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History and Government
History: The Mayans were dominant through much of Central America from the fifth until the eighth century when their civilisation declined and a variety of other ethnic groups moved into the region. Europeans arrived in the 15th century, and Guatemala was one of the territories overrun by the Spanish conquistador Cortés in the 17th century. Pressure on their empire during the early 19th century forced the Spanish to concede independence to their American colonies, principally Mexico, into which Guatemala was briefly incorporated in 1822. Subsequent plans to fuse the countries of the Central American isthmus were equally short lived. Guatemala enjoyed comparative stability, punctuated by brief periods of upheaval, under a series of dictators who were content to keep the country under a quasi-feudal regime underpinned by a small clique of land-owning families.
The government of Colonel Arbenz Guzman attempted various land reforms in the early 1950s, but was overthrown by a US-backed invasion led by military opponents of Arbenz. The country then slid into a state of almost perpetual civil war between a series of right-wing military governments and various leftist guerrilla movements: the conflict was characterised by a level of human rights abuse exceptional even for civil war, the legacy of which still casts a shadow over the country today.
Although Guatemala has completed a successful transition from military to civilian government, the military retains considerable political power. This transition began in May 1985, when Guatemala’s new constitution was put into effect. The centre-right Partido Democracia Cristiana Guatemalteca (PDCG) formed the majority party in the new National Congress. The Christian Democrats retained a monopoly on power until 1995, when they met serious challenges from the Plan por el Adelantamiento Nacional (National Advance Party, PAN), which is dominated by business interests, and the Frente Republicano - Guatemalteco (FRG), which enjoys close relations with the army and a coterie of established landowners. A period of political musical chairs ended at the start of 1995 with a FRGPDCG coalition in control of the legislature. The 1995 election was notable for the participation, for the first time, of some left-wing parties allied to the anti-government guerrillas. They had previously boycotted the political process in the absence of a political settlement between the Government and the left-wing guerrillas. This was eventually reached the following year, 1996. A key component of the deal, which many found difficult to accept, was that the culprits in the worst human rights abuses – the vast majority of which were carried out by the military – would go unpunished (see below).
The most recent polls in November 1999 brought victory for the FRG whose presidential candidate, Alfonso Portillo Cabrera (known by his peculiar nickname ‘Husky Chicken’), defeated the PAN’s Oscar ‘The Rabbit’ Berger at the run-off while the FRG obtained a small absolute majority in the National Assembly. The FRG and PAN now dominate Guatemalan politics. Only now has the Government been prepared to admit that its predecessors, especially the Rios Montt military regime, were responsible for massive human rights abuses: this is still a central and highly sensitive issue in Guatemalan domestic politics. An exhaustive investigation into the conduct of the civil war by the Catholic bishop Juan Gerardi concluded in 1998 that the army was responsible for 90 per cent of the killings (as if to prove his point, Gerardi was promptly assassinated). Rios Montt, a former army Chief of Staff, ex-President and architect of several failed coups, is a significant influence on the Portillo government. He is due to face judicial accusations of genocide in 2002 brought by human rights groups. Whether any court will have the courage to convict him is another matter.
In July 2002, the Pope visited Guatemala, a deeply Catholic country, and canonised the country’s first saint, the 17th-century missionary Pedro de San Jose de Betancur.
Abroad, the main issue facing the country remains the dispute with neighbouring Belize, over which Guatemala has territorial claims; 1993 saw the signing of a non-aggression pact by the two governments, and as a concession, Belize granted the Guatemalans access to its maritime facilities. The following year, however, the Guatemalan government reasserted its territorial claim at the UN; in 2000, it did so again, claiming half of Belize’s current territory. Since then, despite the resumption of talks between the two governments under the auspices of the UN, there have been a number of border clashes and relations are still tense.
Government: Under the 1986 constitution, legislative power is vested in a single-chamber elected assembly with 80 members directly elected every four years. The President, also elected every four years, holds executive power.
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