Otto Pérez Molina

He has been married to Rosa Perez Leal for over 40 years; Rosa was 17 years old when they got married. The pair has two children: a daughter Lissette Perez and a son Otto Perez Leal.

Molina’s son, Otto Perez Leal, is also involved in politics and joined the Patriot Party in 2008; he was elected Mayor of Mexico on September 11th, 2011.

Otto Perez Molina’s family has been the victim of political attacks multiple times. On February 21st, 2001, a few days before Molina was scheduled to launch the Patriotic Party, masked gunman attacked and wounded his daughter, Lissette. November of that same year, Otto Perez Leal was attack by gunmen while driving with his wife and infant daughter.

Otto Perez Molina was born on December 1, 1950 in Guatemala City, Guatemala.

In 1969, Perez Molina graduated from Guatemala’s National Military Academy. He then went on to attend the School of the Americas and the Inter-American Defense College.

In 1983, Otto Perez Molina was part of a group of army officers who backed Defense Minister Oscar Meijia’a coup d’etat against President Efrain Rios Montt.

From January 1992 to June 1993 he served as D-2 Directorate of Intelligence, one of the army’s two main intelligence-gathering entities during the Guatemalan Civil War.

In 1993, while serving as Chief of Military Intelligence, Molina aided the forced departure of corrupt president Jorge Serrano, who had attempted a self-coup.

He was appointed Presidential Chief of Staff by the President Ramiro de Leon Carpio in 1993 and served in this cappacity until 1995.

He was appointed as the chief representative of the military in the negotiations with the guerilla forces to end the Guatemalan Civil War. He played a key role in the negotiations that brought an end to the 36-year-long conflict and resulted in the 1996 Peace Accords.

During his first year in office as President, murder rates in Guatemala dropped from 41 per 100,000 in 2010 to 38.6 per 100,000. Molina aims to reduce the homicide rate to 30 murders per 100,000 through use of an expanded police force and by boosting Guatemala’s security presence on its borders in order to combat transnational crime.

After assuming presidency, he launched ‘Zero Hunger Program’ with an aim to reduce chronic malnutrition. However, the program has been criticized for lack of resources and its failure to reach much of the at-risk population due to poor level of organization.