History of Guatemala

The history of Guatemala traces back to the Maya civilization (2600 BC – 1697 AD), with the country's modern history beginning with the Spanish conquest of Guatemala in 1524. By 1000 AD, most of the major Classic-era (250–900 AD) Maya cities in the Petén Basin, located in the northern lowlands, had been abandoned. The Maya states in the Belize central highlands continued to thrive until the Spanish conquistador Pedro de Alvarado—called "The Invader" by the Maya—arrived in 1525 and began to subdue the indigenous populations.

For nearly 330 years, Guatemala was part of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, which included Chiapas (now in Mexico) and the present-day countries of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. The colony declared its independence on 15 September 1821 and briefly joined the First Mexican Empire in 1822. By 1824, Guatemala became a member of the Federal Republic of Central America, and upon the Republic's dissolution in 1841, it gained full independence.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, foreign agricultural companies, particularly the United Fruit Company (UFC), were drawn to Guatemala. These companies were bolstered by the country's authoritarian rulers and support from the U.S. government, which enforced harsh labor regulations and granted vast concessions to wealthy landowners. The oppressive policies of Jorge Ubico led to a popular uprising in 1944, sparking the ten-year Guatemalan Revolution. During the presidencies of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Árbenz, the country experienced wide-ranging social and economic reforms, including a successful agrarian reform program and increased literacy.

The progressive reforms of Arévalo and Árbenz alarmed the UFC, which lobbied the U.S. government to intervene. This led to a U.S.-backed coup that ousted Árbenz and installed a military regime. This regime's rise initiated a period of military governments, culminating in a civil war from 1960 to 1996. The conflict was marked by severe human rights violations, including the Guatemalan genocide of the indigenous Maya by the military. After the war ended, Guatemala re-established a representative democracy but has since struggled with high crime rates and ongoing extrajudicial killings, often carried out by security forces.

Pre-Columbian era

Main article: Maya civilization

The remains of the Nakbé palace from the mid-Preclassic period, Mirador Basin, Petén, Guatemala

The earliest human settlements in Guatemala date back to the Paleo-Indian period and were inhabited by hunters and gatherers. Sites from around 6500 BC have been discovered in the Quiché department in the Highlands, as well as in Sipacate and Escuintla on the central Pacific coast.

It is uncertain when these hunter-gatherer groups transitioned to agriculture, but pollen samples from the Petén region and the Pacific coast indicate maize cultivation as early as 3500 BC. By 2500 BC, small settlements were emerging in Guatemala's Pacific lowlands, in areas such as Tilapa, La Blanca, Ocós, El Mesak, and Ujuxte, where the oldest ceramic pottery in Guatemala has been found. Excavations in Antigua Guatemala at Urías and Rucal have uncovered stratified materials from the Early and Middle Preclassic periods (2000 BC to 400 BC). Paste analyses of this early pottery suggest it was made from clays sourced from various environmental zones, indicating that people from the Pacific coast expanded into the Antigua Valley.

Guatemala's Pre-Columbian era is divided into three periods: the Preclassic period (2000 BC to 250 AD), the Classic period (250 to 900 AD), and the Postclassic period (900 to 1500 AD).

Pre-classic

Until recently, the Preclassic period was considered formative, with small villages of farmers living in huts and few permanent structures. However, this view has been challenged by recent discoveries of monumental architecture from that era, such as an altar at La Blanca, San Marcos, dating to 1000 BC; ceremonial sites at Miraflores and El Naranjo from 801 BC; the earliest monumental masks; and the cities in the Mirador Basin, including Nakbé, Xulnal, El Tintal, Wakná, and El Mirador.

Barrigones sculpture

In Monte Alto, near La Democracia, Escuintla, giant stone heads and potbellies (or barrigones) dating back to around 1800 BC have been found. These stone heads are attributed to the Pre-Olmec Monte Alto Culture, and some scholars suggest that the Olmec Culture may have originated in the Monte Alto area. However, it has also been argued that the only connection between the statues and the later Olmec heads is their size. The Monte Alto Culture might have been the first complex culture of Mesoamerica and a predecessor to all other cultures in the region. In Guatemala, some sites display unmistakable Olmec style, such as Chocolá in Suchitepéquez, La Corona in Petén, and Tak'alik A'baj in Retalhuleu, the latter being the only ancient city in the Americas with both Olmec and Mayan features.

El Mirador was by far the most populated city in pre-Columbian America. The El Tigre and Monos pyramids have a combined volume of over 250,000 cubic meters. Richard Hansen, director of the archaeological project in the Mirador Basin, believes that the Maya at Mirador Basin developed the first politically organised state in America around 1500 BC, known as the Kan Kingdom in ancient texts. The region featured 26 cities, all connected by sacbeob (highways) that were several kilometres long, up to 40 metres wide, and two to four metres above the ground, paved with stucco. These highways are distinguishable from the air in Mesoamerica's most extensive virgin tropical rainforest.

Despite local tradition and history, Hansen argues that the Olmec were not the mother culture of Mesoamerica. However, it is well known that the Maya people themselves do not support this view. Based on findings at the Mirador Basin in Northern Petén, Hansen suggests that the Olmec and Maya cultures developed independently and later merged in some locations, such as Tak'alik Abaj in the Pacific lowlands.

Maya city of Tikal

Northern Guatemala has exceptionally high densities of Late Preclassic sites, including Naachtun, Xulnal, El Mirador, Porvenir, Pacaya, La Muralla, Nakbé, El Tintal, Wakná (formerly Güiro), Uaxactún, and Tikal. El Mirador, Tikal, Nakbé, Tintal, Xulnal, and Wakná are the largest in the Maya world. Their size is evident not only in the extent of the sites but also in their monumental construction, especially the vast platforms supporting prominent temples. Many sites from this era feature monumental masks for the first time (Uaxactún, El Mirador, Cival, Tikal, and Nakbé). Hansen's dating has been challenged by other Maya archaeologists, and the developments leading to probable extra-regional power by the Late Preclassic period at Kaminaljuyu in the southern Maya area suggest that Maya civilisation evolved differently in the Lowlands and the Southern Maya Area (SMA), leading to the Classic Maya civilisation.

On 3 June 2020, researchers published an article in Nature describing their discovery of the oldest and largest Maya site, known as Aguada Fénix, in Mexico. It features monumental architecture, including an elevated, rectangular plateau measuring approximately 1,400 metres long and nearly 400 metres wide, constructed from a mixture of earth and clay. To the west, there is a 10-metre-tall earthen mound. Remains of other structures and reservoirs were also detected using Lidar technology. The site is estimated to have been built between 1000 and 800 BC, demonstrating that the Maya constructed large, monumental complexes from their early period.

Classic period

The Classic period of Mesoamerican civilisation corresponds to the height of Maya civilisation and is represented by numerous sites throughout Guatemala. The largest concentration is found in Petén. This period is characterised by expanded city-building, the development of independent city-states, and contact with other Mesoamerican cultures. It lasted until around 900 AD, when the Classic Maya civilisation collapsed. The Maya abandoned many cities in the central lowlands, possibly due to a decline brought about by a drought-induced famine. Scientists debate the cause of the Classic Maya Collapse, but the Drought Theory—discovered through the study of lake beds, ancient pollen, and other tangible evidence by physical scientists—has gained traction.

Lidar in Guatemala

In 2018, archaeologists revealed 60,000 previously uncharted structures in northern Guatemala using Lidar technology. This project applied Lidar across an area of 2,100 square kilometres in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Petén region of Guatemala. The new findings suggest that 7–11 million Maya people inhabited northern Guatemala during the late classical period from 650 to 800 AD, twice the estimated population of medieval England.

Lidar technology digitally removed the tree canopy to uncover ancient remains, showing that Maya cities, such as Tikal, were larger than previously thought. The technology revealed numerous houses, palaces, elevated highways, and defensive fortifications. According to archaeologist Stephen Houston, it represents one of the most significant discoveries in over 150 years of Maya archaeology.

Colonial era

The colonial era in the history of Guatemala spans from 1524, when the Spaniards conquered the region, to 15 September 1821, when Guatemala gained independence from the Spanish Empire.

Spanish conquest of Guatemala

Central America in the 16th century, before the Spanish conquest

Main article: Spanish conquest of Guatemala

See also: Spanish conquest of Petén

Second-in-command to Hernán Cortés, Pedro de Alvarado was sent to the Guatemala highlands with 300 Spanish foot soldiers, 120 Spanish horsemen, and several hundred Cholula and Tlascala auxiliaries.

Alvarado entered Guatemala from Soconusco on the Pacific lowlands, heading for Xetulul Humbatz, Zapotitlán. He initially allied himself with the Kaqchikel nation to fight against their traditional rivals, the K'iche'. Pedro de Alvarado began his conquest in Xepau, Olintepeque, defeating 72,000 K'iche' men led by Prince Tecún Umán (now Guatemala's national hero).

Alvarado then moved to Q'umarkaj, (Utatlán), the K'iche' capital, and burned it on 7 March 1524. He proceeded to Iximche, establishing a base near Tecpán on 25 July 1524. From there, he led several campaigns to other cities, including Chuitinamit, the capital of the Tzutuhils (1524); Mixco Viejo, capital of the Poqomam; and Zaculeu, capital of the Mam (1525). He was named captain general in 1527.

Having secured his position, Alvarado turned against his allies, the Kaqchikels, confronting them in several battles until they were subdued in 1530. Battles with other tribes continued until 1548, when the Q'eqchi' in Nueva Sevilla, Izabal, were defeated, leaving the Spanish in complete control of the region. Not all native tribes were subdued through violence; Bartolomé de las Casas pacified the Kekchí in Alta Verapaz without bloodshed.

After more than a century of colonisation, mutually independent Spanish authorities in Yucatán and Guatemala made various attempts to subjugate Petén and neighbouring parts of what is now Mexico. In 1697, the Spanish finally conquered Nojpetén, capital of the Itza Maya, and Zacpetén, capital of the Kowoj Maya. Due to Guatemala's location on the Pacific American coast, it became a trade node in commerce between Asia and Latin America, serving as a supplementary trade route to the Manila Galleons.

Modern era

19th century

Independence and Central American civil war

Main articles: Manuel José Arce and Francisco Morazán

Criollos rejoice upon learning of the declaration of independence on 15 September 1821. Painting by Rafael Beltranena.

In 1821, with Fernando VII's power in Spain weakened by French invasions and other conflicts, Mexico declared the Plan de Iguala. This led Mariano Aycinena y Piñol, the criollo leader and Captain General of the Kingdom of Guatemala, Gabino Gaínza Fernandez de Medrano, to declare Guatemala and the rest of Central America as an independent entity on 15 September 1821.

Aycinena y Piñol was one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence of Central America from the Spanish Empire. He strongly lobbied for Central America's annexation to the Mexican Empire under Agustín de Iturbide, due to its conservative and ecclesiastical nature. In October 1826, Central American Federation president Manuel José de Arce y Fagoaga dissolved the Legislature and attempted to establish a Unitarian System for the region, shifting from the Liberal to the Conservative party led by Aycinena.

The rest of Central America rejected this system and sought to remove the Aycinena family from power, leading to the Central American Civil War (1826–1829). From this conflict emerged the dominant figure of Honduran general Francisco Morazán. Mariano Aycinena y Piñol, leader of the Aycinena family and conservative power, was appointed Governor of Guatemala on 1 March 1827 by President Manuel José Arce. The Aycinena regime was dictatorial: it censored the free press, banned books with liberal ideologies, imposed martial law, and reinstated the death penalty retroactively. Mandatory tithing for the secular clergy of the Catholic Church was also reinstated.

Invasion by General Morazán in 1829

Main article: Francisco Morazán

Francisco Morazán and his liberal forces were fighting around San Miguel in El Salvador, defeating any conservative federal forces sent by Guatemalan general Manuel Arzú from San Salvador. Arzú decided to take matters into his own hands, leaving Colonel Montúfar in charge of San Salvador and pursuing Morazán. Realising Arzú was pursuing him, Morazán retreated to Honduras to seek more volunteers for his army. On 20 September, Manuel Arzú was near the Lempa River with 500 men when he learned that the rest of his army had surrendered in San Salvador. Morazán then returned to El Salvador with a significant force, and General Arzú, feigning illness, fled to Guatemala, leaving Lieutenant Colonel Antonio de Aycinena in command. Aycinena and his 500 troops were en route to Honduras when they were intercepted by Morazán's forces in San Antonio, resulting in Aycinena's defeat on 9 October. With Aycinena's defeat, there were no more conservative federal troops in El Salvador. On 23 October, General Morazán triumphantly marched into San Salvador. A few days later, he went to Ahuachapán to organise an army to confront the conservative aristocrats led by Mariano Aycinena y Piñol in Guatemala and to establish a regime favourable to the Central American Federation, the vision of the liberal criollos.

Upon learning this, Aycinena y Piñol attempted to negotiate with Morazán but was unsuccessful; Morazán was determined to defeat the aristocrats at all costs.

Map of Guatemala in 1829. Note that borders with Mexico, Yucatán, and Chiapas are not defined.

Plaza Central of Antigua Guatemala in 1829. The old "Palacio de la Capitanía General" remained in ruins following the 1773 earthquake.

After his victory in San Miguelito, Morazán's army grew as many volunteers from Guatemala joined him. On 15 March, while Morazán and his army were en route to reclaim their former positions, they were intercepted by federal troops at Las Charcas. Despite being outnumbered, Morazán held a superior position and decisively defeated the federal forces. The battlefield was littered with corpses, and the allies captured numerous prisoners and weapons. They continued to reclaim their previous positions in San José Pinula and Aceituno and laid siege to Guatemala City once again. General Verveer, the ambassador from the King of the Netherlands and Belgium, who was in Guatemala to negotiate the construction of a transoceanic canal in Nicaragua, attempted to mediate between the State of Guatemala and Morazán but was unsuccessful. Military operations continued with significant success for the allies.

To prepare for the siege by Morazán’s troops, on 18 March 1829, Aycinena declared martial law, but he was ultimately defeated. On 12 April 1829, Aycinena conceded defeat, and he and Morazán signed an armistice pact. Aycinena and his cabinet members were imprisoned, and the Aycinena family was confined to their mansion. However, Morazán annulled the pact on 20 April, as his true objective was to strip power from the conservatives and the regular clergy of the Catholic Church in Guatemala, whom Central American leaders resented for their control over commerce and power during the Spanish colonial period.

Liberal rule

Main article: Mariano Gálvez

A member of the liberal party, Mariano Gálvez was appointed chief of state in 1831. This was during a period of turmoil that made governing difficult. After the expulsion of the conservative leader of the Aycinena family and the regular clergy in 1829, Gálvez was appointed by Francisco Morazán as Governor of Guatemala in 1831. According to liberal historians Ramón Rosa and Lorenzo Montúfar y Rivera, Gálvez promoted major innovations in all aspects of the administration to make it less dependent on the influence of the Catholic Church. He also made public education independent of the Church, fostered science and the arts, eliminated religious festivals as holidays, founded the National Library and the National Museum, promoted respect for the laws and the rights of citizens, guaranteed freedom of the press and freedom of thought, established civil marriage and divorce, respected freedom of association, and promulgated the Livingston Code (penal code of Louisiana). Gálvez did this against much opposition from the population who were not used to the fast pace of change; he also initiated judicial reform, reorganized municipal government, and established a general head tax which severely impacted the native population. However, these were all changes that the liberals wanted to implement to eliminate the political and economic power of the aristocrats and of the Catholic Church—whose regular orders were expelled in 1829 and the secular clergy was weakened by abolishing mandatory tithing.

Among his major errors was a contract made with Marshall Bennett—commercial partner of Francisco Morazán in the fine wood business—on 6 August 1834; the contract provided that the territories of Izabal Department, las Verapaces, Petén, and Belize would be colonized within twenty years, but this proved impossible and irritated people who had to deal with "heretics". In February 1835, Gálvez was re-elected for a second term, during which the Asiatic cholera afflicted the country. The secular clergy that was still in the country persuaded the uneducated people of the interior that the disease was caused by the poisoning of the springs by order of the government and turned the complaints against Gálvez into a religious war. Peasant revolts began in 1837, and under chants of "Hurray for the true religion!" and "Down with the heretics!" started growing and spreading. Gálvez asked the National Assembly to transfer the capital of the Federation from Guatemala City to San Salvador.

His major opponents were Colonel and Juan de Dios Mayorga; also, José Francisco Barrundia and Pedro Molina, who had been his friends and party colleagues, came to oppose him in the later years of his government after he violently tried to repress the peasant revolt using a scorched earth approach against rural communities.

In 1838, Antigua Guatemala, Chiquimula, and Salamá withdrew recognition of his government, and in February of that year Rafael Carrera's revolutionary forces entered Guatemala City asking for the cathedral to be opened to restore order in the Catholic communities, obliging Gálvez to relinquish power. Gálvez remained in the city after he lost power.

Rise of Rafael Carrera

Main article: Rafael Carrera

In 1838, the liberal forces of Honduran leader Francisco Morazán and Guatemalan José Francisco Barrundia invaded Guatemala and reached San Sur, where they executed Pascual Alvarez, Carrera's father-in-law. They impaled his head on a pike as a warning to all followers of the Guatemalan caudillo. Upon learning of this, Carrera and his wife Petrona—who had come to confront Morazán upon hearing of the invasion and were in Mataquescuintla—swore they would never forgive Morazán, even in death; they found it impossible to respect anyone who would not avenge family members.

After sending several envoys, whom Carrera would not receive—especially Barrundia, whom Carrera did not want to murder in cold blood—Morazán began a scorched earth offensive, destroying villages in his path and stripping them of their few assets. The Carrera forces had to hide in the mountains. Believing that Carrera was completely defeated, Morazán and Barrundia marched on to Guatemala City, where they were welcomed as saviors by the state governor Pedro Valenzuela and members of the conservative Aycinena Clan. Valenzuela and Barrundia provided Morazán with all the Guatemalan resources needed to address any financial problems he had. The criollos of both parties celebrated until dawn, relieved to have a criollo caudillo like Morazán who could crush the peasant rebellion.

Morazán used the proceeds to support Los Altos and then replaced Valenzuela with Mariano Rivera Paz, a member of the Aycinena clan. However, Rivera Paz did not return any property confiscated in 1829. In retaliation, Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol voted for the dissolution of the Central American Federation in San Salvador shortly thereafter, forcing Morazán to return to El Salvador to defend his federal mandate. On his way, Morazán increased repression in eastern Guatemala as punishment for aiding Carrera.

Knowing that Morazán had gone to El Salvador, Carrera attempted to capture Salamá with the small force that remained but was defeated, losing his brother Laureano in the combat. With only a few men left, he managed to escape, badly wounded, to Sanarate. After partially recovering, he attacked a detachment in Jutiapa and acquired a small amount of booty, which he distributed to his volunteers. He then prepared to assault Petapa, near Guatemala City, where he achieved victory, albeit with heavy casualties.

In September of that year, he attempted an assault on Guatemala City, but liberal general Carlos Salazar Castro defeated him in the fields of Villa Nueva, forcing Carrera to retreat. After an unsuccessful attempt to capture Quetzaltenango, Carrera was surrounded and wounded, leading him to capitulate to Mexican General Agustín Guzmán, who had been in Quetzaltenango since Vicente Filísola's arrival in 1823. Morazán had the opportunity to shoot Carrera but chose not to, as he needed the support of the Guatemalan peasants to counter the attacks of Francisco Ferrera in El Salvador. Instead, Morazán left Carrera in charge of a small fort in Mita, disarmed. Knowing that Morazán was preparing to attack El Salvador, Francisco Ferrera supplied Carrera with arms and ammunition and persuaded him to attack Guatemala City.

Meanwhile, despite persistent advice to decisively crush Carrera and his forces, Salazar attempted to negotiate diplomatically. He even demonstrated his lack of fear and distrust of Carrera by removing the fortifications around Guatemala City, which had been in place since the Battle of Villa Nueva. Taking advantage of Salazar's good faith and Ferrera's weapons, Carrera took Guatemala City by surprise on 13 April 1839. Castro Salazar, Mariano Gálvez, and Barrundia fled before Carrera's militiamen arrived. Salazar, in his nightshirt, vaulted over rooftops to seek refuge and eventually reached the border disguised as a peasant. With Salazar gone, Carrera reinstated Rivera Paz as head of state of Guatemala.

Annexation of Los Altos

Main article: Los Altos, Central America

Captain General Rafael Carrera after being appointed President for Life of the Republic of Guatemala in 1854

Coat of arms of the state of Los Altos, carved in stone on the grave of heroes at the Cemetery of Quetzaltenango

On 2 April 1838, in the city of Quetzaltenango, a secessionist group founded the independent State of Los Altos, which sought independence from Guatemala. The most prominent members of the Liberal Party of Guatemala and liberal opponents of the conservative regime moved to Los Altos, leaving their exile in El Salvador. The liberals in Los Altos began to criticize the Conservative government of Rivera Paz severely; they even had their own newspaper, El Popular, which contributed to the harsh criticism.

Los Altos was the region with the primary production and economic activity of the former state of Guatemala. Without Los Altos, the conservatives lost much of the resources that had given Guatemala hegemony in Central America. The Guatemalan government initially sought a peaceful resolution, but the people of Los Altos, protected by the recognition of the Central American Federation Congress, refused to negotiate. The Guatemalan government then resorted to force, sending Carrera as commanding general of the army to subdue Los Altos.

Carrera defeated General Agustín Guzmán when the former Mexican officer attempted to ambush him and then proceeded to Quetzaltenango, where he imposed a harsh conservative regime in place of the liberals. He summoned all council members and warned them that while he was lenient this time, there would be no mercy if they defied him again. Finally, Guzmán and the head of state of Los Altos, Marcelo Molina, were sent to the capital of Guatemala, where they were displayed as trophies of war during a triumphant parade on 17 February 1840; Guzmán was shackled, still with bleeding wounds, and riding a mule.

General Francisco Morazán

On 18 March 1840, liberal caudillo Morazán invaded Guatemala with 1,500 soldiers to avenge the insult done in Los Altos. Fearing that this action might end liberal efforts to maintain the Central American Federation, Guatemala established a cordon of guards along the border with El Salvador. Without a telegraph service, messengers carried last-minute updates. With the information from these messengers, Carrera devised a defense plan, leaving his brother Sotero in charge of troops who offered only slight resistance in the city. Carrera pretended to flee, leading his ragtag army to the heights of Aceituno with few men, rifles, and two old cannons. The city was left at the mercy of Morazán's army, with bells from twenty churches ringing for divine assistance.

Once Morazán reached the capital, he took it easily and freed Guzman, who immediately went to Quetzaltenango to announce Carrera's defeat. Carrera, exploiting his enemies' assumptions, concentrated fire on Central Park and employed surprise attack tactics, causing heavy casualties to Morazán's army and forcing the survivors to fight for their lives. Morazán's soldiers lost their initiative and previous numerical superiority. In unfamiliar surroundings, they had to fight, carry their dead, and care for their wounded while being resentful and tired from the long march from El Salvador to Guatemala.

Carrera, an experienced military leader, was able to defeat Morazán thoroughly. The defeat was complete for the liberal general: aided by Angel Molina—son of Guatemalan Liberal leader Pedro Molina Mazariegos—who knew the city's streets, Morazán fled disguised, shouting "Long live Carrera!" through the ravine of "El Incienso" to El Salvador. In his absence, Morazán was replaced as Head of State and had to go into exile in Peru. In Guatemala, survivors from his troops were shot without mercy, while Carrera unsuccessfully pursued Morazán. This engagement solidified Carrera's position and marked the decline of Morazán, and forced the conservative Aycinena clan criollos to negotiate with Carrera and his peasant revolutionary supporters.

Guzmán, who had been freed by Morazán after the latter's apparent victory over Carrera in Guatemala City, returned to Quetzaltenango to bring the good news. The city's liberal criollo leaders swiftly reinstated the State of Los Altos and celebrated Morazán's success. However, upon hearing this, Carrera and the newly reinstated Mariano Rivera Paz quickly moved to reclaim control over the rebel liberal state. Carrera, with his volunteer army, returned to Quetzaltenango to reassert authority. On 2 April 1840, after entering the city, Carrera reminded the citizens that he had previously warned them after his earlier victory. He then ordered the execution of most of the liberal city hall officials from Los Altos and forcibly annexed Quetzaltenango and much of Los Altos back into conservative Guatemala.

Following the violent reinstatement of Los Altos by Carrera in April 1840, Luis Batres Juarros, a conservative member of the Aycinena Clan and secretary general of the Guatemalan government under the recently reinstated Mariano Rivera Paz, obtained authorization from Vicar Larrazabal to dismantle the regionalist Church. Priests from Quetzaltenango—the capital of the short-lived State of Los Altos—including Urban Ugarte and his coadjutor José Maria Aguilar, as well as priests from San Martin Jilotepeque and San Lucas Tolimán, were removed from their parishes. Larrazabal assigned priests Fernando Antonio Dávila, Mariano Navarrete, and José Ignacio Iturrioz to cover the parishes of Quetzaltenango, San Martin Jilotepeque, and San Lucas Tolimán, respectively.

The defeat and execution of the liberal criollos in Quetzaltenango bolstered Carrera's standing with the local population, whom he respected and protected.

In 1840, Belgium began supporting Carrera's independence movement as a means to exert influence in Central America. The Compagnie belge de colonisation (Belgian Colonization Company), commissioned by Belgian King Leopold I, became the administrator of Santo Tomas de Castilla, replacing the unsuccessful British Eastern Coast of Central America Commercial and Agricultural Company. Although the colony eventually failed, Belgium continued to support Carrera into the mid-19th century, though Britain remained the primary business and political partner for Carrera.

Rafael Carrera was elected Governor of Guatemala in 1844. On 21 March 1847, Guatemala declared itself an independent republic, and Carrera became its first president.

General Carrera, portrait celebrating the foundation of the Republic of Guatemala in 1847

Proclamation coin from 1847 of the independent Republic of Guatemala

During his first term as president, Carrera shifted the country from extreme conservatism to a more traditional moderation. In 1848, after months of turmoil, the liberals managed to oust him from office. Carrera willingly resigned and left for Mexico. The new liberal regime, aligned with the Aycinena family, quickly passed a law sentencing Carrera to death if he returned to Guatemalan soil. In Quetzaltenango, liberal criollos, led by General Agustín Guzmán, took control after Corregidor General Mariano Paredes was called to Guatemala City to assume the presidency. On 26 August 1848, they declared Los Altos an independent state once again, with support from Vasconcelos' regime in El Salvador and the rebel guerrilla army led by Vicente and Serapio Cruz, sworn enemies of Carrera. The interim government, headed by Guzmán, included Florencio Molina and the priest Fernando Dávila as Cabinet members. On 5 September 1848, the altenses criollos elected a formal government under Fernando Antonio Martínez.

Meanwhile, Carrera returned to Guatemala through Huehuetenango, where he met native leaders and urged them to unite to prevail. The leaders agreed, and gradually, the segregated native communities began developing a new Indigenous identity under Carrera's leadership. In the eastern region of Guatemala, particularly Jalapa, tensions escalated; former president Mariano Rivera Paz and rebel leader Vicente Cruz were both murdered there in 1849 while attempting to take over the Corregidor office.

Upon Carrera's arrival in Chiantla, Huehuetenango, two emissaries from Los Altos informed him that their soldiers would not fight his forces, fearing an indigenous revolt similar to the one in 1840. They only requested that Carrera keep the indigenous people under control. However, the altenses did not comply, and led by Guzmán, they began pursuing Carrera, who, with the help of his native allies, went into hiding and remained under their protection while Miguel García Granados’ forces searched for him.

Upon learning that officer José Víctor Zavala had been appointed Corregidor of Suchitepéquez Department, Carrera and his hundred jacalteco bodyguards crossed a dangerous, jaguar-infested jungle to meet his former friend. When they met, Zavala not only refrained from capturing him but also agreed to serve under his command, sending a strong message to both liberals and conservatives in Guatemala City that they would either have to negotiate with Carrera or fight on two fronts—Quetzaltenango and Jalapa. Carrera returned to the Quetzaltenango area while Zavala remained in Suchitepéquez as a tactical maneuver. Carrera received a visit from a Cabinet member of Paredes and assured him that he had control over the native population, promising Paredes that he would keep them appeased. When the emissary returned to Guatemala City, he reported that Carrera had significant control over the natives and described their forces as formidable.

Guzmán went to Antigua Guatemala to meet with another group of Paredes emissaries. They agreed that Los Altos would rejoin Guatemala and that the latter would help Guzmán defeat his hated enemy and build a port on the Pacific Ocean. Guzmán felt confident in his plan, but it fell apart when, in his absence, Carrera and his native allies occupied Quetzaltenango. Carrera appointed Ignacio Yrigoyen as Corregidor and persuaded him to collaborate with the K'iche', Mam, and Q'anjobal leaders to maintain control of the region. As Yrigoyen departed, he remarked to a friend, "Now he is truly the King of the Indians!"

Guzmán then traveled to Jalapa, where he struck a deal with the rebels. Meanwhile, Luis Batres Juarros convinced President Paredes to negotiate with Carrera. Within months, Carrera returned to Guatemala City as commander-in-chief, supported by the military and political backing of the Indian communities from the densely populated western highlands. During his first presidency, from 1844 to 1848, Carrera transitioned the country from excessive conservatism to a moderate regime. With advice from Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol and Pedro de Aycinena, he restored relations with the Church in Rome through a Concordat ratified in 1854. He also maintained peace between the native and criollo populations, with the criollos fearing an uprising similar to the one occurring in Yucatán at the time.

Caste War of Yucatán

Main article: Caste War of Yucatán

In Yucatán, then an independent republic north of Guatemala, a war broke out between the Maya and the criollo people. This conflict appeared to stem from the defense of communal lands against the expansion of private ownership, exacerbated by the boom in the production of henequen, an industrial fiber used to make rope. After realizing the plant's value, wealthier Yucateco criollos began cultivating it on plantations starting in 1833. Shortly after the henequen boom, there was a surge in sugar production, generating even more wealth. Both the sugar and henequen plantations encroached on indigenous communal lands, and Maya workers recruited to labor on the plantations were mistreated and underpaid.

However, in their correspondence with British Honduras, rebel leaders frequently pointed to taxation as the immediate cause of the war. For instance, in 1848, Jacinto Pat wrote, "What we want is liberty and not oppression, because before we were subjugated with the many contributions and taxes that they imposed on us." Pat's companion, Cecilio Chi, added in 1849 that Santiago Imán, the rebel leader, had promised to "liberate the Indians from the payment of contributions," which was a reason for resisting the central government. However, in practice, he continued imposing taxes.

In June 1847, Méndez discovered that a large force of armed Maya, along with supplies, had gathered at the Culumpich, a property owned by Jacinto Pat, the Maya batab (leader), near Valladolid. Fearing a revolt, Méndez arrested Manuel Antonio Ay, the principal Maya leader of Chichimilá, accused him of planning an uprising, and executed him in the town square of Valladolid. Méndez also searched for other insurgents, burning the town of Tepich and repressing its residents. In the following months, several Maya towns were looted, and many people were arbitrarily killed. In his 1849 letter, Cecilio Chi noted that Santiago Méndez had come to "put every Indian, big and little, to death," but the Maya had retaliated, writing, "It has pleased God and good fortune that a much greater portion of them [whites] than of the Maya [have died]."

Cecilio Chi, the Maya leader of Tepich, along with Jacinto Pat, attacked Tepich on 30 July 1847 in response to the indiscriminate massacre of Mayas and declared war on the entire non-Maya population in the region. By the spring of 1848, Maya forces had taken control of most of Yucatán, except for the walled cities of Campeche and Mérida, and the southwestern coast, where Yucatecan troops maintained control of the road from Mérida to the port of Sisal. The Yucatecan governor Miguel Barbachano had prepared a decree for the evacuation of Mérida, but was delayed in publishing it due to the lack of suitable paper in the besieged capital. However, the decree became unnecessary when republican troops unexpectedly broke the siege and launched a major offensive, making significant advances.

Governor Barbachano sought allies wherever he could, including Cuba (on behalf of Spain), Jamaica (for the United Kingdom), and the United States, but none of these foreign powers intervened, though the matter was taken seriously enough to be debated in the U.S. Congress. Consequently, Barbachano turned to Mexico and accepted a return to Mexican authority. Yucatán was officially reunited with Mexico on 17 August 1848. Yucateco forces, aided by fresh guns, money, and troops from Mexico, rallied and pushed the Indigenous people back from more than half of the state.

By 1850, the Maya occupied two distinct regions in the southeast, inspired to continue their struggle by the apparition of the "Talking Cross." This apparition, believed to be a divine communication with the Maya, dictated that the war should persist. Chan Santa Cruz (Small Holy Cross) became the religious and political center of the Maya resistance, imbuing the rebellion with religious significance. It also became the name of the largest independent Maya state and its capital, which is now Felipe Carrillo Puerto, Quintana Roo. The followers of the Cross were known as the "Cruzob."

The Yucatán government declared the war over in 1855, but hopes for peace were premature. Regular skirmishes and occasional major deadly assaults into each other’s territories continued from both sides. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland recognized the Chan Santa Cruz Maya as a "de facto" independent nation, partly due to significant trade between Chan Santa Cruz and British Honduras.

Battle of La Arada

Main article: Battle of La Arada

See also: Doroteo Vasconcelos and Vicente Cerna y Cerna

After Carrera returned from exile in 1849, Vasconcelos granted asylum to Guatemalan liberals, who harassed the Guatemalan government in various ways. José Francisco Barrundia did so through a liberal newspaper established for that purpose, while Vasconcelos supported the rebel faction "La Montaña" in eastern Guatemala by distributing money and weapons for a whole year. By late 1850, Vasconcelos, growing impatient with the slow progress of the war with Guatemala, decided to plan an open attack. In this context, the Salvadoran head of state launched a campaign against the conservative Guatemalan regime, inviting Honduras and Nicaragua to join the alliance; only Honduras, under Juan Lindo, accepted.

Meanwhile, in Guatemala, where the invasion plans were well known, President Mariano Paredes began taking precautions to face the threat, while Guatemalan Archbishop Francisco de Paula García Peláez ordered peace prayers throughout the archdiocese.

On 4 January 1851, Doroteo Vasconcelos and Juan Lindo met in Ocotepeque, Honduras, where they signed an alliance against Guatemala. The Salvadoran army, comprising 4,000 men, was well-trained, armed, and supported by artillery, while the Honduran army numbered 2,000 men. The coalition army was stationed in Metapán, El Salvador, near the Guatemalan and Honduran borders.

On 28 January 1851, Vasconcelos sent a letter to the Guatemalan Ministry of Foreign Relations demanding that the Guatemalan president relinquish power, allowing the alliance to designate a new head of state loyal to the liberals, and that Carrera be exiled, escorted by a Salvadoran regiment to any of the Guatemalan southern ports. The Guatemalan government refused these terms, prompting the Allied army to invade Guatemalan territory at three different points. On 29 January, a 500-man contingent led by General Vicente Baquero entered through Piñuelas, Agua Blanca and Jutiapa, while the main invading force marched from Metapán. The Allied army, composed of 4,500 men under Vasconcelos as Commander in Chief, included other commanders such as generals José Santos Guardiola, Ramón Belloso, José Trinidad Cabañas, and Gerardo Barrios. Guatemala, with 2,000 men, was led by Lieutenant General Carrera as Commander in Chief, supported by several colonels.

Carrera's strategy involved feigning a retreat, drawing the enemy into a location of his choosing. On 1 February 1851, both armies faced each other, separated only by the San José River. Carrera had fortified the foothills of La Arada, whose summit rose approximately 50 meters above the river. A meadow 300 meters wide lay between the hill and the river, bordered by a sugar cane plantation. Carrera divided his forces into three sections: the left wing led by Cerna and Solares, the right wing by Bolaños, and he himself led the central battalion, placing his artillery there. Five hundred men remained in Chiquimula to defend the city and assist in case of a retreat, leaving only 1,500 Guatemalans against the 4,500-strong Allied force.

The battle began at 8:30 a.m. with the Allied troops launching an attack at three points, and both sides engaged in intense fire. The first Allied attack was repelled by the defenders on the foothill; during the second attack, the Allied troops managed to take the first line of trenches but were eventually expelled. The third attack saw the Allied forces advance to the point where the battle turned into a mêlée, making it hard to distinguish between Guatemalan and Allied troops. At this critical moment, Carrera ordered the sugar cane plantation surrounding the meadow to be set ablaze. The invading forces were now surrounded—facing Guatemalan firepower at the front, a blazing inferno on the flanks, and the river behind, making retreat nearly impossible. The central division of the Allied army panicked and began a disorderly retreat, soon followed by the rest of the Allied troops.

The 500 men of the Guatemalan rearguard pursued the remnants of the Allied army, which fled desperately toward the borders of their respective countries. The final count of Allied losses was 528 dead, 200 prisoners, 1,000 rifles, 13,000 rounds of ammunition, numerous pack animals and baggage, 11 drums, and seven artillery pieces. Vasconcelos sought refuge in El Salvador, while two generals, mounted on the same horse, were seen crossing the Honduran border. Carrera regrouped his army and crossed into Salvadoran territory, occupying Santa Ana, before receiving orders from Guatemalan President Mariano Paredes to return to Guatemala, as the Allies were requesting a cease-fire and a peace treaty.

Concordat of 1854

Main article: Concordat of 1854

The Concordat of 1854 was an international treaty between Carrera and the Holy See, signed in 1852 and ratified in 1854. Through this agreement, Guatemala entrusted the education of its people to the Catholic Church's religious orders, pledged to respect ecclesiastical property and monasteries, imposed mandatory tithing, and allowed bishops to censor publications. In return, Guatemala received dispensations for military personnel, permitted those who had acquired Church property confiscated by the liberals in 1829 to retain it, received taxes generated by Church properties, and retained the right to judge certain clergy crimes under Guatemalan law. The concordat, designed by Juan José de Aycinena y Piñol, not only reestablished but also strengthened the Church-State relationship in Guatemala. It remained in effect until the fall of Field Marshal Vicente Cerna y Cerna's conservative government.

In 1854, on the initiative of Manuel Francisco Pavón Aycinena, Carrera was declared "supreme and perpetual leader of the nation" for life, with the power to choose his successor. He held this position until his death on 14 April 1865. While he took steps to establish economic prosperity to appease conservative landowners, military challenges—both domestic and in a three-year war with Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua—dominated his presidency. His rivalry with Gerardo Barrios, President of El Salvador, escalated into open war in 1863.

At Coatepeque, the Guatemalans suffered a significant defeat, followed by a truce. Honduras allied with El Salvador, while Nicaragua and Costa Rica sided with Guatemala. Ultimately, the conflict was settled in Carrera’s favor, as he besieged and occupied San Salvador and gained control over Honduras and Nicaragua. He remained aligned with the Clerical Party and maintained friendly relations with European governments. Before his death, Carrera nominated his friend and loyal soldier, Army Marshal Vicente Cerna y Cerna, as his successor.

Wyke-Aycinena treaty

Coat of Arms of the Republic of Guatemala from 1858 to 1871. A replica was carved on the front of the Carrera Theater before it was remodeled in 1892.

1861 map showing the boundary between British Honduras (now Belize) and Guatemala

The Belize region, originally Maya territory in the Yucatán Peninsula, was never occupied by either Spain or Guatemala. Spain conducted some exploratory expeditions in the 16th century that formed the basis for its claim to the area. Guatemala inherited this claim but never sent an expedition to the region after gaining independence from Spain, due to the ensuing Central American civil war that lasted until 1860.

The British had established a small settlement there by the mid-17th century, primarily as quarters for buccaneers and later for wood production. Although these settlements were never formally recognized as British colonies, they were somewhat under the jurisdiction of the British government in Jamaica. In the 18th century, Belize became a major smuggling center for Central America, despite British acceptance of Spanish sovereignty over the region through treaties signed in 1783 and 1786. These treaties granted a ceasefire and authorized British subjects to work in the forests of Belize.

After 1821, Belize emerged as a key point for Britain's commercial interests in the isthmus. British commercial brokers established themselves and developed prosperous trade routes through the Caribbean harbors of Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

When Carrera came to power in 1840, he ceased the complaints about Belize and established a Guatemalan consulate in the region to oversee Guatemalan interests. Belize's commerce flourished until 1855, when the construction of a transoceanic railway by the Colombians improved trade efficiency between the oceans, leading to a decline in Belize's commercial importance. During the Caste War of Yucatán in the Yucatán Peninsula, Belize and Guatemalan representatives were on high alert. Yucatán refugees fled into both Guatemala and Belize, and Belize's superintendent feared that Carrera, given his strong alliance with Guatemalan natives, might support the native uprisings.

In the 1850s, the British worked to resolve territorial disputes with Central American countries. They withdrew from the Mosquito Coast in Nicaragua, initiating talks that culminated in the return of the territory to Nicaragua in 1894. They also returned the Bay Islands to Honduras and negotiated with the American filibuster William Walker to prevent his invasion of Honduras. They also signed a treaty with Guatemala concerning Belize's borders, which some Guatemalans have since referred to as the worst mistake made by Rafael Carrera.

Pedro de Aycinena y Piñol, as Foreign Secretary, made significant efforts to maintain good relations with the Crown. In 1859, with Walker threatening Central America once more, Carrera's regime had to negotiate with the British over Belize to secure the necessary weapons. On 30 April 1859, the Wyke-Aycinena Treaty was signed between British and Guatemalan representatives. The treaty comprised two main parts:

• The first six articles clearly defined the Guatemala-Belize border, with Guatemala acknowledging British sovereignty over Belize.
• The seventh article addressed the construction of a road between Guatemala City and the Caribbean coast. This road was intended to benefit both parties: Belize needed a route to the Pacific coast to enhance its commercial relevance, while Guatemala sought improved communication with its Atlantic coast. However, the road was never built due to disagreements over its location and the subsequent change in government in Guatemala in 1871, which led the liberal government to declare the treaty void.

Among those who signed the treaty was José Milla y Vidaurre, who was working with Aycinena in the Foreign Ministry at the time. Carrera ratified the treaty on 1 May 1859, and Charles Lennox Wyke, British consul in Guatemala, secured royal approval in Great Britain on 26 September 1859. American consul Beverly Clarke, along with some liberal representatives, objected, but the issue was resolved.

In 1850, Guatemala's population was estimated at 600,000.

Guatemala's "Liberal Revolution" occurred in 1871 under the leadership of Justo Rufino Barrios, who aimed to modernize the country, improve trade, and introduce new crops and manufacturing. During this period, coffee became an important crop for Guatemala. Barrios also had ambitions of reuniting Central America and waged war in an unsuccessful attempt to achieve this goal, ultimately losing his life on the battlefield in El Salvador in 1885.

Justo Rufino Barrios government

Main article: Justo Rufino Barrios

Guatemalan National Penitentiary, built by Barrios to incarcerate and torture his political enemies

The Conservative government in Honduras supported a group of Guatemalan Conservatives seeking to reclaim control of their government, prompting Barrios to declare war on Honduras. Concurrently, Barrios, along with President Luis Bogran of Honduras, declared their intention to reunify the old United Provinces of Central America.

During his tenure, Barrios pursued the liberal reforms initiated by García Granados but was more aggressive in their implementation. A summary of his reforms includes:

• Definitive separation between Church and State: He expelled the regular clergy, similar to Morazán's actions in 1829, and confiscated their properties.

Regular order	Coat of arms	Clergy type	Confiscated properties
Order of Preachers		Regular	Monasteries Large extensions of farmland Sugar mills Indian doctrines
Mercedarians		Regular	Monasteries Large extensions of farmland Sugar mills Indian doctrines
Society of Jesus		Regular	The Jesuits had been expelled from the Spanish colonies in 1765 and did not return to Guatemala until 1852. By 1871, they did not hold significant possessions.
Recoletos		Regular	Monasterires
Conceptionists		Regular	Monasteries Large expanses of farmland
Archdiocese of Guatemala		Secular	School and Trentin Seminar of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción
Congregation of the Oratory		Secular	Church buildings and housing in Guatemala City were destroyed by presidential order.

• Forbidden mandatory tithing to weaken secular clergy members and the archbishop.
• Established civil marriage as the only official form of marriage in the country.
• Created secular cemeteries.
• Made civil records supersede religious ones.
• Implemented secular education across the country.
• Established free and mandatory elementary schools.
• Closed the Pontifical University of San Carlos and created the secular National University in its place.

Barrios had a National Congress entirely devoted to his will, enabling him to create a new constitution in 1879 that allowed for his reelection as president for another six-year term.

He was also intolerant of political opponents, forcing many to flee the country and constructing the infamous Guatemalan Central Penitentiary, where numerous individuals were incarcerated and tortured.

Day laborers receiving their pay in Santa Rosa, circa 1890, as per the Day Laborer Regulations established by Barrios

Guatemalan territory during the conservative regimes of Rafael Carrera and Vicente Cerna. The Soconusco territories were ceded to Mexico in exchange for support during the Liberal revolution of 1871, as stipulated by the Herrera-Mariscal Treaty of 1882.

Town alcaldes of Highland Guatemala in traditional dress, 1891

During Barrios' tenure, the lands of the Maya, which had been strongly defended by the conservative regime of Rafael Carrera, were confiscated and redistributed among the officers who had supported him during the Liberal Revolution of 1871. Decree #170 (also known as the Census Redemption Decree) facilitated the confiscation of these lands in favor of army officers and German settlers in Verapaz by allowing the public sale of Maya communal lots. Consequently, a fundamental characteristic of the productive system during Barrios' regime was the concentration of large tracts of land among a few owners and a form of "farmland servitude" based on the exploitation of Maya day laborers.

To ensure a steady supply of day laborers for the coffee plantations, Barrios' government enacted the Day Laborer Regulations, which placed the entire native population at the disposal of both new and traditional Guatemalan landlords. The regular clergy, eventually expelled from the country and stripped of their properties, were exempt from this legislation. The decree stipulated the following for native Guatemalans:

1. They were legally obligated to work on farms when required by the owners, regardless of their native towns' locations.
2. They were under the control of local authorities, who ensured that laborers were dispatched to farms as needed.
3. They were subject to habilitation: a form of forced advance payment that entrenched them in debt, allowing landlords to retain them on their land indefinitely.
4. The day laborer booklet: a document verifying that a laborer had no debts to their employer. Without this booklet, laborers were vulnerable to exploitation by local authorities and landlords.

In 1879, Guatemala ratified its first constitution as an independent nation, replacing the previous decree-based rule of the Conservador regime. In 1880, Barrios was reelected President for a six-year term. He unsuccessfully sought U.S. mediation to resolve the disputed boundary between Guatemala and Mexico.

Government of Manuel Lisandro Barillas

Main article: Manuel Barillas

General Manuel Lisandro Barillas Bercián became interim president of Guatemala following the death of President Justo Rufino Barrios in the Battle of Chalchuapa in El Salvador in April 1885 and the resignation of first designate Alejandro Manuel Sinibaldi Castro. He executed a clever scheme: he visited the General Cemetery during Barrios's funeral and told the president of Congress, "Please prepare room and board for the 5,000 troops that I have waiting for my orders in Mixco." Fearing the threat, the Congress president declared Barillas interim president on the spot. By the time the deception was discovered, it was too late to reverse the decision.

Instead of calling for elections, as required, Barillas Bercián was declared President on 16 March 1886 and served until 1892.

During Barillas's government, the Carrera Theater was remodeled to commemorate the fourth centennial of the Discovery of America. The Italian community in Guatemala donated a statue of Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón in Spanish), which was placed next to the theater. The venue was henceforth known as the "Colón Theater".

In 1892, Barillas called for elections to attend to his personal affairs. This was the first election in Guatemala where candidates were allowed to campaign in local newspapers.

Barillas Bercián was unique among Guatemalan liberal presidents from 1871 to 1944 for peacefully transferring power to his successor. As elections approached, he invited the three Liberal candidates to present their government plans. Satisfied with the proposal from General Reyna Barrios, Barillas ensured that a large group of Indigenous people from Quetzaltenango and Totonicapán were mobilised to vote for Reyna Barrios. Reyna was elected president. To avoid offending the losing candidates, Barillas provided them with checks to cover their campaign expenses. Reyna Barrios assumed the presidency on 15 March 1892.

20th century

In the 1890s, the United States began implementing the Monroe Doctrine, expelling European colonial powers and establishing U.S. hegemony over resources and labor in Latin American nations. The dictators who ruled Guatemala during the late 19th and early 20th centuries were generally very accommodating to U.S. business and political interests. Consequently, unlike other Latin American nations such as Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba, the U.S. did not need to use overt military force to maintain dominance in Guatemala. The Guatemalan military and police worked closely with the U.S. military and State Department to secure U.S. interests. The Guatemalan government exempted several U.S. corporations from paying taxes, particularly the United Fruit Company, privatized and sold off publicly owned utilities, and transferred large tracts of public land.

Manuel Estrada Cabrera regime (1898–1920)

Main article: Manuel Estrada Cabrera

Manuel Estrada Cabrera ruled Guatemala from 1898 to 1920.

After the assassination of General José María Reina Barrios on 8 February 1898, the Guatemalan cabinet convened an emergency meeting to appoint a new successor but did not invite Estrada Cabrera to the meeting, despite him being the First Designated to the Presidency. There are two versions of how he managed to become president:

• (a) Estrada Cabrera entered "with pistol drawn" to assert his entitlement to the presidency

• (b) Estrada Cabrera showed up unarmed and demanded the presidency, asserting his position as the First Designated

The first Guatemalan head of state from civilian life in over 50 years, Estrada Cabrera overcame resistance to his regime by August 1898 and called for September elections, which he won handily . At that time, Estrada Cabrera was 44 years old; he was stocky, of medium height, dark, and broad-shouldered. His mustache gave him a plebeian appearance. He had dark eyes, a metallic voice, and a rather sullen, brooding mien. His courage and character were evident on the night Reina Barrios died, when he stood in front of the ministers meeting in the Government Palace to choose a successor and said: Gentlemen, let me please sign this decree. As First Designated, you must hand me the Presidency. His first decree was a general amnesty, and his second was to reopen all elementary schools closed by Reina Barrios , both administrative and political measures aimed at gaining public support. Estrada Cabrera was almost unknown in the political circles of the capital, and the nature of his government and his intentions were unclear.

In 1898, the Legislature convened to elect President Estrada Cabrera, who triumphed due to the significant number of soldiers and policemen who voted in civilian clothing, as well as the large number of illiterate families they brought to the polls. Additionally, effective propaganda was disseminated through the official newspaper La Idea Liberal. The newspaper was managed by the poet Joaquín Méndez, with contributions from writers such as Enrique Gómez Carrillo, who had just returned from Paris and believed that Estrada Cabrera was the president Guatemala needed; Rafael Spinola; Máximo Soto Hall; and Juan Manuel Mendoza, who would later become Gómez Carrillo's biographer. In recognition of his work as a political propagandist, Gómez Carrillo was appointed General Consul in Paris with a monthly salary of 250 gold pesos and immediately returned to Europe.

One of Estrada Cabrera's most infamous legacies was his decision to allow the United Fruit Company to enter the Guatemalan economic and political arena. As a member of the Liberal Party, he aimed to develop the nation's infrastructure, including highways, railroads, and sea ports, to expand the export economy. By the time Estrada Cabrera assumed the presidency, there had been repeated efforts to construct a railroad from the major port of Puerto Barrios to the capital, Guatemala City. However, due to a lack of funding exacerbated by the collapse of the internal coffee trade, the railway fell 100 kilometres (60 mi) short of its goal. Estrada Cabrera decided, without consulting the legislature or judiciary, that making a deal with the United Fruit Company was the only way to complete the railway. In 1904, he signed a contract with UFCO's Minor Cooper Keith, granting the company tax exemptions, land grants, and control of all railroads on the Atlantic coast.

Estrada Cabrera often employed brutal methods to assert his authority, reflecting the tyrannical style of government in Guatemala at the time. Like his predecessors Rafael Carrera y Turcios and Justo Rufino Barrios, who had led similarly autocratic regimes, Cabrera began his first presidential term by prosecuting political rivals and establishing a well-organised network of spies. One American ambassador returned to the United States after learning that the dictator had ordered his poisoning. Former President Manuel Barillas was stabbed to death in Mexico City, outside the Mexican Presidential Residence, on Cabrera's orders; the street where this occurred is now named Calle Guatemala. Cabrera also responded violently to workers' strikes against the United Fruit Company (UFCO). In one instance, after the armed forces refused to intervene, UFCO went directly to Cabrera. The president then ordered an armed unit to enter the workers' compound, where they fired indiscriminately into the workers' sleeping quarters, wounding and killing an unspecified number of people.

In 1906, Cabrera faced serious revolts supported by some Central American governments, but he succeeded in suppressing them. Elections held against Cabrera's will resulted in the murder of the president-elect in retaliation. In 1907, the brothers Avila Echeverría, along with a group of associates, planned to kill Cabrera with a bomb. Despite their education at foreign universities and their prominent backgrounds, they returned to find a nation under constant fear and a president ruling without opposition.

The attack was carefully planned, but when Cabrera went for a carriage ride, the bomb exploded, killing the horse and driver but only slightly injuring the president. The attackers, unable to escape, took their own lives. Their families were subsequently imprisoned in the notorious Penitenciaría Central, where conditions were cruel and foul. Political prisoners were tortured daily, and their screams were heard throughout the penitentiary. Many prisoners died under these harsh conditions, as political crimes were not pardonable. It has been suggested that Estrada Cabrera's extreme despotic characteristics emerged following this attempt on his life in 1907.

Estrada Cabrera remained in power until he was forced to resign in 1920 due to new revolts. By this time, his power had significantly waned, and he was reliant on the loyalty of a few generals. Although the United States had threatened intervention if he were removed through revolution, a bipartisan coalition formed to oust him. He was deposed after the national assembly declared him mentally incompetent and was replaced by Carlos Herrera on 8 April 1920.

In 1920, Prince Wilhelm of Sweden visited Guatemala and provided an objective account of Guatemalan society and the Estrada Cabrera government in his book Between Two Continents: Notes from a Journey in Central America, 1920. The prince described Guatemalan society as having three sharply defined classes:

• Criollos: A minority descended from Spanish conquerors who, by 1920, were heavily mixed with foreigners and had significant indigenous ancestry. They dominated both politics and intellectual life due to their superior education compared to the rest of the population and their control over much of the country's cultivated land.

• Ladinos: The middle class, comprising individuals of mixed indigenous, black, and Criollo ancestry. In 1920, they held minimal political power and were primarily artisans, storekeepers, tradesmen, and minor officials. Agricultural laborers were also found in the eastern part of the country.

• Indians (Maya): A large, uneducated group that was disinclined to change. They were a major part of the agricultural workforce and were often employed as soldiers due to their respect for authority. They were divided into three categories:
  • "Mozos colonos": Settled on plantations with a small piece of land for personal cultivation, working on plantations for part of the year.
  • "Mozos jornaleros": Day-laborers hired for specific periods, paid daily wages. Although theoretically free, they were often bound by debt to their employers, making it difficult to leave. If they attempted to escape, they could be pursued and imprisoned at their own expense.
  • Independent tillers: Residing in remote areas, they grew crops such as maize, wheat, or beans for personal use and occasional sale in town markets, sometimes traveling up to 40 km (25 mi) to do so.

Jorge Ubico regime (1931–1944)

Main article: Jorge Ubico

In 1931, General Jorge Ubico came to power, supported by the United States, and established one of the most repressive regimes in Central American history. Like his predecessor, Estrada Cabrera, Ubico created an extensive network of spies and informants, resulting in the torture and execution of numerous political opponents. A wealthy aristocrat (with an estimated income of $215,000 per year in 1930s dollars) and a staunch anti-communist, Ubico consistently aligned himself with the United Fruit Company, Guatemalan landowners, and urban elites in conflicts with peasants. Following the 1929 New York Stock Exchange crash, the peasant system established by Barrios in 1875, which had initially stimulated coffee production, became inadequate. Ubico then imposed a system of debt slavery and forced labour to ensure a sufficient workforce for the coffee plantations and UFCO operations.

Allegedly, Ubico enacted laws permitting landowners to execute workers as a "disciplinary" measure. He openly identified as a fascist, admiring Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler, and once stated, "I am like Hitler. I execute first and ask questions later." Ubico expressed disdain for the indigenous population, describing them as "animal-like" and arguing that they required mandatory military training to become "civilized," likening it to "domesticating donkeys." He granted hundreds of thousands of hectares to the United Fruit Company (UFCO), exempted them from taxes in Tiquisate, and allowed the U.S. military to establish bases in Guatemala.

Ubico viewed himself as a modern-day Napoleon, dressing ostentatiously and surrounding himself with statues and paintings of the emperor. He frequently remarked on their similarities. He militarised various political and social institutions—including the post office, schools, and symphony orchestras—and appointed military officers to many government positions. Ubico regularly conducted "inspections" throughout the country, accompanied by a military escort, a mobile radio station, an official biographer, and cabinet members.

On the other hand, Ubico was an efficient administrator:

• His new decrees, though unfair to most of the indigenous population, benefitted the Guatemalan economy during the Great Depression, as they boosted coffee production nationwide.
• He reduced bureaucrats' salaries by nearly half, helping to curb inflation.
• He maintained peace and order in Guatemala City by effectively combating crime.

October Revolution (1944)

After 14 years, Ubico's repressive policies and arrogant demeanor led to passive resistance by urban middle-class intellectuals, professionals, and junior army officers in 1944. On 25 June, a peaceful demonstration by female schoolteachers was suppressed by government troops, resulting in the assassination of María Chinchilla, who became a national heroine. On 1 July 1944, Ubico resigned amidst a general strike and nationwide protests. Initially, he planned to hand over power to former police director General Roderico Anzueto, whom he believed he could control. However, his advisors noted that Anzueto's pro-Nazi sympathies had made him highly unpopular and unmanageable by the military. Consequently, Ubico selected a triumvirate of Major General Bueneventura Piñeda, Major General Eduardo Villagrán Ariza, and General Federico Ponce Vaides. The three generals promised to convene the national assembly to elect a provisional president. However, when Congress met on 3 July, soldiers held everyone at gunpoint and forced them to vote for General Ponce instead of the popular civilian candidate, Dr. Ramón Calderón. Ponce, who had previously retired from military service due to alcoholism, took orders from Ubico and retained many officials from the Ubico administration, continuing its repressive policies.

Opposition groups began organizing again, joined by many prominent political and military leaders who deemed the Ponce regime unconstitutional. Among the military officers in the opposition were Jacobo Árbenz and Major Francisco Javier Arana. Ubico had fired Árbenz from his teaching post at the Escuela Politécnica, and since then, Árbenz had been living in El Salvador, organizing a group of revolutionary exiles. On 19 October 1944, a small group of soldiers and students led by Árbenz and Arana attacked the National Palace in what became known as the "October Revolution". Ponce was defeated and driven into exile, and Árbenz, Arana, and lawyer Jorge Toriello established a junta. They declared that democratic elections would be held before the end of the year.

The winner of the 1944 elections was Juan José Arévalo, PhD, a teaching major who had earned a scholarship in Argentina during General Lázaro Chacón's government due to his outstanding teaching skills. Arévalo spent several years in South America, working as a university professor in various countries. When he returned to Guatemala during the early years of Jorge Ubico's regime, his colleagues asked him to propose the creation of the Faculty of Humanism at the National University, a project to which Ubico was strongly opposed. Recognising Ubico's dictatorial nature, Arévalo left Guatemala and returned to Argentina. After the 1944 Revolution, he came back to Guatemala and ran under a coalition of leftist parties known as the Partido Acción Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Action Party, PAR), winning 85% of the vote in elections widely considered to have been fair and open.

Arévalo implemented social reforms, including minimum wage laws, increased educational funding, near-universal suffrage (excluding illiterate women), and labor reforms. However, many of these changes primarily benefited the upper-middle classes and did little for the peasant agricultural laborers who constituted the majority of the population. Although his reforms were relatively moderate, he was widely disliked by the United States government, the Catholic Church, large landowners, employers such as the United Fruit Company, and Guatemalan military officers, who viewed his government as inefficient, corrupt, and heavily influenced by communists. At least 25 coup attempts occurred during his presidency, mostly led by wealthy liberal military officers.

Presidency of Juan José Arévalo (1945–1951)

Main article: Juan José Arévalo

Árbenz served as defense minister under President Arévalo, becoming the first to hold this position after it had previously been called the Ministry of War. In 1947, Dr. Arévalo, along with a friend and two Russian dancers visiting Guatemala, was involved in a car accident on the road to Panajachel. Arévalo fell into a ravine and was seriously injured, while all his companions were killed. The official party leaders then signed a pact with Lieutenant Colonel Arana, in which he pledged not to attempt a coup against the ailing president in exchange for being recognized by the revolutionary parties as the official candidate in the next election. However, Arévalo's recovery was almost miraculous, and he was soon able to resume governing. Lieutenant Colonel Francisco Javier Arana had agreed to the pact because he wanted to be seen as a democratic hero of the uprising against Ponce, and he believed the Barranco Pact secured his position for the upcoming presidential elections.

Arana was a highly influential figure in Arévalo's government and had secured his nomination as the next presidential candidate, surpassing Captain Árbenz, who was told that due to his young age, he would have no difficulty waiting for his turn in the subsequent election. Arana died in a gun battle against a military civilian attempting to capture him on 18 July 1949, at the Bridge of Glory in Amatitlán, where he and his assistant commander had gone to inspect weapons that had been seized at the Aurora Air Base a few days earlier. There are varying accounts of who ambushed him and who ordered the attack; both Arbenz and Arévalo have been accused of orchestrating an attempt to remove Arana from the presidential race.

The death of Lieutenant Colonel Arana is of critical importance in the history of Guatemala, as it marked a turning point in the Guatemalan revolution. His death not only cleared the path for Colonel Árbenz to be elected president in 1950 but also triggered a major crisis in the government of Dr. Arévalo Bermejo. Suddenly, Arévalo faced opposition from an army more loyal to Arana than to him, as well as from elite civilian groups who seized the opportunity to protest vigorously against his administration.

Before his death, Arana had planned to run in the upcoming 1950 presidential elections. His death left Árbenz without any significant rivals, which led some, including the CIA and U.S. military intelligence, to speculate that Árbenz had him eliminated for this reason. Árbenz received more than three times as many votes as the runner-up, Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes. Fuentes claimed that electoral fraud had benefited Árbenz; however, scholars have noted that while fraud may have given Árbenz some votes, it was not the reason for his victory. In 1950s Guatemala, only literate men could vote by secret ballot; illiterate men and literate women voted by open ballot, while illiterate women were not enfranchised at all.

For the 1950 campaign, Árbenz asked José Manuel Fortuny, a high-ranking member of the Guatemalan Communist Party, to write some of his speeches. The central theme of these speeches was land reform, Árbenz's "pet project." Árbenz won a comfortable victory in the late 1950 elections, after which he and Fortuny collaborated closely on government tasks. While many leaders of the ruling coalition sought personal benefits from their proximity to the president, the leaders of the Guatemalan Labor Party, especially Fortuny, were among Árbenz's closest advisers.

The election of Árbenz alarmed U.S. State Department officials, who remarked that Arana had always represented the "only positive conservative element" in the Arévalo administration, that his death would "materially strengthen the Left," and that "developments forecast a sharp leftist trend within the government."

Presidency of Jacobo Árbenz Guzman (1951–1954)

Main article: Jacobo Árbenz Guzman

Inauguration of Colonel Jacobo Árbenz as President of Guatemala, 1951.

In his inaugural address, Árbenz promised to transform Guatemala from "a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state". He declared his intent to reduce dependency on foreign markets and diminish the influence of foreign corporations on Guatemalan politics. He also stated that he would modernize Guatemala's infrastructure without relying on foreign capital.

Based on his government plan, he:

1. Promulgated Decree 900, expropriating idle land from UFCO.
2. Began construction of the Atlantic Highway.
3. Initiated construction of the Santo Tomas de Castilla port, where Puerto Matías de Gálvez used to be, to compete with UFCO's Puerto Barrios.
4. Began studies for the Jurun Marinalá generation plant to compete with the American-owned electric company.

Árbenz was a Christian socialist and governed as a European-style democratic socialist, taking great inspiration from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. According to historian Stephen Schlesinger, while Árbenz had a few communists in lower-level positions in his administration, he "was not a dictator, he was not a crypto-communist." Nonetheless, some of his policies, particularly his agrarian reforms, were branded "communist" by Guatemala's upper classes and the United Fruit Company.

Land reform

Route map of the Great White Fleet of the United Fruit Company, which held a monopoly on freight and passenger maritime transport to and from Puerto Barrios in Guatemala since 1903.

Prior to Árbenz's election in 1950, a handful of U.S. corporations controlled Guatemala's primary electrical utilities, the nation's only railroad, and the banana industry, which was Guatemala's chief agricultural export. By the mid-1940s, Guatemalan banana plantations accounted for more than one-quarter of all of the United Fruit Company's production in Latin America. Land reform was the centerpiece of Árbenz's election campaign. The revolutionary organizations that had helped put Árbenz in power applied constant pressure on him to fulfill his campaign promises regarding land reform. Árbenz continued Arévalo's reform agenda, and in June 1952, his government enacted an agrarian reform program. Árbenz made land reform his central goal, as only 2% of the population owned 70% of the land.

On 17 June 1952, Árbenz's administration enacted an agrarian reform law known as Decree 900. The law empowered the government to create a network of agrarian councils, which would be in charge of expropriating uncultivated land on estates larger than 272 hectares (672 acres). The land was then allocated to individual families. Owners of expropriated land were compensated according to the value claimed in May 1952 tax assessments, which they had often dramatically understated to avoid paying taxes. The land was paid for in 25-year bonds with a 3% interest rate. The program was in effect for 18 months, during which it distributed 600,000 hectares (1,500,000 acres) to about 100,000 families. Árbenz himself, a landowner through his wife, gave up 700 hectares (1,700 acres) of his own land in the land reform program.

In 1953, the reform was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; however, the democratically elected Congress later impeached four judges associated with the ruling.

Decree 900, which implemented Agrarian Reform in Guatemala, provided the opportunity for landless field workers to cultivate crops. The effect of this law was similar to what occurred in Europe after the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages. After the plague, which killed one-third of Europe's population, the number of landowners decreased, releasing much of the land, increasing supply, and lowering land prices. Simultaneously, many farmers died, reducing the labor force, which, in turn, led to higher wages. The economic effects of the plague mirrored those of Guatemala's land reform. During the first harvest after the law's implementation, the average income of farmers increased from Q225.00 per year to Q700.00 per year. Some analysts argue that conditions in Guatemala improved after the reform, leading to a "fundamental transformation of agricultural technology due to the reduced labor supply." Similarly, rising living standards and large-scale technological advances occurred in Europe during the fifteenth century, with the missing workforce acting as "the mother of invention." The reform's benefits extended beyond the working class, resulting in increased consumption, production, and domestic private investment.

Construction of transport infrastructure

Map of railway lines in Guatemala and El Salvador, owned by the IRCA, a subsidiary of the United Fruit Company that controlled the railroads in both countries. The only Atlantic port was controlled by the Great White Fleet, also a UFCO company.

To establish the necessary physical infrastructure for "independent" and national capitalist development, and reduce extreme dependence on the United States while breaking the American monopolies in the country—primarily those controlling the banana enclave economy—Árbenz and his government began planning and constructing the Atlantic Highway. This highway aimed to compete with the United Fruit Company's (UFCO) monopoly on land transport, which was managed through its subsidiary, the International Railways of Central America (IRCA). The IRCA had held this concession since 1904, granted by then-President Manuel Estrada Cabrera. Construction of the highway was initiated by the Roads Department of the Ministry of Communications, with assistance from the military engineering battalion. The highway was designed to run parallel to the railway line wherever possible. Additionally, the construction of a new port was intended to challenge another UFCO monopoly: Puerto Barrios, which was exclusively owned and operated by The Great White Fleet, another UFCO subsidiary.

National power plant Jurun Marinalá

The Jurun Marinalá power plant was conceived during the Árbenz government to compete with the Electricity Company of Guatemala, which was then an American company using foreign oil instead of Guatemala's natural resources. Construction of the plant was not completed until 1968, fourteen years after Árbenz was removed in a CIA-sponsored coup d'état in 1954.

Advertisement for the Marinalá power plant during the Árbenz government

The Jurun Marinalá electric power generation plant was planned as Guatemala's first national hydroelectric power plant. Its goal was to challenge the monopoly of the Electric Company, a subsidiary of American Electric Bond and Share (Ebasco), which used fossil fuels instead of local water resources, thus draining foreign currency reserves. Due to its significant economic importance, construction continued beyond the Árbenz presidency and was completed under President Julio César Méndez Montenegro in 1968. The plant is located in the village of Agua Blanca, within El Salto, Escuintla.

Catholic national pilgrimage campaign against communism

The Catholic Church, which held significant power in Central America during the Colonial Era, gradually lost its influence following independence from Spain. Initially, the rise of liberal forces displaced the conservative Guatemalan elites, including senior clergy, who had previously wielded considerable power. By 1838, with the fall of liberal President Mariano Gálvez, Lieutenant General Rafael Carrera emerged as the conservative leader. Carrera restored the Church's influence in Guatemala, which became the last bastion of conservatism in the region. The Central American Federation, which was liberal in nature, could not be established due to Carrera's military power, and he eventually founded the Republic of Guatemala on 21 March 1847. After Carrera's death in 1865, Guatemalan Liberals seized the opportunity to reclaim power, leading to the Liberal Revolution of 1871. This period saw increased attacks on the senior clergy, secular education, freedom of religion, the expulsion of religious orders, and the expropriation of church properties. These policies continued through subsequent liberal governments until the October Revolution of 1944, which worsened the situation as revolutionary factions became increasingly anti-religious.

By 1951, Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano sought to restore the Catholic Church's elite position in Guatemala. He allied with the United Fruit Company and the National Liberation Movement, aiming to overthrow the revolutionary government, which he denounced as atheists and communists. After the consecration of the Shrine of Esquipulas in 1950, Rossell y Arellano commissioned sculptor Julio Urruela Vásquez to create a replica of the Christ of Esquipulas. This bronze replica, established as a symbol of the national pilgrimage against communism, was appointed as the Commander in Chief of the National Liberation Movement's forces during the June 1954 invasion.

On 4 April 1954, Rossell y Arellano issued a pastoral letter condemning the progress of communism in the country and calling on Guatemalans to rise up against this common enemy of God and the nation. The letter was widely distributed throughout the country.

Agrarian Reform and UFCo conflict

In 1953, when the government implemented Agrarian Reform, its goal was to redistribute large holdings of unused land to peasants, both Latino and Amerindian, for subsistence farming. The reform expropriated 250,000 of the 350,000 hectares held by the United Fruit Company (UFCO) and, according to Decree 900, intended to redistribute this land for agricultural purposes. UFCO continued to hold thousands of hectares of pastureland and substantial forest reserves. The Guatemalan government offered the company Q 609,572 in compensation for the appropriated land. The company contested the expropriation with several legal arguments. It claimed the government had misinterpreted its own law, which was meant to target unused land suitable for agricultural development. According to the company, land in pasture, forest cover, and under cultivation should have remained untouched. UFCO argued that most of the land taken was cultivated and in use, making the expropriation illegal.

Additionally, the company contended that the offered compensation was inadequate for the amount and value of the land taken. The valuations of UFCO's rural property were based on values declared in its tax filings. In 1945, Arevalo's administration ordered new assessments to be completed by 1948. UFCO submitted the assessment by the due date but later claimed that the values used for taxation purposes were outdated and did not reflect the true value of the land. The government had investigated in 1951, but a new assessment was never completed. UFCO argued that the 1948 assessment was outdated and estimated that just compensation should be as high as Q 15,854,849, nearly twenty times more than what the Guatemalan government had offered.

The U.S. State Department and embassy actively supported the position of UFCO, a major U.S. company. The Guatemalan government faced significant pressure as a result. While the U.S. officially acknowledged Guatemala's right to conduct its own politics and business, U.S. representatives claimed they were protecting UFCO, a company that generated substantial revenue and contributed to the U.S. economy. Arbenz's administration maintained that Agrarian Reform was essential for improving Guatemala's economy. He insisted on adopting nationalist economic policies if necessary, stating that all foreign investments would be subject to Guatemalan laws. Arbenz was resolute in promoting Agrarian Reform and, within a few years, acted decisively. He asserted that the Guatemalan government could not make exceptions for the U.S. concerning Decree 900 and that it was not Guatemala's fault that UFCO had understated the value of its land on tax forms.

As Arbenz resisted pressure to reconsider the expropriation of UFCO’s land, his government was targeted by propaganda. For the U.S., national security concerns were paramount, intertwining political and economic interests. The fear of communist influence was shared by Guatemala's urban elite and middle classes, who were reluctant to relinquish their privileges. Local media outlets, such as the newspapers El Imparcial and La Hora, exploited press freedoms under the regime and, with UFCO's sponsorship, criticized communism and the government's legal recognition of the Communist Party. Opposing political parties organized anti-communism campaigns, drawing large crowds to rallies and steadily increasing membership in anti-communist organizations.

Arrival of John Peurifoy to Guatemala

Between 1950 and 1955, during General Eisenhower's presidency in the United States, a witch hunt for communists known as McCarthyism was conducted. This period was marked by the persecution of innocent people based on mere suspicion, leading to unfounded accusations, interrogations, job losses, passport denials, and even imprisonment. These methods of social control and repression in the U.S. bordered on totalitarian and fascist practices.

One of the key figures of McCarthyism was John Peurifoy, who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala. Guatemala was the first country in the American sphere of influence after World War II to include openly communist elements in its government. Peurifoy, who had previously engaged in anti-communist activities in Greece, was installed as ambassador in November 1953, around the time Carlos Castillo Armas was organizing his small revolutionary army. After a lengthy meeting, Peurifoy informed President Arbenz that the U.S. was concerned about the communist elements in his government. He reported to the Department of State that while Arbenz himself was not a communist, it was likely that a communist leader would follow him. In January 1954, he told Time magazine, "American public opinion could force us to take some measures to prevent Guatemala from falling into the orbit of international communism."

Operation PBSuccess

Main article: Operation PBSuccess

The Communist Party was not the focal point of the communist movement in Guatemala until Jacobo Árbenz came to power in 1951. Prior to 1951, communism existed within urban labor forces in small study groups from 1944 to 1953, exerting considerable influence on these groups. Despite its limited size in Guatemala, many Communist leaders were highly vocal about their beliefs, particularly through protests and literature. In 1949, the Communist Party had fewer than forty members in Congress, but by 1953, this number had increased to nearly four thousand. Before Árbenz came to power, the communist movement largely operated through mass organizations. Following Árbenz's rise, the Guatemalan Communist Party expanded its activities into the public sphere.

Upon assuming power in 1951, Árbenz extended political freedoms, allowing communists in Guatemala to engage in politics. This policy enabled many opponents of Ubico's regime to identify as communists. By 1952, Árbenz implemented land reform, redistributing about 91,000 hectares (225,000 acres) of unused agricultural land from large landowners to rural workers and farmers. The land, primarily taken from the United Fruit Company, was to be compensated; however, the UFC argued that the compensation was insufficient. Meanwhile, Árbenz permitted the Communist Party to organize and include leaders, notably his leftist adviser. The propaganda campaign by the United Fruit Company against the Guatemalan revolution influenced the U.S. government to combat communism in Guatemala. The Eisenhower administration in the U.S. was displeased with Árbenz's government, viewing him as too aligned with communism. There were reports suggesting that Árbenz's wife was a communist and part of the Communist Party in Guatemala. Despite the lack of concrete evidence linking Guatemala to the Soviet Union, the U.S. was inclined to believe in the presence of communism in Guatemala.

As Árbenz proceeded with land reform, the United Fruit Company, which had a near-monopoly on Guatemalan fruit production and some industry, lobbied the Eisenhower administration to remove him. More significantly, there was widespread American concern about the potential establishment of a so-called "Soviet beachhead." Árbenz's sudden legalization of the Communist Party and the importation of arms from the Soviet-satellite state of Czechoslovakia, among other actions, convinced major policy makers in the White House and CIA to seek Árbenz's removal, despite his term being due to end naturally in two years. This led to a CIA-orchestrated coup in 1954, known as Operation PBSuccess, which resulted in Árbenz being toppled and forced into exile by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. Although many Guatemalans were committed to the original ideals of the 1944 uprising, some private sector leaders and military figures came to view Árbenz as a communist threat and supported his overthrow, hoping that his successor would continue the more moderate reforms initiated by Arevalo.

Armed and trained by the CIA, groups of Guatemalan exiles, commanded by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, invaded Guatemala on 18 June 1954. The Americans portrayed this as an anti-communist coup against Árbenz. Supported by CIA radio broadcasts, the Guatemalan army did not resist the coup, leading to Árbenz's resignation. In 1954, a military government replaced Árbenz's administration, disbanded the legislature, and arrested communist leaders, with Castillo Armas assuming the presidency.

Following the CIA coup, hundreds of Guatemalans were rounded up and killed. Documents obtained by the National Security Archive revealed that the CIA was involved in planning the assassinations of enemies of the new military government, should the coup prove successful.

1976 earthquake

Damaged hotel in Guatemala City, 1976

Main article: 1976 Guatemala earthquake

Civil war (1960–1996)

Main article: Guatemalan Civil War

The government, right-wing paramilitary organizations, and left-wing insurgents were all engaged in the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–96). A variety of factors contributed: social and economic injustice and racial discrimination suffered by the indigenous population, the 1954 coup which reversed reforms, weak civilian control of the military, the United States support of the government, and Cuban support of the insurgents. The Historical Clarification Commission (commonly known as the "Truth Commission") after the war estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed — the vast majority of whom were indigenous civilians. 93% of the human rights abuses reported to the commission were attributed to the military or other government-supported forces. It also determined that in several instances, the government was responsible for acts of genocide.

In response to the increasingly autocratic rule of Gen. Ydígoras Fuentes, who took power in 1958 following the murder of Col. Castillo Armas, a group of junior military officers revolted in 1960. When they failed, several went into hiding and established close ties with Cuba. This group became the nucleus of the forces who mounted armed insurrection against the government for the next 36 years.

In 1966, the left-of-center former law professor Julio César Méndez Montenegro became President of Guatemala while holding the rank of civilian. However, the historical political odds were still in favor of the nation's military. Shortly after Méndez Montenegro took office, the Guatemalan army launched a major counterinsurgency campaign that largely broke up the guerrilla movement in the countryside.

The guerrillas concentrated their attacks in Guatemala City, where they assassinated many leading figures, including U.S. Ambassador John Gordon Mein in 1968. Despite this, Méndez Montenegro managed to successfully complete his four-year term as President of Guatemala before being succeeded by Army Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio in 1970. During the next nearly two decades, Méndez Montenegro was the only civilian to head Guatemala until the inauguration of Vinicio Cerezo in 1986.

Franja Transversal del Norte

Main article: Franja Transversal del Norte

Location of Franja Transversal del Norte -Northern Transversal Strip- in Guatemala

The first settler project in the FTN was in Sebol-Chinajá in Alta Verapaz. Sebol, then regarded as a strategic point and route through Cancuén river, which communicated with Petén through the Usumacinta River on the border with Mexico and the only road that existed was a dirt one built by President Lázaro Chacón in 1928. In 1958, during the government of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) financed infrastructure projects in Sebol, which finally adopted the name "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas", municipality created in 1983 in Alta Verapaz. In 1960, then Army captain Fernando Romeo Lucas García inherited Saquixquib and Punta de Boloncó farms in northeastern Sebol. In 1963 he bought the farm "San Fernando" El Palmar de Sejux and finally bought the "Sepur" farm near San Fernando. During those years, Lucas was in the Guatemalan legislature and lobbied in Congress to boost investment in that area of the country.

In those years, the importance of the region was in livestock, exploitation of precious export wood and archaeological wealth. Timber contracts were granted to multinational companies such as Murphy Pacific Corporation from California, which invested US$30 million for the colonization of southern Petén and Alta Verapaz, and formed the North Impulsadora Company. Colonization of the area was made through a process by which inhospitable areas of the FTN were granted to native peasants.

In 1962, the DGAA became the National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INTA), by Decree 1551 which created the law of Agrarian Transformation. In 1964, INTA defined the geography of the FTN as the northern part of the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz and Izabal and that same year priests of the Maryknoll order and the Order of the Sacred Heart began the first process of colonization, along with INTA, carrying settlers from Huehuetenango to the Ixcán sector in Quiché.

"It is of public interest and national emergency, the establishment of Agrarian Development Zones in the area included within the municipalities: San Ana Huista, San Antonio Huista, Nentón, Jacaltenango, San Mateo Ixcatán, and Santa Cruz Barillas in Huehuetenango; Chajul and San Miguel Uspantán in Quiché; Cobán, Chisec, San Pedro Carchá, Lanquín, Senahú, Cahabón and Chahal, in Alta Verapaz and the entire department of Izabal."

Decreto 60–70, artítulo 1o.

The Northern Transversal Strip was officially created during the government of General Carlos Arana Osorio in 1970, by Decree 60–70 in the Congress, for agricultural development.

Guerrilla Army of the Poor

Main article: Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres

On 19 January 1972, members of a new Guatemalan guerrilla movement entered Ixcán, from Mexico, and were accepted by many farmers; in 1973, after an exploratory foray into the municipal seat of Cotzal, the insurgent group decided to set up camp underground in the mountains of Xolchiché, municipality of Chajul.

In 1974, the insurgent guerrilla group held its first conference, where it defined its strategy of action for the coming months and called itself Guerrilla Army of the Poor (-Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres -EGP-). In 1975, the organization had spread around the area of the mountains of northern municipalities of Nebaj and Chajul. As part of its strategy EGP agreed to perform acts that notoriety was obtained and through which also symbolize the establishment of a "social justice" against the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the judicial and administrative organs of the State. They saw also that with these actions the indigenous rural population of the region is identified with the insurgency, thus motivating joining their ranks. As part of this plan was agreed to so-called "executions". To determine who would be these people subject to "execution", the EGP attended complaints received from the public. For example, they selected two victims: Guillermo Monzón, who was a military Commissioner in Ixcán and José Luis Arenas, the largest landowner in the area of Ixcán, and who had been reported to the EGP for allegedly having land conflicts with neighboring settlements and abusing their workers.

On Saturday, 7 June 1975, José Luis Arenas was killed by unknowns when he was in the premises of his farm "La Perla" to pay wage workers. In front of his office there were approximately two to three hundred people to receive their payment and four members of EGP mixed among farmers. Subsequently, the guerrilla members destroyed the communication radio of the farm and executed Arenas. After having murdered José Luis Arenas, guerrilla members spoke in Ixil language to the farmers, informing them that they were members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and had killed the "Tiger Ixcán". They requested to prepare beasts to help the injured and were transported to Chajul to receive medical care. Then the attackers fled towards Chajul.

José Luis Arenas' son, who was in San Luis Ixcán at the time, seek refuge in a nearby mountain, waiting for a plane to arrive to take him to the capital, in order to immediately report the matter to the Minister of Defense. The defense minister replied, "You are mistaken, there are no guerrillas in the area".

Panzós massacre

Main article: Panzós massacre

In Alta Verapaz in the late nineteenth century German farmers came to concentrate in their hands three quarters of the total area of 8686 square kilometers that had the departmental territory. In this department came insomuch land grabbing and women [slaves] by German agricultural entrepreneurs, a political leader noted that farmers disappeared from their villages overnight, fleeing the farmers.

Julio Castellanos Cambranes

Also located in the Northern Transversal Strip, the valley of the Polochic River was inhabited since ancient times by k'ekchí and P'okomchi people. In the second half of the nineteenth century, President Justo Rufino Barrios began the allocation of land in the area to German farmers. Settlers from Germany arrived in the mid-19th century, acquired land and grew coffee plantations in Alta Verapaz and Quetzaltenango. Decree 170 (or decree of Census Redemption Decree) facilitated the expropriation of Indian land in favor of the Germans, because it promoted the auction of communal lands. Since that time, the main economic activity was export-oriented, especially coffee, bananas and cardamom. The communal property, dedicated to subsistence farming, became private property led to the cultivation and mass marketing of agricultural products. Therefore, the fundamental characteristic of the Guatemalan production system has since that time been the accumulation of property in few hands, and a sort of "farm servitude" based on the exploitation of "farmer settlers".

In 1951, the agrarian reform law that expropriated idle land from private hands was enacted, but in 1954, with the National Liberation Movement coup supported by the United States, most of the land that had been expropriated, was awarded back to its former landowners. Flavio Monzón was appointed mayor and in the next twenty years he became one of the largest landowners in the area. In 1964, several communities settled for decades on the shore of Polochic River claimed property titles to INTA which was created in October 1962, but the land was awarded to Monzón. A Mayan peasant from Panzós later said that Monzón "got the signatures of the elders before he went before INTA to talk about the land. When he returned, gathered the people and said that, by an INTA mistake, the land had gone to his name." Throughout the 1970s, Panzós farmers continued to claim INTA regularization of land ownership receiving legal advice from the FASGUA (Autonomous Trade Union Federation of Guatemala), an organization that supported the peasants' demands through legal procedures. However, no peasant received a property title, ever. Some obtained promises while other had provisional property titles, and there were also some that only had received permission to plant. The peasants began to suffer evictions from their land by farmers, the military and local authorities in favor of the economic interests of Izabal Mining Operations Company (EXMIBAL) and Transmetales. Another threat at that time for peasant proprietors were mining projects and exploration of oil: Exxon, Shenandoah, Hispanoil and Getty Oil all had exploration contracts; besides there was the need for territorial expansion of two mega-projects of that era: Northern Transversal Strip and Chixoy Hydroelectric Plant.

In 1978, a military patrol was stationed a few kilometers from the county seat of Panzós, in a place known as "Quinich". At this time organizational capacity of peasant had increased through committees who claimed titles to their land, a phenomenon that worried the landlord sector. Some of these owners, among them Monzón, stated: "Several peasants living in the villages and settlements want to burn urban populations to gain access to private property", and requested protection from Alta Verapaz governor.

On 29 May 1978, peasants from Cahaboncito, Semococh, Rubetzul, Canguachá, Sepacay villages, finca Moyagua and neighborhood La Soledad, decided to hold a public demonstration in the Plaza de Panzós to insist on the claim of land and to express their discontent caused by the arbitrary actions of the landowners and the civil and military authorities. Hundreds of men, women, indigenous children went to the square of the municipal seat of Panzós, carrying their tools, machetes and sticks. One of the people who participated in the demonstration states: "The idea was not to fight with anyone, what was required was the clarification of the status of the land. People came from various places and they had guns."

There are different versions on how the shooting began: some say it began when "Mama Maquín" –an important peasant leader – pushed a soldier who was in her way; others argue that it started because people kept pushing trying to get into the municipality, which was interpreted by the soldiers as an aggression. The mayor at the time, Walter Overdick, said that "people of the middle of the group pushed those who in front". A witness says one protester grabbed the gun from a soldier but did not use it and several people argue that a military voice yelled: "One, two, three! Fire!". In fact, the lieutenant who led the troops gave orders to open fire on the crowd.

The shots that rang for about five minutes, were made by regulation firearms carried by the military as well as the three machine guns located on the banks of the square. 36 Several peasants with machetes wounded several soldiers. No soldier was wounded by gunfire. The square was covered with blood.

Immediately, the army closed the main access roads, despite that "indigenous felt terrified". An army helicopter flew over the town before picking up wounded soldiers.

Transition between Laugerud and Lucas Garcia regimes

Due to his seniority in both the military and economic elites in Guatemala, as well as the fact that he spoke perfectly the q'ekchi, one of the Guatemalan indigenous languages, Lucas García the ideal official candidate for the 1978 elections; and to further enhance his image, he was paired with the leftist doctor Francisco Villagrán Kramer as running mate. Villagrán Kramer was a man of recognized democratic trajectory, having participated in the Revolution of 1944, and was linked to the interests of transnational corporations and elites, as he was one of the main advisers of agricultural, industrial and financial chambers of Guatemala. Despite the democratic façade, the electoral victory was not easy and the establishment had to impose Lucas García, causing further discredit the electoral system – which had already suffered a fraud when General Laugerud was imposed in the 1974 elections.

In 1976, student group called "FRENTE" emerged in the University of San Carlos, which completely swept all student body positions that were up for election that year. FRENTE leaders were mostly members of the Patriotic Workers' Youth, the youth wing of the Guatemalan Labor Party (-Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo- PGT), the Guatemalan communist party who had worked in the shadows since it was illegalized in 1954. Unlike other Marxist organizations in Guatemala at the time, PGT leaders trusted the mass movement to gain power through elections.

FRENTE used its power within the student associations to launch a political campaign for the 1978 university general elections, allied with leftist Faculty members grouped in "University Vanguard". The alliance was effective and Oliverio Castañeda de León was elected as President of the Student Body and Saúl Osorio Paz as President of the university; plus they had ties with the university workers union (STUSC) thru their PGT connections. Osorio Paz gave space and support to the student movement and instead of having a conflicted relationship with students, different representations combined to build a higher education institution of higher social projection. In 1978, the University of San Carlos became one of the sectors with more political weight in Guatemala; that year the student movement, faculty and University Governing Board -Consejo Superior Universitario- united against the government and were in favor of opening spaces for the neediest sectors. In order to expand its university extension, the Student Body (AEU) rehabilitated the "Student House" in downtown Guatemala City; there, they welcomed and supported families of villagers and peasant already sensitized politically. They also organized groups of workers in the informal trade.

At the beginning of his tenure as president, Saúl Osorio founded the weekly Siete Días en la USAC, which besides reporting on the activities of the university, constantly denounced the violation of human rights, especially the repression against the popular movement. It also told what was happening with revolutionary movements in both Nicaragua and El Salvador. For a few months, the state university was a united and progressive institution, preparing to confront the State head on.

Now, FRENTE had to face the radical left, represented then by the Student Revolutionary Front "Robin García" (FERG), which emerged during the Labor Day march of 1 May 1978. FERG coordinated several student associations on different colleges within University of San Carlos and public secondary education institutions. This coordination between legal groups came from the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), a guerrilla group that had appeared in 1972 and had its headquarters in the oil rich region of northern Quiché department -i.e., the Ixil Triangle of Ixcán, Nebaj and Chajul in Franja Transversal del Norte. Although not strictly an armed group, FERG sought confrontation with government forces all the time, giving prominence to measures that could actually degenerate into mass violence and paramilitary activity. Its members were not interested in working within an institutional framework and never asked permission for their public demonstrations or actions.

On 7 March 1978, Lucas Garcia was elected president; shortly after, on 29 May 1978 -in the late days of General Laugerud García government- in the central square of Panzós, Alta Verapaz, members of the Zacapa Military Zone attacked a peaceful peasant demonstration, killing a lot of people. The deceased, indigenous peasants who had been summoned in place, were fighting for the legalization of public lands they had occupied for years. Their struggle faced them directly with investors who wanted to exploit the mineral wealth of the area, particularly oil reserves -by Basic Resources International and Shenandoah Oil- and nickel -EXMIBAL. The Panzós Massacre caused a stir at the university by the high number of victims and conflicts arose from the exploitation of natural resources by foreign companies. In 1978, for example, Osorio Paz and other university received death threats for their outspoken opposition to the construction of an inter-oceanic pipeline that would cross the country to facilitate oil exploration. On 8 June the AEU organized a massive protest in downtown Guatemala City where speakers denounced the slaughter of Panzós and expressed their repudiation of Laugerud García regime in stronger terms than ever before.

Escalation of violence

After the execution of José Luis Arenas population of Hom, Ixtupil, Sajsivan and Sotzil villages, neighbors of La Perla and annexes, increased support for the new guerrilla movement, mainly due to the land dispute that peasants kept with the owners of the farm for several years and that the execution was seen as an act of "social justice".

The murder owner of the farm "La Perla", located in the municipality of Chajul, resulted in the escalation of violence in the area: part of the population moved closer to the guerrillas, while another part of the inhabitants of Hom kept out of the insurgency. In 1979, the owners of the farm "La Perla" established links with the army and for the first time a military detachment was installed within the property; in this same building the first civil patrol of the area was established. The Army high command, meanwhile, was very pleased with the initial results of the operation and was convinced it had succeeded in destroying most of the social basis of EGP, which had to be expelled from the "Ixil Triangle". At this time the presence of EGP in the area decreased significantly due to the repressive actions of the Army, who developed its concept of "enemy" without necessarily including the notion of armed combatants; the officers who executed the plan were instructed to destroy all towns suspect of cooperate with EGP and eliminate all sources of resistance. Army units operating in the "Ixil Triangle" belonged to the Mariscal Zavala Brigade, stationed in Guatemala City. Moreover, although the guerrillas did not intervene directly when the army attacked the civilian population allegedly because they lacked supplies and ammunition, it did support some survival strategies. It streamlined, for example, "survival plans" designed to give evacuation instructions in assumption that military incursions took place. Most of the population began to participate in the schemes finding that them represented their only alternative to military repression.

Lucas Garcia presidency

Main article: Fernando Romeo Lucas García

The election of Lucas García on 7 March 1978 marked the beginning of a full return to the counterinsurgency practices of the Arana period. This was compounded by the strong reaction of the Guatemalan military to the situation unfolding in Nicaragua at the time, where the popularly supported Sandinista insurgency was on the verge of toppling the Somoza regime. With the aim of preventing an analogous situation from unfolding in Guatemala, the government intensified its repressive campaign against the predominantly indigenous mass movement. The repression not only intensified, but became more overt.

On 4 August 1978, high school and university students, along with other popular movement sectors, organized the mass movement's first urban protest of the Lucas García period. The protests, intended as a march against violence, were attended by an estimated 10,000 people. The new minister of the interior under President Lucas García, Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz, promised to break up any protests done without government permission. Having refused to ask for permission, the protesters were met by the Pelotón Modelo (Model Platoon) of the National Police. Employing new anti-riot gear donated by the United States Government, Platoon agents surrounded marchers and tear-gassed them. Students were forced to retreat and dozens of people, mostly school-aged adolescents, were hospitalized. This was followed by more protests and death squad killings throughout the later part of the year. In September 1978 a general strike broke out to protest sharp increases in public transportation fares; the government responded harshly, arresting dozens of protesters and injuring many more. However, as a result of the campaign, the government agreed to the protesters' demands, including the establishment of a public transportation subsidy. Fearful that this concession would encourage more protests, the military government, along with state-sponsored paramilitary death squads, generated an unsafe situation for public leaders.

The administrator of a large cemetery in Guatemala City informed the press that in the first half of 1978, more than 760 unidentified bodies had arrived at the cemetery, all apparent victims of death squads. Amnesty International stated that disappearances were an "epidemic" in Guatemala and reported more than 2,000 killings between mid-1978 and 1980. Between January and November 1979 alone the Guatemalan press reported 3,252 disappearances.

Spanish Embassy fire

On 31 January 1980, a group of displaced K'iche' and Ixil peasant farmers occupied the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City to protest the kidnapping and murder of peasants in Uspantán by elements of the Guatemalan Army. In the subsequent police raid, over the protests of the Spanish ambassador, the police attacked the building with incendiary explosives. A fire ensued as police prevented those inside of the embassy from exiting the building. In all, 36 people were killed in the fire. The funeral of the victims (including the hitherto obscure father of Rigoberta Menchú, Vicente Menchú) attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners, and a new guerrilla group was formed commemorating the date, the Frente patriotico 31 de enero (Patriotic Front of 31 January). The incident has been called "the defining event" of the Guatemalan Civil War. The Guatemalan government issued a statement claiming that its forces had entered the embassy at the request of the Spanish Ambassador, and that the occupiers of the embassy, whom they referred to as "terrorists", had "sacrificed the hostages and immolated themselves afterward". Ambassador Cajal denied the claims of the Guatemalan government and Spain immediately terminated diplomatic relations with Guatemala, calling the action a violation of "the most elementary norms of international law". Relations between Spain and Guatemala were not normalized until 22 September 1984.

Increased insurgency and state repression: 1980–1982

In the months following the Spanish Embassy Fire, the human rights situation continued to deteriorate. The daily number of killings by official and unofficial security forces increased from an average of 20 to 30 in 1979 to a conservative estimate of 30 to 40 daily in 1980. Human rights sources estimated 5,000 Guatemalans were killed by the government for "political reasons" in 1980 alone, making it the worst human rights violator in the hemisphere after El Salvador. In a report titled Guatemala: A Government Program of Political Murder, Amnesty International stated, "Between January and November of 1980, some 3,000 people described by government representatives as "subversives" and "criminals" were either shot on the spot in political assassinations or seized and murdered later; at least 364 others seized in this period have not yet been accounted for".

The repression and excessive force used by the government against the opposition was such that it became source of contention within Lucas Garcia's administration itself. This contention within the government caused Lucas Garcia's Vice President Francisco Villagrán Kramer to resign from his position on 1 September 1980. In his resignation, Kramer cited his disapproval of the government's human rights record as one of the primary reasons for his resignation. He then went into voluntary exile in the United States, taking a position in the Legal Department of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Insurgent mobilization

The effects of state repression on the population further radicalized individuals within the mass movement and led to increased popular support for the insurgency. In late 1979, the EGP expanded its influence, controlling a large amount of territory in the Ixil Triangle in El Quiche and holding many demonstrations in Nebaj, Chajul and Cotzal. At the same time the EGP was expanding its presence in the Altiplano, a new insurgent movement called the ORPA (Revolutionary Organization of Armed People) made itself known. Composed of local youths and university intellectuals, the ORPA developed out of a movement called the Regional de Occidente, which split from the FAR-PGT in 1971. The ORPA's leader, Rodrigo Asturias (a former activist with the PGT and first-born son of Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Ángel Asturias), formed the organization after returning from exile in Mexico. The ORPA established an operational base in the mountains and rain-forests above the coffee plantations of southwestern Guatemala and in the Atitlan where it enjoyed considerable popular support. On 18 September 1979, the ORPA made its existence publicly known when it occupied the Mujulia coffee farm in the coffee-growing region of the Quezaltenango province to hold a political education meeting with the workers.

Insurgent movements active in the initial phase of the conflict such as the FAR also began to reemerge and prepare for combat. In 1980, guerrilla operations on both the urban and rural fronts greatly intensified, with the insurgency carrying out a number of overt acts of armed propaganda and assassinations of prominent right-wing Guatemalans and landowners. In 1980, armed insurgents assassinated prominent Ixil landowner Enrique Brol, and president of the CACIF (Coordinating Committee of Agricultural, Commercial, Industrial, and Financial Associations) Alberto Habie. Encouraged by guerrilla advances elsewhere in Central America, the Guatemalan insurgents, especially the EGP, began to quickly expand their influence through a wide geographic area and across different ethnic groups, thus broadening the appeal of the insurgent movement and providing it with a larger popular base. In October 1980, a tripartite alliance was formalized between the EGP, the FAR and the ORPA as a precondition for Cuban-backing.

In early 1981, the insurgency mounted the largest offensive in the country's history. This was followed by an additional offensive towards the end of the year, in which many civilians were forced to participate by the insurgents. Villagers worked with the insurgency to sabotage roads and army establishments, and destroy anything of strategic value to the armed forces. By 1981, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 members of Guatemala's indigenous community actively supported the insurgency. Guatemalan Army Intelligence (G-2) estimated a minimum 360,000 indigenous supporters of the EGP alone. Since late 1981 the Army applied a strategy of "scorched earth" in Quiché, to eliminate the guerrilla social support EGP. In some communities of the region's military forced all residents to leave their homes and concentrate in the county seat under military control. Some families obeyed; others took refuge in the mountains. K'iche's who took refuge in the mountains, were identified by the Army with the guerrillas and underwent a military siege, and continuous attacks that prevented them from getting food, shelter and medical care.

La Llorona massacre, El Estor

La Llorona, located about 18 kilometers from El Estor, department of Izabal (part of the Northern Transversal Strip), was a small village with no more than twenty houses. Most of the first settlers arrived from the areas of Senahú and Panzós, both in Alta Verapaz. In 1981, the total population was about 130 people, all belonging to the q'eqchi' ethnic group. Few people spoke Spanish and most worked in their own cornfields, sporadically working for the local landowners. In the vicinity are the villages of El Bongo, Socela, Benque, Rio Pita, Santa Maria, Big Plan, and New Hope. Conflicts in the area were related to land tenure, highlighting the uncertainty about the boundaries between farms and communities, and the lack of titles. As in the National Institute of Agrarian Transformation (INTA) was not registered a legitimate owner of land occupied La Llorona, the community remained in the belief that the land belonged to the state, which had taken steps to obtain title property. However, a farmer with great influence in the area occupied part of the land, generating a conflict between him and the community; men of the village, on its own initiative, devised a new boundary between community land and the farmer, but the problem remained dormant.

The second half of the seventies gave rise to the first news about the presence of guerrillas in the villages. The commander aparacimiento Ramon, talked to people and said they were the Guerrilla Army of the Poor. They passed many villages asking what problems people had and offered to solve them. They told peasants that the land belonged to the poor and that they should trust them. In 1977, Ramon, a guerrilla commander, regularly visited the village of La Llorona and after finding that the issue of land was causing many problems in the community, taught people to practice new measurements, which spread fear among landowners. That same year, the group under Ramon arbitrarily executed the Spanish landowner José Hernández, near El Recreo, which he owned. Following this, a clandestine group of mercenaries, dubbed "fighters of the rich" was formed to protect the interests of landlords; public authority of El Estor organized the group and paid its members, stemming from the funding of major landowners. The group, irregular, was related to the military commissioners of the region and with commanders of the Army, although mutual rivalries also took place. The secret organization murdered several people, including victims who had no connection whatsoever with insurgent groups.

In December 1978, the EGP group leader, Ramon, was captured by soldiers of the military detachment in El Estor and transferred to the military zone of Puerto Barrios; after two years returned to El Estor; but this time as an officer in the Army G2 and joined a group of soldiers that came to the village.

Killings

On the evening of 28 September 1981, an army officer accompanied by four soldiers and a military commissioner met with about thirty civilians. At seven o'clock, over thirty civilians, mostly from "Nueva Esperanza", including several 'informants' known to military intelligence, gathered around La Llorona along with some military commissioners and a small group of soldiers and army officers. Then they entered the village. Civilians and commissioners entered twelve houses, and each of them were pulling men and shot them dead outside their own homes; those who tried to escape were also killed. Women who tried to protect their husbands were beaten. While the military commissioners and civilians executed men, soldiers subtracted belongings of the victims; within half an hour, the authors of the assault left the village.

Aftermath

The victims bodies, fourteen in all, were in front of houses. Women, despite having been threatened with death if they told what happened, ran to the nearest village, El Bongo, for help. After a few hours, women came back with people who helped to bury the bodies. Days later, widows, with almost 60 fatherless children were welcomed by the parish of El Estor for several days, until the soldiers forced them to return to their village. Two widows of those executed on 29 September established close relations with the military commissioners from Bongo. This situation led to divisions that still exist in the community.

The economic and social activity was disrupted in the village: widows had to take the jobs of their husbands; because of their lack of knowledge in the cultivation of land, harvested very little corn and beans. There were diseases, especially among children and the elderly, there was no food or clothing. The teacher of the village came only part-time, mostly out of fear, but left after he realized it was not worth to stay because young people had to work nor could they spend money on travel. The village had no teacher for the next four years. The events generated finally the breakup of the community. Some village women though that their husbands were killed because of three others who were linked with the guerrillas and were involved in a land dispute.

According to the Historical Clarification Commission, the landlord with whom the villagers had the land dispute took advantage of the situation to appropriate another 5 hectares (12 acres) of land.

List of other massacres perpetrated by the Army in Franja Transversal del Norte

Main article: Franja Transversal del Norte

The report of the Recovery of Historical Memory lists 422 massacres committed by both sides in the conflict; however, it also states that they did the best they could in terms of obtaining information and therefore the list is incomplete; therefore here are the cases that have also been documented in other reports as well.

Chajul, Nebaj and Ixcán massacres in Franja Transversal del Norte

#	Location	Department	Date	Root cause
1	Ilom (village), Chajul	Quiché	23 March 1982	After 1981, repression against Ilom was rampant, ending with the massacre of 96 alleged guerrilla members in front of their families on 23 March 1982, as part of Army "Victoria 82" plan. Soldiers were from the military base in "La Perla" while survivors fled and seek shelter in Comunidades de Población en Resistencia -Resistance population communities-.
2	Chel (village), Chajul	Quiché	3 April 1982	A part of operation "Victoria 82", Army soldiers from the military fort in "La Perla" rushed into Chel settlement, because it had been targeted as "subversive". The attack left 95 dead civilians.
3	Chisis (village), San Juan Cotzal	Quiché	13 February 1982	Chisís was a military target for the Army, who considered the village symbolic for the EGP and believed it was the guerrilla headquarters where the attacks in Chajul, Cotzal, and Nebaj had been planned. In January 1982, EGP attacked Cotzal military base; the attack lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes, resulting 100 military casualties and 20 for the guerrilla. PAC and Army battalions, in revenge, completely destroy Chisis, leaving approximately 200 dead civilians behind.
4	Acul (village), Nebaj	Quiché	April 1982	Combat against EGP. There were 17 deaths.

List of massacres perpetrated by the EGP in FTN

According to a report by the rightist magazine "Crónica", there were 1,258 guerrilla actions against civilians and infrastructure in Guatemala, including more than two hundred murders, sixty eight kidnappings, eleven bombs against embassies and three hundred twenty-nine attacks against civilians. Almost all guerrilla massacres occurred in 1982 when further militarization reigned and there was widespread presence of PAC in communities; many of them were victims of non-cooperation with the guerrillas and in some cases they came after a previous attack by the PAC. In the massacres perpetrated by the guerrillas there is no use of informants, or concentration of population, or separation of groups; also, there are no recounts of rape or repetitive slaughter. There are cases of razed villages and less tendency to mass flight, even though it occurred in some cases. the use of lists was also more frequent.

In a publication of the Army of Guatemala, sixty massacres perpetrated by the EGP were reported, arguing that they were mostly ignored by REHMI and the Historical Clarification Commission reports. It is also reported that in mid-1982, 32 members of "Star Guerrilla Front " were shot for not raising the EGP flag.

Chajul, Nebaj and Ixcán massacres in Franja Transversal del Norte

#	Location	Department	Date	Description
1	Calapté, Uspantán	Quiché	17 February 1982	There were 42 fatal victims, who were murdered with machetes.
2	Salacuín	Alta Verapaz	May 1982	EGP entered the community and murdered 20 peasants.
3	El Conguito (settlement), Las Pacayas (village), San Cristóbal Verapaz	Alta Verapaz	1981
4	Sanimtakaj (village), San Cristóbal Verapaz	Alta Verapaz	1980
5	San Miguel Sechochoch (farm), Chisec	Alta Verapaz	March 1982
6	Chacalté, Chajul	Quiché	June 1982	Attack against a "reactionary gang" from the PAC in Chacalté, that had just formed in March and was loyal to the Army after becoming disillusioned with guerrilla promises. Resulted in 55 dead civilians.
7	San Miguel Acatán (town), San Miguel Acatán	Huehuetenango	Unknown
8	Santa Cruz del Quiche (city), Santa Cruz del Quiché	Quiché	July 1982
9	Chuacaman (settlement), El Carmen Chitatul (village), Santa Cruz del Quiché	Quiché	December 1982
10	La Estancia (village), Santa Cruz del Quiché	Quiché	August 1981
11	Xesic (village), Santa Cruz del Quiché	Quiché	1981
12	Patzité (town)	Quiché	September 1981
13	Lancetillo (village), Uspantán	Quiché	September 1982
14	La Taña (village), Uspantán	Quiché	March 1982
15	Tzununul (village), Sacapulas	Quiché	February 1982
16	Salinas Magdalena (village), Sacapulas	Quiché	August 1982
17	Rosario Monte María (village), Chicamán	Quiché	October 1982

Civil war in the city

Main article: Guatemala City

Beheaded corpses hanging from their legs in between what is left from blown up cars, shapeless bodies among glass shards and tree branches all over the place is what a terrorist attack caused yesterday at 9:35 am. El Gráfico reporters were able to get to exact place where the bomb went off, only seconds after the horrific explosion, and found a truly infernal scene in the corner of the 6th avenue and 6th street -where the Presidential Office is located- which had turned into a huge oven -but the solid building where the president worked was safe-. The reporters witnessed the dramatic rescue of the wounded, some of them critical, like the man that completely lost a leg and had only stripes of skin instead.

El Gráfico, 6 September 1980

On 31 January 1980, Guatemala got worldwide attention when the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City was burnt down, resulting in 37 deaths, including embassy personnel and high ranked Guatemalan former government officials. A group of native people from El Quiché occupied the embassy in a desperate attempt to bring attention to the issues they were having with the Army in that region of the country, which was rich in oil and had been recently populated as part of the "Franja Transversal del Norte" agricultural program. In the end, thirty seven people died after a fire started within the embassy after the police force tried to occupy the building; after that, Spain broke its diplomatic relationships with Guatemala.

Finance Center in 2011. In 1981, a powerful bomb exploded in the basement of the building, leaving it without windows for several years. The owners -Industrial Bank- decided to keep it open to the public to defy the leftist guerrilla.

On 5 September 1980 a terrorist attack by Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (EGP) took place in front of the Guatemalan National Palace, then the headquarters of the Guatemalan government. The intention was to prevent the Guatemalan people to support a huge demonstration that the government of general Lucas Garcia had prepared for Sunday 7 September 1980. In the attack, six adults and a boy died after two bombs inside a vehicle went off.

There was an undetermined number of wounded and heavy material losses, not only from art pieces from the National Palace, but from all the surrounding buildings, particularly in the Lucky Building, which is right across from the Presidential Office. Among the deceased was Domingo Sánchez, Secretary of Agriculture driver; Joaquín Díaz y Díaz, car washer; and Amilcar de Paz, a security guard.

The attacks against private financial, commercial and agricultural targets increased in the Lucas Garcia years, as the leftist Marxist groups saw those institutions as "reactionaries" and "millionaire exploiters" that were collaborating with the genocidal government. The following is a non-exhaustive list of the terrorist attacks that occurred in Guatemala city and are presented in the UN Commission report:

Date	Perpetrator	Target	Result
15 September 1981	Rebel Army Forces	Corporación Financiera Nacional (CORFINA)	Car bomb damaged the building and neighbor Guatemalan and international financial institutions; there were more than Q300k in losses.
19 October 1981	EGP Urban guerrilla	Industrial Bank Financial Center	Building sabotage.
21 December 1981	EGP "Otto René Castillo" commando	Bombs against newly built structures: Chamber of Industry, Torre Panamericana (Bank of Coffee headquarters) and Industrial Bank Financial Center	Car bombs completely destroyed the building's windows.
28 December de 1981	EGP "Otto René Castillo" commando	Industrial Bank Financial Center	Car bomb against the building which virtually destroyed one of the bank towers. In a sign of defiance, the bank did not repair the windows immediately and continued operating as normally as it could.

Despite advances by the insurgency, the insurgency made a series of fatal strategic errors. The successes made by the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua against the Somoza regime combined with the insurgency's own successes against the Lucas government led rebel leaders to falsely conclude that a military equilibrium was being reached in Guatemala, thus the insurgency underestimated the military strength of the government. The insurgency subsequently found itself overwhelmed, and was unable to secure its advances and protect the indigenous civilian population from reprisals by the security forces.

'Operation Ceniza'

In response to the guerrilla offensive in early 1981, the Guatemalan Army began mobilizing for a large-scale rural counter-offensive. The Lucas government instituted a policy of forced recruitment and began organizing a "task-force" model for fighting the insurgency, by which strategic mobile forces were drawn from larger military brigades. To curtail civilian participation in the insurgency and provide greater distinction between "hostile" and compliant communities in the countryside, the army resorted to a series of "civic action" measures. The army under Chief of Staff Benedicto Lucas García (the President's brother) began to search out communities in which to organize and recruit civilians into pro-government paramilitary patrols, who would combat the insurgents and kill their collaborators.

In 1980, and 1981, the United States under Reagan administration delivered $10.5 million worth of Bell 212 and Bell 412 helicopters and $3.2 million worth of military trucks and jeeps to the Guatemalan Army. In 1981, the Reagan administration also approved a $2 million covert CIA program for Guatemala.

On 15 April 1981, EGP rebels attacked a Guatemalan Army patrol from the village of Cocob near Nebaj, killing five personnel. On 17 April 1981, a reinforced company of Airborne troops was deployed to the village. They discovered fox holes, guerrillas and a hostile population. The local people appeared to fully support the guerrillas. "The soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved". The army killed 65 civilians, including 34 children, five adolescents, 23 adults and two elderly people.

In July 1981, the armed forces initiated a new phase of counterinsurgency operations under the code-name "Operación Ceniza", or "Operation Ashes", which lasted through March 1982. The purpose of the operation was to "separate and isolate the insurgents from the civilian population". During "Operación Ceniza" some 15,000 troops were deployed on a gradual sweep through the predominantly indigenous Altiplano region, comprising the departments of El Quiché and Huehuetenango.

Large numbers of civilians were killed or displaced in the Guatemalan military's counterinsurgency operations. To alienate the insurgents from their civilian base, the army carried out large-scale mass killing of unarmed civilians, burned villages and crops, and butchered animals, destroying survivors' means of livelihood. Sources with the human rights office of the Catholic Church estimated the death toll from the counterinsurgency in 1981 at 11,000, with most of the victims indigenous peasants of the Guatemalan highlands. Other sources and observers put the death toll due to government repression in 1981 at between 9,000 and 13,500.

As army repression intensified in the countryside, relations between the Guatemalan military establishment and the Lucas Garcia regime worsened. Professionals within the Guatemalan military considered the Lucas approach counterproductive, on grounds that the Lucas government's strategy of military action and systematic terror overlooked the social and ideological causes of the insurgency while radicalizing the civilian population. Additionally, Lucas went against the military's interests by endorsing his defense minister, Angel Anibal Guevara, as a candidate in the March 1982 presidential elections.

The guerrilla organizations in 1982 combined to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). 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.

On 23 March 1982, army troops commanded by junior officers 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 Guevara. Ríos Montt had been the candidate of the Christian Democracy Party in the 1974 presidential election 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 canceled the electoral law. After a few months, Montt dismissed his junta colleagues and assumed the de facto title of "President of the Republic".

Guerrilla forces and their leftist allies denounced Montt, who sought to defeat them by a combination of military actions and economic reforms; in his words, "rifles and beans". In May 1982, the Conference of Catholic Bishops accused 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 in Cunén that: "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 rural Guatemalan men (including young boys and the elderly), especially in the northwest, had no choice but to join either the PACs or be considered guerrillas. At their peak, the PACs are estimated to have included 1 million conscripts. Montt's conscript army and PACs recaptured essentially all guerrilla territory. The insurgents' activity lessened and was largely limited to hit-and-run operations. Montt won this partial victory at an enormous cost in civilian deaths.

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 Guatemalan 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%.

On 8 August 1983, Montt was deposed by his Minister of Defense, General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores, who succeeded him as de facto president of Guatemala. Mejía justified his coup, based on problems with "religious fanatics" in government and "official corruption". Seven people were killed in the coup. Montt survived to found a political party (the Guatemalan Republic Front) and to be elected President of Congress in 1995 and again in 2000.

Awareness in the United States of the conflict in Guatemala, and its ethnic dimension, increased with the 1983 publication of the "testimonial" account I, Rigoberta Menchú, a memoir by a leading activist. Rigoberta Menchú was awarded the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in favor of broader social justice. In 1998, a book by U.S. anthropologist David Stoll challenged some of the details in Menchú's book, creating an international controversy. After the publication of Stoll's book, the Nobel Committee reiterated that it had awarded the Peace Prize based on Menchú's uncontested work promoting human rights and the peace process.

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.

1986 to 1996: from constitution to peace accords

Upon its inauguration in January 1986, President Cerezo's civilian government announced that its top priorities would be to end the political violence and establish the rule of law. Reforms included new laws of habeas corpus and amparo (court-ordered protection), the creation of a legislative human rights committee, and the establishment in 1987 of the Office of Human Rights Ombudsman. The Supreme Court embarked on a series of reforms to fight corruption and improve legal system efficiency.

With Cerezo's election, the military returned to the more traditional role of providing internal security, specifically by fighting armed insurgents. The first two years of Cerezo's administration were characterized by a stable economy and a marked decrease in political violence. Dissatisfied military personnel made two coup attempts in May 1988 and May 1989, but the military leadership supported the constitutional order. The government was strongly criticized for its reluctance to investigate or prosecute cases of human rights violations.

The final two years of Cerezo's government were marked by a failing economy, strikes, protest marches, and allegations of widespread corruption. The government's inability to deal with many of the nation's social and health problems—such as infant mortality, illiteracy, deficient health and social services, and rising levels of violence—contributed to popular discontent.

Presidential and congressional elections were held on 11 November 1990. After a runoff ballot, Jorge Antonio Serrano Elías was inaugurated on 14 January 1991, completing the first successful transition from one democratically elected civilian government to another. Because his Movement of Solidarity Action (MAS) Party gained only 18 of 116 seats in Congress, Serrano entered into a tenuous coalition with the Christian Democrats and the National Union of the center (UCN) to form a government.

The Serrano administration's record was mixed. It had some success in consolidating civilian control over the army, replacing a number of senior officers and persuading the military to participate in peace talks with the URNG. He took the politically unpopular step of recognizing the sovereignty of Belize, which had long been officially, though fruitlessly, claimed as a province by Guatemala. The Serrano government reversed the economic slide it inherited, reducing inflation and boosting real growth.

In 1992, Efraín Bámaca, a notable guerrilla leader also known as Comandante Everardo, "disappeared". It was later found that Bámaca was tortured and killed that year by Guatemalan Army officers. His widow, the American Jennifer Harbury, and members of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission, based in Washington, D.C., raised protests that ultimately led the United States to declassify documents going back to 1954 related to its actions in Guatemala. It was learned that the CIA had been funding the military, although Congress had prohibited such funding since 1990 because of the Army's human rights abuses. Congress forced the CIA to end its aid to the Guatemalan Army.

On 25 May 1993, Serrano illegally dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court and tried to restrict civil freedoms, allegedly to fight corruption. The autogolpe (palace coup) failed due to unified, strong protests by most elements of Guatemalan society, international pressure, and the army's enforcement of the decisions of the Court of Constitutionality, which ruled against the attempted takeover. In the face of this pressure, Serrano fled the country.

On 5 June 1993, Congress, pursuant to the 1985 constitution, elected the Human Rights Ombudsman, Ramiro de León Carpio, to complete Serrano's presidential term. De León was not a member of any political party. Lacking a political base but with strong popular support, he launched an ambitious anti-corruption campaign to "purify" Congress and the Supreme Court, demanding the resignations of all members of the two bodies.

Despite considerable congressional resistance, presidential and popular pressure led to a November 1993 agreement brokered by the Catholic Church between the administration and Congress. This package of constitutional reforms was approved by popular referendum on 30 January 1994. In August 1994, a new Congress was elected to complete the unexpired term. Controlled by the anti-corruption parties: the populist Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) headed by Ríos Montt, and the center-right National Advancement Party (PAN), the new Congress began to abandon the corruption that characterized its predecessors.

Under de León, the peace process, now brokered by the United Nations, took on new life. The government and the URNG signed agreements on human rights (March 1994), resettlement of displaced persons (June 1994), historical clarification (June 1994), and indigenous rights (March 1995). They also made significant progress on a socioeconomic and agrarian agreement.

National elections for president, Congress, and municipal offices were held in November 1995. With almost 20 parties competing in the first round, the presidential election came down to a 7 January 1996 runoff in which PAN candidate Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen defeated Alfonso Portillo Cabrera of the FRG by just over 2% of the vote. Arzú won because of his strength in Guatemala City, where he had previously served as mayor, and in the surrounding urban area. Portillo won all of the rural departments except Petén. Under the Arzú administration, peace negotiations were concluded, and the government signed peace accords ending the 36-year internal conflict in December 1996 (see section on peace process).

1996 Peace Accords to present

The human rights situation remained difficult during Arzú's tenure, although some initial steps were taken to reduce the influence of the military in national affairs. The most notable human rights case of this period was the brutal slaying of Bishop Juan José Gerardi on 24 April 1998, two days after he had publicly presented a major Catholic Church-sponsored human rights report known as Guatemala: Nunca Mas, summarizing testimony about human rights abuses during the Civil War. It was prepared by the Recovery of Historical Memory project, known by the acronym of REMHI. In 2001, three Army officers were convicted in civil court and sentenced to lengthy prison terms for his murder.

Guatemala held presidential, legislative, and municipal elections on 7 November 1999, and a runoff presidential election on 26 December. Alfonso Portillo was criticized during the campaign for his relationship with the FRG's chairman, former president Ríos Montt. Many charge that some of the worst human rights violations of the internal conflict were committed under Ríos Montt's rule.

In the first round the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) won 63 of 113 legislative seats, while the National Advancement Party (PAN) won 37. The New Nation Alliance (ANN) won nine legislative seats, and three minority parties won the remaining four. In the runoff on 26 December, Alfonso Portillo (FRG) won 68% of the vote to 32% for Óscar Berger (PAN). Portillo carried all 22 departments and Guatemala City, which was considered the PAN's stronghold.

Portillo's impressive electoral triumph, with two-thirds of the vote in the second round, gave him a mandate from the people to carry out his reform program. He pledged to maintain strong ties to the United States, enhance Guatemala's growing cooperation with Mexico, and join in the integration process in Central America and the Western Hemisphere. Domestically, he vowed to support continued liberalization of the economy, increase investment in human capital and infrastructure, establish an independent central bank, and increase revenue by stricter enforcement of tax collections rather than increasing taxation.

Portillo also promised to continue the peace process, appoint a civilian defense minister, reform the armed forces, replace the military presidential security service with a civilian one, and strengthen protection of human rights. He appointed a pluralist cabinet, including indigenous members and individuals who were independent of the FRG ruling party.

Progress in carrying out Portillo's reform agenda during his first year in office was slow. As a result, public support for the government sank to nearly record lows by early 2001. The administration made progress on such issues as taking state responsibility for past human rights cases and supporting human rights in international fora. It struggled to prosecute past human rights cases, and to achieve military reforms or a fiscal pact to help finance programs to implement peace. It is seeking legislation to increase political participation by residents. The prosecution by Portillo's government of suspects in Bishop Gerardi's murder set a precedent in 2001; it was the first time military officers in Guatemala had been tried in civil courts.

Faced with a high crime rate, a public corruption problem, often violent harassment and intimidation by unknown assailants of human rights activists, judicial workers, journalists, and witnesses in human rights trials, the government began serious attempts in 2001 to open a national dialogue to discuss the considerable challenges facing the country.

In July 2003, the Jueves Negro demonstrations rocked the capital, forcing the closing of the US embassy and the UN mission. Supporters of Ríos Montt called for his return to power, demanding that the courts lift a ban against former coup leaders participating in government. They wanted Montt to run as a presidential candidate in the 2003 elections. The FRG fed the demonstrators.

On 9 November 2003, Óscar Berger, a former mayor of Guatemala city, won the presidential election with 39% of the vote. As he failed to achieve a fifty percent majority, he had to go through a runoff election on 28 December, which he also won. He defeated the center-left candidate Álvaro Colom. Allowed to run, Montt trailed a distant third with 11% of the vote.

In early October 2005, Guatemala was devastated by Hurricane Stan. Although a relatively weak storm, it triggered a flooding disaster, resulting in at least 1,500 people dead and thousands homeless.

Determined to make progress against crime and internal police corruption, Óscar Berger in December 2006 came to agreement with the United Nations to gain support for judicial enforcement of its laws. They created the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), an independent institution, which is to assist the Office of the Prosecutor of Guatemala, the National Police Force, and other investigative institutions. Their goal was to prosecute cells linked to organised crime and to drug trafficking. CICIG has the authority to conduct its own inquiries, and to refer the most significant cases to the national judiciary. The stated objective of CICIG is to "reinforce the national criminal justice system and to help it with its reforms".

As of 2010, CICIG has led inquiries into some 20 cases. It is acting as Deputy Prosecutor in eight other cases. CICIG conducted the investigations leading to an arrest warrant against Erwin Sperisen, former Head of the National Civilian Police (Policia Nacional Civil – PNC) from 2004 to 2007. With dual Swiss-Guatemalan citizenship, he fled to Switzerland to escape prosecution in Guatemala for numerous extrajudicial killings and police corruption. In addition, 17 other persons are covered by arrest warrants related to these crimes, including several former highly placed political figures of Guatemala.

President Otto Pérez Molina government and "La Línea" case

Main article: Otto Pérez Molina

Retired general Otto Pérez Molina was elected president along with Roxana Baldetti, the first ever woman vice president in Guatemala; they began their term in office on 14 January 2012. But on 16 April 2015, UN anti-corruption agency CICIG issued a report that implicated several high-profile politicians including Vice President Baldetti's private secretary, Juan Carlos Monzón and the director of the Guatemalan Internal Revenue Service. The revelations generated public outrage that had not been seen since the times of general Kjell Eugenio Laugerud Garcia presidency. The CICIG, working with the Guatemalan attorney general, revealed the scam known as "La Línea", following a year-long investigation that included wire taps; officials received bribes from importers in exchange for reducing tariffs the importers were required to pay, a procedure that as rooted in a long tradition of customs corruption in the country, as successive military governments tried to raise funds for counterinsurgency operations during Guatemala's 36-year-long civil war.

Citizens created an event on Facebook inviting all their friends to go to Guatemala City historic downtown to ask for Vice President Baldetti's resignation with the hashtag #RenunciaYa (Resign Now). Within days, over 10,000 people said they would attend. Quickly the organizers realized that for the action to succeed, they had to guarantee that no one would be harmed and The group set a series of rules making clear that no political party or group was behind that event, instructing protesters to follow the law, and urging people to bring water, food and sunblock but not cover their faces or wear party political colors. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Guatemala City, and due to the pressure, Baldetti resigned a few days later and was forced to remain in the country after the United States removed her visa to visit that country and the Guatemalan government arraigned her as there was enough suspicion to assume that she might be involved in "La Linea" scandal. This, and the prominent presence of US Ambassador Todd Robinson in the Guatemalan political scene since the scandal broke loose brought up the suspicion in Guatemalans that the US government was behind the investigation because it needed a government sympathetic to the US in Guatemala to counter the presence of China and Russia in the region.

Since then, the UN anti-corruption committee has reported on other cases and more than 20 government officials have stepped down, some have been arrested. Of those, the largest are the ones that involve two former president private secretaries: Juan de Dios Rodríguez in the Guatemalan Social Service and Gustavo Martínez, who was involved in a bribe scandal in the coil mega power plant Jaguar Energy. Martinez was also President Perez Molina's son-in-law.

But also political opposition leaders have been involved in CICIG investigations: several legislators and members of Libertad Democrática Renovada party (LIDER) were formally accused of bribery-related issues, prompting a large decline in the electorate trend for its presidential candidate, Manuel Baldizón, who before April was almost certain to become the next Guatemalan president in the 6 September 2015 presidential elections. Baldizón popularity suffered a steep decline and he even went on to accuse CICIG leader, Iván Velásquez, of international obstruction with Guatemalan internal affairs before the Organization of American States.

CICIG presented so many cases on Thursdays that Guatemalans started calling them "CICIG's Thursdays". But it was a Friday press conference that brought up the crisis to its peak: on Friday 21 August 2015, CICIG and the Attorney General, Thelma Aldana, presented an investigation showing enough evidence to believe that both President Pérez Molina and former Vice President Baldetti were the actual leaders of "La Línea". Baldetti was arrested that same day and an impeachment was requested for the president. As a result, several cabinet members resigned, and the clamor for the president's resignation grew to unprecedented levels after President Perez Molina defiantly assured the nation that he was not going to resign on a televised message transmitted on 23 August 2015.

After a thousands of protesters took to the streets to demand the increasingly isolated president's resignation, Guatemala's Congress named a commission of five legislators to consider whether to remove the president's immunity from prosecution. The request was approved by the supreme court. A major day of action kicked off early on Thursday 27 August, with marches and roadblocks across the country. Urban groups, which have spearheaded regular protests since the scandal broke in April, on Thursday 27th sought to unite with rural and indigenous organizations who have orchestrated the road blocks.

This strike in Guatemala City was filled to bursting with a diverse and peaceful crowd ranging from the indigenous poor to the well-heeled, and included many students from public and private universities. Hundreds of schools and businesses closed in support of the protests. The organization grouping Guatemala's most powerful business leaders issued a statement demanding that Pérez Molina step down, and urged Congress to withdraw his immunity from prosecution.

The attorney general's office released its own statement calling on the president to resign, "to prevent ungovernability that could destabilize the nation". As pressure mounted, the president's former ministers of defense and the interior, who were named in the corruption investigation and resigned from cabinet recently, left the country. Pérez Molina, meanwhile, has been losing support by the day. The powerful private sector – until then a loyal supporter of Molina, their former defender in the Army during the Guatemalan Civil War – called for his resignation; however, he also has managed to get support from entrepreneurs that are not affiliated to the private sector chambers: Mario López Estrada – grand child of former dictator Manuel Estrada Cabrera and the billionaire owner of cellular phone companies – had some of his executives assume the cabinet positions that had been vacated days before.

The Guatemalan radio station TGTO ("Emisoras Unidas") reported having a text message exchange with Perez Molina, who when asked about whether he planned to resign, wrote: "I will face whatever is necessary to face, and what the law requires". Some protesters have demanded the general election be postponed, both because of the crisis and because it is plagued with accusations of irregularities. Others warn that suspending the vote could lead to an institutional vacuum. However, on 2 September 2015 Molina quit from office after Congress impeached him a day before, and on 3 September 2015 he was summoned to the Justice Department to face his first legal audience for the La Linea case.

Jimmy Morales and Alejandro Giammattei in power (2016–2024)

In October 2015, presidential election, former TV comedian Jimmy Morales was elected as the new President of Guatemala after huge anti-corruption demonstrations. He took office in January 2016.

In January 2017, President Morales announced that Guatemala will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, becoming the first nation to follow the United States.

In January 2020, Alejandro Giammattei replaced Jimmy Morales as the President of Guatemala. Giammattei had won the presidential election in August 2019 with his "tough-on-crime" agenda.

In November 2020, large protests and demonstrations occurred in Guatemala against President Alejandro Giammattei and the legislature, because of cutting educational and health spending.

Bernardo Arévalo (2024- )

In August 2023, Bernardo Arevalo, the candidate of the centre-left Semilla (Seed) Movement and son of the former president Juan José Arévalo, had a landslide victory in Guatemala's presidential election. On 14 January 2024, Bernardo Arévalo was sworn in as Guatemala's president.

See also

• List of presidents of Guatemala
• Politics of Guatemala
• Route of the Agroindustry and the Architecture Victoriana of Guatemala
• Route of the Dominican Evangelisation of Guatemala
• Route of the Franciscan Evangelisation in Guatemala
• Spanish colonization of the Americas
• Timeline of Guatemala City

Notes and references

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• North American Congress on Latin America (1984). NACLA Report on the Americas.
• Ortiz, Oscar G. (2007). "Jesús de las Tres Potencias". Cuaresma y Semana Santa (in Spanish). Guatemala. Archived from the original on 22 February 2007. Retrieved 2 March 2015.
• Paterson, Thomas G.; Clifford, J. Garry; Maddock, Shane J.; Kisatsky, Deborah; Hogan, Kenneth J., eds. (2009). American foreign relations: a history. Vol. 2: Since 1895. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth. ISBN 9780547225692.
• Platero Trabanino, Oscar German (2013). "La farsa del genocidio en Guatemala" (PDF). Fundación Contra el Terrorismo (in Spanish). Guatemala: Mi ejército, sitio oficial. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
• "Avalancha terrorista en contra de la manifestación de mañana; poder público y transporte extraurbano blancos de ataque". Prensa Libre. Guatemala. 6 September 1980.
• Rabe, Stephen G. (1988). Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807842041.
• Rain Forest Wordpress (4 April 2013). "Guatemala Rainforest Interesting fact | rainforest facts". Rainforestcentralamerica.wordpress.com. Retrieved 22 September 2013.
• Rakosy, Betsy (23 May 2012). "Victimization – the EXMIBAL Story". MAC: Mines and communities. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
• Richards, Michael (1985). "Cosmopolitan world-view and counterinsurgency in Guatemala". Anthropological Quarterly. 58 (3): 94. doi:10.2307/3317916. JSTOR 3317916.
• Rosa, Ramón (1974). Historia del Benemérito Gral. Don Francisco Morazán, ex Presidente de la República de Centroamérica (in Spanish). Tegucigalpa: Ministerio de Educación Pública, Ediciones Técnicas Centroamericana.
• Rugeley, Terry (1996). Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War. San Antonio, Texas: University of Texas. ISBN 978-0-292-77078-2.
• Rugeley, Terry (2001). Maya Wars: Ethnographic Accounts from Nineteenth Century Yucatán. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0806133553.
• Sabino, Carlos (2007). Guatemala, la historia silenciada (1944–1989) (in Spanish). Vol. Tomo 1: Revolución y Liberación. Guatemala: Fondo Nacional para la Cultura Económica.
• Shillington, John (2002). Grappling with atrocity: Guatemalan theater in the 1990s. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 9780838639306.
• Solano, Luis (2012). Contextualización histórica de la Franja Transversal del Norte (FTN) (PDF). Centro de Estudios y Documentación de la Frontera Occidental de Guatemala, CEDFOG. Archived from the original (PDF) on 13 November 2014. Retrieved 31 October 2014.
• Stephens, John Lloyd; Catherwood, Frederick (1854). Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán. London, England: Arthur Hall, Virtue and Co.
• Streeter, Stephen M. (2000). Managing the counterrevolution: the United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961. Ohio University Press. ISBN 9780896802155.
• Striffler, Steve; Moberg, Mark (2003). Banana wars: power, production, and history in the Americas. Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822331964.
• Taracena, Arturo (2011). Invención criolla, sueño ladino, pesadilla indigena, Los Altos de Guatemala: de región a Estado, 1740–1871 (in Spanish) (3rd ed.). Guatemala: Biblioteca básica de historia de Guatemala. ISBN 978-9929-587-42-7. Archived from the original on 9 January 2016. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
• Torres Espinoza, Enrique (2007). Enrique Gómez Carrillo, el cronista errante (in Spanish) (2nd ed.). Guatemala: Artemis-Edinter.
• Trigger, Bruce G.; Washburn, Wilcomb E.; Adams, Richard E. W. (2000). The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas.
• Troika study abroad programs (2006). "Guatemala". Community colleges for international development. Archived from the original on 18 September 2010. Retrieved 12 June 2012.
• United Nations (2011). "Human Development Report 2011; Statistical annex" (PDF). United Nations online. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 January 2012. Retrieved 22 December 2011.
• Velásquez, S. (8 August 1997). "Crímenes de la Guerrilla" (PDF). Revista Crónica (in Spanish). Guatemala.
• Weaver, Frederic S. (March 1999). "Reform and (Counter) Revolution in Post-Independence Guatemala: Liberalism, Conservatism, and Postmodern Controversies". Latin American Perspectives. 26 (2): 129–158. doi:10.1177/0094582x9902600207. JSTOR 2634298. S2CID 143757705.
• White, Douglas R. (2002). The Marriage Core of the Elite Network of Colonial Guatemala (PDF). Irvine, California: University of California, Irvine, School of Social Sciences. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 December 2004. Retrieved 10 February 2015.
• Wilhelm of Sweden (1922). Between two continents, notes from a journey in Central America, 1920. London, UK: E. Nash and Grayson, Ltd. pp. 148–209.
• Woodward, Ralph Lee (1993). Rafael Carrera and the Emergence of the Republic of Guatemala, 1821–1871. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. ISBN 978-0820314488.
• Vice President's Task Force on Combating Terrorism (1989). Terrorist Group Profiles (Illustrated ed.). DIANE. p. 86. ISBN 9781568068640.

Further reading

• Woodward, Ralph Lee (1992). Guatemala. Oxford, England; Santa Barbara, California : Clio Press

Conquest and Colonial era

• Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio, & Adelaida Cortijo Ocaña. Cartas desde México y Guatemala (1540–1635). El proceso Díaz de la Reguera. Cáceres, Berkeley: Universidad de Extremadura, The Bancroft Library, 2003.
• Few, Martha. For All of Humanity: Mesoamerican and Colonial Medicine in Enlightenment Guatemala. Tucson: University of Arizona Press 2015.
• Few, Martha. Women Who Live Evil Lives: Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Power in Colonial Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press 2002.
• Komisaruk, Catherine. Labor and Love in Guatemala: The Eve of Independence. Stanford University Press 2013.
• Lanning, John Tate. The Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment in the University of San Carlos de Guatemala. Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1956.
• Lovell, W. George. Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500–1821. 3rd edition. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press 2005.
• Meneray, Wilbur E. The Kingdom of Guatemala during the Reign of Charles III, 1759–1788. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Dissertation: Ph.D. University of North Carolina 1975
• Martínez Peláez, Severo. La Patria Criollo: An Interpretation of Colonial Guatemala. Trans. Susan M. Neve and W. George Lovell. Durham: Duke University Press 2009.
• Orellana, Sandra. Indian Medicine in Highland Guatemala: The Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Periods. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 1987.
• Van Oss, Adriaan C. Catholic Colonialism: A Parish History of Guatemala, 1524–1821. New York: Cambridge University Press 1986.

Post-independence

• Adams, Richard N. Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Structure, 1944–1966. Austin: University of Texas Press 1970.
• Arias, Arturo (1990). "Changing Indian Identity: Guatemala's Violent Transition to Modernity". In Carol Smith (ed.). Guatemalan Indians and the State, 1540 to 1988. Austin: University of Texas Press.
• Carmack, Robert, ed. Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 1982.
• Cullather, Nick (1999). Secret History: The CIA's classified account of its operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-3311-2.
• Dosal, Paul J. Doing Business with the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala 1899–1944, Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources 1993
• Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, Terror in the land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982–1983. Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Gibbings, Julie. "In the Shadow of Slavery: Historical Time, Labor, and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Alta Verapaz, Guatemala," Hispnaic American Historical Review 96.1, (February 2016): 73–107.
• Grieb, Kenneth. Guatemalan Caudillo. Athens: Ohio University Press 1979.
• Gleijeses, Piero, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954. Princeton University Press, 1991
• Grandin, Greg. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, Chicago 2004
• Green, Dee F., and Gareth W. Lowe, eds. 1989 Olmec Diffusion: A Sculptural View from Pacific Guatemala. In Regional Perspectives on the Olmec (Robert J. Sharer and David C. Grove, eds.): 227–246. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Eng.
• Griffith, William J. Empires in the Wilderness: Foreign Colonization and Development in Guatemala, 1834–1844. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1965.
• Hernández Sandoval, Bonar L. Guatemala's Catholic Revolution: A History of Religious and Social Reform, 1920–1968 (U of Notre Dame Press, 2018) Online review
• Historia General de Guatemala, 1999, several authors ISBN 84-88622-07-4.
• Immerman, R. H., The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention, University of Texas Press: Austin, 1982.
• Charles Knight, ed. (1866). "Republic of Guatemala". Geography. English Cyclopaedia. Vol. 3. London: Bradbury, Evans, & Co. hdl:2027/nyp.33433000064802.
• Jonas, Susanne. The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power. Boulder: Westview Press 1991.
• Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Henry Holt and Company, LLC. New York, 2006.
• Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.
• Malmström, Vincent H. The Origins of Civilization in Mesoamerica: A Geographic Perspective, Department of Geography, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
• McCreery, David. Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994.
• Menchú, Rigoberta. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala. (1984).
• Morier-Genoud, Eric. "Sant’ Egidio et la paix. Interviews de Don Matteo Zuppi & Ricardo Cannelli", LFM. Social sciences & missions, no. 13, Oct. 2003, pp. 119–145
• Joseph Sabin, ed. (1875). "Guatemala". Bibliotheca Americana. Vol. 7. New York. OCLC 13972268.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Samson, Matt. "The Martyrdom of Manuel Saquic. Constructing Maya Protestantism in the face of war in contemporary Guatemala", LFM. Social sciences & missions, no. 13, Oct. 2003, pp. 41–74
• Sanford, Victoria. Buried secrets : truth and human rights in Guatemala, New York [u.a.] : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003
• Schlesinger, Stephen and Stephen Kinzer,Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Garden City, New York : Doubleday, 1982
• Wasserstrom, Robert. "Revolution in Guatemala: Peasants and Politics under the Arbenz Government", Comparative Studies in Society and History 17(4), 433–78.
• Woodward, Ralph Lee. Class Privileges and Economic Development: The Consulado de Comericio in Guatemala, 1793–1871. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1966.

External links

• Media related to Guatemala at Wikimedia Commons
• Guatemala: Memory of Silence – English-language summary report of the Historical Clarification Commission report
• Background Note: Guatemala – Information from the US State Department
• Rights Action – Website of Rights Action, with special reports on mining, human rights, the struggles of indigenous people, and impunity
• Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA – Website of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA, with special reports on human rights, genocide trials, impunity, the Mérida Initiative, femicide, Bishop Gerardi's assassination, and more.
• The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal – from George Washington University's National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 32