Zury Ríos and the bloody past in Guatemala of her father, the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt

A smiling Zury Ríos showed the cameras of the Guatemalan press her credential as a presidential candidate for the conservative Valor Unionista coalition.

In an act organized on February 4, the electoral authorities of Guatemala sealed the candidacy of Ríos, a procedure denied to the candidates of the leftist Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MPL), but which in the case of Ríos seemed like a mere formality.

The officials of the Electoral Tribunal, also smiling, received Ríos very kindly and one of them assured him that the delivery of the accreditation was an important step "for you, for the country and for democracy."

In this way, Ríos has a clear path to start in March what is expected to be an intense campaign ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for June,

Although the campaign has not officially started, Zury Ríos is moving throughout the country to attract the vote.

The polls put her in the lead, with 16% of possible voters willing to favor her.

In a video that shows her at a political rally in Tecpán, in the Guatemalan highlands, Ríos orders one of her aides to put a coat on an indigenous-looking man.

“This is the symbol of what it means for us to serve the people, because with the gabacha we sweep, we care for women and men,” says Ríos.

The act occurred in a region hit by the repression that the Guatemalan government unleashed against the guerrillas in the 1980s, with the so-called cleanup operations, whose objective was to devastate the insurgents.

These actions intensified under the leadership of Ríos Montt,

They were years of blood and fire in Guatemala.

The country was experiencing a bloody internal conflict that left more than 200,000 victims, but some of the most terrifying episodes occurred with Ríos Montt in power.

In an Amnesty International report published in 2012, one of the survivors of those massacres, named Antonio, recalls how the military razed his town: “The boy left his house only to find a terrifying scene.

More than 250 soldiers entered the community and with weapons and kicks, forced men, women and children to walk towards the central square.

The soldiers took the men to a church and the women to an office, all accused of belonging to the guerrillas.

In the church they murdered each man with one shot.

In the office, many of the women were raped, some in front of their children.

After the massacre, the soldiers returned to the community to burn what was left.

The survivors were forced to walk until they reached a farm where they would spend a long year, mostly outdoors and under strict military control.

In an interview with CNN, Ríos has defended his father and said that "he died innocent."

According to the policy, Ríos Montt "was accused of many things, but my father was judged by the country's history, time after time, when he was elected at the polls."

The conservative politics referred to the election of Ríos Montt as a member of the Guatemalan Congress, whose presidency he held between 2000 and 2004. “I love my father and I will never, ever judge him.

Our relationship is that of father and daughter, of friends.

He instilled in me the values ​​of responsibility, of believing in God,” said Ríos.

“Yes, they accused him, but they never proved it to him.

He died free.

Nobody showed him anything, ”he added.

And at the most critical moment of the interview, the conservative politician affirms: "In Guatemala there was no genocide, what we had was a war."

According to Rios,

his father did not come to power after carrying out a coup, but "as a consequence" of a coup carried out by other officers and he "had to take charge of the nation."

He further stated that the trial against Ríos Montt was riddled with irregularities and was misrepresented.

Ríos Montt, after evading justice for decades, was subjected to an oral and public trial in 2013. More than 100 survivors and relatives of the victims gave their testimonies, an account of the horrors committed by the Army.

The dictator was sentenced to 80 years in prison, 50 for genocide and 30 years for crimes against humanity.

It is estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed in the few months of his presidency, because the general was overthrown in a coup against him 17 months after taking office.

Ten days after the conviction was announced, the Constitutional Court suspended the process on a technicality and annulled the conviction.

Ríos Montt died in 2018 due to cardiac arrest.

The dictator died in impunity.

Zury Ríos began her presidential career defending her father's legacy and attacking the corruption and impunity that plague Guatemala and has become a strong critic of the current president, Alejandro Giammattei, who has very low approval ratings.

He also talks about defending the values ​​of democracy and state institutions, although in 1990 Ríos led a mob that entered Congress while electoral reforms were being discussed, leaving several injured.

In this way, she defended her father, who aspired to the Presidency despite the fact that the new laws prohibited the participation in the electoral processes of those who had participated in a coup.

Those same reforms would later put conservative politics in trouble, although she has now been able to evade them.

Ríos presents herself as a defender of conservative values, has the support of broad religious sectors such as evangelical churches, and in Guatemala it is said that she is the candidate of big business and the military, both groups with enormous influence in the government.

Despite her father's dark legacy, conservative politics tops voters' preferences, though there is still a long way to go until the June election.

“She won democracy,” said Ríos the day she was handed her credentials as a presidential candidate.

"This time the people decide," she wrote in a tweet.

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