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Otto Pérez Molina

President of Guatemala (2012-2015)

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 6, 2026
Entity authorityQ57539 ↗
Source-derived summary

Otto Fernando Pérez Molina (born December 1, 1950) is a Guatemalan politician and retired general who served as the 48th president of Guatemala from 2012 to 2015. Standing as the Patriotic Party (Partido Patriota) candidate, he lost the 2007 presidential election but prevailed in the 2011 presidential election. During the 1990s, before entering politics, he served as Director of Military Intelligence, Presidential Chief of Staff under President Ramiro de León Carpio, and as the chief representative of the military for the Guatemalan Peace Accords. On being elected President, he called for the legalization of drugs.

On September 2, 2015, beset by corruption allegations and having been stripped of his immunity by Congress the day earlier, Pérez presented his resignation. He was arrested on September 3, 2015. Following his arrest, Pérez remained in prison until he was released on bond in January 2024; prior to his release, Pérez received convictions and jail sentences in 2022 and 2023.

Military career

Pérez is a graduate of Guatemala's National Military Academy (Escuela Politécnica), the School of the Americas, and of the Inter-American Defense College.

He has served as Guatemala's Director of Military Intelligence and as inspector-general of the army. In 1983, he was a member of the group of army officers who backed Defence Minister Óscar Mejía's coup d'état against de facto president Efraín Ríos Montt.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Otto Pérez Molina” is president of Guatemala (2012-2015). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Otto, Pérez and Molina, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 2012, 2015, 2007—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1950-12-01. For this dossier, Otto, Pérez and Molina is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “president of Guatemala (2012-2015)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q57539. VIAF identifies the subject as 342147266793935481817. The Library of Congress control number is no2016110775. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1950, 2012, 2015 and 2007.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Otto Pérez Molina”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Otto Pérez Molina primary sources, Otto Pérez Molina archive and Otto research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Otto Pérez Molina”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Otto Pérez Molina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.