In rural areas, where the insurgency maintained its strongholds, the government repression led to large massacres of the peasantry and the destruction of villages, first in the departments of Izabal and Zacapa (1966–68) and in the predominantly Mayan western highlands from 1978 onward.

[26] He analyzed Guatemalan society at the time, pointing out that even though it called itself a "republic", Guatemala had three sharply defined classes:[27] The prince classified them into three categories: In 1931, the dictator General Jorge Ubico came to power, backed by the United States.

In February and March 1964, the Guatemalan Air Force began a selective bombing campaign against MR-13 bases in Izabal, which was followed by a counterinsurgency sweep in the neighboring province of Zacapa under the code-name "Operation Falcon" in September and October of the following year.

[68] In November 1965, U.S. Public Safety Advisor John Longan arrived in Guatemala on temporary loan from his post in Venezuela to assist senior military and police officials in establishing an urban counterinsurgency program.

[74] The use of such tactics increased dramatically after the inauguration of President Julio César Méndez Montenegro, who – in a bid to placate and secure the support of the military establishment – gave it carte blanche to engage in "any means necessary" to pacify the country.

[82] Under Colonel Arana's jurisdiction, military strategists armed and fielded various paramilitary death squads to supplement regular army and police units in clandestine terror operations against the FAR's civilian support base.

This was followed by a renewed wave of "death squad" killings of members of the opposition, under the guise of new Defense Minister Col. Rolando Chinchilla Aguilar and Army chief of staff Col. Doroteo Reyes, who were both subsequently promoted to the rank of "General" in September 1968.

"Special commandos" of the military and the Fourth Corps of the National Police acting "under government control but outside the judicial processes",[109] abducted, tortured and killed thousands of leftists, students, labor union leaders and common criminals in Guatemala City.

Guatemalan government sources confirmed to the U.S. Department of State that the "Avenging Vulture" and other similar death squads operating during the time period were a "smokescreen" for extralegal tactics being employed by the National Police against non-political delinquents.

For example, they selected two victims: Guillermo Monzón, who was a military Commissioner in Ixcán and José Luis Arenas, the largest landowner in the area, and who had been reported to the EGP for allegedly having land conflicts with neighboring settlements and abusing their workers.

Massive economic inequality persisted, compounded by external factors such the 1973 oil crisis, which led to rising food prices, fuel shortages, and decreased agricultural output due to the lack of imported goods and petrol-based fertilizers.

"[138] Due to his seniority in both the military and economic elites in Guatemala, as well as the fact that he spoke q'ekchi perfectly, one of the Guatemalan indigenous languages, Lucas García became the ideal candidate for the 1978 elections; and to further enhance his image, he was paired with the leftist doctor Francisco Villagrán Kramer as his running mate.

In response to the increasing number of disappearances and killings, the insurgency began targeting members of the security forces, beginning with the assassination of Juan Antonio "El Chino" Lima López – a notorious torturer and second in command of the Commando Six unit of the National Police – on 15 January 1980.

[152] On 24 August 1980, plainclothes National Police and Army soldiers under the direction of Alfonso Ortiz, the Deputy Chief of the Detectives Corps, abducted 17 union leaders and a Catholic administrator from a seminar at the "Emaus Medio Monte" estate belonging to the diocese of Escuintla, on the southern coast of Guatemala.

El Gráfico reporters were able to get to exact place where the bomb went off, only seconds after the horrific explosion, and found a truly infernal scene in the corner of the 6th avenue and 6th street -where the Presidential Office is located- which had turned into a huge oven -but the solid building where the president worked was safe-.

[178] Relying on continued material support from the United States and US-allied third parties, the armed forces under Army Chief of Staff, Benedicto Lucas García (the president's brother, known as "General Benny") initiated a strategy of "scorched earth"[179] to "separate and isolate the insurgents from the civilian population",[180] under the code-name "Operación Ceniza" ("Operation Ash").

To intimidate these officers and stifle plans for a counter-coup, Ríos Montt ordered the arrest and investigation of three of its most prominent members: Captains Mario López Serrano, Roberto Enrique Letona Hora and Otto Pérez Molina.

Additionally, Col. Germán Chupina Barahona – who was responsible for much of the repression in the capital under Lucas – was forced to resign and Col. Hernán Ponce Nitsch, a former instructor at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, was appointed as director-general of the National Police.

According to some observers, the decline in extralegal tactics by the National Police and intelligence services and the passing of press censorship laws offered the regime some degree of plausible deniability and fostered the misconception on the outside and among city dwellers that political repression was on a downward trend in Guatemala.

The cable traced the wave of death squad repression to an October 1982 meeting by General Ríos Montt with the "Archivos" intelligence unit in which he gave agents full authorization to "apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit.

In the wake of García's kidnapping, his wife, Nineth Montenegro – now a member of Congress – launched the Mutual Support Group (Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo—GAM), a new human rights organization that pressed the government for information about missing relatives.

Charles Meachling Jr., who led U.S. counterinsurgency and internal defense planning from 1961 to 1966, explains the results of this new initiative as a shift from toleration of "the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military", to "direct complicity" in their crimes, to U.S. support for "the methods of Heinrich Himmler's extermination squads.

After a successful (U.S. backed) coup against president Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes in 1963, U.S. advisors began to work with Colonel Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio to defeat the guerrillas, borrowing "extensively from current counterinsurgency strategies and technology being employed in Vietnam."

[223][224] According to Elias Barahona, former Press Secretary for the Ministry of Home Affairs in Guatemala from 1976 to 1980, the United States also worked closely with the government of Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia on the development of anti-guerrilla strategies through the "Programme for the Elimination of Communism".

[240]In January 1983, shortly after President Reagan's "bum rap" comment, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Elliott Abrams went on television to defend the announced resumption of military aid: The army massacres and the ensuing refugee flows should be blamed "on the guerrillas who are fighting the government", he said.

"[241] As opposition to U.S. policy grew, the London Economist, three months later observed, "What liberal Americans can reasonably expect is that a condition of military help to Guatemala should be an easing of the political persecution of the center – which played into the hands of the extreme left in the first place.

"[245] The agency also helped to provide "technical assistance" including communications equipment, computers and special firearms, as well as collaborative use of CIA-owned helicopters that were flown out of a piper hangar at La Aurora civilian airport and from a separate U.S. Air facility.

[250] Perhaps the best known and most highly publicized case is that of Sister Dianna Ortiz, an American Roman Catholic nun who later founded a human rights advocacy group, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).

While the CIA and the U.S. Green Berets continued to function covertly in Guatemala – providing training and counterinsurgency advice – a critical aspect of American support involved outsourcing operations to proxies such as Israel and Argentina.

Through its connections in the Guatemalan security forces, the Argentines were involved with the 'Secret Anticommunist Army' (ESA) carried out thousands of assassinations of leftist political activists, students, unionists and others in Guatemala City during the Lucas Garcia regime as part of its "pacification campaign."