Vinicio Cerezo
Vinicio Cerezo was president of Guatemala from January 1986 to January 1991, the Christian Democrat who was the first civilian elected in twenty years and the first to finish a term since 1970. He said on taking office that he had thirty per cent of the power and would try to get more, which he did not. His five years were the Esquipulas agreements that ended the Central American wars and the two coup attempts that did not end his presidency. He was born in Guatemala City, the son of a supreme court judge. He was a lawyer of the San Carlos university who joined the Christian Democrats in 1964 and survived three assassination attempts in the 1970s and 1980s, one of them a machine-gunning of his car in 1981 that killed his bodyguard. He won the election of December 1985, held under the constitution the generals had written in 1985 to hand over a state they could no longer pay for, with sixty-eight per cent in the run-off. The presidency was the peace. There was the meeting he called at Esquipulas in May 1986 with the five presidents, the second in August 1987 at which Arias's plan was signed, and the Central American Parliament that came out of it. There were the talks with the URNG guerrilla opened in Madrid in 1987 under the church's mediation, and the Belize claim dropped, in effect, in 1991. There were the amnesty for the army that the generals had given themselves and he let stand, and the tax reform that the business chambers fought with a general strike. There were the coup attempts of May 1988 and May 1989 by the officers who thought the talks were treason, put down by the defence minister Gramajo, whose price was that the army's war went on. There was the killing, lower than the generals' but not low, the students of the San Carlos university disappeared in 1989, the anthropologist Myrna Mack stabbed in the street in September 1990 by an army sergeant, and the Santiago Atitlán massacre of December 1990, thirteen villagers shot by soldiers, after which the town expelled the garrison. He handed over to Serrano in January 1991, the first transfer between elected civilians the country had made. He was a deputy in the Congress and the Central American Parliament. He is the Christian Democrats' elder in a country where the party has dissolved. He was the secretary-general of the Central American integration system from 2017 to 2021. That is the institution his Esquipulas left.
- Lived: 1942 CE – ?
- Nationality: Guatemalan
- Roles: president, lawyer, politician
