Guatemalan dictator seized power through 1982 coup
GUATEMALA CITY — Former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who seized power in a 1982 coup and presided over one of the bloodiest periods of Guatemala’s civil war in which soldiers waged a scorched- earth campaign to root out Marxist guerrillas, died Sunday, his lawyers said.
Lawyer Jaime Hernandez said the family told him the 91- year- old, whose daughter married an Illinois congressman in 2004, died of a heart attack. Another of his attorneys, Luis Rosales, said he “died in peace, surrounded by his family.”
Echoing Rios Montt’s long- standing, angry denials, Rosales said, “Here ( in Guatemala) there was no genocide.”
Hector Reyes, a lawyer who represented the families of some of the victims of government massacres, disputed that. Rios Montt “didn’t die innocent,” Reyes said. “He had been convicted, even though his sentence was overturned.
“His house was his prison,” the lawyer added, referring to the house arrest Rios Montt had long been under.
A U. N. truth commission determined that some 245,000 people were killed or disappeared during Guatemala’s 1960- 1996 civilwar, with the vastmajority of the killings attributed to the army or pro- government paramilitary groups. Tens of thousands of those deaths came during Rios Montt’s 17- month rule.
Rios Montt was convicted in 2013 of genocide and crimes against humanity for the massacre of 1,771 indigenous Ixil Mayans by security forces under his command.
But the ruling was swiftly set aside and a new trial ordered, dismaying human rights activists and victims who long sought to see him punished for atrocities.
In October, his trial on genocide charges resumed behind closed doors after being suspended formore than a year while his lawyers argued he was too senile to participate, with no memory and unable to make decisions.
Guatemala’s Congress said in a statement that because of the political offices he held, Rios Montt was entitled to lie in state at the Legislative Palace. But the family decided to hold a quick, private burial ceremony Sunday at a local cemetery.
An ex- general known for inspiring fear and giving speeches at a near- shout, Rios Montt was later a longtime member of congress and one of the most influential figures in Guatemalan politics for three decades.
Born June 16, 1926, in the city of Huehuetenango, in western Guatemala’s highlands, Rios Montt grew up in a conservative Roman Catholic family.
He entered the army in 1946 as a cadet and, over a long career, held nearly every military post there was: troop assistant, platoon commander, instructor, defense secretary. He attended the U. S. School of the Americas in the 1950s, and became a brigadier general in 1972.
Rios Montt first ran for president in 1974 but lost amid allegations of electoral fraud and was sent to the Guatemalan Embassy in Spain as military attache.
In March 1982, he seized power in a military coup and promptly suspended the constitution, disbanded congress and set in motion a ruthless counterinsurgency campaign that resulted in thousands of deaths. According to a U. N. truth commission, the worst atrocities of the 1960- 1996 Guatemalan Civil War took place during his rule.
Nonetheless he continued to receive the support of the United States, where President Ronald Reagan called him “a man of great personal integrity and commitment.”
Rios Montt was married to Maria Teresa Sosa and had three children: Adolfo, who joined the army, participated in his father’s coup and was killed in 1984 in a rebel downing of a military helicopter; Zury, who was elected to Guatemala’s congress and in 2004 married then- U. S. Rep. Jerry Weller, R- Ill.; and Enrique, who also went into the army and served as defense minister.