The Rebel Armed Forces (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, FAR) was a Guatemalan guerrilla organization established in 1961 and lasting until the peace agreements in 1996.
In the late 1960s, the Guatemalan government began a United States-backed counter-insurgency campaign that killed between 2,800 and 8000 FAR supporters in eastern Guatemala. The survivors of this campaign, which devastated the FAR, regrouped in Mexico City in the 1970s, and founded the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), which succeeded in mobilizing tremendous popular support over the next few years.[1]
In 1970, the group briefly kidnapped Guatemala's foreign ministerAlberto Fuentes Mohr, but freed him in exchange for the release of a student leader. Karl von Spreti, German ambassador to Guatemala, was kidnapped and murdered by the FAR as well in that year. Further actions that year included the kidnapping of U.S. labor attachéSean Holly, he was freed for the release of FAR prisoners.[citation needed]
McAllister, Carlota (2010). "A Headlong Rush into the Future". In Grandin, Greg; Joseph, Gilbert (eds.). A Century of Revolution. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. pp.276–309.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army is a Marxist–Leninist guerrilla group involved in the continuing Colombian conflict starting in 1964. The FARC-EP was officially founded in 1966 from peasant self-defense groups formed from 1948 during the "Violencia" as a peasant force promoting a political line of agrarianism and anti-imperialism. They are known to employ a variety of military tactics, in addition to more unconventional methods, including terrorism.
The Shankill Butchers were an Ulster loyalist paramilitary gang — many of whom were members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) — that was active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was based in the Shankill area and was responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom were killed in sectarian attacks.
José Efraín Ríos Montt was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as de facto President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. 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.
The Dirty War is the name used by the military junta or civic-military dictatorship of Argentina for the period of state terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983 as a part of Operation Condor, during which military and security forces and death squads in the form of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance hunted down any political dissidents and anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement.
Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio was a military officer and politician who served as president of Guatemala from 1970 to 1974. His government enforced torture, disappearances and killings against political and military adversaries, as well as common criminals.
Julio César Méndez Montenegro was a Guatemalan academic who served as president of Guatemala from July 1966 to July 1970. Mendez was elected on a platform promising democratic reforms and the curtailment of military power. The only civilian to occupy Guatemala's presidency during the long period of military rule between 1954 and 1986. Mendez had assumed the presidency under a pact in July 1966 that gave the armed forces carte blanche with respect to internal security matters and an effective veto over governmental policy. Nevertheless, his election and swearing in was considered a major turning point for the long military-led Guatemala. He was the first cousin of César Montenegro Paniagua whose kidnapping, torture and murder during the Julio César Méndez presidency is rumored to have been undertaken with presidential sanction.
The Colombian conflict began on May 27, 1964, and is a low-intensity asymmetric war between the government of Colombia, far-right paramilitary groups and crime syndicates, and far-left guerrilla groups, fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory. Some of the most important international contributors to the Colombian conflict include multinational corporations, the United States, Cuba, and the drug trafficking industry.
Daniel Anthony Mitrione was a U.S. government official in Latin America who trained local police in the use of torture. He was kidnapped and murdered by the Tupamaros guerrilla group fighting against the authoritarian government in Montevideo, Uruguay.
The Dominican Republic Embassy siege was the 1980 siege of the embassy of the Dominican Republic by M-19 guerrillas in Bogotá, Colombia. The guerrillas held nearly 60 people, including 15 ambassadors, hostage. Of the initial group, 18 were held captive for 61 days.
An attack on the Saudi embassy in Khartoum took place on 1 March 1973. It was carried out by the Black September Organization. Ten diplomats were taken hostage. After President Richard Nixon stated that he refused to negotiate with terrorists, and insisted that "no concessions" would be made, the three Western hostages were killed.
Hugh Torney was an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary leader best known for his activities on behalf of the INLA and Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in a feud with the Irish People's Liberation Organisation (IPLO), a grouping composed of disgruntled former INLA members, in the mid-1980s.
The Guatemalan Civil War was a civil war in Guatemala fought from 1960 to 1996 between the government of Guatemala and various leftist rebel groups. The government forces have been condemned for committing genocide against the Maya population of Guatemala during the civil war and for widespread human rights violations against civilians. The context of the struggle was based on longstanding issues of unfair land distribution. Wealthy Guatemalans, mainly European-descended, and foreign companies such as the American United Fruit Company had dominated control over much of the land, and paid almost zero taxes in return – leading to conflicts with the rural indigenous poor who worked the land under miserable terms.
The Salvadoran Civil War was a twelve-year period of civil war in El Salvador that was fought between the government of El Salvador and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a coalition or "umbrella organization" of left-wing groups backed by the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro as well as the Soviet Union. A coup on 15 October 1979 followed by government killings of anti-coup protesters is widely seen as the start of civil war. The war did not formally end until 16 January 1992 with the signing of the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City.
This article covers national and international security issues in Colombia.
The Guerrilla Army Of The Poor was a Guatemalan leftist guerrilla movement, which commanded significant support among indigenous Maya people during the Guatemalan Civil War.
Mano Blanca, was a Guatemalan right-wing, anti-communist death squad, set up in 1966 to prevent Julio César Méndez Montenegro from being inaugurated as the president of Guatemala. While initially autonomous from the government, it was absorbed into the Guatemalan State's counter-terror apparatus and evolved into a paramilitary unit of the Guatemalan armed forces, and was responsible for the murder and torture of thousands of people in rural Guatemala. The group received support from the Guatemalan army and government, as well as from the United States. The group was officially known as the Movimiento de Acción Nacionalista Organizado which gives the acronym "MANO",. The group was variously known by its full name, by MANO, or most popularly by Mano Blanca, or "White Hand."
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has a history of interference in the government of Guatemala over the course of several decades. Guatemala is bordered by the North Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Honduras. The four bordering countries are Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Belize. Due to the proximity of Guatemala to the United States, the fear of the Soviet Union creating a beachhead in Guatemala created panic in the United States government during the Cold War. The CIA undertook Operation PBSuccess to overthrow the democratically elected Jacobo Árbenz in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. Carlos Castillo Armas replaced him as a military dictator. Guatemala was subsequently ruled by a series of military dictatorships for decades. Between 1962 and 1996, Left-wing guerrillas fought the U.S. backed military governments during the Guatemalan Civil War.
The Guatemalan genocide, also referred to as the Maya genocide, or the Silent Holocaust, was the massacre of Maya civilians during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996) by successive US-backed Guatemalan military governments. Massacres, forced disappearances, torture and summary executions of guerrillas and especially civilian collaborators at the hands of security forces had been widespread since 1965, and was a longstanding policy of the military regime, which US officials were aware of. A report from 1984 discussed "the murder of thousands by a military government that maintains its authority by terror". Human Rights Watch has described "extraordinarily cruel" actions by the armed forces, mostly against unarmed civilians.
Political kidnapping is kidnapping which is conducted to obtain political concessions from security forces or governments.
The Committee for Peasant Unity was an indigenous Guatemalan labor organization. It has been described as the most potent peasant organization since the 1944–1954 Guatemalan Revolution.
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