Guerrilla Army of the Poor
Ramírez began to fight Guatemala's rightist regime after leftist president Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état. 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. An anti-insurgency campaign by the army under the 1982-83 presidency of General Efraín Ríos Montt, however, set an end for Ramírez's hopes for armed resistance against the government, and it became clear to him that the end of the armed conflict could be attained probably only by a negotiated solution.