Kjell Laugerud García
Kjell Laugerud García was president of Guatemala from 1974 to 1978, the general of Norwegian descent whom the count of the election of March 1974 declared the winner after the Christian Democrats' candidate, the general Ríos Montt, had been ahead. His four years were the earthquake of February 1976 and the opening that the earthquake, for a while, produced. He was born in Guatemala City to a Norwegian father, trained at the Escuela Politécnica and at Fort Leavenworth. He was the army's chief of staff and Arana Osorio's defence minister. He was the official candidate of the army's party and the MLN, elected, by the count, with forty-one per cent. Ríos Montt, who had won by the other count, was sent to Madrid as military attaché and came back a Pentecostal. The earthquake of 4 February 1976 killed twenty-three thousand people, left a million without houses and destroyed the highland towns along the Motagua fault. The government's response, the reconstruction, the foreign aid that came in, the cooperatives that the Maya highlands organised to rebuild, and the peasant committee that the reconstruction produced, the CUC, founded in 1978, was the opening. The unions were allowed to organise, the Christian Democrats and the social democrats allowed to campaign, the university allowed to function, the murders continuing at a lower rate. The years are the ones the country's democrats called a spring and the army called a mistake. The Panzós massacre of 29 May 1978, six weeks before he left office, when the army fired on Kekchí peasants in the town square of Panzós in Alta Verapaz who had come to ask about their land in the Franja Transversal and killed perhaps a hundred and fifty, was the end of the spring and the beginning of the war in the highlands. Lucas García, his defence minister and successor, fought it. He broke with Ríos Montt's Christian Democrats and quarrelled with the MLN, which called him a communist. He ceded the Belize claim to negotiation. He handed over in July 1978 to Lucas after an election the count again decided. He lived in Guatemala City, out of politics. He died there in December 2009, at seventy-nine. He was the general who is remembered for the earthquake and the four years in which the killing was only ordinary.
- Lived: 1930 CE – 2009 CE
- Nationality: Guatemalan
- Roles: president, general, politician
