Government seat
General Ubico was not able to enjoy the palace that he ordered to be built, because in the face of growing opposition to his regime, and due to widespread popular discontent, he decided to resign on July 1, 1944, just seven months after inaugurating the work:[Note 1][4].
Liberal writers have said that Ubico resigned to avoid useless bloodshed in the country.[5] However, opponents of the Ubico regime indicate that he did so to give Guatemala a lesson and that is why he left in their place the three most drunk and incompetent military members of his staff: Eduardo Villagrán Ariza, Federico Ponce Vaides and Buenaventura Pineda.[6].
From July to September 1944, General Federico Ponce Vaides - who had been delegated by President Jorge Ubico as interim president after his resignation on July 1, 1944 - issued coercive measures against citizens, supported by the Progressive Liberal Party, with the aim of perpetuating himself in power. Several high-ranking intermediate-ranking military officers in the Honor Guard battalion began to exchange impressions and propose solutions to prevent the emergence of a new dictatorship in the country.[7] The main links they maintained were the low-ranking military officers Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán and Enrique de León Aragón. In addition, the businessman Jorge Toriello, the labor leader Silverio Ortiz, Dr. Julio Bianchi and a group of students led by Mario and Julio César Méndez Montenegro, Oscar de León Aragón and Julio Valladares Castillo, among others.[8].
On the night before October 20, 1944, after coordinating the units that would be in combat, checking communications, assigning missions and objectives of establishing a command post, the elders decided to begin operations in accordance with the established strategic plan: two artillery pieces were placed in zone 5 to shell the Matamoros Castle while two tanks covered the front of the barracks to prevent escapes;[9] from the heights of Cerrito del Carmen, two other units They bombed the Castillo de San José, also besieged by another pair of tanks. The airfield of the La Aurora International Airport was neutralized and then four more cannons were placed against Matamoros and the Castillo de San José, producing, in both, material damage to the buildings and a considerable number of casualties between dead and wounded. Finally, four tanks were placed in front of the National Palace with the order to attack if resistance was encountered.[10] The first civilians to join the armed struggle were fifteen university students who arrived at the Honor Guard at two in the morning, who were immediately armed. Another civilian contingent was that of armed workers led by the legendary leader Silverio Ortiz.[11].
In the early morning hours of October 20, the Matamoros Castle raised the white flag in a sign of redemption and the San José Castle did the same. Some violent street events by the resistance forced the revolutionary army to integrate with students and teachers a surveillance body called "Civic Guard", which patrolled Guatemala City from the night of October 20 onwards, replacing the national police.[12] After the surrender of the two military bastions defending the government of Federico Ponce, the president and his cabinet raised the white flag of the cessation of hostilities.[13].
President Juan José Arévalo Bermejo began his government in 1945, and from the beginning he used sometimes dissociative language, which began to polarize Guatemalan society, causing landowners to feel that he was only the ruler of a part of Guatemalans. In the book "Presidential Office" by Arévalo, it is observed that the government began with sanctions against the opposition,[Note 2] economic interventionism by the State[Note 3] and determined support for a recently emerged trade union movement. Thus then, the opposition forces to the Arevalista government[Note 4] little by little were marginalized and began to fear the implementation of socialism in the country.[14] On the other hand, it is important to highlight that President Arévalo took office with limited power, restricted by the military, who were led by Lieutenant Colonel Arana.[15] This is how the country was when Dr. Arévalo, in the company of a friend and two Russian dancers who were visiting In Guatemala, he had a terrible car accident on the road to Panajachel: he fell into a ravine and was seriously injured, while all his companions died.[16][17][18] The leaders of the PAR signed a pact with the now lieutenant colonel Arana, in which he promised not to attempt any coup d'état against the convalescent president, in exchange for the revolutionary parties supporting Arana as their official candidate in the following elections.[Note 5] However, the robust president's recovery was almost miraculous and he was soon able to take charge of the government again.[Note 6][19] Arana had accepted this pact because he wanted to be known as a "democratic hero" of the uprising against Ponce and believed that the Barranco Pact would guarantee his position when the time came for presidential elections.
Arana was a very influential person in the government of Juan José Arévalo, and had managed to be nominated as the next candidate for the presidency, ahead of Captain Arbenz, who was told that due to his young age (just 36 years at that time) he would have no problem waiting for his election in the following elections.[16] Arana died in an armed confrontation against civilian soldiers who wanted to arrest him on July 18, 1949, on the Puente de la Gloria, in Amatitlán, where he had gone in the company of his assistant and the commander of the "La Aurora" air base to seize weapons that had been seized a few days before.[20] Colonel Arana stopped by a vehicle stopped in the middle of the road, moments later another arrived from behind while the civilian soldiers of the two vehicles show their weapons, there was probably no intention to kill him, but as a soldier in charge of his mission - which had been entrusted to him in the president's office himself Arévalo- reacted defensively.
The response of the armed forces loyal to Arana was immediate: Guatemalan army tanks positioned themselves in front of the southwest corner of the National Palace and the Presidential House, and from there they fired at the presidential office and the president's residence. Despite the extensive shooting, there were no victims of the attack, but the building suffered a considerable number of bullet holes, which are still visible in the century. Arévalo and Arbenz managed to solve the crisis and conclude the constitutional mandate in 1951.
In December 1961, President General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes organized electoral fraud in the elections to elect the deputies to the Congress of the Republic. It was determined that on March 1, 1962, these deputies would take their respective positions. University students, organized in the Association of University Students (AEU), and secondary education students gathered in the United Front of Organized Guatemalan Students (FUEGO) held a protest on March 1 of that year and that same day, the students carried out a work stoppage in the different faculties and schools of the University, dispersed throughout the center of the City. On March 9, the AEU called for a second work stoppage. On the 13th there was another strike. The students paralyzed a good part of the capital's economic activity. They controlled the city's entrances, throwing tacks to stop vehicle traffic. They were the first days of massive struggle since the counterrevolutionary coup of 1954. The students, using only sticks, stones and some Molotov cocktails, stopped the advances of the public forces. When the government cut off the telephone network, the students reacted, occupying radio stations to transmit their messages and thus coordinate their actions. The protests spread to the interior of the country, Chiquimula, Jutiapa "Jutiapa (municipality)"), Retalhuleu, San Marcos "San Marcos (San Marcos)"), Huehuetenango and mainly to Quetzaltenango, the second center of student protest.
Emulating the events of June 1944 - which ended the government of General Jorge Ubico - the movement called for the resignation of Ydígoras Fuentes for his corruption and despotism, the dissolution of Congress, the repeal of the 1956 Constitution and the reimplantation of that of 1945, as well as the installation of an agrarian reform, among other demands. At that time, the mass movement in the capital had already become a challenge for the government. Ydigoras released a statement in which he attributed the unrest to the communists and called on the population not to allow "communism" to "bloody" Guatemala again. Ydigoras Fuentes ordered the protests to be repressed; A state of siege was declared, a curfew was imposed and the chase began. The popular rebellion was put down and at the end of the revolt the balance was dozens of dead and wounded, hundreds of captured and many others expelled from the country.
On September 5, 1980, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor carried out an attack in front of the National Palace with the intention of dissuading the Guatemalan people from attending a demonstration in support of the government of General Lucas García that was planned for Sunday, September 7 in the Central Park. In that attack, seven people died due to the explosion of two bombs located in a vehicle;[21][22].
The attack left an unknown number of injuries and extensive material damage not only to the works of art in the National Palace, but also to many of the surrounding buildings, especially in the Lucky Building, which is in front of the National Palace on 6th Street. avenue.[23][Note 7] The television images showed parts of the bodies distributed around the area of the incident, while the newspapers showed on their front pages the image of the destroyed car bomb and the surroundings of the palace.[24].
In the morning, the guerrilla parked a vehicle on that swallow, which had a much larger load inside; The explosive charge was detonated, causing serious material and human damage, leaving the bodies of several civilians scattered after being mutilated, whose human remains were thrown in a radius greater than seventy meters. Five minutes after the explosion occurred, seven vehicles were on fire.[Note 8].
The palace suffered minor damage to its structure, but its stained glass windows were destroyed.
On March 23, 1982, the young officers of the Guatemalan Army carried out a coup d'état to overthrow President Fernando Romeo Lucas García and replace him with General Efraín Ríos Montt, who had been director of the Polytechnic School "Escuela Politécnica (Guatemala)") when many of the plotters had completed their military studies.
On June 30, 1982, Ríos Montt, in a speech titled "We are willing for honesty and justice to reign," said that the government realized that there were Guatemalans who, for fear of being murdered, had not made use of the amnesty, because the "communist comrades" had declared themselves enemies of these populations and that for this reason the government was going to combat subversion by whatever means they wanted, but that they were going to do so with open trials, completely fair, at the same time with energy and rigor. He reported that for this purpose he had established "special jurisdiction courts" that would fulfill this purpose and declared that from that moment on there was the death penalty by firing squad for those who kidnapped, set fires, and attacked and damaged defense facilities.
The special jurisdiction courts, directed by unknown officials, civil or military, appointed by the president, and who tried and convicted, in a drastic and rapid manner, in parallel to the Judicial Branch, more than five hundred people accused of attempting to violate the legal, political, economic and social institutions of the country were a judicial body subject to the Executive Branch.[25] In total, 15 people were shot to death without there being any way to prove their guilt, since in less than a month after their capture, The courts with anonymous judges – faceless and without record – sentenced them to death and the arguments on which their ruling was based were never made public. In addition, another 582 people who were not sentenced to death were tried.[25].
The courts operated under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense, then headed by General Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores. After the visit of the IACHR (Inter-American Court of Human Rights) at the end of 1982, Ríos Montt decided to suspend all existing death penalty executions, without disclosing the names of those convicted, taking into account some suggestions from the international human rights organization. After receiving the report from the IACHR, the law would undergo modifications; among them, that the defense could have at least a discreet participation and the creation of a second instance for the processes submitted to these courts. On December 14, 1982, the changes were published in the Official Gazette: Decree Law 111-82.[25] The defense was able to at least activate a mechanism within the Official Justice System, which although it did not manage to prevent the executions, at least postponed them for a few days.[25].
On March 3, 1983, General Mejía Víctores, Minister of Defense, forced the CSJ magistrates to go to the National Palace - which was now known to be the headquarters of the Special Jurisdiction Courts - so that they could finally review the documents. After conferring with the judges in the Palace, the CSJ magistrates found only small errors, and consequently those sentenced would be shot. Ten hours later, six prisoners were shot, whose death had great repercussions in Guatemala and the world, because it occurred just a few days before the visit of Pope John Paul II to Guatemala, who had asked for indulgence for the condemned.[25].
The Special Jurisdiction Courts were in force throughout the Ríos Montt Government and it was never known who the judges were.[25].