ABSTRACT
Although the civil war officially ended in 1996 with the signing of a peace agreement between the government and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (URNG), the country's transition to democracy began in 1985 when the military handed power over to an elected civilian government. Guatemala has begun to make progress in the fight against corruption and in favor of transitional justice for victims and survivors of the country's thirty-six-year internal conflict. Guatemala became the political, spiritual, cultural, and economic center of the Spanish Kingdom of Guatemala, a region that stretched from Chiapas to Costa Rica. Guatemala's political leadership alternated between Liberal and Conservative governments after the federation's collapse. The Liberal faction was led by middle-class urban and provincial elites who sought to reduce the power of the Catholic Church and autonomy of indigenous groups. Conservatives from Guatemala City's colonial merchant and governmental aristocracy sought to maintain the vestiges of power from the colonial period—racial hierarchy and the Catholic Church.
