Efraín Ríos Montt

José Efraín Ríos Montt (born June 16, 1926 in Huehuetenango, Guatemala) is the former President of Guatemala (1982-83) and former head of the National Congress. In 1989, he founded the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) party, and was its candidate in the presidential elections of 2003, but he failed to reach the second round.

A staunch anti-Communist popularly known as El general, he is one of the most controversial figures in Guatemalan history. Regarded by many as a genocidal neo-fascist and among the bloodiest strongmen in modern Latin American history, he is seen by his supporters as a strong leader committed to democracy and capable of restoring order to the country. According to human rights groups, Ríos Montt had ties to the United States for many decades (via the Pentagon's School of the Americas, the CIA, various presidential administrations, and the religious right),

Background

Ríos Montt entered the Military Academy of Guatemala in 1943 before receiving training by the US Pentagon, graduating as a cadet at the School of the Americas at Fort Gulick in Panama, which at the time educated students in jungle warfare tactics for the purposes of combating perceived communist influence in the region.

In 1954, the young officer played a minor role in Operation PBSUCCESS successful CIA-organized coup against left-wing Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, after which Ríos Montt steadily rose through the military ranks.

In 1970, he became a general and chief of staff for the Guatemalan army in the government of Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio. In 1973, he resigned from his post in the Washington embassy to participate in the March 1974 presidential elections as candidate for the National Opposition Front (FNO), a centre-left grouping. He lost the election to the right-wing Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García by 70,000 votes. He denounced a massive electoral fraud, blaming Catholic priests who had questioned the mistreatment of the Catholic Mayans, and claimed that the priests were leftist agents. It is claimed that he was given a payoff of several hundred thousand dollars along with a post as military attaché in the embassy in Madrid, Spain, where he stayed until 1977.

In 1978, having returned to Guatemala, he left the Catholic Church to become a minister in the California-based evangelical millennarian Church of the Word; since then Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have become personal friends. As a born-again Christian, he is a Protestant in a predominantly Roman Catholic country.

Military regime

Frijoles y fusiles

On March 7, 1982 General Ángel Aníbal Guevara, the official party candidate, won the presidential election. On March 23, with the support of fellow soldiers General Horacio Maldonado Schaad and Colonel Francisco Luis Gordillo Martínez, Ríos Montt seized power in a coup d'état, that was quietly backed by the CIA, deposing General Romeo Lucas García. They set up a military tribunal with Montt at its head. The junta immediately suspended the constitution, shut down the legislature, set up secret tribunals, and began a campaign against political dissidents that included kidnapping, torture, and extra-judicial assassinations. The coup was described as being of the Oficiales jovenes (young officials), and prevented Guevara from being annointed President on July 1.

Initially the coup was met with great hopes by the population that the extremely poor human rights and security situation might improve under the new regime. Ríos invoked a modern apocalyptic vision comparing the four riders of the Book of Revelations to the four modern evils of hunger, misery, ignorance and subversion, as well as fighting corruption and what he described as the depredations of the rich. He said that the true Christian had the Bible in one hand and a machine gun in the other. On April 10, he launched the National Growth and Security Plan whose stated goals were to end the extermination and teach the populace about nationalism. They wanted to integrate the campesinos and indigenous people into the state, declaring that because of their illiteracy and "immaturity" they were particularly vulnerable to the seductions of international communism. Great stress was laid on national power.

On June 9th, the other two members of the junta were forced to resign, leaving Ríos Montt as the sole leader, head of the armed forces, and Minister of Defense. Justifying himself in his Biblical visions he saw the campaign against the guerrilla groups as a Holy War. Violence escalated in the countryside, with the massacres becoming much more generalised in a campaign known as frijoles y fusiles (beans and guns). This was an attempt by Ríos Montt to win over the large indigenous population to the rule of the law, unleashing a scorched earth attack on the nation's Mayan population, particularly in the departments of Quiché and Huehuetenango, that, according to an investigative United Nations commission, resulted in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages. One example was the terible Plan de Sánchez massacre in Baja Verapaz in June 1982, which saw over 250 people killed. The administration established special military courts that had the power to impose death penalties against suspected peasant guerrillas. Thousands of Guatemalan Maya fled over the border into southern Mexico. Meanwhile, in the urban areas a temporary calm was experienced. The June amnesty for political prisoners was replaced by a state of siege that limited the activities of political parties and labor unions under the threat of death by firing squad.

In 1982 an Amnesty International report estimated that over 10,000 indigenous Guatemalans and peasant farmers were killed during the March-July period, and that 100,000 were made homeless. According to more recent estimates, tens of thousands were killed by regime death squads in the subsequent eighteen months.

U.S. backing for the regime

The United States administration of Ronald Reagan resumed military aid to Guatemala, cut off in 1977 by the Carter administration. Given Montt's background, they continued to support the general and his regime, paying a visit to Guatemala City in December 1982. [1] During a meeting with Ríos Montt on December 4, Reagan declared: "President Rios Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. ... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."¹

The US agreed in January 1983 to sell Guatemala helicopter spare parts. In turn, Guatemala was eager to resurrect the Central American Defense Council, defunct since 1969, in order to join forces with the right-wing governments of El Salvador and Honduras against the Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Removal from office

By the end of 1982, Ríos Montt, claiming that the war against the leftist guerrillas had been won, said that the government's work was one of "techo, trabajo, y tortillas" ("roofs, work, and tortillas").

Three coups had been attempted since he came to power. On June 29th 1983 he declared a state of emergency, and announced elections for July 1984. On August 8 General Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores overthrew the regime in a bloodless coup. The unpopularity of Ríos was widespread, exacerbated by his refusal to grant clemency to six guerrillas during the visit of Pope John Paul II. The military was offended by his promotion of young officers in defiance of the Army's traditional hierarchy. Much of the middle class was alienated by his decision on August 1 to introduce the value-added tax, never before levied in Guatemala.

The killings continued even after Ríos Montt was eased from office in 1983. Some human rights groups charge that perhaps as many as one million Mayan peasants were uprooted from their homes, and that many were forced to live in re-education concentration camps and to work in the fields of Guatemalan land barons. Montt's supporters claim that his repressive tactics were necessary to restore order to the country and defeat leftist guerrilla groups. The Mayan Indian and campesino population suffered greatly under Ríos's government, who deliberately targeted them while pursuing guerrillas, though he himself has said he was not aware that the massacres were taking place.

Comeback

Ríos Montt founded the FRG in 1989. He tried to run for president in 1990, and was considered the favorite, but was prohibited from entering the race by the constitutional court due to a constitutional provision banning people who had participated in military coups from becoming president. He was an FRG deputy between 1990 and 2004. In 1994 he was elected head of the unicameral legislature. With his attempt to run in 1994 also banned he supported his fellow FRG friend Alfonso Portillo as candidate for the presidency, which Portillo narrowly lost in 1995, and won in 1999.

Guatemalan campaigners on behalf of Maya survivors of Guatemala's civil war, such as Nobel laureate and Mayan human rights advocate Rigoberta Menchú, were amazed in March when 1999 U.S. President Bill Clinton apologized for the United States support of Ríos Montt's regime. Clinton declared: "For the United States, it is important I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong and the United States must not repeat that mistake." [2]

The same August President Portillo admitted involvement of the government in human rights abuses over the previous 20 years, including for 2 massacres that took place during Ríos Montt's presidency. The first massacre was in Plan de Sánchez, in Baja Verapaz with 268 dead, and in Two Erres in Petén, where 200 people were murdered.

Presidential candidate 2003

The FRG nominated Montt in May 2003 for the forthcoming November presidential election, but his candidacy was initially, and once again, rejected by the electoral registry and by two lower courts. Followers of Ríos Montt were stirred into action by FRG and his own statements of anger after the Guatemalan Supreme Court suspended his campaign for the presidency and agreed to hear a complaint brought by two right-of-center parties that the general was constitutionally barred from running for president of the country. Ríos Montt denounced the ruling as judicial manipulation and, in a radio address, called on his followers to take to the streets to protest against this decision. On July 24th, in a day known as jueves negro (black Thursday) thousands of masked FRG supporters invaded the streets of Guatemala City armed with machetes, clubs and guns. They had been bussed in from all over the country by the FRG amidst claims that people working in FRG controlled municipalities were being blackmailed with being sacked if they did not attend the demonstration. The demonstrators blocking traffic, chanted threatening slogans, and waved their machetes about. They were led by well known FRG militants, including a well known member of congress who was photographed by the press early in the morning while co-ordinating the actions. The demonstrators marched on the courts, the opposition parties headquarters, and newspapers, torching buildings, shooting out windows and burning cars and tyres in the streets. A tv journalist, Héctor Fernando Ramírez, died of a heart attack running away from a mob who were chasing him. The situation was so chaotic over the weekend that both the UN mission and the U.S. embassy were closed.

Yet many analysts had also speculated that in spite of this setback Montt's bid would be successful this time since the nation's highest court, the Constitutional Court, was filled with the Montt and Portillo's allies. The Constitutional Court did in fact overturn the lower court decisions, paving the way for Montt to run again.

The legal reasoning behind the 4–3 decision by the Constitutional Court was not immediately made public. However, Ríos Montt had argued that the ban on coup leaders, formalized in the 1985 Constitution, could not be applied retroactively to acts before that date. Many Guatemalans expressed anger over the Court's decision. Some argued that if the Constitution was not retrospective to be fore 1985 it would allow foreigners (born outside Guatemala before 1985) to also stand for President.

In the post-Cold War environment, American support for Ríos Montt has subsided. In June the State Department publicly announced that it would prefer to deal with a less tarnished figure, but maintained that bilateral relations would remain strong under Ríos Montt's rule, or that of any other democratically elected leader.

However, during tense but peaceful presidential elections held on November 9, Ríos Montt received just 11 percent of the votes, putting him a distant third behind businessman Óscar Berger, head of the conservative National Grand Alliance (PAN), and Álvaro Colom of the National Unity of Hope (UNE). As he was running for president he could not also run to be a member of Congress at the same time, and thus ended his 14 years there.

Attempts to indict Montt on charges of genocide have so far failed. Rigoberta Menchú sought to have Ríos Montt tried in Spanish courts in 1999 for crimes committed against Spanish citizens. So far, these attempts have been unsuccessful.

His daughter Zury Ríos Sosa, also member of Congress, married U.S. Representative Jerry Weller (a Republican of Illinois) on November 20, 2004. Ríos Montt was present for the ceremony, despite being under house arrest, after obtaining the permission of a judge. This house arrest also does not stop him from leaving his house to travel around Guatemala.

See also

• History of Guatemala
• Politics of Guatemala

External links

• BBC article Montt defying ban

Further reading

• Anfuso, Joseph. Sczepanski David. (fwd. by Pat Robertson). Efrain Rios Montt, Servant or Dictator? : The Real Story of Guatemala's Controversial Born-again President (Vision House, Ventura, CA, 1984) ISBN 0884491102
  
• Carmack, Robert M. (ed.). Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis (University of Oklahoma Press, 1988) ISBN 0806121327
  
• Cullather, Nick. (fwd. by Piero Gleijeses). Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford University Press, 1999). ISBN 0804733104
  
• Dosal, Paul J. Return of Guatemala's Refugees: Reweaving the Torn (Temple University Press, 1998) ISBN 1566396212
  
• Falla, Ricardo (trans. by Julia Howland). Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–1982 (Westview Press, Boulder, 1994) ISBN 0813386683
  
• Fried, Jonathan L., et al. Guatemala in Rebellion : Unfinished History (Grove Press, NY, 1983). ISBN 0394532406
  
• Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (Princeton University Press, 1991) ISBN 0691078173
  
• Goldston, James A. Shattered Hope: Guatemalan Workers and the Promise of Democracy (Westview Press, Boulder, 1989). ISBN 0813377676
  
• LaFeber, Walter. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. (W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 1993). ISBN 0393017877
  
• Perera, Victor. Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy (University of California Press, 1993). ISBN 0520079655
  
• Sanford, Victoria . Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala (Palgrave Macmillan, NY, 2003) ISBN 1403960232
  
• Schlesinger, Stephen. Bitter Fruit : The Untold story of the American Coup in Guatemala (Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1982). ISBN 0385148615
  
• Shillington, John Wesley. Grappling with Atrocity: Guatemalan Theater in the 1990s (Associated University Presses, London, 2002). ISBN 0838639305
  
• Stoll, David. Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala (Columbia University Press, NY, 1993). ISBN 0231081820
  
• Streeter, S.M. Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala, 1954–1961 (Ohio Univ. Cent. Int. Stud., 2000) ISBN 0896802159
  

Notes

1. See Schirmer, Jennifer (1998) The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 33.