ABSTRACT

In 1982, four guerrilla groups that traced their roots back to the 1960s and 1970s merged to form the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unit (URNG). For the next 15 years, the URNG struggled against a Guatemalan military that launched a genocidal campaign against the country’s indigenous people in order to separate the rebels from their base. After a decade-long peace process, the URNG and the government of Alvaro Arzú of the National Advancement Party (PAN) officially ended the war with the signing of the Firm and Lasting Agreement in December 1996. From 1960-1996, Guatemala had suffered through one of the longest and bloodiest civil wars in Latin American history where an estimated 200,000 were killed or disappeared and another two million internally displaced or forced into exile.