Education
Ramírez studied law at National University of San Carlos.
Ramírez studied law at National University of San Carlos.
At the time of his death he held the post of Secretary General of the URNG. At the end of the 1940s he became active as a counselor in the road construction trade union. He joined the Communist Party of Guatemala during the democratic period of the country (1944-1954). lieutenant was in this time that he became acquainted with Che Guevara, who was touring the country.
This was the beginning of a friendship of many years.
Ramírez began to fight Guatemala"s rightist dictatorship after leftist president Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by a United States.-sponsored 1954 military coup. He was one of the organizers of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor in 1972, one of the four organizations which later formed the URNG. Ramírez was involved in the peace process between the guerrilla and the government that restored democracy to Guatemala on December 29, 1996 and ended a 36-year-long civil war.
"This new democratic nation, multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual, luxuriant and varied as it is the nature of the population of our country, was born out of the historical synthesis of cultures, wills, opinions and feelings of all Guatemalans united in a single national élan which transcends the system of values inherited from the past" (From the speech of acceptance of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Peace Prize, 1997).
After living many years in exile, President Álvaro Arzú allowed him to return to the country, and the URNG become a legal political party.