The Armed Forces of Guatemala () is the unified military organization of the Guatemala, consisting of three services: the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Guatemalan Armed Forces are responsible for defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country, and both internal and external security. The president of Guatemala is the commander-in-chief of the military, and formulates policy, training, and budget through the Minister of National Defense. The Chief of the General Staff is responsible for its operations.
The formal establishment of the organization occurred after the start of the liberal period in Guatemala on 30 June 1871, a date that is commemorated as Armed Forces Day. The Guatemalan military emerged as the dominant political force in the country after the 1954 coup d'état and instituted a military dictatorship until 1986. During the Guatemalan Civil War from 1960 to 1996, the military waged a counter-insurgency campaign against left-wing guerilla fighters that resulted in many atrocities against civilians, a genocide of the Maya population, and the deaths of 200,000 people.
Since the civil war, the military underwent reforms to strengthen civilian control and accountability, though it still has a high degree of autonomy. More recently, Guatemalan forces have taken part in United Nations peacekeeping missions and have assisted other government agencies in combating organized crime.
History Early development When news of the independence of Mexico reached the local elite in Guatemala, independence from Spain was declared on 15 September 1821. Guatemalan conservatives ensured that the country was incorporated into the First Mexican Empire, but after its dissolution in 1823, Guatemala became part of the Federal Republic of Central America. The conflict between liberals and conservatives that followed was essentially a war between Guatemala and El Salvador, with Guatemalan conservatives wanting to disband the federation. The conservatives were defeated and Guatemala was led by a liberal government under Mariano Gálvez from 1831 to 1838, who introduced several measures that were unpopular among rural Guatemalans, including anticlerical policies towards the Catholic Church and quarantines during an outbreak of cholera. An uprising led by Rafael Carrera overthrew the liberal government and established conservative rule from 1839 to 1865. Carrera became the president of the State of Guatemala in 1844 and declared it an independent republic in 1847, leading a strongly conservative and Catholic government.
For the first fifty years of Guatemala's independence the armed forces consisted of ad hoc gangs recruited by local elites during their conflicts. The task of the armed forces was to back the political leader in office as long as that leader followed the rules set by the wealthy oligarchy. After Carrera's death in 1865, Vicente Cerna led a more moderate government, until he was overthrown in a rebellion backed by powerful coffee oligarchs from the western highlands that defeated his army. During the liberal period beginning from 30 June 1871, Guatemala's liberal governments made an effort to professionalize the military, and the officer corps in particular. The creation of the Escuela Politécnica military academy on 4 February 1873 by presidents Miguel García Granados and Justo Rufino Barrios was the first move towards a formal national army controlled by the Gautemalan state. Instruction there was provided by Spanish or French advisors, and its first director was an officer from the Spanish Army's infantry school in Toledo. A Colegio Militar had existed prior to 1873, but it was not comparable to the Escuela Politécnica that replaced it.
The military started to become a vehicle for social mobility for the working and middle classes. However, little progress was made in the professionalization of the armed forces beyond the creation of a formal national army. An officer career was seen as a springboard to a more lucrative position, such as joining the landowner class. In 1891, Guatemala requested a military advisory mission to be sent from France, which was initially refused due to the poor economic conditions in the country. The mission arrived in 1898 and remained until the early 1930s. Its presence led to Guatemala increasingly buying military equipment from France instead of Germany, as had been the case previously, and during World War I the country asked France to modernize its army in preparation for a possible deployment to Europe.
Graduates of the Escuela Politécnica developed a high esprit de corps. Some of its nearly 700 graduates saw combat in border conflicts with Guatemala's neighbors before it was briefly closed in 1908. After the death of Justo Rufino Barrios in El Salvador during one of those wars, he was followed by a series of liberal leaders. The last of them, Manuel Estrada Cabrera, was in office from 1898 and 1920, and presided over the growing influence of the United Fruit Company, which began cultivating bananas and building infrastructure in Guatemala. Members of the Politécnica led a failed uprising against Cabrera's despotic rule in 1908, after which the school was temporarily closed, and was fully restored after his overthrow in 1920.
The military in politics Jorge Ubico regime The removal of Cabrera led to the rise of military governments during the 1920s, led by the generals José María Orellana and Lázaro Chacón. During their tenure the Guatemalan military was used by the coffee elite and the United Fruit Company to suppress growing opposition against them. The Great Depression had a major impact on Guatemala's single-crop export economy, and General Jorge Ubico assumed power in a 1931 election that was carefully managed by the military. He put the state at the service of the oligarchy and began suppressing labor unions and left-wing movements. Ubico also began militarizing the state, appointing generals as provincial governors and to other key positions overseeing infrastructure development. However, the military's senior ranks far exceeded the number of available positions for them, and during his early years Ubico reduced the number of promotions. This changed in 1937, when he started increasing promotions as a way of ensuring loyalty from the officer corps. The pre-1931 conditions were restored: an incompetent but politically influential officer caste leading poorly trained soldiers drafted from society's lowest caste.
Guatemala requested a military mission from the United States in late 1929, and it arrived in April 1930. The mission later operated within the context of the Good Neighbor policy towards Central America. Ubico asked the head of the mission, United States Army Major John A. Considine, to serve as the head of the military academy and instructed him to "make the Escuela Politécnica as near like West Point as possible". Considine, with the brevet rank of brigadier general in the Guatemalan Army, reformed the courses at the school and succeeded in improving the education there. Considine's biggest success was described as instilling Guatemalan officer cadets with American "West Point discipline". He served there until 1934, and at Ubico's request, American officers continued to be appointed as directors of the academy until 1945. Graduates were commissioned as a subteniente of the infantry, cavalry, or engineers, or a teniente of artillery. In 1941 the Escuela de Táctica Aplicada was founded and modeled on the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, to train select officers on leadership matters. France maintained an advisory mission to the Guatemalan Air Force during the Ubico years, which had started during Cabrera's presidency, until 1941.
Ubico controlled the Ministry of War himself by giving orders through the minister. The military budget was increased and the army was well equipped by Central American standards. According to a U.S. military attaché in 1941, the armed forces were "organized as a large police force rather than a modern army. Its prime objective seems to be the preservation of internal peace and not to engage in any conflict with another military force equipped with modern arms and munitions."
Ubico also made an effort to improve the living conditions and training for the troops outside of the military academy, but according to American observers, only the cadets at the Escuela Politécnica received adequate training. In garrisons across Guatemala's departments, troops received training only in military parades, and "their principle purpose seems to be at the guard house where a prodigious number of them 'sit' all day long to be called to attention whenever an officer passes." In some parts of western Guatemala garrisons consisting of indigenous Maya peoples who did not speak Spanish were led by Spanish-speaking officers. While Ubico described military service as "a school of citizenship which returns the individual to everyday life a man and a patriot who is ready to practice self-denial," American observers noted that Guatemalan soldiers only served out of personal loyalty to their leaders, and not for the state or any abstract principles. The government also intended to use the military to integrate the Maya with the urbanized Ladino society. Guatemalan law mandated military service for men between the ages of 18 and 50 (one year in the infantry or two years in other branches), but wealthier families were able to pay to avoid conscription. In practice the lower ranks of soldiers consisted entirely of indigenous people.
About half of the officer corps were Politécnica graduates while the others, especially majors or below, were line officers who had been promoted from the ranks of indigenous Maya soldiers. Serving as a soldier and becoming a commissioned officer was a path to upward mobility for the indigenous population, while attending the Politécnica and becoming an officer served that purpose for the Ladino urban middle class. The oligarchy sometimes sent its sons to the Politécnica but they typically left the military right after graduation, which they could do because their family paid their tuition instead of the state. There was an increasing number of Ladino officers in the middle ranks, but Ubico kept filling the highest ranks with less qualified and more politically connected indigenous officers.
Military consolidation
In the early 1940s the military was led by "an octogenarian, illiterate Secretary of War and a preponderance of incompetents on its active list of 67 general officers". By 1944 the Guatemalan armed forces had 15,000 troops and 80 generals, even though there were only five to seven military commands. This caused resentment and tensions between the more professional and competent graduados who were kept at the lower-to-mid level ranks, and the generals who had been appointed from the oficiales de línea (line officers). Ubico banned political discussions in the military and relied on his ageing generals, not realizing that they had lost control of the growing divide within the officer corps until the Guatemalan Revolution. The rebellion reflected this divide and removed the "old guard". In October 1944 it was the Politécnica graduates that revolted against Federico Ponce Vaides, the provisional president that replaced Ubico, amidst a background of sweeping economic and social changes. The army officers, in an alliance with the middle class, removed the traditional elite and the old guard generals. The "October revolution" led to the emergence of the armed forces as the dominant political force in the country and, ultimately, to the institutionalized Guatemalan military dictatorship of 1954 to 1986.