Francisco Villagrán Kramer

Francisco Villagrán Kramer (5 April 1927 – 12 July 2011)^[1] was a Guatemalan legal scholar and social democrat who served as vice president^[2] under General Romeo Lucas García beginning in 1978. He resigned from office on 1 September 1980,^[3] before his term ended, citing differences with the Lucas administration and disapproval of Guatemala's worsening human rights situation.^[4] He then went into voluntary exile in the United States, taking a position in the Legal Department of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Villagrán has been elected to and served on the Inter-American Juridical Committee of the Organization of American States (OAS) and on the United Nations' International Law Commission. In 1994 he was elected to the Guatemalan Congress, where he served as president of the Committee on Human Rights.

In 1997, he was nominated for a seat on the OAS's Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The nomination raised strong criticism based on the allegation that death squads had been active in Guatemala during his time as vice-president.

Villagrán has authored more than two dozen books and dozens of articles on international law and Guatemalan history and politics. In Biografía Política de Guatemala he describes his involvement with the Lucas administration as a failed attempt to exert a moderating influence on a rightist regime.

References

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/world/americas/16villagran.html?_r=1
2. Politics in Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua By Thomas P. Anderson 1988
3. The Future of Central America: policy choices for the U.S. and Mexico By Richard R. Fagen, Olga Pellicer de Brody, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, Project on United States-Mexico Relations 1983
4. Report on the Situation of Human Rights in the Republic of Guatemala, Chapter IX, 1981

External links

• History of Guatemala chapter 9, (includes text of resignation)
• worldpolicy.org
• Inter-American Juridical Committee