The Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (in Spanish: Unidad Revolucionaria Nacional Guatemalteca, URNG-MAIZ or most commonly URNG) is a Guatemalan political party that started as a guerrilla movement but laid down its arms in 1996 and became a legal political party in 1998 after the peace process which ended the Guatemalan Civil War. History Background PBSUCCESS and early insurgency Since the CIA-backed coup in 1954, opposition groups were continuously forming in an attempt to fight against the repression that the military and wealthy landowners in Guatemala had created. The ensuing military dictatorship of Carlos Castillo Armas immediately banned labor unions and left-wing parties, like the Guatemalan Party of Labour (PGT). After the assassination of Castillo Armas by a left-wing member of the presidential guard, Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes prevailed in the ensuing power struggle. The continued repression, coupled with an ever closer alignment of the Guatemalan government with the United States government, as well as rampant corruption and favoritism led to a rebellion by a group of dissident officers, which later named themselves Revolutionary Movement 13th November (MR-13), in reference to the incident. The failed coup d'état on 13 November 1960 usually marks the beginning of the Guatemalan Civil War, a bloody affair that lasted 36 years and claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people. With United States military assistance, the guerrilla were uprooted from eastern Guatemala and had to flee to neighboring Honduras. Remnants of the MR-13 returned in 1962 and established the first guerrilla group, the Rebel Armed Forces (FAR). The failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961 and his purported erratic behavior convinced part of the military and the United States to rid themselves of Ydígoras Fuentes, which finally succeeded after several attempts in March 1963. This putsch, led by his Minister of Defense Alfredo Enrique Peralta Azurdia, denoted the beginning of Guatemala's first authentic military regime. In 1966, the law professor Julio César Méndez Montenegro was elected to the presidency, but was only allowed to take up the position under the condition, that he would not interfere in matters of internal security or the military. The year also saw the creation of Mano Blanca, a right-wing paramilitary group associated with the MLN, founded to prohibit Méndez Montenegro from taking office and to counter left-wing activism. The subsequent "white terror" coupled with the Zacapa program, severely crippled the guerrilla force based in eastern Guatemala, which