Ramiro de León Carpio

Ramiro de León Carpio

Ramiro de León Carpio (born January 12, 1942 in Guatemala City , † April 16, 2002 in Miami , Florida ) was a Latin American lawyer and politician. From June 6, 1993 to January 14, 1996 he was President of Guatemala .

Life

He studied law at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala and at the Jesuit- led Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala City, where he published the newspaper Sol Bolivariano . He was licensed as a lawyer and notary.

From 1967 to 1969 he worked as an official in the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the tax department for the Mercado Común Centroamericano . From 1970 to 1974 he was Secretary General of the Council of State under Carlos Arana Osorio . During this time he became a member of the state party Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN). From 1978 to 1981 he was a lawyer for the Asociación de Azucareros de Guatemala . From 1981 to 1983 he was managing director of the Asociación de Azucareros de Guatemala . He was involved in the replacement of Efraín Ríos Montt by Óscar Humberto Mejía. Together with his cousin Jorge Carpio, he was one of the founders of the Unión de Centro Nacional (UCN). From 1983 to 1986 he was the first general secretary of the UCN , from which he later separated. From 1984 to 1986 he was one of the party's 21 members of the Comisión de los Treinta, the constituent assembly that enacted the 1985 constitution. In 1985 he supported his cousin Jorge Carpio in his presidential election campaign, as he was intended as his deputy in his election. Jorge Carpio reached the runoff, then Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo became president. He founded the Instituto de Investigación y Capacitación Anastasio Tzul (ICAT) and was chairman of the Consejo de la Sociedad Civil Centroamericana para la Paz (COCEPAZ).

Procurador de los Derechos Humanos

In 1989 he became Procurador de los Derechos Humanos , charged with human rights violations and was a critic of the government forces , which he blamed for numerous crimes and for the repression in Guatemala. The Procurador de los Derechos Humanos is a human rights officer of the parliament. Its role and responsibilities were set out in the 1985 Constitution. The authority he heads is called Procuraduria de los Derechos Humanos and a publication by this authority is called El defensor del pueblo . The office also exists at the department level .

Presidency

On May 25, 1993, Jorge Serrano Elías committed the Serranazo , as the head of the executive he got rid of his control body, the legislature: he dissolved parliament, decreed a state of emergency and gave the order to arrest Ramiro de León Carpio and others. Ramiro de León Carpio avoided arrest by fleeing over the roofs of neighboring houses and was then able to publicly condemn the coup. On June 1, 1993, Jorge Serrano Elías felt pressured to flee Guatemala. The army wanted to install Gustavo Adolfo Espina Salguero , the deputy of Jorge Serrano Elías, as president. Ramiro de León Carpio had accused him of breaking the constitution during the coup. Gustavo Espina resigned on June 5, 1993. Thanks to an overwhelming conviction in parliament, Ramiro de León Carpio was soon sworn in as president.

Ramiro de León Carpio vowed to defend public freedom and the rule of law, and to advance negotiations with the guerrillas to punish the armed forces for their misdeeds. He sacked Defense Minister General José Domingo García Samayoa and appointed General Jorge Roberto Perussina Rivera , who was involved in the massacres in the 1980s.

On July 3, 1993, his cousin Jorge Carpio, who was involved in the peace negotiations, was murdered. On August 26, 1993, he requested that all MPs and all Supreme Court judges resign. This led to a crisis that lasted until November 16, 1993 and led to 43 amendments to the 1985 constitution, which were approved in a referendum on January 30, 1994.

On January 6, 1994 , negotiations with the guerrilla URNG were held under the auspices of the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS), a less dominant role of the government army. On March 29, 1994, a global agreement on human rights was agreed in which the dissolution of the paramilitary Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil (PAC), which played a major role in the massacre, was agreed. On April 3, 1994, the presiding judge of the Constitutional Court, Eduardo Epaminondas González Dubón, was murdered. On 5 October 1995 sent 26 soldiers and a sergeant in Xaman, an indigenous community in the Departamento de Alta Verapaz a massacre at. On August 14, 1994, 80 of the 116 members of parliament were elected, which was unusual for Guatemala. Usually, members of parliament are elected together with the president. On November 14, 1995, the first round of the presidential election took place and in the runoff election on January 7, 1996, Álvaro Arzú became President of Guatemala.

FRG membership

In October 1995 Ramiro de León Carpio became a member of the Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana . In the next few years he worked as an international consultant and was an election observer for the OAS. In 1999 he joined the Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG), the party of Ríos Montt, and was elected as a member of Congress . On March 18, 2002, he resigned his parliamentary mandate and left the FRG , stating that he wished he had never accepted Ríos Montt's invitation to join the party.

He intended to write memoirs and took part in international work. He died of diabetes mellitus while visiting Miami . It was national mourning arranged and he was given a state funeral .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Es : Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (Guatemala)
2. ^ El Grafico June 8, 1993, General Jorge Roberto Perussina Rivera and several of his officers confronted President Ramiro De León Carpio at the presidential palace and coerced him into appointing Perussina as Minister of Defense.
3. ↑ Comisión para el Esclaracimiento Histórico (CEH), MASACRE DE XAMAN

predecessor	Office	successor
Gustavo Adolfo Espina Salguero	President of Guatemala June 6, 1993–14. January 1996	Álvaro Arzú Irigoyen