Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio

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Passions

Vocation

Guatemalan military leader who served as President of Guatemala from 1970 to 1974. His government enforced torture, disappearances and killings against political and military adversaries, as well as common criminals. It is estimated that over 20,000 Guatemalans were killed or "disappeared" under the Arana administration. A colonel in the Army, he was elected in an electoral process generally considered "non-transparent" on a platform promising a crackdown on law-and-order issues and stability; his vice president was Eduardo Cáceres. In November 1970, Arana imposed a "State of Siege" which was followed by heightened counterinsurgency measures. The government received continued large-scale military support from the United States, which provided weapons, technical support and military advisors to the security forces under Arana to assist in fighting the guerrillas. The systematic use of state-terrorism which emerged in 1966 under President Julio César Méndez persisted under Arana; government-sponsored "death squads" remained active and the security forces regularly detained, disappeared, tortured and extrajudicially executed political opponents, student leaders, suspected guerrilla sympathizers and trade unionists. Carlos Arana, a freemason, was the first of the string of Institutional Democratic Party military rulers who would dominate Guatemalan politics in the 1970s and 1980s. He also served as the ambassador to Nicaragua. Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio died in Guatemala City on 6 December 2003 at age 85. Link to Wikipedia biography