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Jorge Serrano Elías
Jorge Antonio Serrano Elías (born April 26, 1945) is a Guatemalan industrial engineer and politician who served as the 41st president of Guatemala from January 14, 1991 to June 1, 1993. He attempted a self-coup in May 1993 to stay longer in power. Life and career Serrano was born on 26 April 1945 in Guatemala City as the son of Jorge Adán Serrano and Rosa Elías, who was of Lebanese descent. After attending Liceo Guatemala he graduated from the University of San Carlos with a degree in industrial engineering. Then, attended Stanford University in California, U.S., where he studied economic growth and gained a doctorate in education and science. He then returned to Guatemala to become a civil servant. In 1976, he collaborated with various American Protestant churches to help the population recover from the devastating earthquake that had afflicted the country. He then published a document describing the wretched conditions under which the indigenous people lived, which ...
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Vinicio Cerezo
Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo (born December 26, 1942) is a Guatemalan politician who served as the 40th President of Guatemala from 1986 to 1991. He also served as the Secretary General of the Central American Integration System (SICA) from 2017 to 2021. His tenure as President of Guatemala was characterized by political instability and political corruption. There were two failed coup attempts against Arévalo. Career Cerezo was born in Guatemala City, the son of the Supreme Court judge Marco Vinicio Cerezo Sierra, and came from a well-known liberal family. In 1962, he was a member of the student body of the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC), which played an important part in the national protests against the government of Miguel Ydígoras. In 1964, he joined the Guatemalan Christian Democrats (DCG), a political party banned from standing in the 1966 elections. He graduated in judicial science from USAC in 1968, the same year the DCG was formally legalized, a ...
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Civil Servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service official, also known as a public servant or public employee, is a person employed in the public sector by a government department or agency for public sector undertakings. Civil servants work for central and local governments, and answer to the government, not a political party. The extent of civil servants of a state as part of the "civil service" varies from country to country. In the United Kingdom (UK), for instance, only Crown (national government) employees are referred to as "civil servants" whereas employees of local authorities (counties, cities and similar administrations) are generally referred to as "local government officers", who are considered public servants but not civil servants. Thus, in the UK, a civil servant is a public ...
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1993 Guatemalan Constitutional Crisis
The 1993 Guatemala constitutional crisis took place in 1993 when then President Jorge Serrano Elías attempted a self-coup or autogolpe. On Tuesday May 25, 1993, Serrano illegally suspended the constitution, dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court, imposed censorship, and tried to restrict civil freedom.Barry S. Levitt (2006), "A Desultory Defense of Democracy: OAS Resolution 1080 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter, ''Latin American Politics and Society'', Volume 48, Issue 3, September 2006, Pages: 93–123. pp104-5 The attempted self-coup was similar to the one carried out by Alberto Fujimori, but unlike Fujimori's, had no popular support: Serrano's action met with strong protests by most elements of Guatemalan society, at the forefront of which was the '' Siglo Veintiuno'' newspaper under the leadership of José Rubén Zamora. This was combined with international pressure (the Organization of American States condemned the autogolpe) and the army's enforcement of the ...
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Belize
Belize is a country on the north-eastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a maritime boundary with Honduras to the southeast. Part of the Caribbean region, Belize is a member of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Commonwealth Caribbean, the historical British West Indies. The Maya civilization spread into the area of Belize between 1500 BCE and 300 CE and flourished until about 1200. European contact began in 1502–04 when Christopher Columbus sailed along the Gulf of Honduras. European exploration was begun by English settlers in 1638. Spanish Empire, Spain and Kingdom of Great Britain, Britain both laid claim to the land until Britain defeated the Spanish in the Battle of St. George's Caye (1798). It became British Honduras, a British colony in 1840, and a Crown colony in 1862. Belize achieved its independence from the United Kingdom on 21 September ...
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Civilian Control Of The Military
Civil control of the military is a doctrine in military science, military and political science that places ultimate command responsibility, responsibility for a country's Grand strategy, strategic decision-making in the hands of the state's civil authority, rather than completely with professional military Officer (armed forces), leadership itself. As such, a "fundamental requirement of any nation is to ensure that the activities of its armed forces be subordinated to the political purposes of constitutional government; hence, the armed forces must be under civil control". The concept of civil control falls within the overarching concept of civil-military relations representing the "societal imperative that the military remain subordinate to civil authority and that it reflect, to an appropriate degree, societal values and norms". Civil oversight over militaries puts the power to take military action in the hands of a civil authority, such as through government ministers or le ...
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Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.Gerald O'Collins, O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 Catholic particular churches and liturgical rites#Churches, ''sui iuris'' (autonomous) churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and Eparchy, eparchies List of Catholic dioceses (structured view), around the world, each overseen by one or more Bishops in the Catholic Church, bishops. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the Papal supremacy, chief pastor of the church. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The ...
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President Of Guatemala
The president of Guatemala (), officially titled President of the Republic of Guatemala (), is the head of state and head of government of Guatemala, elected to a single four-year term. The position of President was created in 1839. Selection process Eligibility Article 185 of the Constitution, sets the following requirements to qualify for the presidency: * be Guatemalan of origin who is a citizen in good standing; * be at least 40 years old. A person who meets the above qualifications would, however, still be disqualified from holding the office of president if the individual: * Was the leader or the head of a coup d'état, armed revolution, or similar movement, that had altered the constitutional order, and as a result of their actions became the Head of Government; * Exercised the role of President or Vice President during an election, or at any point within the presidential period in which elections are conducted. * Are relatives of the incumbent president or vice p ...
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Jorge Carpio
Jorge Carpio Nicolle (October 24, 1932 – July 3, 1993) was a prominent Guatemalan politician and newspaper publisher. He was the founder of the Unión del Centro Nacional (National Centrist Union, or UCN) in 1984, and ran as the party's candidate for president in the elections of 1985 and 1990. He came in second in both elections. He was the founder, director and editor of ''El Gráfico'', at one time one of Guatemala's largest newspapers. He also founded ''La Tarde'', ''El Deportivo'', ''La Razón'', and other newspapers during his career. He also served as Guatemala's Ambassador to the United Nations, and formed part of the commission on human rights (1966) He was assassinated on July 3, 1993, along with Juan Vicente Villacorta Fajardo who was a member of one of Guatemala's oldest and well known political families and two other political leaders of the UCN, in the municipality of Chichicastenango, El Quiché. Surviving witnesses reported that the murders took place after ...
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Efraín Ríos Montt
José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as ''de facto'' President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. Ríos Montt's counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxism, Marxist Guerrilla warfare, guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) while also leading to accusations of war crimes and genocide perpetrated by the Armed Forces of Guatemala, Guatemalan Army under his leadership. Ríos Montt was a career army officer. He was director of the Guatemalan military academy and rose to the rank of brigadier general. He was briefly chief of staff of the Guatemalan army in 1973. However, he was soon forced out of the position over differences with the military high command. He ran for president in the 1974 Guatemalan general el ...
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Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism (), also called evangelical Christianity or evangelical Protestantism, is a worldwide, interdenominational movement within Protestantism, Protestant Christianity that emphasizes evangelism, or the preaching and spreading of the Gospel, Christian gospel. The term evangelical is derived from the Koine Greek word ''euangelion'', meaning “good news,” in reference to the message of salvation through Jesus Christ. Evangelicalism typically places a strong emphasis on personal conversion to Christianity, conversion, often described as being “born again (Christianity), born again,” and regards the Bible as the ultimate authority in matters of Christian theology, faith and practice. The definition and scope of evangelicalism are subjects of debate among theology, theologians and religious studies, scholars. Some critics argue that the term encompasses a wide and diverse range of beliefs and practices, making it difficult to define as a coherent or unified movement ...
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Indigenous Peoples Of The Americas
In the Americas, Indigenous peoples comprise the two continents' pre-Columbian inhabitants, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with them in the 15th century, as well as the ethnic groups that identify with the pre-Columbian population of the Americas as such. These populations exhibit significant diversity; some Indigenous peoples were historically hunter-gatherers, while others practiced agriculture and aquaculture. Various Indigenous societies developed complex social structures, including pre-contact monumental architecture, organized city, cities, city-states, chiefdoms, state (polity), states, monarchy, kingdoms, republics, confederation, confederacies, and empires. These societies possessed varying levels of knowledge in fields such as Pre-Columbian engineering in the Americas, engineering, Pre-Columbian architecture, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, History of writing, writing, physics, medicine, Pre-Columbian agriculture, agriculture, irrigation, geology, minin ...
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1976 Guatemala Earthquake
The 1976 Guatemala earthquake struck on February 4 at with a moment magnitude of 7.5. The shock was centered on the Motagua Fault, about 160 km northeast of Guatemala City at a depth of near the town of Los Amates in the department of Izabal. The earthquake ruptured a continuous length of 240 km along the Motagua fault and might have extended further to the east and west but was blocked by vegetation and swamps. Cities throughout the country suffered damage, and most adobe type houses in the outlying areas of Guatemala City were destroyed. The earthquake struck during the early morning (at 3:01 am, local time) when most people were asleep. This contributed to the high death toll of 23,000. Approximately 76,000 were injured, and many thousands left homeless. Some of the areas affected went without electricity and communications for days. The main shock was followed by thousands of aftershocks, some of the larger ones causing additional damage and loss of life. ...
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