Guatemala
...ras, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. The elite class was divided into competing liberal and conservative factions. In 1829 liberal forces commanded by Honduran general Francisco Morazán took power. Morazán instituted policies that took land from the church, indigenous people, and rural communities and turned it over to private owners and foreign investors for commercial agriculture. Changes have been made in the educational systems, encouraged foreign immigration, and introduced trial by jury and other judicial innovations. These actions made huge rifts of the Guatemalan clergy, legal profession, and rural peasants. Taking advantage of the widespread dissatisfaction, Rafael Carrera, a conservative and a former army officer, led the peasants in a successful guerrilla war, and the federation collapsed. Carrera dominated Guatemala from 1840 until his death in 1865, ruling almost as a dictator. Under his rule, Guatemala formally declared itself a republic in 1847. The Catholic clergy regained much of its power, and foreign influence declined. Carrera's successor, General Vicente Cerna, continued rule until 1871, when liberals took power. Led by a series of strong dictators, Guatemala stayed under liberal rule until 1944. During this time, Guatemala's economy grew alot, largely from exports of coffee and other crops. An elite class benefited most from the economic success, and the gap between wealthy growers and rural laborers grew larger. Although coffee was the main economic force, bananas also became important. The crop was controlled primarily by the United Fruit Company (UFCO), which was owned by U.S. businesses. In the 1930s, the Great Depression brought severe economic decline to Guatemala; coffee and banana exports dropped dramatically. Jorge Ubico Castañeda took office as president in 1931 and remained in power until 1944, when growing opposition and sickness forced him to step down. General Jorge Ponce Vaides became president, but a group of military officers and civilians soon forced him to resign. A decade of dramatic social, economic, and political change in Guatemala referred to as the Guatemalan revolution or Ten Years of Spring began. Under the presidencies of Juan José Arévalo (1944-1951) and Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951-1954), the government gave more attention to the grievances of middle- and lower-class Guatemalans. It began to limit the privileges and power of the elite class and foreign capitalists. The land reform law of June 1952, which attempted to take unused agricultural land from large property owners and give it to landless rural workers, was aimed directly at the United Fruit Company's huge banana plantations. United Fruit's propaganda campaign against the Guatemalan revolution influenced the U.S. government. In 1954 a group of Guatemalan exiles, armed and trained by the U.S. government and commanded by Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, invaded Guatemala. Arbenz was forced to resign, and Castillo Armas became president. For the next 30 years military officers dominated Guatemala. Many of the reforms begun during the revolution were reversed. Land was returned to property owners; Marxist parties were outlawed; and other political parties, labor groups, and rural organizations were banned or severely restricted. With strong U.S. military and economic aid, the governments during this period were anti-Communist. With no peaceful way to seek political or social change, some Guatemalans turned to violence. In 1982 General Efraín Ríos Montt took control as a dictator, starting a brutal campaign against the guerrillas. The next year, there was a military coup on Ríos Montt and a period of conciliation began. In 1985 Marco Vinicio Cerezo won election as Guatemala's first civilian president in 31 years. Although the military still exercised complete control, civilian leaders continued to govern Guatemala in the 1990s. By the middle of the decade, a wider range of groups was allowed to participate in politics, and negotiations began to end the civil war. In 1992 Rigoberta Menchú Túm, a Quiché woman from Guatemala, won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of human rights for the poor and indigenous people of the country. A peace accord between the government and guerrilla forces was finally signed in 1996. The Political Parties were subject to drastic changes throughout the original time period later declared “the Guatemalan political system”. Severe instability, major military intervention in the political arena, and the volatility of the party system have all given reason to the declarations that Guatemala is "a country whose political system has failed miserably to keep pace with the dynamics of modern social and economic change". In 1966 to 1982 there was great military-civilian collaboration. General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes and his National Democratic Reconciliation Party held the presidency, but in March of 1963, his defense minister overthrew him. The coup occurred prior to the scheduled presidential elections in order to prevent the return of Juan José Arévalo. Not the new head of state, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdía, rewrote the constitution, to stipulated severe restrictions on political parties, including the requirement that all new parities were to submit membership lists in excess of 50,000 people. The government therefore had effective control over which parties could contest elections. This new contribution provided Azurdia with power to suppress the reformist parities. This idea was used in the election of 1966 restricting the number of participating parties to only three: the extreme rightist Nation Liberation Movement, the president’s own center-right Institutional Democratic Party, and the centrist Revolutionary Party. The Revolutionary Party took power after winning the presidential vote and majority of the Congress’s. The presidential candidate for the Revolutionary Party, Montenegro exercised very little control that was actually effective, leaving much of the power in the hand of the armed forces. This was then stopped in 1970 with the election giving power to Osorio, the head of a coalition of rightist. (Anticommunist parties) The voting was said to have become “a narrow choice between conservative parties allied with the military” at least until the coup in 1982. The presidency was a place for officers of the military selected by the military high command and endorsed by the rightist parties. This meant that all candidates have to be sanctioned by the armed forces. The coup of 1982 was the starting point for the civilian control to strengthen. On March 23, Montt and a group of army officers disaffected seized power in a bloodless coup. Montt, the head of a centrist coalition and who had be defrauded of the presidency in 1974, created the revision of the political system. However these revisions were interrupted when Victores replaced Montt in 1983 after a violent palace coup. 1984 brought the military government to announce election for an eighty-eight member Constituent Assembly, their job was toe draft a new constitution and electoral law. This new constitution was introduced in June of 1985. Elections were then held in November, which ushered in the new era of civilian control of the government. The Christian Democrat took both the presidency and majority of Congress. The governmental branches in Guatemala, executive, legislative and judicial, have separated powers because of the constitution of 1985. Following the constitution, in 1993 the constitutional reforms changed many aspects of the government including an increase in the number of Supreme Court justices from nine to thirteen. The terms of office for president, vice president, and congressional representatives were reduced from five to four years. The Supreme Court justices from six to five years, and the terms of mayors and city councils from 21/2 to four years. The president and vice president are directly elected through universal suffrage and limited to one term. A vice president can run for president after four years out of office. Supreme Court justices are elected by the Congress from a list submitted by the bar association, law school deans, a university rector, and appellate judges. The Supreme Court and local courts handle civil and criminal cases. There also is a Constitutional Court. Guatemala has twenty-two administrative departments administered by governors appointed by the president. Popularly elected mayors or councils govern Guatemala City and 330 others. Guatemala political conditions are now set as presidential and legislative election to be considered free and fair. The have been extended to women and indigenous voters, however, there are still concerns remaining regarding the accessibility of polling places in rural area...