The Guatemalan Party of Labour (Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo) was a communist party

Communist party

A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...

 in Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

. It existed from 1949 to 1998. It gained prominence during the government of Col. Jacobo Arbenz. It was one of the main forces of opposition to the various regimes that followed Arbenz's overthrow and became a constituent of the URNG guerrilla coalition during the later phase of the country's Civil War

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...

.

First Congress

The party, then under the name Communist Party of Guatemala (Partido Comunista de Guatemala) held its constituent first congress on September 28, 1949. It was founded by the Guatemalan Democratic Vanguard

Guatemalan Democratic Vanguard

Guatemalan Democratic Vanguard was a leftwing group in Guatemala. VDG was founded in 1947 as a fraction within the ruling Revolutionary Action Party . The leader of VDG was José Manuel Fortuny....

, which had functioned as a fraction within the ruling Revolutionary Action Party

Revolutionary Action Party

Revolutionary Action Party , PAR. Left political party in Guatemala. PAR was formed in November 1945 through the merger of two parties that had brought Arevalo to power, the National Renovation Party and the Popular Front Liberator...

 for two years. José Manuel Fortuny had been the leader of VDG, and now became general secretary of PCG. At the time of the congress of the party, its membership stood at 43.

An earlier Communist Party of Guatemala

Communist Party of Guatemala

Communist Party of Guatemala may refer to:*Communist Party of Guatemala *Guatemalan Party of Labour , known in its early days as the "Communist Party of Guatemala"....

 had been founded in 1922, but was suppressed in 1932.

In June 1950 PCG started publishing a weekly newspaper, Octubre, which was distributed amongst workers, peasants and intellectuals throughout the country.

In the summer of 1950 a section of the party, led by trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

 leader Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez

Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez

Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez Garbín was a Guatemalan labour leader. Gutiérrez, a school teacher by profession, was head of the Confederación General de Trabajadores de Guatemala . Gutiérrez has been referred to as the most important labour leader in Guatemala from 1944-1954.Gutiérrez was a member of...

, broke away and formed a separate party, the Guatemalan Revolutionary Workers Party

Guatemalan Revolutionary Workers Party

Guatemalan Revolutionary Workers Party was a communist party in Guatemala. PROG was founded in 1950, following a split from the Communist Party of Guatemala . PROG made its first public appearance on July 1. PROG was led by Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez...

 (PROG). PROG made its first public appearance on July 1. The split had been provoked by differences of opinions concerning the social composition of the Central Committee of the party.

Second Congress

On February 2, 1952 PROG was dissolved and its members returned to PCG. The 2nd congress of PCG, held the same year, elected Gutiérrez as a Central Committee member. The congress also decided to adopt the name PGT, a move which was intended to facilitate legalization of the party. A 1945 legislation banned "international organizations" from working in Guatemala, a legislation used to maintain the illegality of any communist organization. By changing the name to PGT the party wanted to state that it was an independent and national party. At the same time, communists came to use the similar names abroad. One prominent example is the Swiss Party of Labour.

However, Although communism had not been officially legalized until the inauguration of reformist President Col. Jacobo Arbenz, the party had participated in political activities more or less openly; some avowed communists were employed in high-level positions in the civil service and educational bureaucracy. The PGT program tended to emphasize participation in the trade union

Trade union

A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...

s and direct action rather than electoral politics, though at one point there were four PGT members in the 58-seat parliament in the period of 1953-1954. The four PGT MPs were José Alberto Cardoza, Victor Manuel Gutiérrez, Carlos Manuel Pellecer and Antonio Ardón.

The PGT was generally supportive of the reform efforts launched by Juan José Arévalo

Juan José Arévalo

Juan José Arévalo Bermejo was the first of the reformist presidents of Guatemala. Preceded by military junta interregnum after a definitive pro-democracy revolt in 1944...

 and Col. Arbenz after the overthrow of right-wing military dictator Gen. Jorge Ubico

Jorge Ubico

Jorge Ubico y Castañeda was a Guatemalan dictator who held the title of President of Guatemala from 14 February 1931 to 4 July 1944.-Early years:...

 in 1944. Because of this, the governments and press in Western countries (especially the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

) attempted to gather support for an economic or military intervention to halt the 'Communist threat'. A CIA intelligence estimate in 1952 reported that the PGT had a membership of about five hundred and an undetermined number of sympathizers. Later estimates raised the membership total to 3,000, including a group of five hundred described as 'hard-core'. The PGT publication Octubre had a circulation of about 3,000 in 1952. American intelligence briefings and post reports conceded that the PGT did not have sufficient popular backing or resources to foment a coup or revolution.

On August 2, 1953 Octubre was substituted by Tribuna Popular as the party organ.

The land reform

Land reform

[Image:Jakarta farmers protest23.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Farmers protesting for Land Reform in Indonesia]Land reform involves the changing of laws, regulations or customs regarding land ownership. Land reform may consist of a government-initiated or government-backed property redistribution,...

 initiatives implemented by the Arbenz government attracted more foreign attention to Guatemala's political scene. About 100,000 landless peasants were to benefit from the expropriation of unused arable land from landed interests (such as the U.S.-based United Fruit Company

United Fruit Company

It had a deep and long-lasting impact on the economic and political development of several Latin American countries. Critics often accused it of exploitative neocolonialism and described it as the archetypal example of the influence of a multinational corporation on the internal politics of the...

). The plan was never fully executed, as the Arbenz government fell in a U.S.-sponsored coup d'état

Operation PBSUCCESS

The 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état was a covert operation organized by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to overthrow Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, the democratically-elected President of Guatemala....

on 29 June 1954; the government offered no significant resistance. The first decree issued by the new military régime banned the PGT. Following the ban a section of the party, including Fortuny, went into exile in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 where they continued to operate politically. Inside Guatemala, PGT was largely marginalized.

Third Congress

In the underground, PGT was radicalized. The 3rd party congress proclaimed the importance of "all forms of struggle", meaning that armed struggle was justified against the regime. This marked a shift of policy, as the party until then had worked under the banner of "democratic restoration". In April 1961 the party had adopted a document titled "General Tactics, development and forms of struggle of the Guatemalan revolution", which mentioned armed struggle as one of different kind of struggle to be utilized.

The party rallied survivors of the failed November 13, 1960 military insurrection and student radicals into forming a guerilla movement, the Rebel Armed Forces

Rebel Armed Forces

The Rebel Armed Forces was a Guatemalan guerrilla organization established in 1961 and lasting until the peace agreements in 1996.FAR is most significantly known for having killed the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala, John Gordon Mein, in 1968. Also killed that year were two U.S...

 (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes, FAR) in 1962. FAR initiated attacks against the government military, the beginning of a four decade long civil war.

Meanwhile, the relation of the party towards the armed struggle was not uncomplicated. In theory the armed forces of FAR stood under the political control of PGT. In practice, that was not always the case. FAR developed its own political leadership and started criticizing the PGT leadership for indifference towards the armed struggle. Within the party Ricardo Ramírez led the radical section.

PGT suffered a setback in early March 1966, as raids were conducted against the party leadership. Thirty-three left-wing leaders 'disappeared', including Víctor Manuel Gutiérrez and Leonardo Castillo Flores. CIA documents, declassified in 1998, confirmed that they had been executed by the state forces.

In the mid 1960s the U.S. State Department estimated the party membership to be approximately 1300.

The 1966 presidential elections

Guatemalan general election, 1966

General elections were held in Guatemala on 6 March 1966. After no candidate received 50% or more of the national vote, Julio César Méndez Montenegro was elected President by Congress on 10 May. On the Congressional elections, the Revolutionary Party won 28 of the 54 seats...

 highlighted differences within the party. After much discussions the party decided to support the candidature of Julio César Méndez

Julio César Méndez Montenegro

Julio César Méndez Montenegro was the Revolutionary Party President of Guatemala from 1 July 1966 to 1 July 1970. The only civilian to occupy Guatemala's presidency during the long period of military rule between 1954 and 1986, Méndez was not allowed to act independently of the military and was...

, claiming that he represented progressive and democratic sectors. At the same time the party maintained its support to the ongoing armed struggle. After Méndez had been elected he continued the anti-communist path of his predecessors, leading to accusations within PGT that the party leadership had adopted an incorrect line ahead of the elections. Some analysts claim that the killings of leaders of the older and more moderate generation within PGT, like Gutiérrez and Castillo, effectively closed the openings towards a peaceful settlement of the emerging civil war and emboldened the younger generation to take the more radical path.

In 1968 FAR broke its bond with PGT, reconstituting itself as the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, FAR II). FAR was able to win over a large section of the youths and students from PGT, resulting in a severe setback for the party amongst those sections.

Whereas the main difference between the PGT leadership and the young radicals of FAR concern the line towards the armed struggle, there were also other issues of diverging views. A crucial issue was to consider the poverty of the majority of Guatemalans only as an issue of class, or whether the indigenous populations were subjected to racist oppression. PGT maintained an orthodox marxist understanding, that the poverty of the indigenous peoples were an issue of class and that the solution to their problems was to be handled within the framework of class struggle

Class struggle

Class struggle is the active expression of a class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote "The [written] history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"....

. The emerging guevarist

Che Guevara

Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...

 leftist groups, however, developed an understanding that the indigenous peoples suffered from forms of oppression that could not only be explained as issues of class. These differences would remain during years to come, and has resurfaced even after the consolidation of URNG as a unified political party.

Fourth Congress

PGT held its fourth congress on December 20–22, 1969. The congress, held in complete clandestinity, adopted the policy of 'Revolutionary People's War'. At this time its base of operations was concentrated to Guatemala City

Guatemala City

Guatemala City , is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Guatemala and Central America...

 and the southern coast of the country. The party carried out some armed attacks. The party had a brief rapprochement with FAR, that broke down due to political differences.

The party suffered heavily from government repression. On September 26, 1972 state forces captured Bernardo Alvarado

Bernardo Alvarado Monzón

Bernardo Alvarado Monzón was a Guatemalan communist leader. He led the clandestine Guatemalan Party of Labour , and became its general secretary. Under Alvarado's leadership the party adopted the line of 'Popular Revolutionary War'....

, PGT general secretary, Mario Silva Jonama, Central Committee Secretary of PGT, Carlos René Valle y Valle, Carlos Alvarado Jerez, Hugo Barrios Klee and Miguel Angel Hernández, PGT Central Committee members, Fantina Rodríguez, party member, and the domestic worker Natividad Franco Santos, in a raid in Guatemala City. The following day the president Carlos Arana

Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio

Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio was President of Guatemala from 1 July 1970 to 1 July 1974.Carlos Arana was born in Barberena, in the department of Santa Rosa....

 ordered their execution and that he bodies of the executed were to be dumped into the sea.

On December 21, 1974 the body of the party general secretary, Huberto Alvarado Arellano, was found. He had been subjected to torture and killed. In total, during the period of 1972-1983, two PGT general secretaries and nineteen Central Committee members were 'disappeared' and killed.

In spite of the harsh repression, PGT was able to consolidate its political strength. By the midst of the 1970s, it had reactivated its Northern, Central, Western and Eastern Regional Committees. After Alvarado's death, Ricardo Rosales (whose nom de guerre in PGT was Carlos González) was appointed interim general secretary. He was given the task to organize a 5th party congress. Moreover, the party reactivated the dormant Military Commission of the Central Committee. The party gained political presence in the trade union movement through the Federación Autónoma Sindical de Guatemala (FASGUA) and JPT was one of the forces working with the Association of University Students (AEU).

Fragmentation

However, PGT failed to maintain its unity for long. On May 29, 1978 a massacre occurred in Panzós. Following the massacre massive protests erupted in Guatemala City. These happenings contributed to another wave of radicalization amongst the left-wing in Guatemala, which would divide PGT.

On June 11 the Military Commission ('Comil') of PGT carried out a bomb attack in retaliation of the Panzós massacre against the Mobile Police in the northern region, in which 25 policemen were killed. However, the Political Commission of the Central Committee of the party denied PGT involvement in the attack. The line of the party leadership was that actions like that were bound to produce a government response of increasing state repression.

Now some sections of PGT claimed that the party had an ambiguous relation to the ongoing armed struggle. The dissidents rallied around a Núcleo de Dirección y Conducción de la lucha interna, in which Central Committee and Comil members participated. Soon the party was split in two. The dissident faction broke away forming the National Directing Nucleus of PGT

National Directive Nucleus of the Guatemalan Party of Labour

National Directive Nucleus of the Guatemalan Party of Labour , a splinter-group of the Guatemalan Party of Labour . PGT-NDN was formed in 1978, following an internal rift within PGT...

 (Nucleo de Dirección Nacional del PGT). PGT-NDN was more militant and initiated coordination with FAR and EGP. The remaining group which was led by Ricardo Rosales, which was sometimes referred to as PGT-Central Committee, maintained its role as the official Guatemalan party in the world communist movement.

PGT-NDN won over the South-East Regional Committee, a part of the Southern Regional Committee and a part of the Alamos Zonal Committee (Chimaltenango

Chimaltenango

Chimaltenango is a town in Guatemala of some 43,900 people . It serves as both the capital of the department of Chimaltenango and the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name....

). Its leader was José Alberto Cardoza (nom de guerre: Mario Sánchez), who had been a PGT Central Committee member up to the split. PGT-CC maintained its hold over the Central, Northern, Western Regional Committees and a section of the Southern Regional Committee.

Soon another section of the party, constituted by a group who had recently joined PGT after leaving FAR and members of Comil from the Central Region and the Alamos Zonal Committee, broke away from PGT to form the Guatemalan Party of Labour - Communist Party

Guatemalan Party of Labour - Communist Party

Guatemalan Party of Labour – Communist Party was an underground communist party in Guatemala. PGT-PC was formed in 1978 as a split from the Guatemalan Party of Labour ....

 (PGT-PC).

When the PGT-NDN and the leftist guerrillas (FAR, EGP, ORPA) joined forces and formed the URNG

Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity

The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity is a Guatemalan political party that started as a guerrilla movement but laid down its arms in 1996 and became a legal political party in 1998 after the peace process after the Guatemalan Civil War.-Formation:Since the CIA-backed...

 as a political and military coordination, PGT-CC stayed out of it.

At an expanded meeting of members of the Central Committee, Political Commission and representatives from the Regional Committees and the military structures January 5–7 another mutiny against Rosales' leadership took place. The dissidents formed a parallel party called Guatemalan Party of Labour - January 6 (PGT-6 de Enero).

In 1987 the URNG substituted PGT-NDN for PGT-CC in its leadership. By this time PGT-NDN had been severely marginalized. Since the 1983 capture of Carlos Quinteros ('Miguel'), who had been a leading figure in both PGT-NDN and PGT-PC, these groups were almost wiped out as Quinteros provided the state forces with vast information on their leaders and members.

Thus, following the entry of PGT-CC into URNG, the party worked closely with the other revolutionary movements within the framework of URNG during the final phases of the civil war. Also relations between PGT-CC and PGT-NDN improved, and the two parties were able to hold a joint celebration of the 38th anniversary of the foundation of the party.

Peace Accord and merger into URNG

On 29 December 1996 a peace agreement was signed between the government of Álvaro Arzú

Álvaro Arzú

Álvaro Enrique Arzú Yrigoyen was the 32nd President of Guatemala from January 14, 1996 until January 14, 2000...

 and the URNG. When URNG transformed from a coalition of different groups to a unified political party in 1998, the four constituents merged into it. EGP and FAR were the first to dissolve their organizations, then PGT-CC and ORPA. The Provisional Leading Junta of URNG included Ricardo Rosales from PGT as its secretary.

In October 2005 a group, claiming to represent former members of PGT, PGT-NDN, EGP, FAR and JPT, founded a party with the name PGT.