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inance over Guatemalan politics was the Cold War climate and the fight against Commun-
ism.U.S.policyandmilitaryaidwouldassistthedictators'risetopowerandfacilitatetheir
increasingly repressive nature, all in the name of defeating Communist insurrection.
Among the new regime's first move was the revocation of the 1945 constitution, with
the consequent reversal of the reforms of the previous years. The rule of the oligarchy was
firmly reestablished and a wave of repression against peasants, labor unions, and agrarian
reformers was unleashed.
Castillo Armas would only be in power until 1957, when he was shot by one of his own
palace guards. Political turmoil ensued, followed by the rise to power of Miguel Ydígoras
Fuentes, an army officer from the Ubico years now representing the National Democrat-
ic Renovation Party. His five years in office were characterized by incompetence, corrup-
tion,nepotism,patronage,andeconomicdecline.OppositiontoYdígorasgrew,withyoung
army officers led by Marco Yon Sosa and Turcios Lima attempting an unsuccessful coup
in 1960. Ydígoras was finally ousted by a military coup in 1963 with approval from Wash-
ington after Arévalo threatened to return to Guatemala to run in the next election, firmly
putting the establishment in both Guatemala and Washington on edge.
During the subsequent military government of Alfredo Enrique Peralta Azurdia, Turcios
Lima and Yon Sosa launched a guerrilla offensive from the eastern highlands, marking the
beginningofaprotractedarmedconflictbetweenleftistrebelsandtheGuatemalangovern-
ment. Ironically, both had received U.S. military training while serving in the Guatemalan
forces and now used their skills to attack local army garrisons. The battle was soon joined
byanotherarmedrebelgroup,theFuerzasArmadasRebeldes(FAR,RebelArmedForces).
The PGT, meanwhile, formed an alliance with the rebels while advocating the return of
Arévalo.
A self-proclaimed “third government of the revolution” came to power in 1966 under
Julio Cesar Montenegro of the center-left Partido Revolucionario, who tried to continue in
the vein of Arévalo and Arbenz. It was clear, however, that his hands were tied and power
wasinthehandsofthemilitary.Politicalviolenceescalatedduringhisadministration,with
death squads killing hundreds of students, unionists, academics, and peasant leaders.
By the end of the decade the guerrilla movement had been virtually eliminated from
the eastern highlands. FAR shifted its focus to Guatemala City, where it kidnapped and
murdered the U.S. ambassador in 1968.
Electoral fraud and political violence, accompanied by economic decline, would mark
much of Guatemala's history between 1970 and 1990. A reign of terror became firmly en-
trenched,withsuccessivegovernmentseachgoingtogreaterlengthstocontaintheguerrilla
threat and repress an increasingly unsatisfied populace from which the movement drew its
support. At the heart of the matter was a system of government that ensured the continued
prosperity of a wealthy minority to the detriment of a poor, landless, illiterate peasant class
