Could electoral democracy generate radical change? : Debates within Guatemala's radical left in the 1960s

Abstract

Throughout the 1960s, Guatemala’s radical left became consumed in an internal debate concerning the revolutionary strategy they believed should be followed to generate radical socio-political and economic changes in Guatemala. Confronting the societal anxieties that accompanied advances in modernity, such as growing wealth inequality, new forms of social poverty, and the marginalization of the fragments in Guatemalan society (primarily, peasants and workers), Guatemala’s radical left encountered a fundamental quandary in the development of its revolutionary methodology. Should they work within the confines of electoral democracy to realize radical reforms or, as a militant faction of the radical left increasingly proposed, would radical changes require an armed struggle aimed at toppling the nation’s entire system of governance?