Guerrilla Army of the Poor

The Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP) was one of four Guatemalan guerrilla organizations that formed the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), a coalition of four guerrilla organizations that negotiated and signed the Peace Accords in Guatemala with the Government and the Guatemalan Army in December 1996. The EGP arose from a division of the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) at a time when in Latin America the option of armed struggle had fewer followers and the experiences of Allende in Chile and Velasco Alvarado in Peru, supposed that the guerrilla victory in Cuba had been a historical exception; However, it was reinforced in 1979 after the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, so the Guatemalan war intensified between 1980 and 1983, when the guerrilla groups considered that victory was within their grasp. Its field of action was the western region of the Northern Transversal Strip, specifically the northern departments of Huehuetenango and Quiché, which have enormous oil reserves.

History

Colonization of the Ixcán Sector in Quiché

Map of the Ixcan Sector north of the department of Quiché in Guatemala.

The area was mostly wasteland and national lands, considered by the Ixil peoples as reserve and hunting areas, where there were very few towns. During the government of Justo Rufino Barrios (1873-1885), land was handed over to militiamen from the municipalities of Chiantla and Malacantico de Huehuetenango, but due to difficult access, the land was not occupied until 1964.

After the coup d'état supported by US imperialism or counterrevolution in 1954, the Guatemalan government created the Economic Planning Council (CNPE) and began to use free market strategies, advised by the World Bank and the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) of the United States government. The CNPE and the ICA created the General Directorate of Agrarian Affairs (DGAA) which was in charge of dismantling and annulling the effects of Decree 900 of the Agrarian Reform of the government of Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The DGAA was in charge of the geographical strip that adjoined with the departmental limit of Petén and the borders of Belize, Honduras and Mexico, and that in time would be called Franja Transversal del Norte (FTN).

In 1962, the DGAA became the National Institute of Agrarian Transformation (INTA), by Decree 1551 that created the Agrarian Transformation Law. In 1964, INTA defined the geography of the FTN as the northern part of the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz and Izabal and that same year priests of the Maryknoll order and the Order of the Sacred Heart began the first colonization process, together with INTA, taking residents from Huehuetenango to the Ixcán sector in Quiché. Four years later, six subdivisions had already been formed:

• Mayalán
• Xalbal
• The Resurrection
• The Union
• Selva Reina
• Los Angeles

The subdivisions formed the Ixcán Grande Cooperative on January 1, 1970. At that time, the Ixcán sector was made up of land from the municipalities of Barillas, Huehuetenango and Chajul and Uspantán in Quiché. The descendants of the government adjudicators of Justo Rufino Barrios also settled in the place, forming the villages Valle Candelaria and Santa María Candelaria, between the Ixcán and Xalbal rivers.

Northern Transversal Strip

Northern Transversal Strip, created in 1970 during the government of General Carlos Arana Osorio. The area is rich in minerals, oil and precious woods. The construction of the road that links the main points of interest in the Gaza Strip began in 2008.

The Northern Transversal Strip was officially created during the government of General Carlos Arana Osorio in 1970, through Decree 60-70 in the Congress of the Republic, for the establishment of agrarian development. At first it had great agricultural potential and for the exploitation of precious woods, but then from 1974, commercial oil began to be exploited in the vicinity of the FTN as a result of the discoveries made by the oil companies Basic Resources and Shennadoah Oil, which operated jointly in the oil field of Rubelsanto, Alta Verapaz. In 1976, when Laugerud García came to visit the Mayalán cooperative in the sector of Ixcán, Quiché, in the Northern Transversal Strip, which had been formed just ten 12 years earlier, he said: "Mayalan is settled at the top of the gold." hinting that the Northern Transversal Strip would no longer be dedicated to agriculture or the cooperative movement, but would be used for strategic objectives of exploitation of natural resources. After that presidential visit, the oil companies Basic Resources and Shenandoah Oil carried out explorations in Xalbal lands, very close to Mayalán in Ixcán, where they drilled the "San Lucas" well with unsuccessful results. These explorations, which opened the way for future oil experiments in Ixcán, and the rest of the FTN, were also the main reason for the construction of the dirt road that runs through the Strip. Shennadoah Oil, the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA) and the Army Engineers Battalion coordinated to build this corridor between 1975 and 1979, which ultimately allowed powerful politicians, soldiers and businessmen of the time to take over many of the lands where timber wealth and oil potential lay..

First movements of the EGP

Guatemalan oil reserves.

Initially the new guerrilla organization took the name of the New Revolutionary Combat Organization (NORC). On January 19, 1972, members of a new Guatemalan guerrilla movement entered Ixcán from Mexico and in 1973, after an exploratory incursion into the municipal seat of Cotzal, where they were accepted by many peasants, the insurgent group decided to establish a camp clandestine in the mountains of Xolchiché, municipality of Chajul.

In 1974, the insurgent group held the first guerrilla conference, in which it defined its action strategy for the following months and called itself the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), being one of the four guerrilla groups that gave their lives for leading The peace agreements in Guatemala were carried out because they realized that the army was killing many innocent people, such as women, children and men. In 1975 the organization had spread throughout the area of the mountains in the northern zone of the municipalities of Nebaj and Chajul. As part of its strategy, the EGP agreed to carry out acts in which public notoriety was obtained and through which the establishment of "social justice" was symbolized in the face of the inefficiency and hyperactivity of the State's judicial and administrative bodies.. They also considered that with these actions the indigenous and peasant population of the region would identify with the insurgent movement, thus motivating their incorporation into its ranks. Within the framework of this plan, it was agreed to carry out the so-called "executions". To determine who would be the object of "execution", the EGP attended to the complaints it received from the population. Thus, for example, they selected two victims: Guillermo Monzón, who was the military commissioner of Ixcán, and José Luis Arenas, the largest landowner in the Ixcán area who had been denounced before the EGP for allegedly having land conflicts with neighboring populations and for commit abuses against their workers.

Assassination of Commissioner Guillermo Monzón

The figure of the military commissioner was created in 1938, with the basic purpose of making effective the recruitment of young people to perform military service. In 1954, its organization, instruction and training were reconsidered, remaining under the organic and functional dependence of the Army General Staff, through the military chain of command. An institutionalized system of counterinsurgency was developed in 1963, of which military commissioners were a part and, two years later, were allowed by law to wear military uniforms. In accordance with the regulations that regulate this figure, the military commissioners were considered as "members of the Army when they are in compliance with a mission." The commissioners were chosen from among Army reservists, but there was the legal possibility of appointing someone who had not served in the military to fill that position. Thus, men were chosen, mostly peasants, because of the position they occupied within the community, because of their economic capacity, because of their leadership capacity or their ideological affinity with the regime, or by simple decision of the military officer in charge of the area. These people served the Army's counterinsurgency strategy, especially in intelligence work inside rural communities, in order to maintain strict control of the population. Thus, the military commissioners had to report to the Army the movements of people, the political and non-political comments that circulated in the area, the visits and meetings, the arrival of strangers, that is, everything related to the inhabitants and links, of any kind. whatever it was, with the guerrilla.

The guerrillas, for their part, in the development of the phase of armed propaganda defined in 1974 and 1975 declared the commissioners "military objectives" and starting in 1975 he put into practice a selective repression against them, which lasted until 1996. Guillermo Monzón, military commissioner, originally from Huehuetenango, ladino, landowner in the Xalbal cooperative, municipality of Ixcán, Quiché, maintained strong differences with other indigenous landowners from the same cooperative for the ownership and use of the land. In 1975, he worked as a tractor driver for the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation (INTA), a government entity that had recently arrived in the region. On May 28, 1975, in the La Cuchilla center, Xalbal cooperative, Ixcán municipality, Monzón was surprised by members of the guerrilla. They captured him, executed him, and buried him in the same place where he was executed. Four days later, his body was found by the residents. The victim's family left the place and never returned. Guillermo Monzón lived in the Xalbal cooperative, and was pointed out repeatedly by the inhabitants of the place as an informant for the Army. Through this fact the EGP emerges into the public light, this being its first action in the internal armed confrontation.

Execution of the owner of the La Perla farm

On Saturday, June 7, 1975, José Luis Arenas was murdered by unknown persons when he was in the office facilities of the "La Perla" farm, to pay the biweekly salary to the workers. In front of the office, there were approximately between two and three hundred people to receive his payment and four members of the EGP mixed among the peasants gathered in front of the offices. Subsequently, the guerrillas destroyed the farm's communication radio. After having executed José Luis Arenas, the members of the guerrilla addressed the peasants in the Ixil language, informing them that they were members of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and that they had killed the "Tiger of Ixcán." They requested that beasts be prepared to help the wounded and that they be transported to Chajul to receive medical assistance. Later, the attackers fled in the direction of Chajul. Jose Luis Arenas had actively participated in Guatemalan politics in addition to committing criminal acts, physically and psychologically mistreating the peasants and peasants, on their farms there are gallows, whips and stocks, and was protected by the authoritarian government of Guatemala.

The son of José Luis Arenas, who was at the San Luis Ixcán farm, took refuge on a nearby mountain, waiting for a small plane to arrive to take him to the capital, in order to immediately report the incident to the Defense Minister. The Minister of Defense replied: "You are wrong, there are no guerrillas in the area."

The EGP incorporated into its conceptual body and its management bodies the Indigenous Peoples of Guatemala. According to the EGP, the two main contradictions in Guatemala are the class contradiction and the ethnic-national contradiction. to Until the signing of the Peace Accords, on December 29, 1996, the EGP was the guerrilla organization with the largest number of militants and the largest territorial extension. At its peak, it had a social base of approximately 250,000 people, divided into the following guerrilla fronts:

• "Comandante Ernesto Guevara"in the north-west of the country and the Great Ixcan Jungle.
• "Ho Chi Minh" in the ixil zone of Guatemala.
• "Marco Antonio Yon Sosa" in the Norcentral region of the country.
• "Augusto César Sandino" in the central area of Guatemala.
• "November 13" in the east.
• "Luis Augusto Turcios Lima" on the South Coast.
• "Commander Otto René Castillo" in the capital of the country and suburban areas.

Its commander in chief was Ricardo Ramírez de Léon, alias Commander Rolando Morán, the first secretary general of the URNG after the signing of the Peace Accords.

Sandinista triumph in Nicaragua

In the mid-1970s, some of the Nicaraguan economic leaders and members of the Catholic Church in that Central American country began to align themselves against the dictatorial government of Anastasio Somoza Debayle. They formed an opposition movement led by Pedro Joaquín Chamorro Cardenal, owner of the country's largest daily La Prensa, and forced the government to make some changes. But after the assassination of Chamorro on January 10, 1978, great unrest broke out in the country and in March 1979 the different fractions of the Sandinista National Liberation Front signed the unity agreement; then, in June they called for the "Final Offensive" and called for a general strike. The United States government of Jimmy Carter tried, through the Organization of American States (OAS), to stop the advance of the FSLN, but did not obtain the necessary support from the Latin American countries present in the organization. Later, it tried to station troops in Costa Rica to intervene in Nicaragua, but this operation did not work either; Neither did the attempts to negotiate with the FSLN for the composition of a National Reconstruction Government Junta.

Finally, the United States was forced to request the resignation of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who left the country on Tuesday, July 17, 1979. Francisco Urcuyo Maliaños, then President of the Nicaraguan National Congress, was named president and announced that he would not resign the presidency and that he would complete his term until May 1981. That same day, the foreign ministers of the Andean Pact --Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru-- meeting in San José, Costa Rica, publicly rejected Urcuyo's maneuver, and On the morning of Wednesday, July 18, Sergio Ramírez, Alfonso Robelo, and Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, left San José, Costa Rica, and headed for León, where they met with Sandinista commanders Daniel Ortega Saavedra and Moisés Hassan Morales, proclaiming León as the new provisional capital, and the international community recognized them as the legitimate government of the Republic.

Urcuyo went into exile in Guatemala; For their part, the Sandinistas entered Managua on July 19, 1979, putting an end to the Somocista dictatorial stage, assuming government responsibilities. This triumph meant a new hope for the guerrilla combatants of Guatemala and El Salvador, who now saw how they could obtain logistical and military resources not only from Cuba, but also from Nicaragua.

Bombing of September 5, 1980

On September 5, 1980, a terrorist attack by the Guerrilla Army of the Poor and the Guatemalan Labor Party (PGT) took place in front of the National Palace with the intention of dissuading the Guatemalan people from attending a demonstration in support of the government of General Lucas García that was planned for Sunday, September 7, in the Central Park. In that attack, six adults and one child died due to the explosion of two bombs located in a vehicle; there were an undetermined number of injuries and extensive material damage not only to the works of art in the National Palace, but also to many of the surrounding buildings, especially in the Lucky Building, which is in front of the National Palace on 6th. avenue. The television images showed parts of the bodies distributed around the area of the incident, while the newspapers showed on their front pages the image of the destroyed car bomb and the surroundings of the palace.

The attack was carried out in two parts: first, at night, the guerrillas deposited a small explosive charge in the sewer located in Central Park, at the corner of 6th. street and 6a. zone 1 avenue, in front of the corner where the presidential office was located inside the National Palace. In the morning, the guerrillas parked a vehicle on that hole, which had a much larger load inside; at 9:35 am. m. detonated the small explosive charge, which in turn exploded the one inside the vehicle, leaving the bodies of several civilians scattered after being mutilated, whose human remains were thrown in a radius greater than 70 meters. Five minutes after the explosion occurred, seven vehicles were set on fire.

That same day, and also to try to prevent the development of the demonstration, the guerrillas attacked the Galgos bus terminal, and a Fortaleza company bus, killing a mechanic.

Images of the attacks can be seen on Luis Figueroa's website: Figueroa, Luis (November 29, 2011). "Bombing in Central Park". Google potos plus. Accessed October 25, 2014.

• 

  This was how the Central Park looked when the bomb attack occurred in September 1980. Note the large number of parked vehicles, which was taken advantage of by the guerrillas to conceal the bomb.

Attacks against state property

The guerrilla organizations justified these actions arguing that they affected, on the one hand, the economic interests of the State and the productive sectors, and on the other, that they violated the Army:

• Poor Guerrilla Army: "Destroy infrastructure with the concept of saying we will destroy the infrastructure of the country, to damage the country, not that. I always had an explanation... regarding the war that we were living and in relation to the tactical moment that for what we were going to fly this bridge, we were going to fly it so that the Army would not pass and so that it would not continue with its barbarism... to cut off the advance and withdrawal... But what is Nenton's for the north, the road closed [ends 81 beginning 82], the Army did not enter, no authority entered, the telegraph posts that were the media that was apart from the road were cut off." "By cutting the energy to reach the Army headquarters, the energy of the entire population was cut, creating discontent among the people. Then, those sabotages were generalized for already cause complete uncontrollable throughout the country and prepare conditions to go to an almost pre-insurrection period.
• Rebel Armed Forces: "We pursue the bstaculization of the coordination, communication and mobilization of enemy forces, on the one hand, and on the other the obstruction of the development of the productive processes that drive the ruling classes."

On the other hand, at the end of 1981 and beginning of 1982, the guerrillas burned around 24 municipalities of the 31 that the department of Huehuetenango has, and 33 civil registries were destroyed throughout the republic. These events harmed the population because they burned the official books, and for some time there was no place to record any civil event.

Attacks against private property

The attack against financial, commercial and agricultural objectives increased, since the guerrilla groups considered these institutions as "bourgeois reactionaries" and "exploiting millionaires" who collaborate with the "genocidal government" of Lucas García. The following is a non-exhaustive list of the attacks that were registered in the report of the Commission for Historical Clarification of the United Nations:

Combat the Civil Self-Defense Patrols

The Guerrilla Army of the Poor elaborated a classification of the PACs according to the degree of collaboration that they provided to the Army. They distinguished the patrols formed by the population willing to participate and collaborate with the Army, which he called reactionary bands, from those "forced civil patrols" that participated by force. The guerrillas considered that "the military coup plays a decisive role: the blow to the Army, to the reactionary gangs, to their leaders and to all enemies of the People and the Revolution." According to the EGP, the reactionary bands were armed, received training, and were not only aggressive in seeking combat with the guerrillas, but they were murderers in their own towns. The EGP was in charge of executing many members of the PAC, especially when they were unawares in their villages.. In 1982, he assassinated the members of the patrol that had just been formed in March in Chacalté and who were faithful to the army after being disappointed in the promises of the guerrilla, which had the intention to achieve a change in the government, but never had the sufficient resources to achieve it; In that massacre, 55 patrolmen who were unaware at the time of the attack were killed.

Operation Sofia

Operation Sofia: document issued by the Guatemalan army in 1982.

From July 8 to August 20, 1982, the Guatemalan army implemented the Operation Sofia plan. The military intelligence report indicated that after the strong offensive launched against the insurgency in the last quarter of 1981, the guerrillas had been defeated and had not achieved its objective of reaching power in March 1982; but, in January 1982, the EGP had begun a political-military offensive to overcome the crisis that the Army offensive had represented. The intelligence report also states that the guerrilla offensive had increased in the Nebaj region, in El Quiché due to the international aid that the insurgents had received from abroad and that two new fronts had been formed, the Frontier and the Afghanistan, which had approximately 30 combatants each, and were suitably equipped with weapons and first aid equipment. Regarding the civilians who lived in the area, the intelligence report indicates that all the inhabitants of the region had been made aware by the guerrillas, were hiding from the army in caves far from their towns and did not provide the information required of them..

The document of the "Operation Sofía" plan includes telegrams from the Army Transmission Service, where it is mentioned that civilians were evacuated from the area, and it is requested that those captured be reinstated to their normal life:

• July 22: "Today, 1100 hours, Salquil 87-12, 18 elderly people, 12 children, requested support that superiority effect subsistence control and reinstatement to their normal life. »
• July 24: "1500 hours were evacuated from conflict area 10 families were threatened by subversion, including 5 men, 10 women, 17 girls, 15 children, a newborn. Families are pending for evacuation. »
• July 25: "Increase number of evacuated 8 men, 13 women, 17 children, a newborn. »
• July 26: "Number of evacuees has been 20 men, 27 women, 6 boys, 25 girls, a newborn. »

The document also contains examples of army and guerrilla pamphlets, which were part of the psychological warfare that was being carried out and for which the Guatemalan army requested a small radio station from the General Staff and the implementation of a psychological operations team, since the vast majority of the local population was very convinced of the guerrilla doctrine, was illiterate, and knew very little Spanish:

• Example of military pamphlet:

• Example of GSP pamphlet:

Both pamphlets are aimed at educating the inhabitants of the region, but both show a strong ignorance of the population to which they are addressed: on the one hand, the language used in the guerrilla pamphlet is extremely sophisticated, showing that those who use it They wrote were highly educated people fighting for a Marxist ideal, but without the ability to express the same ideas in simple, direct language that could be easily understood by illiterate rural communities. On the other hand, the language of the army is much more accessible for the inhabitants, but it is not convincing due to the news that was circulating in the area about the actions of the army. In both cases, an indigenous interpretation of the events is lacking: there is no reference to the beliefs of the Ixils, much less written in their native language that effectively conveyed the messages.

Then, the army report on the results of Operation Sofía on August 19, 1982, indicates that it «was successful both in the military aspect and in that of psychological operations. During the entire operation, pressure was maintained on the enemy, there were no casualties due to combat or administrative, having managed to cut off the logistical support bases in the area, having managed to destroy 10 large mailboxes and deactivated 33 traps during the reporting period. 15 underground dwellings all of which were destroyed. In operations to control the population, it was possible to remove a great deal of support for the guerrillas, managing to evacuate 122 people to the municipality of Nebaj, who remained under the control of the Military Detachment of said municipality. The First Company of paratroopers formed a detachment in the Salquil Village in order to gather in this village the inhabitants of the different cantons, reporting having gathered and controlled 737 people, who are receiving help and security from the Gumarkaj Task Force.. On August 5, 246 residents of Salquil and its surroundings presented themselves to the military authorities of the municipality of Aguacatán, requesting protection."

For its part, the documentary When the mountains tremble sponsored by the Guatemalan guerrilla talks about massacres in villages and shows how a guerrilla patrol reaches a town and speaks to it in its own indigenous language to get the message of the revolution across to them. This documentary, narrated by future Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú, presents a guerrilla group made up entirely of indigenous people committed to a revolution against the "Army of the Rich"; The documentary does not show the guerrilla leaders or the intellectuals who wrote the Marxist pamphlets and documents, but it does show the leaders of the 1982 coup, General Ríos Mont and Colonels Gordillo and Maldonado Schaad. Likewise, it does not make any mention because Ixcán had been populated between 1964 and 1968 as part of the formation of the Northern Transversal Strip and that later, the cooperatives that had originally been formed to promote agricultural activity in the region were now being evicted by the force when the military government discovered oil at the site. Finally, the massacres are not shown for most of the film, but only mentioned; It is until the end, that the victims are shown together with their relatives.

After the overthrow of Lucas García on March 23, 1982, a military triumvirate led by General Efraín Ríos Montt, along with Colonels Horacio Maldonado Shaad and Francisco Gordillo, rose to power. On June 2, 1982, international journalists interviewed Ríos Montt, who said the following regarding the government of Lucas García and the Northern Transversal Strip:

Weakening

After the strong military offensive in 1981-82, with several notable events, such as the elimination of two guerrilla barracks in a strong confrontation in July 1981 and the harsh offensive in the Northern Transversal Strip by the general's regime Fernando Romeo Lucas García and after the coup d'état of March 23, 1982, by the government of General Efraín Ríos Montt, the EGP commander Mario Payeras raised the military defeat of the insurgency and proposed a discussion for a change of strategy of revolutionary struggle that was rejected by the leadership of the EGP. As a result, Payeras broke with the EGP in 1984 due to ethical, political and ideological differences. Along with a leading contingent of cadres who followed him, he formed a new unarmed revolutionary organization, called "Revolutionary October."

Location of government projects and massacres in the area of the Northern Transversal Strip. Watch the Atzam oil field that is operational in Ixcan.

Dissolution

The EGP self-dissolved on February 15, 1997, two and a half months after the Firm and Lasting Peace Agreement was signed, its officers, troops, cadres, and militants joined the nascent Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity party.