1. Marco Vinicio Cerezo Arevalo was born on December 26,1942 and is a Guatemalan politician who served as the 40th president of Guatemala from 1986 to 1991.
18 Facts About Vinicio Cerezo
1. 2.
Vinicio Cerezo served as the Secretary General of the Central American Integration System from 2017 to 2021.
3.
Vinicio Cerezo graduated in judicial science from USAC in 1968, the same year the DCG was formally legalized, and was made its secretary in 1970.
4.
Vinicio Cerezo was elected a deputy in the National Congress, where the DCG, with 14 seats, became the largest party within the opposition.
5.
Yet, Vinicio Cerezo appeared at the March 1982 elections to support the opposition candidate Alejandro Maldonado Aguirre, who lost out to the official candidate Angel Anibal Guevara.
6.
When it became clear that the repression in the countryside was becoming more indiscriminate and, perhaps more importantly, that Rios Montt was fanatically preaching an evangelical, messianic, born-again type of Christianity, Vinicio Cerezo withdrew his support for the regime and demanded new elections.
7.
Vinicio Cerezo began to promote the idea of talking to the United Guatemalan National Revolutionaries, an umbrella group containing the main three guerrilla groups.
8.
Vinicio Cerezo was the first democratically elected president and civilian to take office since 1966.
9.
Vinicio Cerezo vowed to change Guatemala within his first 126 days.
10.
Vinicio Cerezo declared Guatemala neutral in the civil wars that were occurring in neighboring El Salvador and Nicaragua.
11.
Vinicio Cerezo was a great supporter of the idea of a Central American Parliament.
12.
Amidst rumors of plots and possible assassination attempts against Vinicio Cerezo, many considered him powerless and ineffective.
13.
Vinicio Cerezo admitted that he had had to submit to some of the military's demands to avoid a coup taking place.
14.
Vinicio Cerezo handed power over to his successor, Jorge Serrano, in the first democratic transition of power since 1951.
15.
In 1991, Vinicio Cerezo became a deputy in the Central American Parliament in its first five-year term.
16.
Vinicio Cerezo was accused of hiding behind the immunity conferred here and in his role as an ex-president to avoid a variety of charges, including fraud in the buying of a Jordanian island, the covering up of the murder of Myrna Mack Chang, and the concession of a large piece of land to a conservation group owned by Cerezo's son Marco Vinicio Cerezo Blandon.
17.
Vinicio Cerezo is currently building an NGO named Esquipulas after Esquipulas Procedure for a firm and lasting peace and a new Esquipulas conference called Esquipulas III to further the integration of Central America, directed by Olinda Salguero.
18.
Vinicio Cerezo was named Peace Ambassador by the Guatemala Government on 7 August 2017, on the anniversary of the Esquipulas II agreements.