Efraín Ríos Montt
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

José Efraín Ríos Montt (; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a
Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...
n military officer, politician, and
dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute Power (social and political), power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a polity. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to r ...
who served as '' de facto''
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. Selectio ...
from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running
Guatemalan Civil War The Guatemalan Civil War was fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various Left-wing politics, leftist rebel groups. The Guatemalan government forces committed Guatemalan genocide, genocide against the Maya population o ...
. Ríos Montt's
counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN, or NATO spelling counter-insurgency) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the ac ...
strategies significantly weakened the
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
guerrillas Guerrilla warfare is a form of unconventional warfare in which small groups of irregular military, such as rebels, Partisan (military), partisans, paramilitary personnel or armed civilians, which may include Children in the military, recruite ...
organized under the umbrella of the
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (in Spanish: ''Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca'', URNG-MAIZ or most commonly URNG) is a Guatemalan political party that started as a guerrilla movement in 1982. The party laid down its ar ...
(URNG) while also leading to accusations of
war crime A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostage ...
s and
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
perpetrated by the 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 general election, losing to the official candidate, General Kjell Laugerud, in an electoral process widely regarded as fraudulent. In 1978, Ríos Montt controversially abandoned the
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, worldwid ...
and joined an
Evangelical Christian 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 th ...
group affiliated with the Gospel Outreach Church. In 1982, discontent with the rule of General Romeo Lucas García, the worsening security situation in Guatemala, and accusations of electoral fraud led to a
coup d'état A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup , is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...
by a group of junior military officers who installed Ríos Montt as head of a government junta. Ríos Montt ruled as a military
dictator A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute Power (social and political), power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a polity. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to r ...
for less than seventeen months before his defense minister, General Óscar Mejía Victores overthrew him in another coup. In 1989, Ríos Montt returned to the Guatemalan political scene as leader of a new political party, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG). He was elected many times to the Congress of Guatemala, serving as president of the Congress in 1995–96 and 2000–04. A constitutional provision prevented him from registering as a presidential candidate due to his involvement in the military coup of 1982. However, the FRG obtained the presidency and a congressional majority in the 1999 general election. Authorized by the
Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...
to run in the 2003 presidential elections, Ríos Montt came in third and withdrew from politics. He returned to public life in 2007 as a member of Congress, thereby gaining
legal immunity Legal immunity, or immunity from prosecution, is a legal status wherein an individual or entity cannot be held liable for a violation of the law, in order to facilitate societal aims that outweigh the value of imposing liability in such cases. S ...
from long-running lawsuits alleging war crimes committed by him and some of his ministers and counselors during their term in the presidential palace in 1982–83. His immunity ended on 14 January 2012, when his legislative term of office expired. In 2013, a court sentenced Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
and crimes against humanity, but the Constitutional Court quashed that sentence, and his retrial was never completed.


Early life and career

Efraín Ríos Montt was born in 1926 in
Huehuetenango Huehuetenango () is a city and municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is also the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The city is situated from Guatemala City, and is the last departmental capital on the Pan-American Hi ...
into a large family of the rural middle class. His father was a shopkeeper, and his mother a seamstress, and the family also owned a small farm. His younger brother Mario Enrique Ríos Montt became a Catholic priest and would serve as prelate of Escuintla and later as
auxiliary bishop An auxiliary bishop is a bishop assigned to assist the diocesan bishop in meeting the pastoral and administrative needs of the diocese. Auxiliary bishops can also be titular bishops of sees that no longer exist as territorial jurisdictions. ...
of the Archdiocese of Guatemala. Intent on making a career in the army, the young Efraín applied to the Polytechnic School (the national military academy of Guatemala) but was rejected because of his
astigmatism Astigmatism is a type of refractive error due to rotational asymmetry in the eye's refractive power. The lens and cornea of an eye without astigmatism are nearly spherical, with only a single radius of curvature, and any refractive errors ...
. He then volunteered for the Guatemalan Army as a private, joining troops composed almost exclusively of full-blooded
Mayas Maya () are an ethnolinguistic group of Indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical region. Today ...
, until in 1946, he was able to enter the Polytechnic School. Ríos Montt graduated in 1950 at the top of his class. He taught at the Polytechnic School and received further specialized training, first at the U.S.-run officer training institute that would later be known as the
School of the Americas The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of the Americas, is a United States Department of Defense school located at Fort Benning (briefly known as Fort Moore) in Columbus, Georgia, the school bein ...
, and later at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and the Italian War College. From the start of his career, Ríos Montt acquired a reputation as a devoutly religious man and as a stern disciplinarian. Ríos Montt did not play any significant role in the successful
CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
-sponsored coup of 1954 against President Jacobo Arbenz. He rose through the ranks of the Guatemalan army and, in 1970–72, served as director of the Polytechnic School. In 1972, in the presidential administration of General Carlos Arana Osorio, Ríos Montt was promoted to brigadier general and in 1973 he became the Army's Chief of Staff (''Jefe del Estado Mayor General del Ejército''). However, he was removed from that post after three months and, much to his chagrin, dispatched to the Inter-American Defense College in
Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
According to anthropologist David Stoll, writing in 1990, Ríos Montt was "at odds with the army's command structure since being sidelined by military president Gen. Carlos Arana Osorio in 1974."


Early political involvement

While in the US, the leaders of the Guatemalan Christian Democracy approached Ríos Montt with an invitation to run for president at the head of a coalition of parties opposed to the incumbent regime. Ríos Montt participated in the March 1974 presidential elections as the National Opposition Front (FNO) presidential candidate. His running mate was Alberto Fuentes Mohr, a respected economist and
social democrat Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...
. At the time, Ríos Montt was generally regarded as an honest and competent military man who could combat the rampant corruption in the Guatemalan government and armed forces. In the run-up to the election, United States officials characterized the candidate Ríos Montt as a "capable left-of-center military officer" who would shift Guatemala "perceptibly but not radically to the left."


1974 presidential elections

The official candidate for the 1974 election was General Kjell Laugerud, whose running mate was
Mario Sandoval Alarcón Mario Sandoval Alarcón (May 18, 1923 – April 17, 2003) was a Guatemalan politician who served as vice president of Guatemala from 1974 to 1978 under Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García. A member and founder of the political party, Movimiento de ...
of the far-right National Liberation Movement. Pro-government posters warned "voters not to fall into a communist trap by supporting Ríos," but Ríos Montt proved to be an effective campaigner, and most observers believe that his FNO won the popular vote by an ample majority. When early returns showed an unmistakable trend in favor of Ríos Montt, the government halted the count and manipulated the results to make it appear that Laugerud finished 71,000 votes ahead of Ríos Montt. Since Laugerud did not have an outright majority of the popular vote, the government-controlled National Congress decided the election, which chose Laugerud by a vote of 38 to 2, with 15 opposition deputies abstaining. According to independent journalist Carlos Rafael Soto Rosales, Ríos Montt and the FNO leadership knew the election was fraudulent, but acquiesced in Laugerud's "election" because they feared that a popular uprising "would result in disorder that would provoke worse government repression and that a challenge would lead to a confrontation between military leaders." General Ríos Montt then left the country to take up an appointment as
military attaché A military attaché or defence attaché (DA),Defence Attachés
''Geneva C ...
at the Guatemalan embassy in
Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
, where he remained until 1977. It was rumored that the military high command paid Ríos Montt several hundred thousand dollars in exchange for his departure from public life and that during his exile in Spain his unhappiness led him to excessive drinking.


Religious conversion

In 1977, Ríos Montt retired from the army and returned to Guatemala. In 1978, a spiritual crisis caused him to leave the Roman Catholic Church and join the ''Iglesia El Verbo'' ("Church of the Word"), an
evangelical 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 th ...
Protestant church affiliated with the Gospel Outreach Church and based in
Eureka, California Eureka ( ; Wiyot: ; Hupa: ; ) is a city and the county seat of Humboldt County, located on the North Coast of California. The city is located on U.S. Route 101 on the shores of Humboldt Bay, north of San Francisco and south of the Oreg ...
. Ríos Montt became very active in his new church and he also taught religion in a school which was affiliated with it. At the time, his younger brother Mario Enrique was the Catholic prelate of Escuintla. Efraín Ríos Montt's conversion has been interpreted as a significant event in the ascendency of
Protestantism Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes Justification (theology), justification of sinners Sola fide, through faith alone, the teaching that Salvation in Christianity, salvation comes by unmerited Grace in Christianity, divin ...
within the traditionally Catholic nation of Guatemala (see Religion in Guatemala). Ríos Montt later befriended prominent evangelists in the US, including
Jerry Falwell Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr. (August 11, 1933 – May 15, 2007) was an American Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservatism in the United States, conservative activist. He was the founding pastor of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a megachurch ...
and
Pat Robertson Marion Gordon "Pat" Robertson (March 22, 1930 – June 8, 2023) was an American Media proprietor, media mogul, Televangelism, televangelist, political commentator, presidential candidate, and charismatic movement, charismatic minister. Rober ...
.


''De facto'' presidency


1982 military coup

The security situation in Guatemala had deteriorated under the government of General Romeo Lucas García. By early 1982, the
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
guerrilla groups belonging to the
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (in Spanish: ''Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca'', URNG-MAIZ or most commonly URNG) is a Guatemalan political party that started as a guerrilla movement in 1982. The party laid down its ar ...
(URNG)
umbrella organization An umbrella organization is an association of (often related, industry-specific) institutions who work together formally to coordinate activities and/or pool resources. In business, political, and other environments, it provides resources and iden ...
had made gains in the countryside and were seen as threatening an attack on the capital,
Guatemala City Guatemala City (, also known colloquially by the nickname Guate), is the Capital city, national capital and largest city of the Guatemala, Republic of Guatemala. It is also the Municipalities of Guatemala, municipal capital of the Guatemala Depa ...
. On March 7, 1982, General Ángel Aníbal Guevara, the official party's candidate, won the
presidential election A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President. Elections by country Albania The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public. Chile The p ...
, a result denounced as fraudulent by all opposition parties. An informal group described as ''oficiales jóvenes'' ("young officers") then staged a military coup that overthrew Lucas and prevented Guevara from succeeding him as president. On March 23, the coup culminated with the installation of a three-person
military junta A military junta () is a system of government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''Junta (governing body), junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the Junta (Peninsular War), national and local junta organized by t ...
, presided by General Efraín Ríos Montt and composed also of General Horacio Maldonado Schaad and Colonel Luis Gordillo Martínez. Ríos Montt had not been directly involved in the planning of the coup and was chosen by the ''oficiales jóvenes'' because of the respect that he had acquired as director of the military academy and as the presidential candidate of the democratic opposition in 1974. The events of March 1982 took the U.S. authorities by surprise. Because of repeated vote-rigging and the blatant corruption of the military establishment, the 1982 coup was initially welcomed by many Guatemalans. Ríos Montt's reputation for honesty, his leadership of the opposition in the 1974 election, and his vision of "education, nationalism, an end to want and hunger, and a sense of civic pride" were widely appealing. In April 1982, U.S. Ambassador Frederic L. Chapin declared that thanks to the coup of Ríos Montt, "the Guatemalan government has come out of the darkness and into the light." However, Chapin soon afterward reported that Ríos Montt was "naïve and not concerned with practical realities." Drawing on his Pentecostal beliefs, Ríos Montt compared the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to the four modern evils of hunger, misery, ignorance, and subversion. He also pledged to fight corruption and what he described as the depredations of the rich.


Dictatorship

The government junta immediately declared martial law and suspended the constitution, shut down the legislature, and set up special tribunals (''tribunales de fuero especial'') to prosecute both common criminals and
political dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established Political system, political or Organized religion, religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, a ...
s. On April 10, the junta launched the ''National Growth and Security Plan'', whose stated goals were to end indiscriminate violence and teach the populace about Guatemalan nationalism. The junta also announced that it sought to integrate peasants and
indigenous peoples There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...
into the Guatemalan state, declaring that because of their illiteracy and "immaturity," they were particularly vulnerable to the seductions of "international communism." The government intensified its military efforts against the URNG guerrillas and, on April 20 1982, launched a new
counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN, or NATO spelling counter-insurgency) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the ac ...
operation known as ''Victoria 82''. On June 9, General Ríos Montt forced the other two junta members to resign, leaving him as sole head of state, commander of the armed forces, and minister of defense. On 17 August 1982, Ríos Montt established a new ''Consejo de Estado'' ("Council of State") as an advisory body whose members were appointed either by the executive or by various civil associations. This Council of State incorporated several representatives of Guatemala's indigenous population, a first in the history of the central Guatemalan government. Under the motto, ''No robo, no miento, no abuso'' ("I don't steal, I don't lie, I don't abuse"), Ríos Montt launched a campaign ostensibly aimed at rooting out corruption in the government and reforming Guatemalan society. He also began broadcasting regular TV speeches on Sunday afternoons, known as ''discursos de domingo''. According to historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett, Ríos Montt's moralizing message continued to resonate with a significant part of Guatemalan society after he departed from power in 1983. In 1990, anthropologist David Stoll quoted a development organizer as saying that she liked Ríos Montt "because he used to get on television, point his finger at every Guatemalan, and say: 'The problem is you!' That's the only way this country is ever going to change."


Counter-insurgency: ''Fusiles y Frijoles''

Violence escalated in the countryside under the Guatemalan military's plan ''Victoria 82'', which included a rural pacification strategy which was known as ''Fusiles y Frijoles'' (), often rendered into English as "beans and bullets", to preserve the original alliteration of its name. The "bullets" referred to the organization of the Civil Defense Patrols (''Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil'', PAC), primarily composed of indigenous villagers who patrolled in groups of twelve, they were usually armed with a single M1 rifle but sometimes, they were not armed at all. The PAC initiative was intended both to provide a pro-government presence in isolated rural villages with a majority Mayan population and to deter guerrilla activity in the area. The "beans" component of the counter-insurgency strategy referred to programs seeking to increase civilian-military contact and cooperation by improving the infrastructure and resources the government provided to the Mayan villages. This was meant to create a link in the minds of the indigenous and peasant communities between better access to resources and their cooperation with the Guatemalan government in its military struggle against the insurgents. In June 1982, General Ríos Montt's government announced an
amnesty Amnesty () is defined as "A pardon extended by the government to a group or class of people, usually for a political offense; the act of a sovereign power officially forgiving certain classes of people who are subject to trial but have not yet be ...
for all insurgents who were willing to lay down their arms. A month later, that announcement was followed by the declaration of a
state of siege ''State of Siege'' () is a 1972 French–Italian–West German political thriller film directed by Costa-Gavras starring Yves Montand and Renato Salvatori. The story is based on an actual incident in 1970, when U.S. official Dan Mitrione was k ...
, leading to the curtailment of the activities of political parties and labor unions under the threat of death by firing squad for subversion. Critics have claimed that in practice, Ríos Montt's strategy was a
scorched earth A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy of destroying everything that allows an enemy military force to be able to fight a war, including the deprivation and destruction of water, food, humans, animals, plants and any kind of tools and i ...
campaign which was waged against the indigenous
Maya Maya may refer to: Ethnic groups * Maya peoples, of southern Mexico and northern Central America ** Maya civilization, the historical civilization of the Maya peoples ** Mayan languages, the languages of the Maya peoples * Maya (East Africa), a p ...
population, particularly in the departments of Quiché,
Huehuetenango Huehuetenango () is a city and municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is also the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The city is situated from Guatemala City, and is the last departmental capital on the Pan-American Hi ...
, and Baja Verapaz. According to the 1999 report by the UN-sponsored
Historical Clarification Commission The Commission for Historical Clarification (; abbreviated CEH) was a Guatemalan government commission established in 1994 in order to investigate atrocities and human rights violations committed during the Guatemalan Civil War, which began in 1962 ...
(CEH), this resulted in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages. One instance was the Plan de Sánchez massacre in
Rabinal Rabinal is a small town, with a population of 15,157 (2018 census),Citypopulation.de
Population of cities & to ...
, Baja Verapaz, in July 1982, which saw over 250 people killed. Tens of thousands of peasant farmers fled over the border into southern
Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
. In 1982, an
Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...
report estimated that over 10,000 indigenous Guatemalans and peasant farmers were killed from March to July of that year and that 100,000 rural villagers were forced to flee their homes. According to more recent estimates presented by the CEH, tens of thousands of non-combatants were killed during Ríos Montt's tenure as head of state. At the height of the bloodshed, reports put the number of disappearances and killings at more than 3,000 per month. The 1999 book ''State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996: A Quantitative Reflection'', published by the
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...
, states that Rios Montt's government presided over "the most indiscriminate period of state terror. More state killings occurred during Ríos Montt’s regime than during any other, and in the same period the monthly rate of violence was more than four times greater than for the next highest regime." On the other hand, the
United Nations special rapporteur Special rapporteur (or independent expert) is the title given to independent human rights experts whose expertise is called upon by the United Nations (UN) to report or advise on human rights from a thematic or country-specific perspective. De ...
for the situation of human rights in Guatemala, Lord Colville of Culross, wrote in 1984 that the lot of the rural population of Guatemala had improved under Ríos Montt, as the previous indiscriminate violence of the Guatemalan Army was replaced by a rational strategy of
counter-insurgency Counterinsurgency (COIN, or NATO spelling counter-insurgency) is "the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces". The Oxford English Dictionary defines counterinsurgency as any "military or political action taken against the ac ...
. Colville also indicated that extrajudicial "killings and kidnappings virtually ceased under the Ríos Montt regime." According to anthropologist David Stoll, "the crucial difference" between Ríos Montt and his predecessor Lucas García was that Ríos Montt replaced "chaotic terror with a more predictable set of rewards and punishments." According to analysts Georges A. Fauriol and Eva Loser of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. From its founding in 1962 until 1987, it was an affiliate of Georgetown University, initially named the Center for Strategic and Inte ...
, "an important component in the 'normalization' of the Guatemalan environment was a marked decrease by late 1982 in the state of fear and violence, which allowed the repositioning of Guatemala's civilian urbanized leadership toward a more vital role in national affairs." Sociologist and historian Carlos Sabino, in a work published initially in 2007 by the '' Fondo de Cultura Económica'', noted that the army's counter-insurgency in the Guatemalan highlands had been launched at the end of 1981, before the coup that put Ríos Montt in power, and that the reported massacres peaked in May 1982 before dropping off rapidly as a consequence of the policies implemented by the Ríos Montt regime. According to Sabino, the guerrillas were effectively defeated by the PACs organized by Ríos Montt's government, which grew to involve 900,000 men and which, "though only very partially armed, completely took away the guerrilla's capacity for political action," as they could no longer "reach the villages and towns, organize rallies, or recruit fighters and collaborators among the peasants." According to French sociologist Yvon Le Bot, writing in 1992, In a similar vein, historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett concluded in 2010 that General Ríos Montt's military's successes "were unprecedented in Guatemala’s modern history" and that "had the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
remained the primary lens of historical analysis, emight well be remembered as a visionary statesman instead of an author of crimes against humanity." Even some of Ríos Montt's harshest critics have noted that, in his later political career during the 1990s and 2000s, he enjoyed firm and enduring electoral support in the departments of Quiché,
Huehuetenango Huehuetenango () is a city and municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is also the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The city is situated from Guatemala City, and is the last departmental capital on the Pan-American Hi ...
, and Baja Verapaz, which had seen the worst violence during the 1982–83 counter-insurgency campaign. According to David Stoll, "the most obvious reason Nebajeños like the former general is that he offered them the chance to surrender without being killed."


Support from US and Israel

In 1977, the United States under the Jimmy Carter administration suspended aid to Guatemala due to the grave violations of human rights by the Guatemalan government. In 1981, the new
Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...
authorized the sale to the Guatemalan military of $4 million in helicopter spare parts and $6.3 million in additional military supplies, to be shipped in 1982 and 1983. President
Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was an American politician and actor who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He was a member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party a ...
traveled to
Central America Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually ...
in December 1982. He did not visit Guatemala but met with General Ríos Montt in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on December 4, 1982. During that meeting, Ríos Montt reassured Reagan that the Guatemalan government's counter-insurgency strategy was not one of "scorched earth," but rather of "scorched Communists," and pledged to work to restore the democratic process in the country. Reagan then declared: "President Ríos 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." Guatemala's poor record on human rights and the refusal of General Ríos Montt to call immediately for new elections prevented the Reagan administration from restoring US aid to Guatemala, which would have required the consent of the
US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
. The Reagan administration did continue the sale of helicopter parts to the Guatemalan military, even though a then-secret 1983 CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" and an increasing number of bodies "appearing in ditches and gullies." Israel, which had been supplying arms to Guatemala since 1974, continued its aid provisions during Ríos Montt's government. The cooperation did not just involve hardware but also included providing intelligence and operational training, carried out both in Israel and Guatemala. In 1982, Ríos Montt told
ABC News ABC News most commonly refers to: * ABC News (Australia), a national news service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation * ABC News (United States), a news-gathering and broadcasting division of the American Broadcasting Company ABC News may a ...
that his success was due to the fact that "our soldiers were trained by Israelis." There was not much outcry in Israel at the time about its involvement in Guatemala, though the support for Ríos Montt was no secret. According to journalist Victor Perera, in 1985, at a cemetery in Chichicastenango, relatives of a man killed by the military told him that "in church they tell us that divine justice is on the side of the poor; but the fact of the matter is, it is the military who get the Israeli guns."


Removal from power

By the end of 1982, Ríos Montt, claiming that the war against the leftist guerrillas had been won, said the government's work was one of "''techo, trabajo, y tortillas''" ("roofs, work, and
tortilla A tortilla (, ) is a thin, circular unleavened flatbread from Mesoamerica originally made from maize hominy meal, and now also from wheat flour. The Aztecs and other Nahuatl speakers called tortillas ''tlaxcalli'' (). First made by the indi ...
s"). Having survived three attempted coups, on June 29, 1983, Ríos Montt declared a
state of emergency A state of emergency is a situation in which a government is empowered to put through policies that it would normally not be permitted to do, for the safety and protection of its citizens. A government can declare such a state before, during, o ...
and announced elections for July 1984. By then, Ríos Montt had alienated many segments of Guatemalan society by his actions. Shortly before the visit to Guatemala by
Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 16 October 1978 until Death and funeral of Pope John Paul II, his death in 2005. In his you ...
in March 1983, Ríos Montt refused the Pope's appeal for clemency to six guerrillas who had been sentenced to death by the regime's special tribunals. The outspoken
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 th ...
and the moralizing sermons of the general's regular Sunday television broadcasts (''discursos de domingo'') were increasingly regarded with embarrassment by many. The military brass was offended by his promotion of young officers in defiance of the Army's traditional hierarchy. Many middle-class citizens were unhappy with the decision, announced on August 1, 1983, to introduce the
value-added tax A value-added tax (VAT or goods and services tax (GST), general consumption tax (GCT)) is a consumption tax that is levied on the value added at each stage of a product's production and distribution. VAT is similar to, and is often compared wi ...
in the country. One week later, on August 8, 1983, his own Minister of Defense, General Óscar Mejía Victores, overthrew the regime in a coup during which seven people were killed. The leaders of the 1983 coup alleged that Ríos Montt belonged to a "fanatical and aggressive religious group" that had threatened the "fundamental principle of the separation of Church and State." However, historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett considered that the main underlying reason for his removal from power was that Ríos Montt "had severely stanched the flow of
graft Graft or grafting may refer to: *Graft (politics), a form of political corruption *Graft, Netherlands, a village in the municipality of Graft-De Rijp Science and technology *Graft (surgery), a surgical procedure *Grafting, the joining of plant ti ...
to military officers and government officials" and was not responsive to the powerful interest groups represented by the Army's high command. Political violence in Guatemala continued after Ríos Montt was removed from power in 1983. It has been estimated that as many as one and a half million Maya peasants were uprooted from their homes. American journalist
Vincent Bevins Vincent Bevins (born June 11, 1984) is an American journalist and writer. From 2011 to 2016, he worked as a foreign correspondent based in Brazil for the ''Los Angeles Times'', after working previously in London for the ''Financial Times''. In 2 ...
writes that by corralling indigenous populations from suspect communities into state-established "model villages" (''aldeas modelos'') that were "little more than deadly
concentration camps A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploit ...
," Ríos Montt waged genocide differently than his predecessors, although massacres continued apace. Bevins argues this was part of Montt's new strategy for fighting
communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
: "The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea." Efraín Ríos Montt's sister Marta Elena Ríos de Rivas was kidnapped on 26 June 1983 in Guatemala City by members of the leftist Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) when she was leaving the primary school where she worked as a teacher. At the time, she was five months pregnant. After General Ríos Montt was deposed in August of that year, the FAR proceeded to kidnap the sister of the new ''de facto'' president, General Mejía Víctores. The new government flatly refused to negotiate with the kidnappers, but the family of General Ríos Montt obtained the release of his sister Marta on 25 September, after 119 days in captivity, by procuring the publication of an FAR comuniqué in several international newspapers.


Later political career

Ríos Montt founded the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) political party in 1989. In the run-up to the 1990 general election, polls indicated that Ríos Montt was the most popular candidate, leading his nearest rival by as many as twelve points. The courts ultimately prevented him from appearing in the ballots because of a provision in the 1985 Constitution of Guatemala that banned people who had participated in a military coup from becoming president. Ríos Montt always claimed that the corresponding article had been written into the Constitution specifically to prevent him from returning to the Presidency and that it could not legitimately be applied retroactively. In the 1990s Ríos Montt enjoyed significant popular support throughout Guatemala and especially among the native Maya population of the departments of Quiché,
Huehuetenango Huehuetenango () is a city and municipality in the highlands of western Guatemala. It is also the capital of the department of Huehuetenango. The city is situated from Guatemala City, and is the last departmental capital on the Pan-American Hi ...
, and Baja Verapaz, where he was perceived as ''un militar recto'' (an honest military man), even though those had been the populations most directly affected by the counter-insurgency that Ríos Montt had led in 1982–83. According to anthropologist David Stoll According to political scientist Regina Bateson, in this new career phase, Ríos Montt embraced
populism Populism is a essentially contested concept, contested concept used to refer to a variety of political stances that emphasize the idea of the "common people" and often position this group in opposition to a perceived elite. It is frequently a ...
as his core political strategy. He was an FRG congressman between 1990 and 2004. In 1994, he was elected president of the
unicameral Unicameralism (from ''uni''- "one" + Latin ''camera'' "chamber") is a type of legislature consisting of one house or assembly that legislates and votes as one. Unicameralism has become an increasingly common type of legislature, making up nearly ...
legislature. He tried to run again in the 1995–96 Guatemalan general election but was barred from entering the race. The FRG chose
Alfonso Portillo Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera (born 24 September 1951) is a Guatemalan politician who served as the 45th president of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004. He took office on 14 January 2000, representing the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), the p ...
to replace Ríos Montt as the party's presidential candidate, and he narrowly lost to
Álvaro Arzú Álvaro Enrique Arzú Irigoyen (; 14 March 1946 – 27 April 2018) was a Guatemalan politician and businessman who served as the 44th president of Guatemala from 1996 to 2000, as well as several terms as Mayor of Guatemala City. The main achi ...
of the conservative National Advancement Party. In his youth, Portillo had been affiliated with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), one of the Marxist insurgent groups that later became part of the
Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (in Spanish: ''Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca'', URNG-MAIZ or most commonly URNG) is a Guatemalan political party that started as a guerrilla movement in 1982. The party laid down its ar ...
(URNG) and which Ríos Montt had combated during his term as president in 1982–83. The
Guatemalan Civil War The Guatemalan Civil War was fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various Left-wing politics, leftist rebel groups. The Guatemalan government forces committed Guatemalan genocide, genocide against the Maya population o ...
officially concluded in 1996 with the signing of the peace accords between the Guatemalan government and the URNG, which after that was organized as a legal political party. In March 1999, U.S. President
Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician and lawyer who was the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, ...
declared that "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 n Guatemalawas wrong and the United States must not repeat that mistake." Ríos Montt's FRG party was successful in the
1999 Guatemalan general election General elections were held in Guatemala on 7 November 1999, with a second round of the presidential elections on 26 December.Dieter Nohlen (2005) ''Elections in the Americas: A data handbook, Volume I'', p323 Alfonso Portillo won the presidentia ...
. Its candidate,
Alfonso Portillo Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera (born 24 September 1951) is a Guatemalan politician who served as the 45th president of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004. He took office on 14 January 2000, representing the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), the p ...
, was elected president, and the party also obtained a majority in the National Congress. Ríos Montt then served four consecutive one-year terms as president of Congress, from 2000 to 2004. President Portillo admitted the involvement of the Guatemalan government in human rights abuses over the previous 20 years, including two massacres that took place during Ríos Montt's presidency. The first was in Plan de Sánchez, in Baja Verapaz, with 268 dead, and in Dos Erres in Petén, where 200 people were murdered.


2003 presidential candidate

In May 2003, the FRG nominated Ríos Montt for the November presidential election. However, his candidacy was rejected again by the electoral registry and by two lower courts. On 14 July 2003, the
Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...
, which had had several judges appointed by the FRG government, approved his candidacy for president because the prohibition in the 1985 Constitution did not apply retroactively. On 20 July, the
Supreme Court In most legal jurisdictions, a supreme court, also known as a court of last resort, apex court, high (or final) court of appeal, and court of final appeal, is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
suspended Ríos Montt's campaign and agreed to hear a complaint brought by two right-of-center parties that the retired General was constitutionally barred from running for president. Ríos Montt denounced the ruling as a judicial manipulation and, in a radio address, called on his followers to take to the streets to protest against it. On 24 July, in an event that came to be 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, and it was alleged that public employees in FRG-controlled municipalities were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they did not participate in the demonstrations. The protestors blocked traffic, chanted threatening slogans, and waved machetes as they marched on the courts, the opposition parties' headquarters, and newspapers. Incidents of torching of buildings, shooting out of windows, and burning of cars and tires in the streets were also reported. A television journalist, Héctor Fernando Ramírez, died of a heart attack while running away from a mob. After two days, the rioters disbanded when an audio recording of Ríos Montt was played on loudspeakers calling them to return to their homes. The situation was so volatile over the weekend that the UN mission and the US embassy were closed. Following the rioting, the Constitutional Court overturned the Supreme Court decision, allowing Ríos Montt to run for president. However, the ''jueves negro'' chaos undermined Ríos Montt's popularity and his credibility as a law-and-order candidate. Support for Ríos Montt also suffered because of the perceived corruption and inefficiency of the incumbent FRG administration under President Portillo. During tense but peaceful presidential elections on November 9, 2003, Ríos Montt received 19.3% of the vote, placing him third behind
Óscar Berger Óscar José Rafael Berger Perdomo (; born 11 August 1946) is a Guatemalan businessman and politician who served as the 46th president of Guatemala from 2004 to 2008. He previously served as mayor of Guatemala City from 1991 to 1999. Early y ...
, head of the conservative Grand National Alliance (GANA), and
Álvaro Colom Álvaro Colom Caballeros (; 15 June 1951 – 23 January 2023) was a Guatemalan engineer, businessman, and politician who served as the 47th president of Guatemala from 2008 to 2012, as well as the General-Secretary of the political party, Natio ...
of the center-left
National Unity of Hope The National Unity of Hope (, UNE) is a populist political party in Guatemala. It was founded in 2002 and defined itself as a social-democratic and Christian socialism, social-Christian party, but since transformed and is now described as a right- ...
(UNE). As he had been required to give up his seat in Congress to run for president, Ríos Montt's 14-year legislative tenure also ended. In March 2004, a court order forbade Ríos Montt from leaving the country while it determined whether he should stand trial on charges related to ''jueves negro'' and the death of Ramírez. On November 20, 2004, Ríos Montt had to request permission to travel to his country home for the wedding of his daughter, Zury Ríos, to
U.S. Representative The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Article One of th ...
Jerry Weller, a Republican from
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...
. On January 31, 2006, manslaughter charges against him for the death of Ramírez were dropped.


Charges of crimes against humanity

The Inter-Diocese Project for the Recovery of the Historic Memory (REMHI), sponsored by the
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, worldwid ...
, and the
Historical Clarification Commission The Commission for Historical Clarification (; abbreviated CEH) was a Guatemalan government commission established in 1994 in order to investigate atrocities and human rights violations committed during the Guatemalan Civil War, which began in 1962 ...
(CEH), co-sponsored by the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
as part of the 1996 peace accords, produced reports documenting grave violations of human rights committed during the
Guatemalan Civil War The Guatemalan Civil War was fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various Left-wing politics, leftist rebel groups. The Guatemalan government forces committed Guatemalan genocide, genocide against the Maya population o ...
of 1960–1996. That war had pitted
Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...
rebels against the Guatemalan state, including the Guatemalan army. Up to 200,000 Guatemalans were estimated to have been killed during the conflict, making it one of Latin America's bloodiest wars. Both the REMHI and CEH reports found that most of the violence had been carried out by the Guatemalan state and by government-backed
death squad A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings, massacres, or enforced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in w ...
s. Since the victims of this violence had disproportionately belonged to the indigenous Mayan population of the country, the CEH report characterized the counterinsurgency campaign, significantly designed and advanced during Ríos Montt's presidency, as having included deliberate "acts of
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
." The REMHI and CEH reports formed the basis for legal actions brought against Ríos Montt and others for crimes against humanity and genocide. Ríos Montt admitted that the Guatemalan army had committed crimes during his term as president and commander-in-chief, but he denied that he had planned or ordered those actions or that there had been any deliberate policy by his government to target the native population that could amount to genocide. In 1998, Mario Enrique Ríos Montt, younger brother of Efraín Ríos Montt, succeeded murdered bishop Juan Gerardi as head of the Office of Human Rights of the Archdiocese of Guatemala. That office took a leading role in denouncing human rights abuses committed by the state during the
Guatemalan Civil War The Guatemalan Civil War was fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various Left-wing politics, leftist rebel groups. The Guatemalan government forces committed Guatemalan genocide, genocide against the Maya population o ...
, including during the government of General Ríos Montt.


In Spain

In 1999, Guatemalan
Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish language, Swedish and ) is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the Will and testament, will of Sweden, Swedish industrialist, inventor, and armaments manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobe ...
laureate Rigoberta Menchú filed a complaint before the '' Audiencia Nacional'' of
Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
for torture, genocide, illegal detention, and
state-sponsored terrorism State-sponsored terrorism is terrorist violence carried out with the active support of national governments provided to violent non-state actors. It contrasts with '' state terrorism'', which is carried out directly by state actors. States can ...
, naming Ríos Montt and four other retired Guatemalan generals (two of them ex-presidents) as defendants. Three other civilians that were high government official between 1978 and 1982 were also named in the complaint. The Center for Justice and Accountability and Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España joined in the suit brought by Menchú. In September 2005, Spain's
Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...
ruled that Spanish courts could try those accused of
crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are certain serious crimes committed as part of a large-scale attack against civilians. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity can be committed during both peace and war and against a state's own nationals as well as ...
, even if the victims were not Spanish nationals. In June 2006, Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz traveled to Guatemala to interrogate Ríos Montt and the others named in the case. At least 15 appeals filed by the defense attorneys of the indicted prevented him from carrying out the inquiries. On July 7, 2006, Pedraz issued an international arrest warrant against Efraín Ríos Montt and former presidents Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores and Romeo Lucas García (the latter of whom had died in May 2006 in
Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
). A warrant was also issued for the retired generals Benedicto Lucas García and Aníbal Guevara. Former minister of the interior Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz, who remained at large, and ex-chiefs of police Germán Chupina Barahona and Pedro García Arredondo were also named on the international arrest warrants. Some of those warrants were initially admitted by Guatemalan courts, but they were all ultimately declared invalid in December 2007 by the
Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ru ...
.


In Guatemala

On January 17, 2007, Ríos Montt announced that he would run for a seat in Congress again in the election to be held later in the year. As a member of Congress, he would again be immune from prosecution unless a court suspended him from office. He won his seat in the September election and led the FRG's 15-member congressional delegation in the new legislature. Ríos Montt's immunity ended on January 14, 2012, when his term in office expired. On January 26, 2012, he appeared in court in Guatemala City and was formally indicted by Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz for genocide and crimes against humanity, along with three other former generals. During the court hearing, he declined to make a statement. The court released him on bail but placed him under
house arrest House arrest (also called home confinement, or nowadays electronic monitoring) is a legal measure where a person is required to remain at their residence under supervision, typically as an alternative to imprisonment. The person is confined b ...
pending trial. On March 1, 2012, a judge ruled the charges against Ríos Montt were not covered by the 1996 National Reconciliation Law, which had granted amnesty for political and common crimes committed in the course of the Guatemalan Civil War. On 28 January 2013, judge Miguel Angel Galves opened a pre-trial hearing against Ríos Montt and retired General José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez for genocide and crimes against humanity, in particular the killing of 1,771 Maya Ixil Indians, including children. Ríos Montt went on trial on those charges on 19 March 2013, marking the first time that a former Latin American
head of state A head of state is the public persona of a sovereign state.#Foakes, Foakes, pp. 110–11 "
he head of state He or HE may refer to: Language * He (letter), the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads * He (pronoun), a pronoun in Modern English * He (kana), one of the Japanese kana (へ in hiragana and ヘ in katakana) * Ge (Cyrillic), a Cyrillic letter cal ...
being an embodiment of the State itself or representative of its international persona." The name given to the office of head of sta ...
was tried for genocide in his own country. The trial was suspended on 19 April 2013 by Judge Carol Patricia Flores, following a directive from the Supreme Court of Justice of Guatemala. The judge ordered the legal process to be set back to November 2011, before the retired general was charged with war crimes. On 10 May 2013, Ríos Montt was convicted by the court of genocide and crimes against humanity and was sentenced to 80 years imprisonment. Announcing the ruling, Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar declared that " e defendant is responsible for masterminding the crime of genocide." She continued: "We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide... íos Montthad knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it." The Court found that " e Ixils were considered public enemies of the state and were also victims of
racism Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
, considered an inferior race... The violent acts against the Ixils were not spontaneous. They were planned beforehand." Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar referred to evidence that 5.5% of the Ixil people had been wiped out by the army. On 20 May 2013, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned Ríos Montt's conviction on the grounds that he had not been allowed an effective defense during some of the proceedings. Anthropologist David Stoll, though granting that large numbers of innocent civilians were killed by the army under Ríos Montt's presidency, questioned both the fairness of 2013 trial and the grounds for the charge of genocide. General Ríos Montt's retrial began in January 2015, but the court later ruled that the proceedings would not be public. It also held that no sentence could be pronounced due to Ríos Montt‘a age and deteriorating physical and mental condition. Earlier, Guatemala's forensic authority ruled that Ríos Montt had dementia so severe that he could not defend himself. The retrial had not been completed when Ríos Montt died in April 2018, and the court, therefore, closed the case against him. His co-defendant, former chief of military intelligence José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, was acquitted in September 2018, although the court found that the counter-insurgency strategy of the Guatemalan army had amounted to genocide.


Death

Ríos Montt died of a
heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when Ischemia, blood flow decreases or stops in one of the coronary arteries of the heart, causing infarction (tissue death) to the heart muscle. The most common symptom ...
at his home in
Guatemala City Guatemala City (, also known colloquially by the nickname Guate), is the Capital city, national capital and largest city of the Guatemala, Republic of Guatemala. It is also the Municipalities of Guatemala, municipal capital of the Guatemala Depa ...
on April 1, 2018, at the age of 91. The then-incumbent president of Guatemala,
Jimmy Morales James Ernesto Morales Cabrera (; born 18 March 1969) is a Guatemalan politician, actor, and comedian who served as the 50th president of Guatemala from 2016 to 2020. Early and personal life Morales was born in Guatemala City to José Everar ...
, expressed his public condolences over the death of General Ríos Montt.


In media and popular culture

Pamela Yates directed '' When the Mountains Tremble'' (1983), a documentary film about the war between the Guatemalan Military and the Mayan Indigenous population of Guatemala. Footage from this film was used as forensic evidence in the Guatemalan court for crimes against humanity in the genocide case against Efraín Ríos Montt. ''Granito: How to Nail a Dictator'' (2011) by Pamela Yates is a follow-up to ''When the Mountains Tremble''. The
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
's Shoah Foundation, funded by director
Steven Spielberg Steven Allan Spielberg ( ; born December 18, 1946) is an American filmmaker. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, Spielberg is widely regarded as one of the greatest film directors of all time and is ...
, is undertaking an extensive analysis of the genocidal Guatemalan civil wars, documented by hundreds of filmed interviews with survivors.Spielberg's Shoah Foundation documents Guatemala genocide
'' ssociated Press', Sonia Perez-Diaz, December 28, 2015. Retrieved 28 December 2015.
The 2019 Guatemalan horror film ''
La Llorona (; ) is a vengeful ghost in Hispanic American folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children whom she drowned in a jealous rage after discovering her husband was unfaithful to her. Whoever hears her crying either suffer ...
'' features a character named Enrique Monteverde, based on Ríos Montt.


See also

* History of Guatemala *
Guatemala National Police Archives In July 2005, in an abandoned warehouse in downtown Guatemala City, Guatemala, delegates from the country's Institution of the Procurator for Human Rights uncovered, by sheer chance, a vast archive detailing the history of the defunct National Pol ...


References


Further reading

* Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional,
From Silence to Memory: Revelations of the AHPN
' (Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Libraries, 2013). * Carmack, Robert M. (ed.). ''Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis'' (University of Oklahoma Press, 1988) * Dosal, Paul J. ''Return of Guatemala's Refugees: Reweaving the Torn'' (Temple University Press, 1998) * Falla, Ricardo (trans. by Julia Howland). ''Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcán, Guatemala, 1975–1982'' (Westview Press, Boulder, 1994) * Fried, Jonathan L., et al. ''Guatemala in Rebellion : Unfinished History'' (
Grove Press Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United S ...
, NY, 1983). * Goldston, James A. ''Shattered Hope: Guatemalan Workers and the Promise of Democracy'' (Westview Press, Boulder, 1989). * LaFeber, Walter. ''Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America''. (W.W. Norton & Company, NY, 1993). * Perera, Victor. ''Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy'' (University of California Press, 1993). * Sabino, Carlos (trans. by Denise Leal). ''Guatemala, a Silenced History (1944–1989)'', vol. II: ''A Break in the Domino Effect (1963–1989)'', (Grafiaetc, Guatemala, 2018) . Originally published in Spanish as ''Guatemala, la guerra silenciada (1944–1989): El dominó que no cayó'', (Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 2007) . * Sanford, Victoria. ''Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala'' (Palgrave Macmillan, NY, 2003) * Sczepanski, David and Anfuso, Joseph (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) * Shillington, John Wesley. ''Grappling with Atrocity: Guatemalan Theater in the 1990s'' (Associated University Presses, London, 2002). * Stoll, David. ''Between Two Armies in the Ixil Towns of Guatemala'' (Columbia University Press, NY, 1993).


External links


Biography by CIDOB

Guatemala Human Rights CommissionIndicted for Genocide: Guatemala's Efraín Ríos Montt: U.S. and Guatemalan Documents Trace Dictator's Rise to Power
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing. Book No. 419. Posted – 19 March 2013. Edited by Kate Doyle
Site monitoring trial against Rios Montt in Guatemala
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rios Montt, Efrain 1926 births 2018 deaths 20th-century Guatemalan people Anti-communist terrorism Anti-Marxism Defense ministers of Guatemala Dirty wars Former Roman Catholics Guatemalan anti-communists Guatemalan Christian Democracy politicians Guatemalan evangelicals Guatemalan generals Guatemalan genocide perpetrators Guatemalan Pentecostals Heads of government convicted of war crimes Heads of state convicted of war crimes Institutional Republican Party politicians Leaders ousted by a coup Leaders who took power by coup Members of the Congress of Guatemala People from Huehuetenango Department People of the Cold War People of the Guatemalan Civil War 20th-century presidents of Guatemala Presidents of the Congress of Guatemala Reagan administration controversies Guatemalan people convicted of genocide Guatemalan people convicted of war crimes Guatemalan people convicted of crimes against humanity