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difficulties some churches and Evangelical entities, as will be seen later, showed interest and participated in different spaces in favour of the Guatemalan population and problems.\u000AIt was during this period that General R\u00EDos Montt became the first Evangelical president in Guatemalan history. From his political background and Neo-Pentecostal beliefs he assumed the government with an ideological conservative posture. The General was one of the leading elders of Verbo church (ICV) when he was called to preside over the Military Junta government in stead of General Garc\u00EDa. His messianic sense, his authoritarianism and leadership in the offensive against the guerrilla, have been discussed and criticized by different authors from distinct angles. The following acts summarise the political activities of R\u00EDos Montt: 1) a moralizing campaign against theft, in favour of the truth, and against the abuse of the governmental bureaucrats; 2) the creation of the Patrols for civil defence; 3) the establishment of the areas of development; 4) the \u2018guns\u2019 and \u2018beans\u2019, and \u2018work\u2019, \u2018roof and tortillas\u2019 programmes; 5) the instalment of the \u2018tribunales de fuero especial\u2019(army courts) (Lujan 1998: 350-51).\u000AThe majority of these programmes and strategies driven by R\u00EDos Montt\u2019s government and the army were used to counterattack and squash the guerrillas, and to inaugurate, according to the General, a new nation based on morality and order. Garrard- Burnett states that the idea of the new Guatemala did not only mean \u2018change or improvement to the institutions, but also to transform and redeem the hearts of men\u2019 (1998: 110). Some analysts affirm that many new believers entered the Evangelical church during R\u00EDos Montt\u2019s government. They became Evangelicals to save their lives from the oppression of the epoch (Cant\u00F3n 1998:101). Of course, Protestant authors affirm that the Evangelical explosion occurred much earlier. The Centenary celebration in 1982 was the culmination of a process which started during the 1960s (Suazo 1999: 93-96). Garrard- Burnett \u2018demonstrates that evangelical growth, rather than being primarily a result of the military exploitation of fundamentalist religion in the 1980s, had assumed substantial\u000A53\u000A