1980 Spanish embassy burning in Guatemala City

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Burning of the Spanish Embassy
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Burning of the Spanish Embassy
Part of
Guatemala City, Guatemala.
Date31 January 1980; 44 years ago (1980-01-31)
Target
Attack type
State terrorism
Deaths37 hostage (8 Spanish diplomats + 28 peasants and activists)
PerpetratorsGuatemalan Police
Armed Forces of Guatemala

The Burning of the Spanish Embassy (sometimes called the Spanish Embassy Massacre or the Spanish Embassy Fire) refers to the occupation of the

Guatemala City, Guatemala, on January 31, 1980, by indigenous peasants of the Committee for Peasant Unity and their allies and the subsequent police raid that resulted in a fire which destroyed the embassy and left 37 people dead. The incident has been called "the defining event" of the Guatemalan Civil War.[1] Spain terminated diplomatic relations with Guatemala as a result.[2]

History

Background

In January 1980 a group of

Congress and their legal adviser was assassinated.[3] On January 28, they briefly took over two radio stations.[4]

Incident

At 11:05 in the morning on January 31, 1980, the peasants, joined by workers and students, entered the Spanish Embassy in Guatemala City. According to police reports, some of the demonstrators were armed with machetes, pistols and

Molotov cocktails.[2]

Máximo Cajal y López, who had visited the Ixil and Kiche regions in the previous weeks, was holding a meeting with former vice president of Guatemala Eduardo Cáceres Lenhoff, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Adolfo Molina Orantes, and lawyer Mario Aguirre Godoy when the group entered the embassy. The protesters announced that they had come to peacefully occupy the embassy and that they would hold a press conference at noon.[2] They presented the ambassador with a letter that read in part, "We ... direct ourselves to you because we know you are honorable people who will tell the truth about the criminal repression suffered by the peasants of Guatemala."[6]
In 1978 an occupation of the Swiss Embassy by factory workers in a labour dispute had ended with a peaceful resolution.

President Fernando Romeo Lucas García, Guatemala City police chief Germán Chupina Barahona, and Minister of the Interior Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz met in the National Palace. Despite pleas by the Spanish ambassador to negotiate, a decision was taken to forcibly expel the group occupying the embassy.[3] Shortly before noon, and before the protesters could air their grievances, about 300 armed state agents surrounded the building and cut the electricity, water and telephone lines. SWAT police proceeded to occupy the first and third floors of the building over the shouts of the ambassador that they were violating international law in doing so.[2] The peasants barricaded themselves, along with the captive embassy staff and the visiting Guatemalan officials, in the ambassador's office on the second floor.[4]

An order was given to charge the ambassador’s office. Police breached the office door and introduced a substance, most likely white phosphorus, which together with the Molotov cocktails ignited a fire. Some academics and critics, including David Stoll and Jorge Palmieri, contend that it was the Molotov cocktails alone that started the blaze. Exactly how the fire started and who is responsible for it has been the subject of considerable controversy.[7] As fire consumed the second floor and the demonstrators and captive staff of the embassy were burned alive, police refused pleas from bystanders to allow firefighters to combat the blaze. A total of 37 people died in the fire, including former vice president Eduardo Cáceres, former Minister of Foreign Affairs Adolfo Molina Orantes and activist Vicente Menchú, father of Rigoberta Menchú, a future politician and Nobel Peace Prize-winner. Spanish Consul Jaime Ruiz del Árbol also died in the fire, along with other Spanish citizens employed by the embassy.

Ambassador Cajal y López survived by escaping through a window. The only other survivor, demonstrator Gregorio Yujá Xona, suffered third-degree burns. Both were sent to Herrera Llerandi Hospital for treatment. On February 1, at 7:30 a.m., the police guard at Herrera Llerandi Hospital was withdrawn. Shortly thereafter a band of twenty armed men masked with bandanas, widely believed to be plainclothes members of the Judicial Police, entered the hospital and kidnapped Gregorio Yuja Xona.

University of San Carlos.[9]
Around his neck was a placard with a note that read "Brought to Justice for Being a Terrorist" and "The Ambassador will be next." Ambassador Cajal y López escaped the hospital with the assistance of other members of the diplomatic corps and eventually fled the country.

Aftermath and legacy

The Guatemalan government issued a statement claiming that its forces had entered the embassy at the request of the Spanish Ambassador, and that the occupiers of the embassy, whom they referred to as "

terrorists," had "sacrificed the hostages and immolated themselves afterward." Ambassador Cajal denied the claims of the Guatemalan government and Spain immediately terminated diplomatic relations with Guatemala, calling the action a violation of "the most elementary norms of international law."[2]
Relations between Spain and Guatemala were not normalized until September 22, 1984.

Hundreds attended the funeral of the victims, and a new guerilla group was formed commemorating the date, the Frente patriótico 31 de enero (Popular Front of January 31).

In 1999,

Romeo Lucas García, Efraín Ríos Montt and Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores. In 2005, a Spanish judge issued an arrest warrant holding former Guatemalan Interior Minister Donaldo Álvarez responsible for the incident. Álvarez was last seen in Mexico and is considered a fugitive.[10]

On January 30, 2009, the eve of the 29th anniversary of the incident, the Guatemalan government filed 3,350 criminal complaints alleging human rights violations against former soldiers and paramilitaries.[11]

On January 20, 2015, former SWAT police chief Pedro García Arredondo was sentenced to 40 years in prison for murder and crimes against humanity, for ordering that no one should be allowed to get out of the burning building alive. He was also sentenced to 50 additional years for killing two students at the funeral for the embassy fire victims.

National Police (Policía Nacional, PN), was already serving a 70 year prison sentence after being found guilty in 2012 of ordering the enforced disappearance of agronomy student Édgar Enrique Sáenz Calito during the country’s long-running internal armed conflict,[13]

The names of those who died in the burning of the Spanish embassy are commemorated in Guatemala City's main square, along with other victims of the Guatemalan Civil War.

See also

References

General
  • Myrna Ivonne Wallace Fuentes, "The Spanish Embassy Occupation and Assault: History and the Partisan Politics of Memory Since 1980 in Guatemala," A Contra Corriente: A Journal on Social History and Literature in Latin America Fall 2012: https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/.../978/[permanent dead link]
  • Cai:stor, Nick (July 8, 2006). "Guatemala comes to terms with its past". BBC News. BBC. Retrieved February 18, 2009.
Specific
  1. ISBN 978-0-8166-4849-8
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e "Outright Murder". Time. February 11, 1980. Archived from the original on May 6, 2008.
  3. ^ a b Ball, Patrick; Paul Kobrak; Herbert F. Spirer (1999). State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection (PDF). American Association for the Advancement of Science. p. 23.
    ISBN 0-87168-630-9
    .
  4. ^ a b "30 are killed in Guatemala Embassy Battle". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. February 1, 1980. p. 2.
  5. ^ Benz, Stephen Connely (1996). Guatemalan Journey. University of Texas Press. p. 45.
    ISBN 0-292-70840-8
    .
  6. ^ Wright, Ronald (2000). Time Among the Maya: Travels in Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico. Grove Press. p. 110.
    ISBN 0-8021-3728-8
    .
  7. ^ Arias, Arturo (2007). Taking Their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 156–159.
    ISBN 978-0-8166-4849-8
    .
  8. ^ Arias, Arturo (2007). Taking Their Word: Literature and the Signs of Central America. University of Minnesota Press. p. 152.
    ISBN 978-0-8166-4849-8
    .
  9. ^ Manz, Beatriz (2004). Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope. University of California Press. pp. 95.
    ISBN 0-520-24016-2
    .
  10. ^ "Arrest Warrant Issued 25 Years After Spanish Embassy Fire in Guatemala". Voice of America. February 1, 2005. Retrieved February 18, 2009. [dead link]
  11. ^ JUAN CARLOS LLORCA, Associated Press Writer. "Guatemala files 3,350 human rights complaints". Fox News. Archived from the original on 2020-07-27.
  12. ^ "Guatemala ex-police chief sentenced over embassy attack". BBC. 2015-01-20.
  13. ^ "Guatemala: Former police chief convicted in 1980s disappearance case". Amnesty Intertional. 2012-08-22. Retrieved 2022-01-18.

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