[JUNE 16, 1926–]

Former dictator of Guatemala

On March 23, 1982 a coup of the Guatemalan Army set the stage for the massacre of over 75,000 people between 1982 and 1983. General José Efraín Ríos Montt was president of the military junta established by the coup, and in 2004 he and five other commanding officers remain charged with crimes against humanity and crimes of war.

Ríos Montt began his career in 1946, quickly rising through the military ranks to oversee the counterinsurgency campaign of the late 1960s and peasant insurgency in the eastern provinces, in which an estimated 10,000 people were killed by the army. After serving as Army Chief of Staff (1970–1974), he ran for office as the presidential candidate of the Christian Democratic Party in 1974. On March 23, 1982, a movement led by young officers within the military asked Ríos Montt to rid the country of corruption, this while he was being paid by...