Word: os
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Instead of the clean-cut junior officers who had staged the military operation, two generals and a beefy colonel stood before the cameras wearing battle fatigues and bearing bolstered pistols. Their leader was retired Brigadier General José Efraín Ríos Montt, 55, a dark-haired, silver-mustached officer who had run unsuccessfully for President in 1974 with the backing of the Christian Democratic Party and was generally thought of as being a moderate. The general launched into a rambling, emotional diatribe that left some Guatemalans and foreign observers wondering who was running the country-and where...
...os Monti's only real driving force seemed to be a born-again religious faith. "Above all," he declared, "I am trusting my Lord and my King, that he shall guide me. Because only he gives and takes away authority." Some Guatemalans quickly dubbed their fervent new leader "Ayatullah Ríos Montt...
...major disappointment was that the general failed to call for new elections and political pluralism. The next day, indeed, Ríos Montt and his fellow junta members announced that they were abolishing the congress, suspending the constitution, and would rule by decree until further notice...
When the call for Brigadier General José Efraín Ríos Montt went out over Guatemalan radio early last Tuesday, he was in a most unmilitary setting: presiding over a parent-teacher conference at a school run by the Christian Church of the Word, a small charismatic group in Guatemala...
...os Montt was approached by the Christian Democrats last October about possibly becoming a vice-presidential candidate. At that time, he asked the church elders for permission to run. "During a three-day fast and prayer session," says DeGolyer, "we received some prophecies." The message: the general's time would come in the future...