The Committee for Peasant Unity (Spanish: Comité de Unidad Campesina, CUC) was an indigenous Guatemalan labor organization.
[2] The Committee for Peasant Unity (Comité de Unidad Campesina) was launched on 15 April 1978, and was described by its founder Pablo Ceto as a convergence of the leftist insurgency and the indigenous peoples' movements.
[4] It also drew upon the discontent with the government that led to widespread support for the EGP, and which was bolstered by the high rate of inflation for fertilizer in the late 1970s.
[5] In response, the government intensified its persecution of its critics, culminating in the Burning of the Spanish Embassy by police forces: a number of CUC members and university students had staged a peaceful occupation of the building, to protest land seizures and arbitrary killings in rural areas.
The campaign was led by Benedicto Lucas García, the president's brother, who had received training in counterinsurgency from the French Armed Forces in Algeria.
The army, supported by military vehicle shipments from the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, began a scorched earth campaign.