Efraín Ríos Montt
President of Guatemala
Died when: 91 years 289 days (1101 months)Star Sign: Gemini
José Efraín Ríos Montt (Spanish: [efɾaˈin ˈrios ˈmont]; 16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who served as de facto President of Guatemala in 1982–83.
His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War.Ríos Montt's counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxist guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), while also leading to accusations of war crimes and genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army under his leadership.
Ríos Montt was a career army officer.He was director of the Guatemalan military academy and rose to the rank of brigadier general.
He was briefly chief of staff of the Guatemalan army in 1973, but was soon forced out of the position over differences with the military high command.
He ran for president in the 1974 general election, losing to the official candidate General Kjell Laugerud in an electoral process widely regarded as fraudulent.
In 1978, Ríos Montt controversially abandoned the Catholic Church and joined an Evangelical Christian group affiliated with the Gospel Outreach Church.
In 1982, discontent with the rule of General Romeo Lucas García, the worsening security situation in Guatemala, and accusations of electoral fraud led to a coup d'état by a group of junior military officers who installed Ríos Montt as head of a government junta.
Ríos Montt ruled as military dictator for less than seventeen months before he was overthrown in another coup led by his defense minister, General Óscar Mejía Victores.
In 1989, Ríos Montt returned to the Guatemalan political scene as leader of a new political party, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG).
He was elected many times to the Congress of Guatemala, serving as president of the Congress in 1995-96 and 2000–04.
A constitutional provision prevented him from registering as a presidential candidate due to his involvement in the military coup of 1982, but the FRG obtained both the presidency and a congressional majority in the 1999 general election.
Authorized by the Constitutional Court to run in the 2003 presidential elections, Ríos Montt came in third and withdrew from politics.
He returned to public life in 2007 as a member of Congress, thereby gaining legal immunity from long-running lawsuits alleging war crimes committed by him and some of his ministers and counselors during their term in the presidential palace in 1982–83.
His immunity ended on 14 January 2012, when his legislative term of office expired.In 2013 a court sentenced Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity, but that sentence was quashed by the Constitutional Court and his retrial was never completed.
Related People
.jpg?width=300)
President of Guatemala
President of Guatemala
President of Guatemala