Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1980s
In the early 1980s four disparate guerilla groups united to form the URNG (the Guatemalan
National Revolutionary Unity) and military suppression of antigovernment elements in the
countryside peaked, especially under the presidency of General Efraín Ríos Montt, an
Evangelical Christian who came to power by coup in March 1982. Huge numbers of people
- mainly indigenous men - from more than 400 villages were murdered in the name of
anti-insurgency, stabilization and anticommunism.
It was later estimated that 15,000 civilian deaths occurred as a result of counterinsur-
gency operations during Ríos Montt's term of office alone, not to mention the estimated
100,000 refugees (again, mostly Maya) who fled to Mexico. The government forced villa-
gers to form Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PACs; Civil Defense Patrols), who were later
accused of some of the worst human rights atrocities committed during Ríos Montt's rule.
As the civil war dragged on and both sides committed atrocities, more and more rural
people came to feel caught in the crossfire.
In August 1983 Ríos Montt was deposed by General Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores,
but the abuses continued. Survivors were herded into remote 'model villages' surrounded
by army encampments. The ongoing reports of human rights violations and civilian mas-
sacres led the US to cut off military assistance to Guatemala, which in turn resulted in the
1986 election of a civilian president, Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo of the Christian Demo-
cratic Party.
There was hope that Cerezo Arévalo's administration would temper the excesses of the
powerful elite and the military, and establish a basis for true democracy. But armed conflict
festered in remote areas and when Cerezo Arévalo's term ended in 1990, many people
wondered whether any real progress had been made.
