"3 A concept similar to the United States of America, that ended up sounding too good to be true, because the different people living in the region of Central America were all very different. The conservative Spanish elite, who had most of the control in the United Provinces, ran the federation and that caused a civil war between them and the rest of the people in the federation.4 This civil war was not unexpected being that each one of these provinces had their own ideas on how things should be done. The provinces fought amongst themselves for a while, until they finally disintegrated in March of 1840. The disintegration of the Provinces was do to Rafael Carerra, when "he defeated its president, Morazanfrom then until his death in 1865, Carrera dominated Guatemala, ruling almost as a dictator."5 After this point, the country had minimal changes; it wasn't until 1954 that the government changed drastically.
In 1954, Guatemala's military organized a coup' d'état backed by the United States was a pivotal point in Guatemala's young democracy. "Over the next four decades, a succession of military rulers would wage counter-insurgency warfare that also would shred the fabric of Guatemalan society. The violence caused the deaths and disappearances of more than 140,000 Guatemalans. Some human rights activists put the death toll as high as 250,000."6 This move caused the people of Guatemala to suffer and violated the people's human rights, because the military government formed after the coup stopped the democratic government that was only beginning to give back to the peasants, and was beginning on social reforms. 7 The government of Guatemala during these bloody decades was responsible for many crimes, most of them targeting any form of governmental change. Military rulers embarked on a program to eliminate left-wingers, resulting in at least 50,000 deaths.
