| History of Guatemala |
The golden age and decline of the Maya empire
In 1542, 32 years after Columbus had discovered America, under Pedro de Alvarado the Spanish invaded the region which now is Guatemala. At this time this region was highly populated by the descendants of the Maya, who, in the years 300 until 900 AD, had known a cultural golden age, in which they had developed a very precise script of words and pictures as well as mathematical and astronomical knowledge. Reasons for the decline of the Maya empire have not been resolved clearly until now. In the opinion of a lot of scientists, an ecological catastrophe destroyed the former flourishing Mayan metropolises that afterwards were overgrown by the rain forest. Therefore, at the time of the Spanish invasion, the Mayan descendants lived in very simple circumstances, pursued agriculture and were in close contact to nature."Discovery" of America
By the invasion of the Spanish, the living standards of the Mayas got worse dramatically. They were driven out or forced to work; they suffered from mistreatment, hunger and diseases brought in from Europe. Within a very short time the population of 800,000 reduced to approximately 100,000.
Independence of Guatemala
At the end of the 18th century, resistance was formed by the country exploited by the Spanish Crown which led to independence of Guatemala in 1821. After independence, huge coffee and banana plantations were formed that were led by domestic big landowners and increasingly by foreign companies, e.g. the "United Fruit Company". Politically the country was unstable and subject to dictatorial regimes. The dictatorship of Jorge Úbico (1933 - 1944) can be seen as the climax of the ordinary people's suffering. During this dictatorship all of Guatemala turned into a "big private madhouse", as quoted by a Times correspondent at the time. The Indígenas, as the Mayan descendants are called today, were deprived of all their rights and tortures and shootings reached alarming and unbearable proportions. In an uprising of the public population, government was removed and nine years of democracy followed.Under President Juan José Arévalo, who was elected in 1945, general electoral law was ratified, trade unions were legalised and literacy programmes were carried out. But when Jacobo Arbenz, his successor, wanted to carry out a land reform in which the Guatemalan plantations as well as the United Fruit Company were planned to be expropriated, the government was overthrown with financial help of the US and the support of the CIA in 1954.
Acts of terror and troops of death
During the following decades and with changing governments, the country remained in the hands of the powerful elite that was formed by big landowners, the army and increasingly industrialists. The oppression of a large part of the population was carried on with by extended states of emergency, acts of terror and troops of death.
Policy of the burned ground
At the end of the 70s, the guerrillas began to recruit again after several years of peace. President Romeo Lucas García, holding office at the beginning of the 80s, tried to fight them by introducing his "policy of the burned ground", which meant destroying whole villages and the killing of a lot of people, mostly of the indigenous population. García's successor, the religious fanatic Rios Montt, who became president in 1982, was pursuing the same politics more radically. During the 17 months of Rios Montt's dictatorship in Guatemala, the Guatemalan population suffered from the most horrible crimes of the civil war, which lasted more than 36 years: 440 villages were razed to the ground, 50,000 people "disappeared" and more than 100,000 people were killed. Those responsible have not been called to account yet and Rios Montt had immunity as president of the Congress until 2003.Continue to read about how the peace contract was created -> History of Guatemala - Part 2
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