Guatemala's government, headed by Fernando Romeo Lucas García is overthrown in a military coup by right-wing General Efraín Ríos Montt.

Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the south and the Gulf of Honduras to the northeast.

Fernando Romeo Lucas García was a military officer and politician who served as the 37th president of Guatemala from July 1, 1978, to March 23, 1982. He was elected as the nominee for the Institutional Democratic Party. During Lucas García's regime, tensions between the radical left and the government increased. The military started to murder political opponents while counterinsurgency measures further terrorized populations of poor civilians.

José Efraín Ríos Montt was a Guatemalan military officer who served as de facto President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. Ríos Montt's counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxist guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), while also leading to accusations of war crimes and acts of genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army under his leadership.