Students at the University of San Carlos still consider the downfall of Ydígoras one of the greatest achievements of their movement. Ironically, his dictatorship did not fall until the U.S. government once again intervened in Guatemala's political affairs, withdrawing its support for the General. It did so not because of his attacks on the democratic process or his regime's well-know corruption, but because of his weak political control. Ydígoras had proved incapable of stopping street protests in the capital and extinguishing the growing guerrilla movement in the eastern part of the country. Moreover the United States feared that if scheduled elections were allowed to take place in 1964, the return to Guatemala of ex-President Juan José Arévelo might lead to victory for Guatemalan nationalists less compliant towards U.S. interests.

In March 1963, for the second time in ten years, the State Department used its influence within the Guatemalan army to encourage another coup d'état. Ydígoras's defense minister, Colonel Enrique Peralta Azurdia, was installed in the national palace. Upon taking power, Peralta abolished the Constitution, canceled the elections and governed by decree. The military's dominance over civil power increased steadily, and democratic principles, already fragile, were further weakened.

Under Peralta's regime the University continued to participate in the democracy movement, if sporadically. In 1965, student protests during a state of siege helped maintain the precept of university autonomy. Still, participants felt that the student movement had become less militant in the wake of the 1962 repression (Azmitia Jiménez 1976: 270-71; Fonseca 1977).

After 1963 the military state achieved such a level of integration that it could restrict any non-official political expression at will, irrespective of civil liberties inscribed in the Constitution. The presence of Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) in the Sierra de las Minas gave a pretext for the formation of this counterinsurgency state. Though insurgency and counterinsurgency developed together in Guatemala, in the coming decades military governments would not limit their violence to the suppression of an armed movement.

To reestablish the appearance of democracy, presidential elections were held in 1966. During the campaign, the level of repression declined. Civilian candidate Julio Cesar Méndez Montenegro won the election, and the results were respected. The new President was not the military's chosen candidate, and indeed had been an important student leader in 1944. Méndez promised voters that he would construct "The Third Government of the Revolution." Nevertheless, before taking power in May of that year, he was forced to sign a pact with the military, agreeing not to enter into any "treaties or understandings" with the guerrillas (who had supported the electoral process that year). The pact, according to one observer, also prohibited Méndez from interfering in the security forces' fight against the guerrillas and the civilian opposition, or from taking any legal action against the army command for transgressing the law (La Hora: November 26 and 27 1973; Sagastume 1983: 36).

But the police and military had already shown the civilian government how it would deal with the opposition. During the week of Méndez' election, security forces captured at least 28 political leaders, the majority of whom belonged to the banned PGT. These detainees were never put on trial, nor set free, nor did their bodies ever appear. They simply "disappeared," the government denying any responsibility. It was only the first of many cases of mass disappearance in Guatemala (CIIDH and GAM 1998).⁵

University students led the organized response to the PGT kidnappings. Law students in the AEU's Bufete Popular (a clinic where low-income people obtain free legal assistance) presented writs of habeas corpus seeking the release of the detainees and advised their families. With the government continuing to profess ignorance about the case, the AEU published the results of its investigation. In their report, two members of the judicial police admitted that the security forces participated in the disappearances and stated that the bodies could be found buried on a plantation in Zacapa. Still, the government refused to undertake an investigation or even an exhumation (McClintock 1985: 82-83).⁶

Soon students themselves became victims of the terror. Several law students and AEU leaders were kidnapped or disappeared over the next few months, apparently in reprisal for their activity on behalf of the disappeared members of the banned PGT. At the same time, the army and the National Liberation Movement (MLN, a political party of the far right led by one-time student dissident Mario Sandoval Alarcón) undertook an ideological campaign against the AEU. Its leaders were publicly accused of being communists and guerrillas, and pamphlets appeared in Guatemala City warning student leaders to leave the country or face the consequences (ibid.).

Thus it was under a civilian government that forced disappearances became a common, if clandestine, government practice. This "death squad" phenomenon allowed the Guatemalan State to fight the opposition through terrorist means while it maintained a posture of ignorance vis-à-vis extra-judicial violence and kept up the appearance of institutional order. Through threats, disappearances and outright killings, these paramilitary groups dissuaded the population at large from political involvement, especially activities that aided the insurgency.

To cover up who was behind these terrorist activities, the government and the press spoke of the perpetrators as "armed men in civilian dress," Nevertheless, these death squads operated with complete liberty and their actions exhibited evidence of official control or, at the very least, official sanction. The death squads presented themselves as anticommunist, but they publicly threatened anyone who questioned the powers that be—the military, the business sector and the landed elite—sectors that rarely, if ever, expressed opposition to the terror. In recent years, various participants in the death squads have admitted that they were, as long suspected, a central part of the government's security forces (Levenson-Estrada 1994: 44-46; Schirmer 1998: 288).

The 1966 disappearance of the 28 opposition activists was the first such act of mass terror against the insurgency and the union movement, but not the last. Soon thereafter, in the country's interior, the army began an offensive, that included a massive bombing campaign, that took the lives of thousands of persons, mainly unarmed peasants in the region where the guerrilla fronts concentrated their operations.

Meanwhile, in the capital state terror, both revolutionary and counterrevolutionary, became a part of daily life. The death squads published lists of opponents that they had sentenced to death, while kidnappings took place in broad daylight, and corpses disfigured by torture appeared by the side of the main roads. Members of the university community, the first to publicly oppose this terror, were also among the earliest victims.

With variations in intensity, this wave of state repression lasted from 1966 to 1972, when the government announced the military defeat of the guerrillas (Aguilera Peralta 1981: 133).

In 1970, the MLN and the anticommunist right strengthened their control. With government backing, Colonel Carlos Arana Osorio, the head of the Zacapa military base and the architect of the defeat of the rural insurgency, became President. Upon taking power, Arana restricted political activity even further by declaring a state of siege, one that lasted from November 1970 to February 1972, this despite the minimal activity of the armed guerrillas. Any expression of opposition was attacked. Victims included members of the University of San Carlos who insisted on denouncing state terror and the assault on democratic rule.⁷

The importance of university autonomy was evident. At the same time that the State was shutting down political dissent in the country as a whole, the University of San Carlos was becoming more radical, both in its intellectual orientation and its activism in support of working-class and peasant economic interests.

In the wake of worldwide 1968 student demonstrations (especially those in Paris and Mexico), students at the San Carlos, together with progressive faculty, began to lobby for a new popular orientation at the University. At the University's main campus on the outskirts of Guatemala City (where the different schools and colleges were concentrated in the early 1970s) the administration instituted various curriculum reforms "to bring the University closer to the national reality."

The Medical School, for example, approved a new curriculum in 1969. Gone was the traditional core curriculum (based on the system common in the United States in the 1950s). In came a multidisciplinary curriculum in which the country's future doctors would study health in Guatemala not only with reference to biology and psychology, but also in relation to the society, its economy and its history. It was a "truly revolutionary change, recalls Rolando Castillo Montalvo, former dean of the Medical School (interview).

The school began to concentrate on forming "masses of doctors" instead of specialists who typically stayed in the capital, attempting to address the lack of health professionals in most of Guatemala. It also expanded its program in Supervised Professional Practice (EPS). Instead of having medical and dentistry students do their internships solely in urban hospitals, they fanned out to health centers and hospitals all over the countryside. Their mission was not simply to bring medical aid to the population. Products of the new curriculum, many interns combined their professional practice with discussions of the social and historical causes of Guatemala's terrible public health situation. The solutions they proposed often involved profound social transformations (interviews).

By 1980, the EPS program was sending interns to 90 percent of country's municipalities, including isolated communities long-ignored by the government. Besides the Medical School, programs in Agronomy, Veterinary Sciences, Architecture, Engineering, Psychology and Social Work also sent interns to the countryside.

For these rural communities, the presence of university interns and their advisers represented an enormous benefit, especially in areas where no doctors practiced or where the government had never built a health center. For the students and professors, the EPS program represented the opportunity to live in the other Guatemala—far from the comfortable urban neighborhoods where the majority of them came from—and to see first-hand the difficult conditions under which their fellow citizens lived. For many participants, the experience contributed to the process of politicization going on within the University.

At the beginning of the 1970s, the student population at the University was growing rapidly, causing a crisis in the classroom. Student organizations began to grow in strength, demanding reforms in course plans that had not changed in decades, and that no longer represented the interests of the students nor the demands of the labor market (interview).

The new social orientation was, in part, a result of the growing influence of Marxist theory in both the University's teaching and research. As with other dominant currents of thought (like liberalism or neoliberalism), Marxism in Guatemala came from abroad. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the socialist bloc achieved a base in Latin America. The Soviet Union began to make Marxist texts available in Spanish, including orthodox textbooks corresponding to different academic fields. In the University of San Carlos, these texts had a considerable impact in many schools and departments.

In 1968 and 1970, as repression intensified in Guatemala, leftist government opponents increased their control of the university administration, winning elections in the faculties of Economics, Medicine, Engineering and the Law School. In the Humanities Faculty, a struggle ensued between conservative and leftist forces. In 1975, when they could not arrive at an amicable solution, the University rector (president) approved the departure of the Psychology, History and Communication Sciences programs from the Humanities Faculty, and they became independent schools. In later years, students and faculty of these programs would be among the most militant of any at the University (Solares 1978: 495).

In 1970, students, faculty and the nation's professional associations (which together comprise the electorate of the public university) elected as rector Law professor Rafael Cuevas del Cid. According to one military analyst, Cuevas del Cid was a member of Guatemalan Workers' Party (Gramajo 1995: 114). The clandestine PGT developed a strong presence at the University, despite the repression it faced in the country as a whole.

After the military defeat of the Armed Rebel Forces (FAR) in the country's northwest in the late 1960s, the FAR had split from the PGT. The PGT's Central Committee (the part of the communist party most influential in the University) began to focus on building a mass social movement, while other factions of the PGT continued to opt for armed struggle. Even though the PGT continued under government attack, a number of militants wanted to legalize the organization and pursue power through the electoral system (interviews).

By the early 1970s, the PGT had won over many of the University's leading intellectuals, as well as labor leaders in the Autonomous Federation of Guatemalan Unions (FASGUA).⁸ For PGT members both inside and out of the University, it was the organization of industrial workers' movement that would lead the country to the social changes that they desired.

It was also during the 1970s that the Law School (the Faculty of Social and Juridical Sciences) became closely identified with Guatemala's labor movement. The University's Bufete Popular, where law students performed their internships, had taken up many labor cases since its founding during the last years of the October Revolution. In 1969 the "El Derecho" Law Students Association founded the Escuela de Orientación Sindical (Labor Orientation School), which worked closely with FASGUA to advise workers during the formation of unions, which the existing labor code made very difficult. In 1970, well-known labor lawyer Mario López Larrave became dean of the Law School and made the Escuela Sindical an official part of the school.

The alliance between the country's intellectuals and workers worried the business community and the State. Beginning in the late 1970s, scores of labor leaders and their university advisers fell victim to the official terror. Still, the Law School's first martyrs were not killed for their labor activism but for their research on controversial economic issues.

Since the Counterrevolution, Guatemala's military governments had not welcomed the opinions on national issues coming out of the San Carlos, in contrast to the influence that it had had during the Revolution. The sharpest dispute occurred when the University protested the Arana regime's attempt to sell off the country's mineral wealth.

For years, under pressure from the U.S. government and international financial organizations, the Guatemalan State had tried to reform its laws regulating foreign investment to facilitate the exploitation of the country's natural resources. An opposing current of thought, a legacy of the October Revolution, questioned the benefits that such investments would bring to the country as a whole.⁹

Throughout the 1960s and early 70s, functionaries from various governments, often motivated by a personal stake in the negotiations, had tried to reach an accord to allow the transnational mining company INCO and its Guatemalan subsidiary EXMIBAL to exploit the country's nickel reserves. In 1965, as in 1956, the military government allowed a representative of INCO to draft the country's new mining code.

Professors from the University of San Carlos investigated the close relations between state officials and the mining companies. In 1970, the Economics faculty shook up the debate over EXMIBAL by publicly revealing the concessions the Méndez Montenegro government was planning to grant the company, forcing the President to suspend negotiations on the multi-million dollar contract (Torriello Garrido 1979: 184-88).

Later that year, Arana Osorio became President and again tried to reach an agreement with EXMIBAL, this time using repressive force to silence public debate. In November, after a series of protests at the University against the contract, President Arana Osorio declared a state of siege, supposedly to battle the guerrilla movement, but one that would also stifle any political activity around the mining issue.

The University responded by forming an Ad Hoc Commission to study the legal aspects of the contract. Despite receiving death threats from paramilitary groups, the four members of the commission continued their work, with tragic consequences. On November 27, 1970, Commission member and Law professor Julio Camey Herrera was machine-gunned to death by unknown assailants on the streets of Guatemala City, just a few meters away from where several police patrol cars were parked. In January 1971, opposition member of Congress Adolfo Mijangos López was killed on a busy downtown street corner as his driver was helping him from his wheelchair into his car. Another member of the Commission, Law professor Alfonso Bauer Paiz, was shot and left for dead not far from police headquarters. Bauer Paiz survived, and is still a leading figure of the Guatemalan left (Fuentes Mohr 1971: 202-203).

Though the assassins wore no uniforms, these crimes appeared to be coordinated and carried out by the security forces. They demonstrated that not only students but also outspoken professors could be victims of state terror.

Following the killings the University continued to use its autonomy and independence to denounce the lack of democracy and human rights in Guatemala, making it a principal target of a new wave of terror.

In 1970, shortly after the death of German ambassador Karl von Spretti at the hands of Rebel Armed Forces, a new death squad appeared, calling itself Ojo por Ojo (An Eye for an Eye). Over the next few years, it focused its violence on the University of San Carlos, which it accused of providing a haven for guerrilla cadres. In an early communiqué, Ojo por Ojo addressed the University's Governing Board and the AEU, mocking the University's concern for human rights:

What are you complaining about? What are you crying for? Why do you clamor for human rights? Do you want the Constitution to be upheld? What position are you trying to define? It is well known by the long-suffering people of Guatemala that the University protects all those who have imported exotic doctrines, spending the people's money, and that it sends students to train in the guerrillas and to be indoctrinated as communist leaders in countries behind the iron curtain... that is why you must stop wasting your tears, or before long you won't have enough to shed for those awaiting execution by our patriotic organization (quoted in Aguilera Peralta and Romero Imery 1981: 128-29).

The University was considered by Ojo por Ojo (and, by extension, by the military government) as a center of rebel organizing. In fact, the San Carlos had become a place for all kinds of political debate, including a permanent forum on guerrilla strategy. Given the knowledge of such contacts with the armed left, paramilitary groups began to regularly attack the University in response to guerrilla actions (interviews).

In October 1971, following the death of student leader and PGT member Manuel de Jesús Cordero Quezada, students shut down the University to protests the violence and to demand an end to the state of siege. At the same time, the University took a leading role in forming the National Front Against the Violence, a pioneering human rights group supported by opposition political parties, religious groups, popular organizations and private universities.

The military government responded by threatening to end the University’s autonomy. On November 27, 1971, 800 soldiers occupied the main university campus to search for arms and “subversive” literature. Despite the mobilization of tanks, helicopters and armored cars, they failed to find what they were looking for (Menton, Goodsell and Jonas 1973: 4).

By 1972, the climate of generalized violence had diminished. On the one hand, military and paramilitary attacks had inspired the formation of an effective social movement against the violence which pressured the government to end the state of siege. On the other, the military government had defeated the guerrilla forces and suffocated the labor movement, giving it sufficient confidence to reestablish democratic conditions, however limited (Aguilera Peralta 1981: 133).

But the close of the state of siege did not mark the end of political violence or social polarization in Guatemala. Within a few years both political opposition and the State’s violent reaction would reappear, stronger than ever.

⁶ Another version, published in the July 15, 1966 edition of El Gráfico, concluded that the victims had been detained at the air force base in Retahuleu on the southern coast before being dumped into the ocean.

⁷ The militarization of the government was not total. In 1970, the same year that the army took over the presidency, social democrat Manuel Colom Argueta became the mayor of Guatemala City.

⁸ FASGUA's origins go back to the aftermath of the 1954 Counterrevolution, when it was formed as a pro-government workers' association, autonomous in name only, as part of a government attempt to control the labor movement that had grown during the ten years of the Revolution. Ironically, the PGT managed to coopt FASGUA, while the Christian Democrats controlled National Workers' Central Committee (CNT), Guatemala's other main labor coordinating group.

⁹ In an earlier period, the United Fruit Company used its influence to manipulate the country's political system, while its operations brought limited benefit to the population (Schlesinger and Kinzer 1999).