Persecution and Populism: Analyzing the Electoral Success of Guatemala’s FRG

• In Event: Authoritarian Successor Parties in Latin America

Abstract

The Guatemalan civil war (1960-1996) killed more than 200,000 civilians, tore apart the social fabric of the Western Highlands, and included genocide against Guatemala’s Mayan population. The 1996 Peace Accords promised a more inclusive political system, and Guatemala held its first post-conflict national elections in 1999. Surprisingly, the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG) swept the elections: Alfonso Portillo became president, the FRG won a majority of seats in Congress, and Efraín Ríos Montt became the president of the Congress. Gen. Ríos Montt had presided over some of the conflict’s most intense years of repression, ruling as de facto president from March 1982 to August 1983. In the waning years of the war, he founded the FRG. Ríos Montt then entered Congress and built the FRG into a formidable organization. By the time of the 1999 elections, the FRG enjoyed national support, despite its founder’s notorious human rights record. Stranger still, the FRG’s base of support was the very region that Ríos Montt had targeted with scorched earth tactics. Out of the ashes of the war emerged houses painted with the FRG’s three-fingered salute, and town halls occupied by FRG mayors. This paper documents the rise of the FRG and uses survey data and qualitative evidence to evaluate potential explanations for the FRG’s electoral success, particularly amongst those individuals who formerly suffered at the hands of its founder.

Author

• Regina A Bateson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology