Fernando Romeo Lucas García
Fernando Romeo Lucas García was a military officer and politician who served as the 37th president of Guatemala from July 1, 1978, to March 23, 1982. He was elected as the nominee for the Institutional Democratic Party. During Lucas García's regime, tensions between the radical left and the government increased. The military started to murder political opponents while counterinsurgency measures further terrorized populations of poor civilians.
Franja Transversal del Norte
The first settler project in the FTN was in Sebol-Chinajá in Alta Verapaz. Sebol, then regarded as a strategic point and route through the Cancuén River, which communicated with Petén through the Usumacinta River on the border with Mexico, and the only road that existed was a dirt one built by President Lázaro Chacón in 1928. In 1958, during the government of General Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, the Inter-American Development Bank financed infrastructure projects in Sebol. In 1960, then Army captain Fernando Romeo Lucas García inherited Saquixquib and Punta de Boloncó farms in northeastern Sebol. In 1963, he bought the farm "San Fernando" El Palmar de Sejux and finally bought the "Sepur" farm near San Fernando. During those years, Lucas was in the Guatemalan legislature and lobbied in Congress to boost investment in that area of the country.In those years, the importance of the region was in livestock, exploitation of precious export wood, and archaeological wealth. Timber contracts were granted to multinational companies such as Murphy Pacific Corporation from California, which invested US$30 million in the colonization of southern Petén and Alta Verapaz and formed the North Impulsadora Company. Colonization of the area was made through a process by which inhospitable areas of the FTN were granted to native peasants.
In 1962, the DGAA became the National Institute of Agrarian Reform by Decree 1551, which created the law of Agrarian Transformation. In 1964, INTA defined the geography of the FTN as the northern part of the departments of Huehuetenango, Quiché, Alta Verapaz, and Izabal, and that same year, priests of the Maryknoll order and the Order of the Sacred Heart began the first process of colonization, along with INTA, carrying settlers from Huehuetenango to the Ixcán sector in Quiché.
The Northern Transversal Strip was officially created by the government of General Carlos Arana Osorio in 1970 by Decree 60-70 in the Congress for agricultural development.
In 1977, when he stepped down as defense minister to pursue his presidential campaign, General Fernando Romeo Lucas García also happened to hold the position of coordinator of the megaproject of the Northern Transversal Strip, whose main objective was to bring production of to facilitate oil exploitation of that vast land. By managing this project, Lucas García obtained greater knowledge and interaction with the transnational companies that were in the area and increased his own personal economic interests in the region, given that his family-owned land there and he had commercial relationships with Shenandoah Oil company.
Cuchumaderas case
In 1977, the municipality of San Mateo Ixtatán signed a contract with Cuchumaderas company for the "sanitation, reforestation, maintenance and exploitation of forests, based on the urgent need to build and maintain natural resources attacked by the pine beetle." Upon learning of the negotiation between the municipality and the company, town people forced the authorities to conduct an open meeting and explain the characteristics of the commitment; each of the members of the municipal corporation gave their account of the negotiation, showing contradictions that led to resignation of the mayor at the very same meeting. Despite threats received by some residents of San Mateo, they organized a local committee to defend the forest and started a lawsuit against the company. As a result, forest extraction processes were stopped.Cuchumaderas was closely related to the interests of the military leaders who held political power in the 1970s and spread throughout the defined territory of the FTN; the forest wealth of San Mateo Ixtatán made it the target of economic interests in the Northern Transversal Strip. Ronald Hennessey, pastor of San Mateo Ixtatán during the Guatemala Civil War, arrived in October 1980, amid people's fight against the presence of Cuchumaderas and accused in his writings as Cuchumaderas partners the following people: Lucas Garcia, who FTN director when Cuchumaderas was founded, general Otto Spiegler Noriega, who was the Chief of Staff of the Army and later became Minister of Defense under Lucas García; Jorge Spiegler Noriega, manager of the National Forestry Institute, and then-colonel Rodolfo Lobos Zamora, commander of Military Zone of Quiché. However, later in the Commercial Register, investigations showed that the owner of the company was a different person: it was the engineer Fernando Valle Arizpe, and was well known for being the husband of journalist Irma Flaquer until 1965. Valle Arizpe had developed close relations with senior officials and close members of the government of Lucas García, especially Donaldo Alvarez Ruiz, the Minister of Interior.
During the Lucas García administration, the Army Engineers Battalion built the road stretch from Cadenas to Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.
After the overthrow of Lucas Garcia on 23 March 1982, rose to power a military triumvirate headed by General Efraín Ríos Montt, along with Horacio Maldonado Shaad colonels and Francisco Gordillo. On 2 June 1982, international journalists interviewed Ríos Montt, who said the following regarding Lucas García government and FTN:
Rise to power
Due to his seniority in the military and economic elites in Guatemala and his fluency fluent in Q'ekchi, one of the Guatemalan indigenous languages, Lucas García was the ideal official candidate for the 1978 elections. To further enhance his image, he was paired with the leftist doctor Francisco Villagrán Kramer as his running mate. Villagrán Kramer was a man of recognized democratic trajectory, having participated in the Revolution of 1944 and was linked to the interests of transnational corporations and elites, as he was one of Guatemala's main advisers of agricultural, industrial, and financial chambers. Despite the democratic facade, the electoral victory was not easy. The establishment had to impose Lucas García, causing further discredit to the electoral system —which had already suffered fraud when General Laugerud was imposed in the 1974 elections.In 1976, a student group called "FRENTE" emerged at the University of San Carlos, which completely swept all student body positions that were up for election that year. FRENTE leaders were primarily members of the Patriotic Workers' Youth, the Guatemalan Labor Party youth wing. This Guatemalan communist party had worked in the shadows since it was illegalized in 1954. Unlike other Marxist organizations in Guatemala at the time, PGT leaders trusted the mass movement to gain power through elections.
FRENTE used its power within the student associations to launch a political campaign for the 1978 university general elections. It allied with leftist faculty members grouped in "University Vanguard." The alliance was effective, and Oliverio Castañeda de León was elected as President of the Student Body and Saúl Osorio Paz as President of the university; plus, they had ties with the university workers union through their PGT connections. Osorio Paz gave space and support to the student movement, and instead of having a conflictive relationship with students, different representations combined to build a higher education institution of higher social projection. In 1978, the University of San Carlos became one of the sectors with more political weight in Guatemala; that year, the student movement, faculty, and University Governing Board -Consejo Superior Universitario- united against the government and were in favor of opening spaces for the neediest sectors. To expand its university extension, the Student Body rehabilitated the "Student House" in downtown Guatemala City; they welcomed and supported families of villagers and peasants already sensitized politically. They also organized groups of workers in the informal trade.
At the beginning of his tenure as president, Saúl Osorio founded the weekly Siete Días en la USAC, which, besides reporting on the university's activities, constantly denounced the violation of human rights, especially the repression against the popular movement. It also told what was happening with the revolutionary Nicaragua and El Salvador movements. The state university was a united and progressive institution for a few months, preparing to confront the State head-on.
FRENTE had to face the radical left, represented then by the Student Revolutionary Front "Robin García", which emerged during the Labor Day march of 1 May 1978. FERG coordinated several student associations at different colleges within the University of San Carlos and public secondary education institutions. This coordination between legal groups came from the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, a guerrilla group that had appeared in 1972 and had its headquarters in the oil-rich region of northern Quiché department -i.e., the Ixil Triangle of Ixcán, Nebaj and Chajul in Franja Transversal del Norte. Although not strictly an armed group, FERG sought confrontation with government forces all the time, giving prominence to measures that could degenerate into mass violence and paramilitary activity. Its members were not interested in working within an institutional framework and never asked permission for their public demonstrations or actions.
On 7 March 1978, Lucas Garcia was elected president; shortly after, on 29 May 1978—in the late days of Laugerud García government—in the central square of Panzós, Alta Verapaz, members of the Zacapa Military Zone attacked a peaceful peasant demonstration, killing many people. The deceased, indigenous peasants who had been summoned in place were fighting for the legalization of public lands they had occupied for years. Their struggle faced them directly with investors who wanted to exploit the mineral wealth of the area, particularly oil reserves—by Basic Resources International and Shenandoah Oil— and nickel -EXMIBAL. The Panzós Massacre caused a stir at the university because of the high number of victims and conflicts arising from the exploitation of natural resources by foreign companies. In 1978, for example, Osorio Paz and other universities received death threats for their outspoken opposition to constructing an inter-oceanic pipeline that would cross the country to facilitate oil exploration. On June 8, the AEU organized a massive protest in downtown Guatemala City where speakers denounced the slaughter of Panzós and expressed their repudiation of the Laugerud García regime in stronger terms than ever before.