In 1986, Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo (born 1942) was elected as the first civilian president of Guatemala following 15 years of military rule. Cerezo Arevalo's term of office lasted through 1990. The significance of these two facts, that he was a civilian president who remained in office for five years, is best understood by examing the violence and political turmoil that was part of daily life in Guatemala for over forty years.

In 1986, Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo was elected as Guatemala's first civilian president in fifteen years (1986-1990). The importance of his election and subsequent five year tenure is best understood by viewing the forty years preceding his election. Guatemala had experienced constant and violent political turmoil, swinging radically to the left and just as radically to the right, from the 1940s onward.

Born in Libertad, Guatemala, in 1942, Cerezo earned an undergraduate degree at the Salesian College of Don Bosco, and then...