Guatemala Army / Fuerzas de Tierra - History
The military is the most complex and stable institution in a nation that has a very small public sector. Moreover, it has filled the vacuum left by the debilitation of other national institutions. In addition to the violence, one-man leadership and the lack of sufficient popular bases hinder most if not all of the political parties. The business community forms no coherent, united front except in crises. Labor is weak and divided. And the Catholic Church has avoided playing a highly visible role in national politics.
The Guatemalan military has had its institutional growth spurred by the traumas of foreign intervention, political factionalism, military assistance from abroad, the responsibility of governing the nation, and prolonged internal warfare. At the same time, as it has grown, acquired more resources, and developed its own bureaucracy, it has assumed nonmilitary functions. The military institution has, in a sense, been thrust into this position by the prevalenJt ideology of the powerful economic interest groups. The ideology is known as inicialiva privada (private initiative), not anti-communism.
During much of Guatemala's history as an independent republic, military officers have headed the government, frequently in the role of caudillo, or dictator, less frequently as the duly elected president. Since the overthrow of President (Colonel) Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in 1954, only one elected president has been a civilian, and charges of fraud have been common in most elections. For example, Rios Montt, the incumbent in mid-1983, claimed with considerable justification that the office had been stolen from him when he was a candidate in the election of 1974. The people expressed some of their sentiments about the system four years later when about 40 percent of the eligible voters stayed away from the polls and another 20 percent cast ballots that were in such poor condition that they had to be invalidated.
Rios Montt came to power as a member of a junta with Brigadier General Horacio Egberto Maldonado Schaad and Colonel Francisco Luis Gordillo Martinez. The junta was installed by six younger army officers who had engineered the coup d'etat of March 23, 1982. A little more than two months later, Rios Montt, with the backing of the military, announced the resignation of the other two junta members and proclaimed his own accession to the presidency. As president he also became "general commander of the army" in addition to continuing in the role of minister of national defense, which he had assumed after the coup. Within a few months, as the new president consolidated his power, he relinquished the defense portfolio and appointed Brigadier General Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores to that post.
The peoples of Guatemala look back on different heritages — the Indians have their own legends, the ladinos have theirs. The Indians are descended from the Mayans, who controlled the area in pre-Columbian times. The ladinos comprise the remainder of the population, that is, everyone who is non-Indian, including many Indians who have given up their own languages and customs. Remaining largely unassimilated more than four and one-half centuries after the Spanish conquest, the Indians retain their own legacies and traditions and, for those who are aware of their history, their military hero is the legendary Tecun Uman, who fell in battle while leading the Quiche tribes against the invading forces of Pedro de Alvarado in 1524. According to legend, Tecun Uman, on foot and armed with a spear, sought out the mounted, armor-clad Alvarado, who then killed the Indian chieftain in hand-to-hand combat, setting the stage for the total defeat of the leaderless Quiche.
Alvarado, a typical Spanish conquistador, was sent from Mexico by Hernan Cortes to conquer Central America for the Spanish crown and for the greater glory and enrichment of the conquistadores. He is remembered as a brilliant, ruthless military tactician who led a small band of Spaniards, along with various Indian allies, against seemingly overwhelming odds to bring Central America under Spanish control. Alvarado was made governor of the captaincy general of Guatemala and held that position until his death in 1541, despite absences to lead armies seeking further conquests and trips to Spain on two different occasions.
Defeat of the Indian nations by such small numbers of Spanish invaders was made possible by several factors, including the Indians awe of fighting men on horseback, which they had not encountered previously. A major factor, however, was the internecine warfare that had become endemic among the Indian tribes long before the arrival of the Europeans. Alvarado is sometimes pictured as marching into Central America with only 100 cavalry and 300 foot soldiers, but he had also enlisted or conscripted Indian allies along the way from Mexico who welcomed the opportunity to fight against ancient enemies, oblivious to the evident signs that the invaders cared nothing for indigenous peoples or cultures. Furthermore, Alvarado entered Guatemala at a time when the Mayan culture was already in a state of decline; his conquest merely speeded the process.
The pre-Columbian Guatemalans succumbed not only to superior Spanish weapons and tactics but also to deceit and ruthlessness. Despite loss of their leaders and subjugation, however, they continued to revolt against the alien invaders. For the next three centuries the Spanish ruled as conquerors, laying the groundwork for the dual society — one ladino, one Indian — that continued to exist in the early 1980s, more than 160 years after independence from the Spanish had been achieved.
The end of Spanish rule required no military action on the part of the Guatemalans. It followed in the wake of the Mexican revolt against Spain and resulted in a short period of Mexican domination that ended with the formation two years later of the United Provinces of Central America (known as the Federation of Central America, or Central American Federation). The federation, which had its capital in Guatemala City, had a short, turbulent existence wracked by civil wars.
It was finally dissolved in 1847 with the establishment of five independent states. Guatemala, which had been practically autonomous since 1839, spent most of the time from then until 1944 under the control of one military despot after another. During that long period and for most of the time since, the primary tasks of the armed forces have been maintaining internal security and providing support to the incumbent president.
In 1838 an illiterate caudillo, Jose Rafael Carrera, had ousted the president of the Guatemala province and challenged the authority of Francisco Morazan, president of the federation. A peasant of mixed Indian, African, and Spanish background, Carrera was unlettered but by no means ignorant, as he demonstrated by manipulating the intense Conservative-Liberal politics of the period to suit his own purposes. A virtual dictator, Carrera used his army not only to keep himself in power but also to establish and maintain friendly governments in neighboring states. He ruled with an iron fist; after his death in 1865 his handpicked successor, General Vicente Cerna, continued the same militaristic, dictatorial policies until his ouster six years later.
Somewhat representative of the activities of the armed forces after independence was the "revolution" begun by General Justo Rufino Barrios and General Miguel Garcia Granados, which overthrew the government of Cerna. The two generals returned from exile at the head of an "army" of 45 men and, meeting no resistance, deposed Cerna and installed Garcia Granados in the presidency. The military establishment permitted the overthrow simply by refusing to support the incumbent and switching its allegiance to the insurgents. It has not been uncommon in Guatemalan history for the allegiance of the military to be to the dictator of the moment rather than to the country or to the constitution. Barrios succeeded to the presidency in 1873 and established a military dictatorship equal in power and despotism to that of Carrera but from a different ideological perspective.
Barrios is credited with making the army a permanent national institution, which during his tenure was relatively well trained and professionally competent. A strong advocate of the Central American Federation, Barrios built up the army to achieve that goal by force if necessary. In 1885 he proclaimed reunification, and when the other nations ignored the proclamation, he led his army in an invasion of El Salvador where he was killed in the first battle, thereby ending that particular attempt to revive the federation.
Spanish officers assisted the Guatemalans in establishing the Escuela Politecnica in 1873. Around the turn of the century, French officers were assigned as advisers to the Guatemalans on the organization and training of their army. The French also aided in the establishment of the air arm in the post-World War I period. During the long military dictatorship of Ubico, however, American officers became the principal advisers to the Guatemalan forces, and at Ubico's request the United States government sent officers to command the Escuela Politecnica.
The next caudillo to rely on the relatively large army and police force to maintain a dictatorship in defiance of the constitution was Manuel Estrada Cabrera, who succeeded to the presidency in 1898 when the incumbent was assassinated. Like earlier dictators, Estrada Cabrera ruled the country by terror. In The Five Republics of Central America, published during the Estrada Cabrera regime, Dana G. Munro described the political atmosphere in Guatemala by noting that "it is dangerous to express an opinion on political matters even in private conversation. Much of the mail, and especially that coming from abroad, is opened and read in the post office." Munro, who traveled extensively through the country before writing his account, further stated that "persons who fall under suspicion are imprisoned or restricted in their liberty, or even mysteriously disappear. The ruthless execution of large numbers of persons, many of whom were probably innocent, have followed attempts to revolt or to assassinate the President."
After a committee of doctors appointed by the legislature in 1920 declared Estrada Cabrera mentally incompetent and deposed him, 11 years elapsed until the arrival of the next dictator on the scene. General Jorge Ubico was elected to the presidency in 1931 but, like so many of his predecessors, he decided to keep the office through extra-constitutional means. He relied on the army and police to maintain an oppressive regime that kept him in office until he was forced to resign in 1944. During his 13 years in office, he followed the traditional patterns of earlier despots by promoting public works, such as road and bridge building, and favored the entrepreneurial elite over the masses of working-class people. The role of the army was to keep the people in line. The collapse of a neighboring dictatorship in El Salvador in May 1944 spurred the al- ready restive Guatemalans on to a general strike in June that brought about the resignation of Ubico, who turned over the reins of government to his friend General Juan Federico Ponce Vaides.
A surge of genuine political freedom gripped the country in the wake of Ubico's departure, giving rise to the formation of parties and the start of a campaign for the presidency. When the Ubico-appointed president gave signs that he intended to perpetuate himself in office, he was ousted by a coalition of various dissident factions, including students, intellectuals, workers, and young army officers. A revolutionary triumvirate of two officers—Major Francisco Javier Arana and Captain Jacobo Arbenz Guzman—and a civilian, Jorge Toriello, ruled until the election and inauguration of the new president, Juan Jose Arevalo, a civilian professor and noted scholar in the field of education.
Arevalo instituted economic and social reforms that incurred the enmity of the establishment elite, as well as elements of the military and foreign investors, who accused him of accepting the support of indigenous communists. Arevalo was followed in the presidency by his minister of national defense, Colonel Arbenz, who was elected by a wide margin in his campaign for the top office. A cloud over this first so-called normal transfer of power in the history of independent Guatemala was the alleged implication of the new president in the earlier assassination of Colonel Arana, chief of the armed forces, who would undoubtedly have been Arbenz' main opponent for the presidency. Some historians who would like to picture Arbenz as a card-carrying communist make him responsible for the assassination; those at the other end of the spectrum proclaim his absolute innocence. The likelihood that the truth can ever be established seems remote.
As president, Arbenz went beyond the policies of his predecessor, accepting communist support and appointing communists to official positions. He allowed the communist party, the Guatemalan Labor Party (Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo—PGT), to register as a legal political party and permitted it to function without hindrance or harassment. He also promoted land reform, which brought about intense opposition from several sectors of the society, including much of the military establishment and the United Fruit Company, a United States corporation that dominated the banana industry throughout the world and was the largest landowner in Guatemala in addition to controlling the country's railroad and the port facilities at Puerto Barrios.
When Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, a political and military rival of Arbenz, secured the backing of the United States Central Intelli- gency Agency (CIA) and in June 1954 led a small band of insurgents from exile in Honduras to challenge the government, the army repeated the role it had played 83 years earlier by refusing to support the sitting president. Arbenz was forced to resign, and Castillo Armas took over, wielding a new broom with which he vowed to sweep away the influences that he and his backers claimed were changing Guatemala into a communist state. To legitimize his presidency, Castillo Armas called for a plebiscite, which was then rigged to ensure the outcome; his term was cut short by an assassin in 1957.
After an abortive election to fill the vacant office of president in the fall of 1957, a special election in January 1958 resulted in victory for Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, who seemed to be a throwback to an earlier era. An army general under Ubico, the new president appeared unable to adapt to the changed circumstances of the country and was continually forced to rely on martial law to counter the many public demonstrations against the prevailing economic conditions. In 1960, after a failed coup d'etat, two young army officers formed the first of the several guerrilla groups that have plagued Guatemalan governments ever since. Marco Antonio Yon Sosa and Luis Augusto Turcios Lima gained fame as guerrilla leaders, but they were only two among many young officers who rebelled against conditions that kept workers and peasants in poverty while corruption at the top levels of the government and the military went unchecked. Ydigoras further angered many professional military officers by allowing the CIA to operate bases in Guatemala for the training of Cuban exiles in preparation for the attempt to overthrow Cuba's Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs. Even those officers who opposed Castro resented what they considered to be the relinquishment of Guatemalan sovereignty to the United States.
Elections scheduled for 1963 raised the possibility of a return of Arevalo to the presidency; to avoid that contingency, the minister of national defense, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, seized power in yet another military coup d'etat. Facing increased guerrilla activity, Peralta suspended the constitution and placed the country under martial law. Political assassinations, kidnappings, and bombings then became commonplace in Guatemala City, and the guerrillas remained active in their mountain strongholds in Izabal and Zacapa. When Peralta restored constitutional government in late 1965 and permitted an electoral campaign for the presidency, the guerrillas were divided between those who wanted to give up their arms and participate in the electoral process and those who wanted to continue their irregular warfare. When several expatriates returned from Mexico to reenter Guatemalan politics, 26 of them were later rounded up and shot, thus giving notice that the purity of the political process would be guaranteed by the right-wing military.
When Mario Mendez Montenegro, a leading civilian contender for the presidency in 1966, was killed, his brother was drafted to run in his place and won easily. Julio Cesar Mendez Montenegro became the only civilian president since Arevalo, taking his place in Guatemalan history among the very few civilians who have held the highest office. His inauguration might have been doubtful had he not signed a pact with the army high command to leave national security matters completely in the hands of the military; his administration will be remembered most for the violence of the antiguerrilla warfare in the eastern departments of the country. The campaign against the guerrillas was directed by Colonel (later General) Carlos Arana Osorio, who was referred to as the "Hero of Zacapa" by his supporters and the "Jackal of Zacapa" by his detrac- tors. Regardless of sobriquet, Arana was credited with ending the guerrilla threat in the eastern departments at that time, and his fame as a military commander led to his election as president in 1970.
Brigadier General Kjell Eugenio Laugerud Garcia succeeded Arana after the controversial election of 1974 and served a full term before turning over the government to the military hierarchy's chosen successor. Brigadier General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia. The regime of President Lucas Garcia was aptly described as "government by terror," but toward the end of his term he was ousted by a group of young officers who decried the corruption of the government and the army and opted for a change of players and scenario.
Rios Montt, who had dissolved the junta and assumed the presidency, declared a state of siege (the first since 1970), which provided him with extraordinary powers as general commander of the armed forces. Included in the provisions of the decla- rations were the banning of all union and political activity, the setting aside of habeas corpus, the granting of arrest powers to the armed forces, and the recision of the guarantees concerning the inviolability of homes and offices. Henceforth, homes, offices, and vehicles could be temporarily confiscated. In addition, the news media were forbidden to broadcast or print information concerning subversion or counter-subversion other than that provided by authorized public relations agencies. Travel was restricted, and private gatherings were banned unless permission had been secured from Minister of National Defense Rios Montt. Business meetings were not affected by the decree.
In a radio speech on 03 July 1982, Rios Montt defended the imposition of the state of siege, stating that "we had 10 years without a state of siege but more than 150,000 people were lost." Loss of life during three decades had been terrible, but even the highest estimates paled beside the figure used by Rios Montt; analysts were at a loss to explain the highly exaggerated figure or the reasons why the president used it. In the same speech he complained that the army and police forces were too small to meet the total threat and called on industrialists to protect their own installations.
The end of the state of siege coincided with the first anniversary of the coup d'etat, but the secret courts continued in operation.
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