Revolutionary Organization of Armed People
Encyclopedia
Revolutionary Organization of the People in Arms was one of the four groups of armed resistance during the Guatemalan Civil War
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In the 1970s, a new organization installed itself in the mountains and the forests above the coffee estates. The Revolutionary Organization of Armed People (ORPA) was started by local youth and university intellectuals. Of the various Guatemalan guerrilla groups, ORPA seemed the least violent, partly because it was led by the urbane Rodrigo Asturias
, the son of Miguel Ángel Asturias
, Guatemala's Nobel Laureate in literature. ORPA was also a group to which, with a few horrifying exceptions, the army did not respond with its trademark village massacres. Why this was so is an interesting question. One possibility is ORPA's decision not to organize villages as publicly declared support bases. Another possible explanation is that planters needed their workers' labor too much for the army to slaughter them en masse.
Guatemalan Civil War
The Guatemalan Civil War ran from 1960-1996. The thirty-six-year civil war began as a grassroots, popular response to the rightist and military usurpation of civil government , and the President's disrespect for the human and civil rights of the majority of the population...
.
In the 1970s, a new organization installed itself in the mountains and the forests above the coffee estates. The Revolutionary Organization of Armed People (ORPA) was started by local youth and university intellectuals. Of the various Guatemalan guerrilla groups, ORPA seemed the least violent, partly because it was led by the urbane Rodrigo Asturias
Rodrigo Asturias
Rodrigo Asturias Amado was a Guatemalan guerrilla leader and politician.Asturias was born in Guatemala City, the first-born son of Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Ángel Asturias. He studied law in Chile and travelled extensively through the Southern Cone...
, the son of Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias
Miguel Ángel Asturias Rosales was a Nobel Prize–winning Guatemalan poet, novelist, playwright, journalist and diplomat...
, Guatemala's Nobel Laureate in literature. ORPA was also a group to which, with a few horrifying exceptions, the army did not respond with its trademark village massacres. Why this was so is an interesting question. One possibility is ORPA's decision not to organize villages as publicly declared support bases. Another possible explanation is that planters needed their workers' labor too much for the army to slaughter them en masse.