but he did have strong popular support. Disregarding calls for revenge against the military, De León overhauled the senior military commanders declaring that stability was his long term goal. Under De León the U.N. brokered peace talks progressed and his 1995 Indigenous Rights Act granted the Maya greater personal freedoms and even allowed state education in Mayan languages.

In 1996, new President Álvaro Arzú moved quickly towards peace and on December 26, 1996, after three decades of civil war with 150,000 dead, 50,000 missing, and over 1 million refugees, the Peace Accords were signed and peace came at last to Guatemala. Human rights abuses were investigated and within two days of publishing a paper on the abuses, Bishop Juan Geradi was bludgeoned to death in his garage. Although the people of Guatemala had been used to death squads and murder, for some reason Geradi’s killing was a shock, this wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, and in the days and weeks following the murder things only got weirder. A few days after the murder, hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Guatemala City for a silent protest while judges and prosecutors received death threats and fled the country. At one point a priest’s dog was implicated in the assassination! If things were not strange enough, Geradi was succeeded by Bishop Mario Rios Mont, the former President's brother. As Arzúl left office Geradi’s murderer or murderers were still at large and although politically motivated killings dropped off the crime rate soared in comparison. Guatemala suddenly found itself with the fourth highest incidence of kidnapping in the world with over 1,000 people abducted in 1997 causing law and order to be a major issue in the 1999 elections.

In the background, former dictator Rios Montt returns to politics as the elected head of the FRG winning his third term in 1998. Guatemala’s first peacetime election in forty years was won by Alfonso Portillo in 1999. Portillo, a member of the FRG, a friend and ally of Montt, and an admitted murderer (he killed two men in a brawl in Mexico and fled the country feeling he had no chance of a fair trial), claimed that if he could kill to defend himself, he could defend his people. Montt is elected the President of Parliament and in that role says, “I make the laws of Congress, I approve the budget of Congress, so I already am (national) President.” Guatemalan politics takes on a “family” air as Montt’s daughter is elected Deputy President of the Parliament, while Montt’s son becomes head of finances for the Army.

In 1999, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú Tum, in concert with Guatemalan human rights organizations, presented charges against Rios Montt and four retired Guatemalan Army Generals, two of whom were once President of Guatemala. Menchú Tum (whose father had been killed inside the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City when government troops laid siege to the building killing 35 people, including four Spanish priests), Petitioned the Spanish National Court and charged the men with torture, genocide, illegal detention, and state-sponsored terrorism. The five were indicted along with three other highly placed government officials who held their offices between 1978-1982. This would prove to be a long, drawn-out case, one in which Rios Montt has still not been held accountable for his actions (which include an estimated 300+ massacres during his 14 months in office). The Spanish court decides not to proceed, arguing that while there was strong evidence against the accused there is no reason why the case could not be heard in Guatemalan courts. However, members of the Guatemalan Parliament, such as Montt, are immune from prosecution by Guatemalan law. Later that same year U.S. President Bill Clinton publicly apologized for his country’s support of Guatemala’s past regimes, specifically that of Montt.

Portillo vowed to clean up the judicial system, get tough on crime, tax the rich, respect human rights, and bring to justice Geradi’s killers. Finally, in June of 2001, an Army officer, Byron Lima Estrada, former head of the notorious G-2 intelligence unit and a former member of the controversial Presidential Security Unit, the EMP, two other Army officers, and a priest who acted as an accomplice, were tried for the murder of Bishop Geradi. The military officers received 30 years each and the priest received a 20-year sentence. This was the first time the Army was actually helpless to defend their own, although a bomb did explode outside the home of one of the judges on the first day of the trial, and random shots were later fired at the courthouse, and there was reported several instances of intimidation of prosecutors and witnesses. Despite serving justice in the Geradi case, Portillo’s years were plagued by scandal, a sagging economy, and an increasing crime rate, and after several kidnapping threats Portillo moved his family to Canada.

On June 17, 2002, some 8,000 former members of the PACs staged a demonstration in northern Guatemala demanding that the government pay them US $2,500 each for “services rendered to the fatherland” during the Guatemalan civil war. In 2003, Montt’s FRG party pushes a bill through Parliament granting the former militia members US$660 each. At this same time reports began showing up that the former militia members were reactivating their intelligence-gathering network and that they were remaining loyal to Montt. Even some 7 years after the peace treaty was signed, an atmosphere of fear and intimidation lingered in Guatemala. A Bishop and several members of the Catholic Church receive death threats just prior to a visit by Pope John Paul II while certain human rights organizers are subjected to similar intimidation.

On July 24, 2003, demonstrations rocked Guatemala City as the Supreme Court granted an injunction temporarily barring Montt from running for the presidency in the upcoming November elections. Some 3,000 demonstrators were given meals by the FRG in return for their protesting and the riots forced the closing of the US Embassy as Montt’s supporters called for his return to power (Guatemala has a “no-second-term” rule for their presidents). The November 9, 2003, presidential election was won by the ex-mayor of Guatemala City, Óscar Berger in a runoff (Montt was a distant third with 11% of the vote-he was finally permitted to run for the office). In May of 2004, Montt, the former 1980s dictator, was ordered held under house arrest on a charge of causing the death of radio reporter Hector Ramírez. Ramírez, a reporter for Guatemala’s Channel 7 television news and Radio Sonora, died as a result of a heart attack suffered while fleeing from FRG attackers who were beating him with sticks while he was covering the aforementioned protests in Guatemala City (the lack of police control and their lackadaisical attitude towards the protestors resulted in the dismissal of the head of the National Police). Similar reports came in from all over the city as FRG members and supporters attacked numerous other journalists. Montt was also accused of manslaughter for instigating a fatal riot in 2003, and is named in lawsuits of directing the wholesale slaughter of tens of thousands of Mayans during his short, one year rule. Charges are currently pending in both Spain and Guatemala as Gustavo Meoño, director of the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation, traveled to Spain to reactivate criminal proceedings against Montt. President Óscar Berger, remarked in an interview, “We’re not going to allow anyone to be exempt from punishment. If someone committed acts outside the law, we will ask that justice be done.” Montt’s house arrest does not forbid him from traveling around Guatemala, and on November 20, 2004, he attended the wedding of his daughter Zury Mayté Sosa, a member of the Guatemalan Congress, to U.S. Representative Jerry Weller, a Republican from Illinois.

In September of 2005, the Spanish Constitutional Court ruled that Spanish courts could indeed try those accused of crimes against humanity even if the victims were not of Spanish origin. In June of 2006, a Spanish judge, Santiago Pedraz, traveled to Guatemala and interviewed Rios Montt and others charged with him. Some 15 defense appeals later Pedraz was prevented from interviewing Montt and his compatriots. On July 7, 2006, Pedraz issued an arrest warrant against Montt and former Presidents Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores and Romeo Lucas García (who had, unknown to Pedraz, died in Venezuela in May of 2006). Also named were two retired generals, two ex-chiefs of police, and a former Minster of the Interior. In a July, 2006, press conference, 80-year old Rios Montt admitted that there were "excesses" that were committed by the army during his tenure in office, but he steadfastly denied his guilt. As of this writing, August of 2006, Montt remains free, but that may change at any time.