Alfonso Portillo
|
His Excellency Alfonso Portillo |
|
|---|---|
| 33rd President of Guatemala | |
|
In office 14 January 2000 – 14 January 2004 |
|
| Vice President | Juan Francisco Reyes |
| Preceded by | Álvaro Arzú |
| Succeeded by | Óscar Berger |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
24 September 1951 Zacapa |
| Political party | Guatemalan Republican Front |
Alfonso Antonio Portillo Cabrera (born 24 September 1951) is a Guatemalan politician who served as President of Guatemala from 2000 to 2004.
He took office on 14 January 2000, representing the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), the party led by retired general and former military ruler Efraín Ríos Montt.
Portillo was born in Zacapa. He obtained his academic qualifications in Mexico. He allegedly received a degree in social sciences from the Autonomous University of Guerrero (UAG) in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, and his doctorate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. However, the veracity of such claims remains uncertain since no evidence has been provided to support them.
In the late 1970s he became involved with left-wing indigenous groups in Guerrero and with the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). During the 1980s he lectured in political science at the university in Chilpancingo. During that time, Portillo shot and killed two students. He later claimed that he had shot the students in self-defense. His political opponents, however, asserted that he had killed the two unarmed students in a "bar brawl." He was never charged for the shootings, and in 1995, a Mexican judge declared the case "inactive."
In 1989 Portillo returned to Guatemala and joined the Social Democratic Party, which had replaced the Authentic Revolutionary Party the previous year. The little-known PSD was one of the very few leftist parties that survived the military repression that had characterized the 1970s and 1980s. He then moved to the Guatemalan Christian Democrats (DCG), a center-right formation which at the time was the governing party. In 1992 he was appointed Director of the Guatemalan Institute of Social and Political Sciences (IGESP), a role he held till 1994. He became the DCG's Secretary General in 1993 and was elected as one of their deputies in 1994, and became head of their group in Congress. During this time he also became an editorial adviser to Siglo Veintiuno, one of the two largest-selling daily newspapers.
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