Guatemalan Party of Labour – Communist Party (in Spanish: Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo – Partido Comunista) was an underground communist party in Guatemala. PGT-PC was formed in 1978 as a split from the Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT).
Spanish or Castilian is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain and today has hundreds of millions of native speakers in the Americas and Spain. It is a global language and the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.
In political science, a communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the social and economic goals of Communism through revolution and state policy. The term communist party was popularized by the title of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As a vanguard party, the communist party guides the political education and development of the working class (proletariat); as the ruling party, the communist party exercises power through the dictatorship of the proletariat. Lenin developed the role of the communist party as the revolutionary vanguard, when social democracy in Imperial Russia was divided into ideologically opposed factions, the Bolshevik faction and the Menshevik faction. To be politically effective, Lenin proposed a small vanguard party managed with democratic centralism, which allowed centralized command of a disciplined cadre of professional revolutionaries; once policy was agreed upon, realizing political goals required every Bolshevik's total commitment to the agreed-upon policy.
Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, Belize and the Caribbean to the northeast, Honduras to the east, El Salvador to the southeast and the Pacific Ocean to the south. With an estimated population of around 16.6 million, it is the most populated country in Central America. Guatemala is a representative democracy; its capital and largest city is Nueva Guatemala de la Asunción, also known as Guatemala City.
The founders of PGT-PC belonged to two groupings within PGT. One section which participated in forming PGT-PC had only a brief period of membership in PGT. They had belonged to the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR), but had left FAR to join PGT. The other section was made up by members of the Military Commission of PGT (i.e. the armed branch of the party) in the Central Regional Committee and the Alamos Zonal Committee.
The Rebel Armed Forces was a Guatemalan guerrilla organization established in 1961 and lasting until the peace agreements in 1996.
In the early 1980s PGT-PC expelled Carlos Quinteros (nom de guerre: Miguel). Quinteros had joined PGT-PC after having participated in the formation of the National Directing Nucleus of PGT (PGT-NDN). Quinteros was captured by state forces on October 9, 1983. Quinteros become a collaborator of the government armed forces. He provided information to the military about the whereabouts and identities of leaders and key cadres of PGT, PGT-NDN and PGT-PC. The arrests and killings that followed wiped out PGT-PC. Only a small section of the party remained active, regrouping itself as the Guatemalan Party of Labour – Alamos. [ ]
Carlos Quinteros was a Guatemalan communist. Quinteros was a member of the Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT). When PGT split in 1978 he became a leading figure in the more militant PGT-NDN break-away group. However, he soon left PGT-NDN and joined Guatemalan Party of Labour - Communist Party (PGT-PC). Soon, however he was expelled from PGT-PC.
National Directive Nucleus of the Guatemalan Party of Labour, a splinter group of the Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT). PGT-NDN was formed in 1978, following an internal rift within PGT. An attack of the Military Commission of PGT against a police convoy provoked the split, in which 25 police officers were killed. The central leadership of the party had denied involvement in the attack. A minority accused the leadership of being ambiguous towards the armed struggle against the regime.
The Guatemalan Party of Labour – Alamos was an underground communist party in Guatemala. PGT-Alamos was formed as a regroupment of the few elements in the Alamos region of the erstwhile Guatemalan Party of Labour - Communist Party (PGT-PC) that survived the 1983 purges against the organisation.
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