Guatemala Civil War Essay

Guatemala’s civil war lasted for 36 years in the 1960s between left-winged guerilla groups and the armed forces under autocratic rule. Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán legalized the communist party called the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT) in 1954 and was viewed as a communist threat threating the rural labor supply system nationalizing the plantations of the Untied Fruit Company. Colonel Castillo Armas, head of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN) assumed presidency backed up by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and reversed land reforms from the peasants. By 1994, Peace negotiations gained momentum under the mediation of the United Nations and President Ramiro De Leon Caprio starting peace talks between the government and the rebels of the Guatemala Revolutionary National Unity. The civil war lasting for over 36 years ended on December 29, 1996 when the government and the URNG signed the Peace Accord in Guatemala City establishing new political rules and an electoral democratic regime. Under Alvaro Arzú’s rule, he was able to decrease the military’s size, budget, and control benefiting the …show more content…
Gradually, however, Guatemala’s civilian political class and civil society gained unexpected strength in the new political space the army had opened and asserted their independence from military tutelage during the 1990s.” I can reflect on what Ruhl mentioned because these people needed to stand up against the authoritarian military rule. They were being pushed around and since a military is funded, Guatemala’s economy tanked. The political violence caused poverty throughout the country. Many peasants living in the south and east lived below the poverty line and in the north and west of the country others lived in extreme