# URNG Formed (1982)

URL: https://allhistories.com/guatemala/timeline/1982-urng-formed
Location: Guatemala
Themes: battle

By 1981 Guatemala's guerrilla organisations, encouraged by the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua in 1979 and the outbreak of war in El Salvador, controlled or influenced wide areas of the highlands and were considered a serious threat by the army. Yet they remained divided by strategy and ideology. Cuba urged them to unite, following the Salvadoran example of the FMLN created in 1980. On 7 February 1982 four organisations, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Revolutionary Organisation of the People in Arms (ORPA), the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) and the National Leadership Nucleus of the Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT), announced the creation of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, URNG). They published a five-point programme calling for an end to repression, an end to the domination of the rich and foreign interests, equality between Indigenous people and ladinos, a popular, representative government and non-alignment. Each group kept its own command structure. The URNG was formed just as the army's scorched-earth offensives began to devastate the guerrillas' social base, and by 1983 it had suffered severe losses. It nevertheless survived as a military and political force and in 1996 signed the peace accords with the government, becoming a legal political party in 1998. At this point in the timeline (7 February 1982), the President of Guatemala was Fernando Romeo Lucas García (1 July 1978 – 23 March 1982).

## Why it matters
It united the guerrilla movement and became the government's counterpart in the 1996 peace accords.

Ruler at the Time: [Fernando Romeo Lucas García](https://allhistories.com/guatemala/rulers/fernando-romeo-lucas-garcia)

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_National_Revolutionary_Unity)
- [Encyclopaedia Britannica — Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity](https://www.britannica.com/search?query=Guatemalan+National+Revolutionary+Unity)
- [Wikipedia — Guatemalan Civil War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War)
- [Wikipedia — Guerrilla Army of the Poor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_Army_of_the_Poor)