Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity
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Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity
Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca |
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| Abbreviation | URNG-MAIZ |
| General Secretary | Gregorio Chay |
| Founded | 7 February 1982 |
| Legalised | 18 December 1998 |
| Merger of |
EGP FAR ORPA PGT PGT-NDN |
| Headquarters | Guatemala City |
| Ideology |
Socialism Marxism |
| Political position | Left-wing |
| Regional affiliation | Foro de São Paulo |
| Colors | Red, Green, Yellow (logo) Blue, White (flag) |
| Congress |
2 / 158
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| Party flag | |
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| Website | |
| www |
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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 after the Guatemalan Civil War.
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 UNRG formed as a leftist umbrella organization consisting of four groups: the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms (ORPA), the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), and the National Directing Nucleus of PGT (PGT-NDN). They became the public face of the long-running insurgency against the Guatemalan government throughout the Civil War. The URNG led the leftist opposition in peace negotiations with the conservative Guatemalan government. These negotiations began in 1987, and brought the end of the civil war when negotiations finished in 1996. They received support from Guatemala’s rural poor as well as from urban intellectuals.
In March 1982, only one month after their formation, the URNG experienced an attack ordered by then president, retired General Efraín Ríos Montt. Backed by the CIA, Ríos Montt led a "scorched-earth" counterinsurgency campaign against the URNG and its supporters until he was toppled the following year.
The UNRG employed ambushes and raids on government security forces as their main tactic, and also performed bombings and assassinations. They attacked the military, government officials, as well as foreign diplomats and foreign businesses. The government responded with undercover death-squads, supported by the police and military, who undertook the mission to take down prominent leftists.
By the time a civilian government returned to office in 1986, the URNG recognized that coming to power through armed struggle was out of the question, and they took initiatives to negotiate a political solution.
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Wikipedia