Vinicio Cerezo - President

President

In the first round of the 1985 presidential elections on November 3 Cerezo came first with 38.6% of the result, and in the second round on December 8 he beat Jorge Carpio with 68.4% of the vote. The DCG gained 51 of the 100 seats in conference, and also gained a majority in many of the municipalities. He was both the first democratically elected President and the first civilian since 1966. In his inauguration, which was met with great hopes amongst the population, he promised to ensure that what he called the dark forces of the right would not be able to break the public order or the state. He promised to change Guatemala within his first 126 days. Some of his first actions as president were to force army chief of staff and suspected human rights abuser Rodolfo Lobos Zamora to retire from his military career, and to name Jaime Hernández Méndez as Minister of Defence, in what was described as a "test of wills" with the Army.

The response was a new wave of terror, with many what are suspected to have been extrajudicial killings but have never been proved. This battle against the undoubted forces of terror operating in the country was to be the dominant theme of his rule. According to NGO Americas Watch in 1986 100 people a month were dying in the conflict at that time. He declared Guatemala neutral in the civil wars that were occurring in neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua. He was a great supporter of the idea of a Central American Parliament. There were 2 important conferences on Central American integration in Esquipulas, the second of which, in August 1987 established the Procedure for a firm and lasting peace, the most important milestone in re-establishing peace in the region.

On September 11, 1987 he established the National Commission for Reconciliation (CNR), and on October 7 negotiations between the URNG and the government began. When they failed two days later, with the government refusing to accept the URNG's terms, Cerezo asked the United States of America for more military aid to further the counter insurgency efforts of the armed forces. On October 28 Congress passed a general political amnesty. Amidst rumors of plots and possible assassination attempts against Cerezo many also began to consider him as powerless and ineffective. After a farcical attempt by 2 colonels to take power on May 11, 1988 on May 19 an Air force unit made a series of demands of the government, including breaking ties with pro-USSR countries and stopping any contacts with the URNG, as well as more money for better equipment and the removal of many local politicians. Cerezo admitted that he had had to submit to some of the military's demands in order to avoid a coup taking place. In August there was a three-week general strike in protest against the liberalization of petrol and other sources of fuel.

1989 saw a worsening of the political situation, with 1600 assassinations and 800 kidnappings or disappearances in the first half of the year. These were attributed to the political violence and the covert war between suspected extrajudicial right-wing forces and the URNG. On May 9 another attempted coup failed, and though the perpetrators were sentenced to long terms in jail that November, they were released on appeal the following January. On August 1 Danilo Barillas, the Secretary General of the DCG was assassinated, but on August 25 Cerezo came back with a new promise to renovate the public administration by consolidating democracy within 500 days (the time he had left in power); which he managed to achieve as we see democracy still stands to this day on Guatemala.

In 1990 during a thaw in diplomatic relations Cerezo invited the noted Russian linguist and epigrapher Yuri Knorozov to Guatemala to present him with a medal. Knorozov had been instrumental in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, and this was the first opportunity for the scholar to visit the lands and sites of the former Maya civilization.

In May 1990 an important agreement was signed in Madrid with the URNG in which they promised not to disturb the forthcoming elections. With this success behind him Cerezo felt able to give a positive recapitulation of his presidency, and he was able to hand power over to his successor Jorge Serrano in the first democratic transition of power since 1951. In this process the DCG did very badly, with its candidate, Alfonso Cabrera Hidalgo, not getting past the first round, but they still won 27 seats in the National Congress.

Then on December 1 a troop of soldiers massacred 24 campesinos in Santiago Atitlán in the department of Sololá. In the resulting outcry the US suspended military aid to Guatemala. Despite having supported the previous coups that lead to human rights abuses in the countryside, President Cerezo claims to have stopped the massacre himself.