Alfonso Portillo - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Portillo was born in Zacapa. He obtained his academic qualifications in Mexico. He received a degree in social sciences from the Autonomous University of Guerrero (UAG) in Chilpancingo, Guerrero, and his doctorate from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City. In the late 1970s he became involved with left-wing indigenous groups in Guerrero and with the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). During the 1980s he lectured in political science at the university in Chilpancingo. During that time, Portillo shot and killed two students. He later claimed that he had shot the students in self-defense. His political opponents, however, asserted that he had killed the two unarmed students in a "bar brawl." He was never charged for the shootings, and in 1995, a Mexican judge declared the case "inactive."

In 1989 Portillo returned to Guatemala and joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which had replaced the Authentic Revolutionary Party the previous year. The little-known PSD was one of the very few leftist parties that survived the military repression that had characterized the 1970s and 1980s. He then moved to the Guatemalan Christian Democrats (DCG), a center-right formation which at the time was the governing party. In 1992 he was appointed Director of the Guatemalan Institute of Social and Political Sciences (IGESP), a role he held till 1994. He became the DCG's Secretary General in 1993 and was elected as one of their deputies in 1994, and became head of their group in Congress. During this time he also became an editorial adviser to Siglo Veintiuno, one of the two largest-selling daily newspapers.