SUMMARY
URNG (Unidad Revolucionaria nacional guatemalteca, or Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity) was an armed umbrella organization active in the Guatemalan intrastate conflict over government. In the 1960s, Guatemala became embroiled in a protracted civil war that pitted the Government of Guatemala against several leftist armed groups claiming to represent poor indigenous Maya and peasant populations. The conflict was characterized by extraordinary brutality against the civilian population, and the number of groups fighting the government increased during the 1970s; it was in this context that URNG emerged. URNG’s primary objective was to wage a "popular revolutionary war" – aimed at overthrowing the Government of Guatemala - that would allow the Guatemalan people “to free themselves from oppression, exploitation, discrimination and dependence on foreign countries". The group also claimed that it pursued equality between the indigenous Maya population and the Ladinos, a term used to denote Guatemala’s Hispanic-origin population.
URNG was created on 8 February 1982, as ORPA, EGP, FAR I, and FAR II – Guatemala’s main leftist armed groups – agreed to create an umbrella organization that could coordinate their revolutionary activities. Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (PGT, or Guatemalan Party of Labor) – a communist political party – was also part of URNG. The creation of URNG was the culmination of several attempts to unify Guatemala’s leftist groups during the 1970s and 1980s. It was suggested that the decision to create a unified front was in part driven by external forces, as for example Cuba had set unification as a prerequisite for potential support. It should also be noted that URNG’s constituent factions maintained separate operational zones, meaning that the URNG umbrella served primarily as a military and diplomatic central command rather than a fully integrated organization. URNG operated mainly in Guatemala’s rural areas, where it maintained its popular support bases. Reflecting the decision to maintain separate operational zones, ORPA was mainly present in the southwestern parts of the country, EGP in the northwestern highlands, and the various FAR factions in the northern Peten department.
Ricardo Arnoldo Ramírez de León (also known as “comandante Rolando Morán”) served as secretary general of URNG, and Jorge Ismael Soto (“Pablo Monsanto”) was vice-secretary general. Rodrigo Asurias Amado (“Gaspar Ilom”) also served as one of the group’s top leaders until his resignation in 1996. URNG also maintained a separate political wing called the Representación Unitaria de la Opposición Guatemalteca (RUOG, or United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition), which was headed by Raúl Molina Meija. In 1996, Jorge Rosal Melendez and Carlos Gonzalez also occupied important positions within the group. URNG was formed at the peak of the Guatemalan armed groups’ strength, which meant that the group could field around 6000 fighters in 1982. There were also claims that, all in all, the URNG factions had more than a quarter of a million supporters organized in one way or another. However, URNG’s cadre strength gradually decreased to around 2000 in the late 1980s, and then to 800-1000 by the mid-1990s.
URNG allegedly received some limited support from Cuba during the 1980s, mainly in the form of training and shipments of various types of weapons. However, the Cuban support was relatively minor, and did not have a marked effect on URNG’s military capacity.
On 19 September 1996, the Government of Guatemala and URNG signed a peace agreement in Mexico that ended the 36-year-old civil war. This agreement was then followed by the “Agreement for a Firm and Lasting Peace”, signed on 29 December the same year. After this, URNG demobilized and reorganized itself as a political party, and thus ceased to exist as an actor in the UCDP data.
