The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (in Spanish: Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, URNG-MAIZ or most commonly URNG) is a Guatemalan political party that started as a guerrilla movement but laid down its arms in 1996 and became a legal political party in 1998 after the peace process which ended the Guatemalan Civil War.
History
Background
PBSUCCESS and early insurgency
Since the CIA-backed coup in 1954, opposition groups were continuously forming in an attempt to fight against the repression that the military and wealthy landowners in Guatemala had created. The ensuing military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas immediately on 28 June 1954 banned the Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT) and shortly later other labor unions and left-wing parties with suspected communist sympathies via Decree 4880. After the assassination of Castillo Armas by a left-wing member of the presidential guard, Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes prevailed in the ensuing power struggle. The continued repression, coupled with an ever closer alignment of the Guatemalan government with the United States government, as well as rampant corruption and favoritism led to a rebellion by a group of dissident officers, which later named themselves Revolutionary Movement 13th November (MR-13), in reference to the incident. The failed coup d'état on 13 November 1960 usually marks the beginning of the Guatemalan Civil War, a bloody affair that lasted 36 years and claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people. With United States military assistance, the guerrilla were uprooted from eastern Guatemala and had to flee to neighboring Honduras. Remnants of the MR-13 returned in 1962 and established the first guerrilla group, the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR). After barely any preparation the FAR launched its first attacks against remote military installations and properties of the United Fruit Company on 6 February 1962. The failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961 and his purported erratic behavior convinced part of the military and the United States to rid themselves of Ydígoras Fuentes, which finally succeeded after several attempts in March 1963. This putsch, led by his Minister of Defense Alfredo Enrique Peralta Azurdia, denoted the beginning of Guatemala's first authentic military regime. In 1966, the law professor Julio César Méndez Montenegro was elected to the presidency, but was only allowed to take up the position under the condition, that he would not interfere in matters of internal security or the military. The year also saw the creation of Mano Blanca, a right-wing paramilitary group associated with the MLN, founded to prohibit Méndez Montenegro from taking office and to counter left-wing activism. The subsequent "white terror" coupled with the Zacapa program, severely crippled the guerrilla force based in eastern Guatemala, which in turn tried to avoid detection by hiding in cities. The FAR responded by resorting to various assassinations and abductions during the late 1960s to early 1970's, like those of John Gordon Mein and Karl von Spreti. The tense security situation led both right-wing military factions, namely the MLN and PID to unify for the elections in 1970, to counter the reforms initiated under Méndez Montenegro, which the army perceived as infringing on their autonomy. The incoming government of Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio initiated another counterinsurgency to stifle the FAR and began to entrench the military in the Guatemalan economy, chiefly by establishing the Army Bank, which handed out loans to the officer corps.