By 1981 progressive forces in the University were in disarray. Many activists had been killed and others exiled. Among survivors who stayed, there was a growing disenchantment with the possibilities of struggle. Students and professors who continued to work in the underground organizations had to adopt strict security measures, avoiding the principal entrances to the campus and coming and going by way of the steep ravines surrounding the campus. Few students stayed on campus late at night to work or socialize, as had been common before. Schools and faculties most identified with the left reduced class times and replaced sit down tests with take-home exams, to cut down students' and professors vulnerability to an attack by the death squads. Windows were painted over to prevent outsiders from observing the movements of students in their classrooms. And the names of some required courses were modified in order to avoid highlighting the courses' Marxist character (interviews).

Urban violence continued steadily throughout 1981, but there was little of the protest or denunciation that had characterized previous years. Few of the progressive lawyers who had previously defended labor rights or human rights were still alive or living in the country (Levenson-Estrada 1994: 204). At times, the only voices of protest came from the University of San Carlos, where, through late 1980, the Governing Board and the AEU continued their criticism of the government.

By the middle of 1980, the University administration was in chaos. Rector Saúl Osorio Paz, elected for the 1978 to 1982 period but living under constant threat, fled the country for Mexico. For a while he tried to run the University from abroad until the Governing Board forced him to resign, in April 1980. The Board replaced him, as was customary, with the longest-serving dean, Leonel Carrillo Reeves, of the Faculty of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Carrillo had been the subject of threats since 1979, and served only two months before leaving the post. He was replaced by the dean of Engineering, Raúl Molina Mejía, who lasted only one month before resigning. En masse, students and professors alike deserted the University which, according to the Governing Board, was on "the verge of collapse" (Siete Días en al USAC: various dates, 1980).

When Law School dean Romeo Alvarado Polanco took over as rector the character of the University quickly changed. Alvarado Polanco, also threatened with death since 1979, was a professor in the Labor Orientation School and considered a leftist by many. But as rector he redoubled efforts to "normalize" the University's relations with the Lucas García government. Previous administrations had tried to open a dialogue with the military regime, but Alvarado Polanco did far more to show his good faith. The University's Siete Días en la USAC stopped denouncing the violence against the University and the popular movement. The paper spent more space criticizing the attitude of student radicals (Amnesty International 1979b: 21; Siete Días en la USAC: 1980).

Administrators spoke of the need to de-politicize the San Carlos. In November of 1980, with a number progressive deans absent, the Governing Board requested an audience with the President while releasing a statement denouncing the "presence of certain political groups (FERG, FRENTE and others)" whose activities, the University claimed, had provoked a recent raid on the campus. Unlike when Saúl Osorio Paz was rector, university authorities now wanted to get along with the State instead of students, with whom relations soon deteriorated (Siete Días en al USAC: 3 November 1980).

After two more short-lived administrations, in May of 1981 the faculty and student body elected a new rector to serve out the 1981 to 1985 period. FRENTE encouraged supporters to annul their ballots while FERG tried to disrupt the electoral process by burning and stealing ballot boxes. In the end, the winner was Mario Dary Rivera of the School of Agronomy. Dary referred to himself as "center-left" but many students considered him a "man of the right" (Siete Días en la USAC: March 16 1981; Inforpress Centroamericana: 17 December 1981).

The short time that Dary, a biologist, occupied the rector's office was characterized by sharp conflict between students and the administration. FERG militants vowed to "continue the struggle against he who is not the legitimate representative of the University's interests." In response, the administration tried to force radical students off campus: the deans of various schools and faculties denounced the fabrication of Molotov cocktails on campus and the presence of common delinquents among the student body, denying these groups' political character (Siete Días en al USAC: 14 September 1981; Inforpress Centroamericana: 17 December 1981).

In September 1981 Mario Dary met with Lucas García's interior and education ministers. Following the meeting, the University invited security forces to enter the campus to combat the climate of violence, which included acts by students and armed guerrilla militants. FERG and the AEU protested Dary's efforts to negotiate with the government, viewing the police presence as a clear violation of university autonomy. The rector responded that he was more worried about violence from "repressive and psychopathic" FERG students than he was from any outside force. By mid-1981, FERG abandoned its work in the University and many of its members integrated fully into the EGP's clandestine revolutionary efforts (Inforpress Centroamericana: 17 December 1981; interviews).

On December 15, 1981 Mario Dary was assassinated, the first sitting San Carlos rector to be killed. The Committee for Popular Resistance, linked by the press to the guerrilla movement, took responsibility for the crime. "We killed Mario Dary because he was a hatchet-man (esbirro) for the government," the group said in a press release, claiming that the rector had turned over to the authorities various students and faculty members linked to the guerrillas (Inforpress Centroamericana: 17 December 1981).

Unlike almost every other political assassination at the University, Dary's did not appear to be part of a government plan. A recent investigative report attributed the killing to an urban commando of the PGT, a group which only months earlier had had a significant presence in the university administration (Velásquez, González and Blanck 1997).

By 1981, the above-ground student movement was in ruins. Many of the associations in the different schools and faculties of the University ceased activity and the AEU lost its ability to mobilize the student masses. Groups that remained lowered their political profile. Few students wanted to do their professional practice in the Bufete Popular or the EPS system, fearing they would viewed as subversives, given the radical tradition of these programs. Among surviving activists the hope of effecting major social change had disappeared and many were forced to act against their principles to save their lives. Those who survived detention by the security forces were, when freed, often viewed with suspicion by their comrades in the struggle (interviews).

Despite the retreat of the left, the government's repressive machinery continued its attack on the University. The State's intention, it seems, was not just to neutralize the San Carlos, but to systematically destroy the bases of opposition there. In 1981, state violence concentrated on one academic unit and then another. These killing sprees often began with the assassination of a distinguished professor.

For example, at the Law School on February 25, 1981, assassins killed professor and former student activist Mario Arnoldo Castro Pérez, who at the time of his death was serving as the legal adviser to the rector's office. He was the second law professor to serve in that capacity killed in less than a year (Hugo Melgar was the first). During the following three weeks, five more professors from Social and Juridical Sciences were killed, including the acting dean, political scientist Jorge Romero Imery (see the appendix).

The terror began to have the desired effect, provoking more resignation than resistance amongst faculty and students. On May 21, 1981 Medical professor Arturo Soto Avedaño received a call informing him that his father had had a traffic accident; when he arrived at the alleged scene of the accident, he was kidnapped. Three days later his body, bearing signs of torture and with five bullet wounds to the head, was dumped at the entrance of the University. Within hours, the dean of the Medical School says he received letters from over 50 professors requesting time off. A few days later, the dean himself, Rolando Castillo Montalvo, left his post. That year at least four faculty members from the School were assassinated (Castillo Montalvo 1984; interviews).¹⁷

Figure 4 illustrates the attack on the faculty. Between 1980 and 1983, 80 university professors or administrators were killed or disappeared in Guatemala (77 of them from the University of San Carlos). By this point, most of the country's progressive faculty were dead or had gone into exile, and few politically-committed professionals emerged to take their place. For the rest of the decade, state repression of the University again concentrated on activist students.

According to data from the appendix, violence against the University decreased in 1982. On the one hand, the decrease in urban violence reflects that the battle between insurgency and counterinsurgency had moved to the western highlands. On the other hand, it may have resulted from the government's desire to construct a facade of democratic conditions in the capital to carry out scheduled presidential elections after four years of state terror against the political opposition. Still, shortly after the vote, junior army officers organized a coup d'etat, bringing to power a military junta led by General Efraín Ríos Montt.

According to pronouncements in Siete Días en la USAC, the university administration viewed the coup positively, even though it represented the suspension of constitutional rule. Lucas García had never suspended the Constitution nor declared a state of siege, and he had never formally shut down the press; but he used death squads to terrorize the political opposition during his four years of rule. With Ríos Montt, the San Carlos hoped for a better deal. After all, the University and the student movement supported Ríos Montt when he had been defrauded during the 1974 presidential elections. After taking power, Ríos Montt came out publicly against the practice of forced disappearances, one of the principal mechanisms of urban terror, and promised to investigate the thousands of cases of unresolved disappearances.

But also upon taking power, Ríos Montt suspended the Constitution, forcing the University to negotiate its standing with the new military regime. The administration's respectful attitude appeared to produce results. In May of 1982, Ríos Montt declared himself in favor of maintaining university autonomy and appeared willing to resolve the University's financial crisis. Even better, for a few brief months the government stopped targeting the country's intellectuals (Siete Días en la USAC: 24 May and 13 September 1982; Amnesty International 1984: 159).¹⁸

A few months after taking power, Ríos Montt established the Courts of Special Jurisdiction, in which unseen military judges summarily tried citizens accused of common crimes or "subversion." Though these tribunals represented the complete militarization of the justice system, for some in the political opposition their use represented an improvement over the previous state of affairs, when security forces routinely tortured and disappeared alleged insurgents without any type of legal process whatsoever. While these courts functioned in 1982 and 1983, various members of the university community were freed after trial; others were never heard from again (División de Publicidad e Información, USAC 1982-83).

Figure 4. University killings and disappearances,
students versus professionals, 1954 to 1996

To defeat the insurgency Ríos Montt knew he would need the military aid that the U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan could offer. Thus, unlike Lucas, the new president was interested in international recognition. Consequently it was during the Ríos Montt regime that international human rights groups managed to pressure the release of Juan José Hurtado Vega and Gustavo Castañeda Palacios, two distinguished Medical professors accused of aiding the guerrillas (AAAS 1986: 22).¹⁹

Despite growing international human rights pressure, the Ríos Montt regime quickly returned to the practices of the past. In July 1982, a month-long amnesty for alleged guerrilla supporters ended, and the level of violence sharply increased, both in the country and the city. Between July and October, at least 22 San Carlos students and professors were disappeared.

Despite the decrease in student militancy, the government continued to work to destroy the University's power. For example, the San Carlos campus was once again inundated with illegal drugs.

The University's problem with drug dealers had first occurred in 1978. Though in part a product of the University's autonomy and the absence of an effective security force, some sources believe that the trade was controlled by the government in order to discredit the University and at the same time help finance the government's counterinsurgency efforts (in 1978 the United States had cut off direct military aid to the Guatemala). At the urging of the administration, students mobilized to counteract the presence of the dealers (Siete Días en la USAC: various dates, 1978; interviews).

In 1982 the dealers returned in force. Their point of sale, a round white building called the "Igloo", across from the Pharmacy and Chemical Sciences Faculty, became famous throughout the capital. Men carrying machine guns protected the operation, while others doled out small bags of marijuana from a massive sack, both to students and people not connected with the San Carlos. The transactions took place in the most open and nonchalant manner, in defiance of university authorities who hesitated to call in the police. A number of those interviewed for this report believe that, given events and their political context, the drug dealers were organized by the State as a new way to weaken and neutralize the University.

¹⁷ Soto Avendaño belonged to the "twelve apostles," a group of faculty members who had led the progressive reforms in the Medical School in the 1960s. At the end of 1981, another member of this group, Guillermo Muñiz Solares, a specialist in hand surgery, was kidnapped and later found with his hands cut off (AAAS 1986: 9-10).

¹⁸ For the country as a whole, however, the first 100 days of the Ríos Montt dictatorship had the highest levels of state killing for the entire armed conflict (Ball, Kobrak and Spirer 1999).

¹⁹ Castañeda Palacios was also the father of slain student leader Oliverio Castañeda de León. He was accused of possessing subversive literature after authorities raided his home and confiscated his son's books (Irías 1984).