Happy Anniversary - Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre!

The CIA-installed government of Guatemala faced its first severe test since it came to power in 1954 when several military officers revolted on November 13, 1960.  They revolted against what they considered to be the government’s excessive corruption and its complicity in allowing the United States to train and launch an invasion of a fellow Latin American country from its soil. 

President (General) Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes had been allowing the CIA to train Cuban exiles and other mercenaries and use of landing strips for its April 1961 invasion of Cuba, more famously known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.  While the Movimiento de los Juramentados (what those who are known as the MR-13 called themselves) had been planning a rebellion for over one year, they launched the revolt on November 12 because they thought that Ydigoras Fuentes' spies had discovered them.

The rebellion was quickly put down by the Guatemalan government.  Most of the surviving military officers fled into exile in Honduras and El Salvador.  The government offerred a $1,000 quetzal reward for information about the MR-13's surviving members.

Over the next two years, these officers, now known as the Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre (November 13^th Revolutionary Movement, or MR-13), failed several more times at spurring a successful uprising.  Some tried to join forces with ultrarightists (Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN) while others moved closer to ultraleftists. 

MR-13 members Marco Antonio Yon Sosa and Luis Augusto Turcios Lima joined forces with the Partido Guatemalteca del Trabajo (Guatemalan Workers Party, or PGT) after a meeting in Cuba in September 1962.  The PGT had been made illegal again following the 1954 coup and primarily worked underground with mass-based organizations.  Turcios Lima and Yon Sosa's military organization joined with the PGT's armed wing and another armed student group to create the Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces, or FAR).

For some, the November 1960 uprising marks the beginning of Guatemala's internal conflict that ended with the 1996 accords (1960-1996).  However, the 1960 revolt was a nationalist uprising against corruption and a repressive government rather than an ideological one.  In many ways, it make more sense to mark the beginning of the war in 1962 with the launch of the FAR or the 1954 coup as I sometimes do.  

See La Hora and Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre (MR-13 for more information.