Revolutionary Party (Guatemala)

The Revolutionary Party (Spanish:"Partido Revolucionario" or PR) was a Guatemalan political party which supplied the country's government from 1966 to 1970.

The party was founded in 1957 by Mario Méndez Montenegro and, although on the moderate left it was claimed that during the early 1960s the country's communists had adopted a policy of entryism towards the PR and this was used as justification for the coup of Enrique Peralta Azurdia. [ [http://janda.org/icpp/ICPP1980/Book/PART2/4-CentralAmerica/44-Guatemala/Guatemala.htm GUATEMALA: The Party System in 1950-1954 and 1953-1962] ]

Despite this the PR survived the coup and contested the 1966 general election, managing to gain the 50,000 members required by the military government in order to be allowed to run. [Daniel M. Costange, [http://www.janda.org/ICPP/ICPP2000/Countries/4-CentralAmerica/44-Guatemala/Guatemala63-00.html GUATEMALA: The Party System from 1963 to 2000] ] Montenegro was initially chosen as their Presidential candidate and he agreed an alliance with the military-backed Institutional Democratic Party (PID). However prior to the vote Montenegro died and was replaced as candidate by his brother Julio César Méndez Montenegro, a more committed reformer who repudiated the alliance with the military. [Jim Handy, 'Resurgent Democracy and the Guatemalan Military', "Journal of Latin American Studies", Vol. 18, No. 2 (Nov., 1986), pp. 393-394]

The younger Montenegro brother was duly elected as President although his promised reforms were implemented poorly as, despite his repudiation of any alliance, the military remained too powerful a check on his ambitions. [Costange, op cit] Alongside this the government was also blighted by violence from the far right National Liberation Movement, who would go on to be the PID's running mates in their successful 1970 election campaign. [Handy, op cit, p. 394]

The PR remained an important opposition force despite not regaining the Presidency, although in the later 1970s the party moved to the right and became more well disposed towards the military to the point that they were the PID's running mates in the 1978 general election which saw Fernando Romeo Lucas García elected as President. [Guillermo O'Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, "Transitions from Authoritarian Rule", 1986, p. 119]

The 1982 coup which brought in Efraín Ríos Montt as head of a military junta effectively placed the PR in a state of limbo as Guatemala did not hold another election until 1990. In between the PR lost its influence to the point that when the 1990 election was held the party, who had held a majority in 1966, captured only one seat in the Congress. [Constange, op cit] The single seat was subsequently lost and the PR faded from Guatemalan politics.

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