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among the four guerrilla groups, along with some 250,000 collaborators. The guerrillas
actively recruited from a historically disenfranchised peasant base, particularly in the Ixil
and Ixcán regions, which only strengthened the army's resolve to do away with the insur-
gencyandintensified punitive measures against realandperceived collaborators. Peasants,
priests, politicians, and anyone perceived to have ties to the guerrillas were massacred in
thethousands.Itisestimatedthat25,000Guatemalanswerekilledduringthefour-yearLu-
cas regime.
Many atrocities were committed by the Lucas regime in a spiral of violence—making
the Spanish conquest look increasingly benign by comparison—including an army mas-
sacre in the village of Panzós, Alta Verapaz, and the firebombing of the Spanish embassy
in Guatemala City during a peaceful occupation by peasant leaders. In Panzós, at least 35
peasants, including some children, lay murdered in the town square with dozens more in-
juredorkilledastheytriedtomaketheirescape.TheoccupationofGuatemalaCity'sSpan-
ishEmbassywascarriedoutbytheGuatemalanmilitaryandeventuallyledtoall-outgeno-
cide by Ixil peasants on January 31, 1980. Without regard for embassy staff or the Spanish
ambassador, Policía Nacional forces stormed the embassy and firebombed it. The sole sur-
vivor was the Spanish ambassador. The victims included the father of Nobel Peace Prize
winner Rigoberta Menchú, who recounts this and other atrocities in her book,
I, Rigoberta
Menchú.
Spain severed diplomatic relations with Guatemala in the aftermath of the mas-
sacre, not restoring them until several years later.
Inaddition tothe ambassador'ssurvival, it shouldbenoted that oneofthe peasant activ-
ists also survived the tragedy, only to be murdered a few days later by a paramilitary death
squad while recovering in a local hospital.
In 1982, Guatemala's armed rebel groups—FAR, EGP, ORPA, and PGT-
FA—consolidated to form the Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca (URNG,
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity), which would go on to fight for its ideals as
a political force, while continuing armed resistance, and negotiate a peace treaty with the
government in 1996.
Efraín Ríos Montt
The 1982 elections were again manipulated by the extreme right, this time to the benefit of
Aníbal Guevara, but a coup on March 23 orchestrated by young military officers installed
General Efraín Ríos Montt as the head of a three-member junta. The coup leaders cited the
rigging of elections three times in eight years as justification for their actions, which were
supported by most of the opposition parties. It was hoped Guatemala could be somehow
steered once again on the path of peace, law, and order and that the terror would stop.
Ríos Montt was an evangelical Christian with ties to Iglesia del Verbo, one of several
U.S.based churches gaining ground in Guatemala after the 1976 earthquake. Among his
many eccentricities was the delivery of weekly Sunday night sermons in which he ex-
