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Bedgebury National Pinetum

Bedgebury National Pinetum at Bedgebury, Kent, in the United Kingdom, is a recreational and conservational arboretum managed by Forestry England that was established as the National Conifer Collection in 1925 and is now recognised as the most complete collection of conifers on one site anywhere in the world. The collection has over 10,000 trees growing across 320 acre, including rare, endangered and historically important specimens. Bedgebury National Pinetum conducts conservation work, is home to some 56 vulnerable or critically endangered species, and houses five National Plant Collections.

History
Bedgebury is first mentioned in an Anglo-Saxon charter in AD 841, the name deriving from the Old English bycgan, meaning "buy", and the Kentish vecge, meaning "to bend or turn", possibly in reference to a stream.

John de Bedgebury is listed as the earliest resident of Bedgebury, in the time of Edward II. In the 15th century Agnes de Bedgebury, sister and heir of John (died 1424) married John Colepeper, whose Colepeper heirs, financed by mining clay-ironstone on the estate, were resident until at the time of the restoration of Charles II, and who created an ornamental park on the Bedgebury estate. Elizabeth I visited in August 1573.

The current house was built in 1688 for Sir James Hayes, a little apart from the old house. The estate later passed to the Stephenson family, who retained it until it was left to a Miss Peach, who sold it in 1789 to John Cartier, Governor of Bengal and High Sheriff of Kent, who improved the plantings and the house.

In the 1840s Viscount William Beresford developed the estate by creating the village of Kilndown and three lodges, one of which – Keepers Lodge, now known as Park House – became the centre of the Pinetum. Beresford initiated the pinetum in the 1850s and his successor, his stepson Alexander Beresford Hope, developed Lady Mildred's Drive to enable visitors in carriages to view the trees.

The estate was sold in 1899 to Isaac Lewis, who allowed the collection to fall into neglect, and it was purchased by the Crown Estate in 1918 for its marshy land and drier ridges, as well as its streams, lakes and valleys.

In 1919, the house was bought by the Church Education Corporation to operate as a school. The school closed in 2006.

The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew and the Forestry Commission established the site as The National Pinetum in a joint venture in 1924, as the National Conifer Collection, because air pollution was rendering London unsuitable for growing conifers. A site at the southern end of Bedgebury Park was chosen, centred on Marshall's Lake and a stream-filled valley.

The first plants for the pinetum were raised at Kew Gardens in 1921 and transferred to Bedgebury in 1925 and 1926, alongside Viscount Beresford's existing plantings. Development of the collection was managed by the Kew botanist William Dallimore, a world-renowned expert on conifers.

In 1969 management of the pinetum reverted solely to the Forestry Commission, now Forestry England, who extended it in 1977 and created two new lakes. In the Great Storm of 1987 almost a quarter of the trees were brought down.

The collection
The aim of Bedgebury National Pinetum is "to grow as many species of conifers as the climatic conditions will allow, planted in generic groupings, using geographically associated plantings where possible." (W. Dallimore, 1923)

The pinetum holds 10,000 specimens of conifers and other species that grow in temperate zones, including 7,000 trees, as living gene banks and as a genetic resource for future restoration programmes. It holds 2,300 different species of conifer, specimens of which include the tallest tree in Kent (Abies grandis) and the three tallest Leyland Cypresses in the UK. The plan is for the pinetum to provide a mix of 70% conifers to 30% broadleaves, and to leave 40% of the site open to provide vistas and allow the trees to be appreciated.

Bedgebury National Pinetum is home to six National Plant Collections accredited with the Plant Heritage charity: Yew, Juniper, Thuja, Lawson's Cypress, Leyland Cypress and Cryptomeria japonica.

The collection contains 56 species that have been officially declared vulnerable or critically endangered.

Conservation
The scale and quality of Bedgebury National Pinetum's conifer collection have made it an ideal site to take part in the International Conifer Conservation Programme (ICCP), run by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. The ICCP aims to promote the conservation of conifers through conservation work, research and education, and work carried out at Bedgebury makes up part of the effort to conserve the genetic diversity of conifers, particularly those from temperate forests.

The Bedgebury Conifer Conservation Project, initiated in 2007, is designed to use redundant forest plots to grow large numbers – up to 500 – of endangered conifers to provide an ex-situ genetic resource. The first plots were planted with Chilean plum yew by Boy Scouts celebrating their centenary in 2007, and future plantings will include samples from Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.

Bedgebury nursery was the first to germinate Vietnamese golden cypress (Xanthocyparis vietnamensis) and chichibu birch (Betula chichibuensis) seeds in cultivation.

title: Bedgebury National Pinetum


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Ubii

The Ubii were a Germanic tribe first encountered dwelling on the east bank of the Rhine in the time of Julius Caesar, who formed an alliance with them in 55 BC in order to launch attacks across the river. They were transported in 39 BC by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa to the west bank, apparently at their own request, as they feared the incursions of their neighbors, the Chatti.

A colony for Roman veterans was founded in 50 AD under the patronage of Agrippa's granddaughter, Agrippina the Younger, who had been born at Ara Ubiorum, the capital of the Ubii. The colony derived its title from the names of Agrippina and her husband, the emperor Claudius, and received the name Colonia Claudia Ara Augusta Agrippinensium, which is the origin of the city's modern name, Cologne. Alongside the allotment of land to veterans, the existing town of Ara Ubiorum was elevated to the status of a colonia, which would have conferred many privileges on the inhabitants. The Ubii were also at Bonna (Bonn) of the Eburones.

The Ubii remained loyal allies of Rome; they were instrumental in crushing the Batavian rebellion in 70 AD and, although some of them made part of the invasion of Pannonia in 166 AD, they become foederati supporting Roman troops in the Marcomannic Wars in 166–67 AD.

They seem to have been so thoroughly Romanized that they adopted the name Agrippinenses in honour of their "founder", and their later history is submerged with other Franks in that of eastern Gaul as a whole.

Roman interactions
In 55 BC, Julius Caesar was preparing for an invasion of Britain, when several Germanic tribes, including the Ubii, crossed the Rhine river. This movement included the Usipetes and Tencteri tribes, who wished to relocate to avoid contact with the Suevi. Caesar, concerned that fighting might break out in the region and draw troops away from his planned invasion, marched toward the Rhine. He met with ambassadors from the Germanic tribe and offered them land with the Ubii and an alliance against the Suevi; however, Caesar soon became worried that the tribes were delaying until their cavalry could return.

Together with the Batavi, the Ubii furnished soldiers for the Germanic bodyguard, the personal bodyguard of the early Roman emperors.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ubii


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Efraín Ríos Montt

José Efraín Ríos Montt (16 June 1926 – 1 April 2018) was a Guatemalan military officer, politician, and dictator who served as de facto President of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983. His brief tenure as chief executive was one of the bloodiest periods in the long-running Guatemalan Civil War. Ríos Montt's counter-insurgency strategies significantly weakened the Marxist guerrillas organized under the umbrella of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) while also leading to accusations of war crimes and genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan Army under his leadership.

Ríos Montt was a career army officer. He was director of the Guatemalan military academy and rose to the rank of brigadier general. He was briefly chief of staff of the Guatemalan army in 1973. However, he was soon forced out of the position over differences with the military high command. He ran for president in the 1974 general election, losing to the official candidate, General Kjell Laugerud, in an electoral process widely regarded as fraudulent. In 1978, Ríos Montt controversially abandoned the Catholic Church and joined an Evangelical Christian group affiliated with the Gospel Outreach Church. In 1982, discontent with the rule of General Romeo Lucas García, the worsening security situation in Guatemala, and accusations of electoral fraud led to a coup d'état by a group of junior military officers who installed Ríos Montt as head of a government junta. Ríos Montt ruled as a military dictator for less than seventeen months before his defense minister, General Óscar Mejía Victores overthrew him in another coup.

In 1989, Ríos Montt returned to the Guatemalan political scene as leader of a new political party, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG). He was elected many times to the Congress of Guatemala, serving as president of the Congress in 1995–96 and 2000–04. A constitutional provision prevented him from registering as a presidential candidate due to his involvement in the military coup of 1982. However, the FRG obtained the presidency and a congressional majority in the 1999 general election. Authorized by the Constitutional Court to run in the 2003 presidential elections, Ríos Montt came in third and withdrew from politics. He returned to public life in 2007 as a member of Congress, thereby gaining legal immunity from long-running lawsuits alleging war crimes committed by him and some of his ministers and counselors during their term in the presidential palace in 1982–83. His immunity ended on 14 January 2012, when his legislative term of office expired. In 2013, a court sentenced Ríos Montt to 80 years in prison for genocide and crimes against humanity, but the Constitutional Court quashed that sentence, and his retrial was never completed.

Early life and career
Efraín Ríos Montt was born in 1926 in Huehuetenango into a large family of the rural middle class. His father was a shopkeeper, and his mother a seamstress, and the family also owned a small farm. His younger brother Mario Enrique Ríos Montt became a Catholic priest and would serve as prelate of Escuintla and later as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Guatemala.

Intent on making a career in the army, the young Efraín applied to the Polytechnic School (the national military academy of Guatemala) but was rejected because of his astigmatism. He then volunteered for the Guatemalan Army as a private, joining troops composed almost exclusively of full-blooded Mayas, until in 1946, he was able to enter the Polytechnic School. Ríos Montt graduated in 1950 at the top of his class. He taught at the Polytechnic School and received further specialized training, first at the U.S.-run officer training institute that would later be known as the School of the Americas, and later at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and the Italian War College. From the start of his career, Ríos Montt acquired a reputation as a devoutly religious man and as a stern disciplinarian.

Ríos Montt did not play any significant role in the successful CIA-sponsored coup of 1954 against President Jacobo Arbenz. He rose through the ranks of the Guatemalan army and, in 1970–72, served as director of the Polytechnic School. In 1972, in the presidential administration of General Carlos Arana Osorio, Ríos Montt was promoted to brigadier general and in 1973 he became the Army's Chief of Staff (Jefe del Estado Mayor General del Ejército). However, he was removed from that post after three months and, much to his chagrin, dispatched to the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C. According to anthropologist David Stoll, writing in 1990, Ríos Montt was "at odds with the army's command structure since being sidelined by military president Gen. Carlos Arana Osorio in 1974."

Early political involvement
While in the US, the leaders of the Guatemalan Christian Democracy approached Ríos Montt with an invitation to run for president at the head of a coalition of parties opposed to the incumbent regime. Ríos Montt participated in the March 1974 presidential elections as the National Opposition Front (FNO) presidential candidate. His running mate was Alberto Fuentes Mohr, a respected economist and social democrat. At the time, Ríos Montt was generally regarded as an honest and competent military man who could combat the rampant corruption in the Guatemalan government and armed forces. In the run-up to the election, United States officials characterized the candidate Ríos Montt as a "capable left-of-center military officer" who would shift Guatemala "perceptibly but not radically to the left."

1974 presidential elections
The official candidate for the 1974 election was General Kjell Laugerud, whose running mate was Mario Sandoval Alarcón of the far-right National Liberation Movement. Pro-government posters warned "voters not to fall into a communist trap by supporting Ríos," but Ríos Montt proved to be an effective campaigner, and most observers believe that his FNO won the popular vote by an ample majority.

When early returns showed an unmistakable trend in favor of Ríos Montt, the government halted the count and manipulated the results to make it appear that Laugerud finished 71,000 votes ahead of Ríos Montt. Since Laugerud did not have an outright majority of the popular vote, the government-controlled National Congress decided the election, which chose Laugerud by a vote of 38 to 2, with 15 opposition deputies abstaining.

According to independent journalist Carlos Rafael Soto Rosales, Ríos Montt and the FNO leadership knew the election was fraudulent, but acquiesced in Laugerud's "election" because they feared that a popular uprising "would result in disorder that would provoke worse government repression and that a challenge would lead to a confrontation between military leaders." General Ríos Montt then left the country to take up an appointment as military attaché at the Guatemalan embassy in Madrid, where he remained until 1977. It was rumored that the military high command paid Ríos Montt several hundred thousand dollars in exchange for his departure from public life and that during his exile in Spain his unhappiness led him to excessive drinking.

Religious conversion
Ríos Montt retired from the army and returned to Guatemala in 1977. A spiritual crisis caused him to leave the Roman Catholic Church in 1978 and join the Iglesia El Verbo ("Church of the Word"), an evangelical Protestant church affiliated with the Gospel Outreach Church based in Eureka, California. Ríos Montt became very active in his new church and taught religion in a school affiliated with it. At the time, his younger brother Mario Enrique was the Catholic prelate of Escuintla.

Efraín Ríos Montt's conversion has been interpreted as a significant event in the ascendency of Protestantism within the traditionally Catholic Guatemalan nation (see Religion in Guatemala). Ríos Montt later befriended prominent evangelists in the US, including Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

1982 military coup
The security situation in Guatemala had deteriorated under the government of General Romeo Lucas García. By early 1982, the Marxist guerrilla groups belonging to the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) umbrella organization had made gains in the countryside and were seen as threatening an attack on the capital, Guatemala City. On March 7, 1982, General Ángel Aníbal Guevara, the official party's candidate, won the presidential election, a result denounced as fraudulent by all opposition parties. An informal group described as oficiales jóvenes ("young officers") then staged a military coup that overthrew Lucas and prevented Guevara from succeeding him as president.

On March 23, the coup culminated with the installation of a three-person military junta, presided by General Efraín Ríos Montt and composed also of General Horacio Maldonado Schaad and Colonel Luis Gordillo Martínez. Ríos Montt had not been directly involved in the planning of the coup and was chosen by the oficiales jóvenes because of the respect that he had acquired as director of the military academy and as the presidential candidate of the democratic opposition in 1974. The events of March 1982 took the U.S. authorities by surprise.

Because of repeated vote-rigging and the blatant corruption of the military establishment, the 1982 coup was initially welcomed by many Guatemalans. Ríos Montt's reputation for honesty, his leadership of the opposition in the 1974 election, and his vision of "education, nationalism, an end to want and hunger, and a sense of civic pride" were widely appealing. In April 1982, U.S. Ambassador Frederic L. Chapin declared that thanks to the coup of Ríos Montt, "the Guatemalan government has come out of the darkness and into the light." However, Chapin soon afterward reported that Ríos Montt was "naïve and not concerned with practical realities." Drawing on his Pentecostal beliefs, Ríos Montt compared the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to the four modern evils of hunger, misery, ignorance, and subversion. He also pledged to fight corruption and what he described as the depredations of the rich.

Dictatorship
The government junta immediately declared martial law and suspended the constitution, shut down the legislature, and set up special tribunals (tribunales de fuero especial) to prosecute both common criminals and political dissidents. On April 10, the junta launched the National Growth and Security Plan, whose stated goals were to end indiscriminate violence and teach the populace about Guatemalan nationalism. The junta also announced that it sought to integrate peasants and indigenous peoples into the Guatemalan state, declaring that because of their illiteracy and "immaturity," they were particularly vulnerable to the seductions of "international communism." The government intensified its military efforts against the URNG guerrillas and, on April 20 1982, launched a new counter-insurgency operation known as Victoria 82.

On June 9, General Ríos Montt forced the other two junta members to resign, leaving him as sole head of state, commander of the armed forces, and minister of defense. On 17 August 1982, Ríos Montt established a new Consejo de Estado ("Council of State") as an advisory body whose members were appointed either by the executive or by various civil associations. This Council of State incorporated several representatives of Guatemala's indigenous population, a first in the history of the central Guatemalan government.

Under the motto, No robo, no miento, no abuso ("I don't steal, I don't lie, I don't abuse"), Ríos Montt launched a campaign ostensibly aimed at rooting out corruption in the government and reforming Guatemalan society. He also began broadcasting regular TV speeches on Sunday afternoons, known as discursos de domingo. According to historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett,

"It was in his Sunday sermons that Ríos Montt explicated the moral roots of Guatemala's many problems and limned the outlines of his political and moral imaginaire. Although ridiculed both at home and abroad for their preachy and even naive tone (earning the General the derisive nickname 'Dios Montt'), the discursos nonetheless bore an internally cohesive message that clearly laid out Ríos Montt's diagnosis of the crisis and his idiosyncratic vision for national redemption. In the General's view, Guatemala suffered from three fundamental problems: a national lack of responsibility and respect for authority, an absolute lack of morality, and an inchoate sense of national identity. All other issues, from the economic crisis to what Ríos Montt called the 'subversion,' were merely symptoms of these three fundamental ills."

Ríos Montt's moralizing message continued to resonate with a significant part of Guatemalan society after he departed from power in 1983. In 1990, anthropologist David Stoll quoted a development organizer as saying that she liked Ríos Montt "because he used to get on television, point his finger at every Guatemalan, and say: 'The problem is you!' That's the only way this country is ever going to change."

Counter-insurgency: Fusiles y Frijoles
Violence escalated in the countryside under the Guatemalan military's plan Victoria 82, which included a rural pacification strategy known as Fusiles y Frijoles (lit. 'Rifles and beans'), often rendered into English as "beans and bullets" to preserve the alliteration of the original. The "bullets" referred to the organization of the Civil Defense Patrols (Patrullas de Autodefensa Civil, PAC), composed primarily of indigenous villagers who patrolled in groups of twelve, usually armed with a single M1 rifle and sometimes not armed at all. The PAC initiative was intended both to provide a pro-government presence in isolated rural villages with a majority Mayan population and to deter guerrilla activity in the area. The "beans" component of the counter-insurgency strategy referred to programs seeking to increase civilian-military contact and cooperation by improving the infrastructure and resources the government provided to the Mayan villages. This was meant to create a link in the minds of the indigenous and peasant communities between better access to resources and their cooperation with the Guatemalan government in its military struggle against the insurgents.

General Ríos Montt's government announced an amnesty in June 1982 for all insurgents willing to lay down their arms. That was followed a month later by the declaration of a state of siege, curtailing the activities of political parties and labor unions under the threat of death by firing squad for subversion.

Critics have argued that, in practice, Ríos Montt's strategy amounted to a scorched earth campaign targeted against the indigenous Maya population, particularly in the departments of Quiché, Huehuetenango, and Baja Verapaz. According to the 1999 report by the UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), this resulted in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages. One instance was the Plan de Sánchez massacre in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, in July 1982, which saw over 250 people killed. Tens of thousands of peasant farmers fled over the border into southern Mexico. In 1982, an Amnesty International report estimated that over 10,000 indigenous Guatemalans and peasant farmers were killed from March to July of that year and that 100,000 rural villagers were forced to flee their homes. According to more recent estimates presented by the CEH, tens of thousands of non-combatants were killed during Ríos Montt's tenure as head of state. At the height of the bloodshed, reports put the number of disappearances and killings at more than 3,000 per month. The 1999 book State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996: A Quantitative Reflection, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, states that Rios Montt's government presided over "the most indiscriminate period of state terror. More state killings occurred during Ríos Montt’s regime than during any other, and in the same period the monthly rate of violence was more than four times greater than for the next highest regime."

On the other hand, the United Nations special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in Guatemala, Lord Colville of Culross, wrote in 1984 that the lot of the rural population of Guatemala had improved under Ríos Montt, as the previous indiscriminate violence of the Guatemalan Army was replaced by a rational strategy of counter-insurgency. Colville also indicated that extrajudicial "killings and kidnappings virtually ceased under the Ríos Montt regime." According to anthropologist David Stoll, "the crucial difference" between Ríos Montt and his predecessor Lucas García was that Ríos Montt replaced "chaotic terror with a more predictable set of rewards and punishments." According to analysts Georges A. Fauriol and Eva Loser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, "an important component in the 'normalization' of the Guatemalan environment was a marked decrease by late 1982 in the state of fear and violence, which allowed the repositioning of Guatemala's civilian urbanized leadership toward a more vital role in national affairs."

Sociologist and historian Carlos Sabino, in a work published initially in 2007 by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, noted that the army's counter-insurgency in the Guatemalan highlands had been launched at the end of 1981, before the coup that put Ríos Montt in power, and that the reported massacres peaked in May 1982 before dropping off rapidly as a consequence of the policies implemented by the Ríos Montt regime. According to Sabino, the guerrillas were effectively defeated by the PACs organized by Ríos Montt's government, which grew to involve 900,000 men and which, "though only very partially armed, completely took away the guerrilla's capacity for political action," as they could no longer "reach the villages and towns, organize rallies, or recruit fighters and collaborators among the peasants." According to French sociologist Yvon Le Bot, writing in 1992,

"Ríos Montt won a decisive victory over a guerrilla force already weakened by the blows landed upon it by General Benedicto Lucas during the last months of his brother's government. Since then, he is, more than the Lucas brothers, the bête noire of the revolutionaries who do not forgive him for having consummated their defeat by turning their own weapons against them and in particular by the appeal to the moral and religious sentiments so profoundly rooted among the Guatemalan Mayas."

In a similar vein, historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett concluded in 2010 that General Ríos Montt's military's successes "were unprecedented in Guatemala’s modern history" and that "had the Cold War remained the primary lens of historical analysis, [he] might well be remembered as a visionary statesman instead of an author of crimes against humanity."

Even some of Ríos Montt's harshest critics have noted that, in his later political career during the 1990s and 2000s, he enjoyed firm and enduring electoral support in the departments of Quiché, Huehuetenango, and Baja Verapaz, which had seen the worst violence during the 1982–83 counter-insurgency campaign. According to David Stoll, "the most obvious reason Nebajeños like the former general is that he offered them the chance to surrender without being killed."

Support from US and Israel
In 1977, the United States under the Jimmy Carter administration suspended aid to Guatemala due to the grave violations of human rights by the Guatemalan government. In 1981, the new Reagan administration authorized the sale to the Guatemalan military of $4 million in helicopter spare parts and $6.3 million in additional military supplies, to be shipped in 1982 and 1983.

President Ronald Reagan traveled to Central America in December 1982. He did not visit Guatemala but met with General Ríos Montt in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, on December 4, 1982. During that meeting, Ríos Montt reassured Reagan that the Guatemalan government's counter-insurgency strategy was not one of "scorched earth," but rather of "scorched Communists," and pledged to work to restore the democratic process in the country. Reagan then declared: "President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."

Guatemala's poor record on human rights and the refusal of General Ríos Montt to call immediately for new elections prevented the Reagan administration from restoring US aid to Guatemala, which would have required the consent of the US Congress. The Reagan administration did continue the sale of helicopter parts to the Guatemalan military, even though a then-secret 1983 CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" and an increasing number of bodies "appearing in ditches and gullies."

Israel, which had been supplying arms to Guatemala since 1974, continued its aid provisions during Ríos Montt's government. The cooperation did not just involve hardware but also included providing intelligence and operational training, carried out both in Israel and Guatemala. In 1982, Ríos Montt told ABC News that his success was due to the fact that "our soldiers were trained by Israelis." There was not much outcry in Israel at the time about its involvement in Guatemala, though the support for Ríos Montt was no secret. According to journalist Victor Perera, in 1985, at a cemetery in Chichicastenango, relatives of a man killed by the military told him that "in church they tell us that divine justice is on the side of the poor; but the fact of the matter is, it is the military who get the Israeli guns."

Removal from power
By the end of 1982, Ríos Montt, claiming that the war against the leftist guerrillas had been won, said the government's work was one of "techo, trabajo, y tortillas" ("roofs, work, and tortillas"). Having survived three attempted coups, on June 29, 1983, Ríos Montt declared a state of emergency and announced elections for July 1984. By then, Ríos Montt had alienated many segments of Guatemalan society by his actions. Shortly before the visit to Guatemala by Pope John Paul II in March 1983, Ríos Montt refused the Pope's appeal for clemency to six guerrillas who had been sentenced to death by the regime's special tribunals. The outspoken evangelicalism and the moralizing sermons of the general's regular Sunday television broadcasts (discursos de domingo) were increasingly regarded with embarrassment by many. The military brass was offended by his promotion of young officers in defiance of the Army's traditional hierarchy. Many middle-class citizens were unhappy with the decision, announced on August 1, 1983, to introduce the value-added tax in the country. One week later, on August 8, 1983, his own Minister of Defense, General Óscar Mejía Victores, overthrew the regime in a coup during which seven people were killed.

The leaders of the 1983 coup alleged that Ríos Montt belonged to a "fanatical and aggressive religious group" that had threatened the "fundamental principle of the separation of Church and State." However, historian Virginia Garrard-Burnett considered that the main underlying reason for his removal from power was that Ríos Montt "had severely stanched the flow of graft to military officers and government officials" and was not responsive to the powerful interest groups represented by the Army's high command.

Political violence in Guatemala continued after Ríos Montt was removed from power in 1983. It has been estimated that as many as one and a half million Maya peasants were uprooted from their homes. American journalist Vincent Bevins writes that by corralling indigenous populations from suspect communities into state-established "model villages" (aldeas modelos) that were "little more than deadly concentration camps," Ríos Montt waged genocide differently than his predecessors, although massacres continued apace. Bevins argues this was part of Montt's new strategy for fighting communism: "The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea."

Efraín Ríos Montt's sister Marta Elena Ríos de Rivas was kidnapped on 26 June 1983 in Guatemala City by members of the leftist Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) when she was leaving the primary school where she worked as a teacher. At the time, she was five months pregnant. After General Ríos Montt was deposed in August of that year, the FAR proceeded to kidnap the sister of the new de facto president, General Mejía Víctores. The new government flatly refused to negotiate with the kidnappers, but the family of General Ríos Montt obtained the release of his sister Marta on 25 September, after 119 days in captivity, by procuring the publication of an FAR comuniqué in several international newspapers.

Later political career

Ríos Montt founded the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG) political party in 1989. In the run-up to the 1990 general election, polls indicated that Ríos Montt was the most popular candidate, leading his nearest rival by as many as twelve points. The courts ultimately prevented him from appearing in the ballots because of a provision in the 1985 Constitution of Guatemala that banned people who had participated in a military coup from becoming president. Ríos Montt always claimed that the corresponding article had been written into the Constitution specifically to prevent him from returning to the Presidency and that it could not legitimately be applied retroactively.

In the 1990s Ríos Montt enjoyed significant popular support throughout Guatemala and especially among the native Maya population of the departments of Quiché, Huehuetenango, and Baja Verapaz, where he was perceived as un militar recto (an honest military man), even though those had been the populations most directly affected by the counter-insurgency that Ríos Montt had led in 1982–83. According to anthropologist David Stoll

"Ríos Montt's popularity was difficult to comprehend for most scholars and journalists because they have been so deeply influenced by human rights and solidarity work [...] The most influential literature on Guatemala has been written by activists, the majority of whom are also academics. Generally, this literature has been slow to admit the defeat of the guerrillas in 1982, their subsequent lack of popular support, and contradictions in the human rights movement."

According to political scientist Regina Bateson, in this new career phase, Ríos Montt embraced populism as his core political strategy. He was an FRG congressman between 1990 and 2004. In 1994, he was elected president of the unicameral legislature. He tried to run again in the 1995–96 Guatemalan general election but was barred from entering the race. The FRG chose Alfonso Portillo to replace Ríos Montt as the party's presidential candidate, and he narrowly lost to Álvaro Arzú of the conservative National Advancement Party. In his youth, Portillo had been affiliated with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), one of the Marxist insurgent groups that later became part of the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) and which Ríos Montt had combated during his term as president in 1982–83.

The Guatemalan Civil War officially concluded in 1996 with the signing of the peace accords between the Guatemalan government and the URNG, which after that was organized as a legal political party. In March 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton declared that "for the United States, it is important I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression [in Guatemala] was wrong and the United States must not repeat that mistake."

Ríos Montt's FRG party was successful in the 1999 Guatemalan general election. Its candidate, Alfonso Portillo, was elected president, and the party also obtained a majority in the National Congress. Ríos Montt then served four consecutive one-year terms as president of Congress, from 2000 to 2004.

President Portillo admitted the involvement of the Guatemalan government in human rights abuses over the previous 20 years, including two massacres that took place during Ríos Montt's presidency. The first was in Plan de Sánchez, in Baja Verapaz, with 268 dead, and in Dos Erres in Petén, where 200 people were murdered.

2003 presidential candidate
In May 2003, the FRG nominated Ríos Montt for the November presidential election. However, his candidacy was rejected again by the electoral registry and by two lower courts. On 14 July 2003, the Constitutional Court, which had had several judges appointed by the FRG government, approved his candidacy for president because the prohibition in the 1985 Constitution did not apply retroactively.

On 20 July, the Supreme Court suspended Ríos Montt's campaign and agreed to hear a complaint brought by two right-of-center parties that the retired General was constitutionally barred from running for president. Ríos Montt denounced the ruling as a judicial manipulation and, in a radio address, called on his followers to take to the streets to protest against it. On 24 July, in an event that came to be known as jueves negro ("Black Thursday"), thousands of masked FRG supporters invaded the streets of Guatemala City, armed with machetes, clubs, and guns. They had been bussed in from all over the country by the FRG, and it was alleged that public employees in FRG-controlled municipalities were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they did not participate in the demonstrations. The protestors blocked traffic, chanted threatening slogans, and waved machetes as they marched on the courts, the opposition parties' headquarters, and newspapers. Incidents of torching of buildings, shooting out of windows, and burning of cars and tires in the streets were also reported. A television journalist, Héctor Fernando Ramírez, died of a heart attack while running away from a mob. After two days, the rioters disbanded when an audio recording of Ríos Montt was played on loudspeakers calling them to return to their homes. The situation was so volatile over the weekend that the UN mission and the US embassy were closed.

Following the rioting, the Constitutional Court overturned the Supreme Court decision, allowing Ríos Montt to run for president. However, the jueves negro chaos undermined Ríos Montt's popularity and his credibility as a law-and-order candidate. Support for Ríos Montt also suffered because of the perceived corruption and inefficiency of the incumbent FRG administration under President Portillo. During tense but peaceful presidential elections on November 9, 2003, Ríos Montt received 19.3% of the vote, placing him third behind Óscar Berger, head of the conservative Grand National Alliance (GANA), and Álvaro Colom of the center-left National Unity of Hope (UNE). As he had been required to give up his seat in Congress to run for president, Ríos Montt's 14-year legislative tenure also ended.

In March 2004, a court order forbade Ríos Montt from leaving the country while it determined whether he should stand trial on charges related to jueves negro and the death of Ramírez. On November 20, 2004, Ríos Montt had to request permission to travel to his country home for the wedding of his daughter, Zury Ríos, to U.S. Representative Jerry Weller, a Republican from Illinois. On January 31, 2006, manslaughter charges against him for the death of Ramírez were dropped.

Charges of crimes against humanity
The Inter-Diocese Project for the Recovery of the Historic Memory (REMHI), sponsored by the Catholic Church, and the Historical Clarification Commission (CEH), co-sponsored by the United Nations as part of the 1996 peace accords, produced reports documenting grave violations of human rights committed during the Guatemalan Civil War of 1960–1996. That war had pitted Marxist rebels against the Guatemalan state, including the Guatemalan army. Up to 200,000 Guatemalans were estimated to have been killed during the conflict, making it one of Latin America's bloodiest wars. Both the REMHI and CEH reports found that most of the violence had been carried out by the Guatemalan state and by government-backed death squads. Since the victims of this violence had disproportionately belonged to the indigenous Mayan population of the country, the CEH report characterized the counterinsurgency campaign, significantly designed and advanced during Ríos Montt's presidency, as having included deliberate "acts of genocide."

The REMHI and CEH reports formed the basis for legal actions brought against Ríos Montt and others for crimes against humanity and genocide. Ríos Montt admitted that the Guatemalan army had committed crimes during his term as president and commander-in-chief, but he denied that he had planned or ordered those actions or that there had been any deliberate policy by his government to target the native population that could amount to genocide.

In 1998, Mario Enrique Ríos Montt, younger brother of Efraín Ríos Montt, succeeded murdered bishop Juan Gerardi as head of the Office of Human Rights of the Archdiocese of Guatemala. That office took a leading role in denouncing human rights abuses committed by the state during the Guatemalan Civil War, including during the government of General Ríos Montt.

In Spain
In 1999, Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú filed a complaint before the Audiencia Nacional of Spain for torture, genocide, illegal detention, and state-sponsored terrorism, naming Ríos Montt and four other retired Guatemalan generals (two of them ex-presidents) as defendants. Three other civilians that were high government official between 1978 and 1982 were also named in the complaint. The Center for Justice and Accountability and Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España joined in the suit brought by Menchú. In September 2005, Spain's Constitutional Court ruled that Spanish courts could try those accused of crimes against humanity, even if the victims were not Spanish nationals.

In June 2006, Spanish judge Santiago Pedraz traveled to Guatemala to interrogate Ríos Montt and the others named in the case. At least 15 appeals filed by the defense attorneys of the indicted prevented him from carrying out the inquiries. On July 7, 2006, Pedraz issued an international arrest warrant against Efraín Ríos Montt and former presidents Óscar Humberto Mejía Victores and Romeo Lucas García (the latter of whom had died in May 2006 in Venezuela). A warrant was also issued for the retired generals Benedicto Lucas García and Aníbal Guevara. Former minister of the interior Donaldo Álvarez Ruiz, who remained at large, and ex-chiefs of police Germán Chupina Barahona and Pedro García Arredondo were also named on the international arrest warrants. Some of those warrants were initially admitted by Guatemalan courts, but they were all ultimately declared invalid in December 2007 by the Constitutional Court.

In Guatemala
On January 17, 2007, Ríos Montt announced that he would run for a seat in Congress in the election to be held later in the year. As a member of Congress, he would again be immune from prosecution unless a court suspended him from office. He won his seat in the September election and led the FRG's 15-member congressional delegation in the new legislature.

Ríos Montt's immunity ended on January 14, 2012, when his term in office expired. On January 26, 2012, he appeared in court in Guatemala City and was formally indicted by Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz for genocide and crimes against humanity, along with three other former generals. During the court hearing, he declined to make a statement. The court released him on bail but placed him under house arrest pending trial. On March 1, 2012, a judge ruled the charges against Ríos Montt were not covered by the 1996 National Reconciliation Law, which had granted amnesty for political and common crimes committed in the course of the Guatemalan Civil War. On 28 January 2013, judge Miguel Angel Galves opened a pre-trial hearing against Ríos Montt and retired General José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez for genocide and crimes against humanity, in particular the killing of 1,771 Maya Ixil Indians, including children.

Ríos Montt went on trial on those charges on 19 March 2013, marking the first time that a former Latin American head of state was tried for genocide in his own country. The trial was suspended on 19 April 2013 by Judge Carol Patricia Flores, following a directive from the Supreme Court of Justice of Guatemala. The judge ordered the legal process to be set back to November 2011, before the retired general was charged with war crimes.

On 10 May 2013, Ríos Montt was convicted by the court of genocide and crimes against humanity and was sentenced to 80 years imprisonment. Announcing the ruling, Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar declared that "[t]he defendant is responsible for masterminding the crime of genocide." She continued: "We are convinced that the acts the Ixil suffered constitute the crime of genocide...[Ríos Montt] had knowledge of what was happening and did nothing to stop it." The Court found that "[t]he Ixils were considered public enemies of the state and were also victims of racism, considered an inferior race... The violent acts against the Ixils were not spontaneous. They were planned beforehand." Judge Iris Yassmin Barrios Aguilar referred to evidence that 5.5% of the Ixil people had been wiped out by the army.

On 20 May 2013, the Constitutional Court of Guatemala overturned Ríos Montt's conviction on the grounds that he had not been allowed an effective defense during some of the proceedings. Anthropologist David Stoll, though granting that large numbers of innocent civilians were killed by the army under Ríos Montt's presidency, questioned both the fairness of 2013 trial and the grounds for the charge of genocide.

General Ríos Montt's retrial began in January 2015, but the court later ruled that the proceedings would not be public. It also held that no sentence could be pronounced due to Ríos Montt‘a age and deteriorating physical and mental condition. Earlier, Guatemala's forensic authority ruled that Ríos Montt had dementia so severe that he could not defend himself. The retrial had not been completed when Ríos Montt died in April 2018, and the court, therefore, closed the case against him. His co-defendant, former chief of military intelligence José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez, was acquitted in September 2018, although the court found that the counter-insurgency strategy of the Guatemalan army had amounted to genocide.

Death
Ríos Montt died of a heart attack at his home in Guatemala City on April 1, 2018, at the age of 91. The then-incumbent president of Guatemala, Jimmy Morales, expressed his public condolences over the death of General Ríos Montt.

In media and popular culture
Pamela Yates directed When the Mountains Tremble (1983), a documentary film about the war between the Guatemalan Military and the Mayan Indigenous population of Guatemala. Footage from this film was used as forensic evidence in the Guatemalan court for crimes against humanity in the genocide case against Efraín Ríos Montt.

Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011) by Pamela Yates is a follow-up to When the Mountains Tremble.

The University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation, funded by director Steven Spielberg, is undertaking an extensive analysis of the genocidal Guatemalan civil wars, documented by hundreds of filmed interviews with survivors.

The 2019 Guatemalan horror film La Llorona features a character named Enrique Monteverde, based on Ríos Montt.

title: Efraín Ríos Montt


text:
BBC Radio 6 Music

BBC Radio 6 Music is a British digital radio station owned and operated by the BBC, specialising primarily in alternative music. In 2002 it was the first national music radio station to be launched by the BBC in 32 years. It is available only on digital media: DAB radio, BBC Sounds, digital television, and throughout northern and western Europe through the Astra 2B satellite.

BBC Radio 6 Music has been described as a "dedicated alternative music station". Many presenters have argued against the perception that the main focus is indie guitar music. The station itself describes its output as "the cutting edge music of today, the iconic and groundbreaking music of the past 60 years and access to the BBC's wonderful music archive". Its format resembles eclectic radio as seen in other countries, as while there is a programmed playlist there is a wide range of music genres played on the station with pop, rock, dance, electronic, indie, hip-hop, R&B, punk, funk, grime, metal, soul, ska, house, reggae, jazz, blues, world, techno, experimental and many other genres played regularly on the station. Added to this is a greater degree of presenter choice in relation to the programmed playlist in comparison to other BBC radio stations but particularly compared to commercial radio. Since 2014, an annual music festival, 6 Music Festival, has been held in different cities around the United Kingdom and broadcast live on the station. Beginning in 2023 the 6 Music Festival will be held only in Greater Manchester every year with a more scaled back event.

In July 2010, the BBC Trust announced it had rejected a proposal by the BBC to close 6 Music to provide commercial rivals more room. The trust commented that the station was "well-liked by its listeners, was highly distinctive and made an important contribution". In 2018, 6 Music was the most listened-to digital-only radio station, with an average weekly audience of 2.53 million.

According to RAJAR, the station broadcasts to a weekly audience of 2.5 million with a listening share of 2.5% as of March 2024.

History
BBC 6 Music was proposed in October 2000 as a "digital-only" radio station to be named "Network Y". ("Network X" became BBC Radio 1Xtra and "Network Z" became BBC 7, now named BBC Radio 4 Extra).

The station opened at 7 a.m., Monday 11 March 2002, with a show presented by Phill Jupitus. At the start-up, presenters included Liz Kershaw, Andrew Collins, Tom Robinson, Gideon Coe, Janice Long, Chris Hawkins, Gary Burton, Craig Charles, Stuart Maconie, Brinsley Forde, Suggs, Clare McDonnell, Bruce Dickinson, Tracey MacLeod, Sean Hughes, and Bob Harris. The first record played was Ash's Burn Baby Burn

6 Music attracted criticism for changing daytime schedules during late 2007 and early 2008, notably including replacing Gideon Coe on the mid morning slot with George Lamb. In response, Lesley Douglas, Controller of BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music at the time, said that the changes were intended to attract more female listeners. She claimed that "men tend to be more interested in the intellectual side of the music, the tracks, where albums have been made, that sort of thing". This in turn brought on more criticism of perceived sexism on Douglas' part.

In March 2006, BBC 6 Music moved from Broadcasting House to new studios in the adjacent Wogan House (then called Western House) to allow the regeneration of Broadcasting House. In 2011, BBC Radio 6 Music started the process of moving some of its presenters, staff, and shows from London and elsewhere to the new studios at MediaCityUK in Salford near Manchester. The studios are located on the ground floor of Dock House. Among programmes broadcast there are Radcliffe & Maconie, The Craig Charles Funk and Soul Show, and Marc Riley's and Mary Anne Hobbs' shows.

Proposed closure
In February 2010, in anticipation of a review by the BBC Trust, newspaper reports suggested 6 Music might be axed. The review stopped short of recommending closure but noted that only one in five UK residents were aware the station existed, and that it lacked presenters with credibility as music experts. The Times claimed that Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC, proposed closure as part of a bid to scale back BBC operations and allow commercial rivals more room. A high-profile campaign to oppose closure of the station attracted media attention and led to "#SaveBBC6Music" quickly becoming a trending topic on Twitter. A leading voice in the campaign was Jarvis Cocker, the lead singer for the British band Pulp who presented his own show on BBC 6 Music, Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service. A Facebook group set up to oppose the proposed closure gained nearly 180,000 members. A campaign was launched to get the song "Joy Division Oven Gloves" by Half Man Half Biscuit to No. 6 in the UK Singles Chart on 12 April 2010; it entered the Singles Chart that week at No. 56 and the Independent Singles Chart at No. 3.

The Sunday Times reported that following the public outcry over the proposed closure, 6 Music would be rebranded as Radio 2 Extra, retaining a similar playlist but broadcasting for only 12 hours a day but Tim Davie, head of audio and music at the BBC, denied this was a possibility.

Five months after rumours of closure first emerged, the BBC Trust announced that it was not convinced by the BBC Executive's plans and that the station would not be closed.

In the first quarter of 2011 some BBC radio services, including 6 Music, were part of an efficiency review conducted by John Myers. His role, according to Andrew Harrison, the chief executive of RadioCentre, was "to identify both areas of best practice and possible savings." The Telegraph suggested that this was due to 'commercial sector criticism' whilst The Guardian cited a National Audit Office report.

BASCA was actively circulating petitions challenging the BBC's plan to close down 6 Music.

2020s
In 2020, Paul Rodgers, the senior head of commissioning for 6 Music left the station, and was replaced by Samantha Moy as the Head of Station. Moy has made a series of schedule changes, presiding over an "undeniable culture shift at the station".

Some music executives have questioned the overall strategy at the digital station since 2020, raising doubts about initiatives such as all-day pop programming, stating it to be "more typical of a commercial network rather than a BBC station", with listeners commenting that themed days are "a sign that they're running out of ideas".

In 2021, Shaun Keaveny left after 14 years of presenting, saying he was "forced out onto the ice floe like an elderly Inuit relative". Due to audience complaints, the BBC issued a statement that "Radio networks always evolve over time".

In 2023, long-serving presenters Gideon Coe and Marc Riley had their hours cut to make way for a new evening programme called New Music Fix Daily with Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft, reducing the hours of new alternative music on the BBC weekly from 20 to eight. Stewart Lee described the move as "a land grab on the sound and attitude that have given the station credibility and purpose", with insiders stated the move would 'rip the heart out of' the station.

Some listeners believe the station changes are due to "ageism" and a drive to win younger listeners, and despite the BBC's service review of 6 Music suggesting more might be done to attract older listeners, the current network strategy is aimed at growing audiences aged between 25 and 44. Some listeners who campaigned to save the station in 2010 believe the changes are "completely at variance to what we campaigned for, both musically and in its general tone".

In September 2023, Steve Lamacq announced he was to step down from presenting the daily drivetime programme but would return in January 2024 with a Monday drivetime programme. Huw Stephens took over Lamacq's slot on Tuesdays to Fridays.

On 11 February 2024, 6 Music broadcast from Wogan House for the final time after 18 years, with Gideon Coe sitting in for Cerys Matthews. The station has now returned to new studios inside Broadcasting House.

Ratings and listenership
In February 2010, 6 Music was reported as showing growth in its audience, winning an audience of 695,000 listeners over the first quarter, up 12.3% year-on-year. However, in the quarter to December 2009, its "reach" (proportion of the adult population who listen for at least five minutes in the course of an average week) was 1%, and Total Survey Area share (of total listening time) was 0.4%.

According to the BBC's service review of Radio 2 and 6 Music, published in February 2010, the average age of 6 Music listeners was 36, which led the authors to suggest more might be done to attract older listeners, considering the station played a broad range of music from the 1960s to the present day. The review also claimed that the deficiency in appeal to female listeners apparent in 2007 was still in existence, and that there should be changes to attract more listeners from ethnic minorities and lower income groups. However, the review did not give details of the scale of these issues.

Following the proposal to close the station, online listening figures rose significantly. The number of weekly unique online listeners rose to an average of 133,653 in March 2010, up 50 per cent on the previous March. When the RAJAR listening figures were released in May 2010, it was revealed that 6 Music had an average of 1.02 million listeners in the first three months of the year, compared to 695,000 the previous year.

In 2011, 6 Music had a total audience of 1.3 million listeners in the three months to 27 March, up from 1.14m in the previous quarter, according to the latest data from the Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) board. Buoyed by shows from high-profile DJs such as Jarvis Cocker, Huey Morgan and Lauren Laverne, 6 Music has also grown its audience from 1.02m in the first quarter of 2010. The station broke more records in 2012, with a total audience of 1.62 million in the third quarter of the year. For the last month of 2012 RAJAR reported 6 Music listening figures had overtaken BBC Radio 4 Extra to become the most-listened-to digital-only radio station in the United Kingdom. The same report also showed that 6 Music had surpassed BBC Radio 3 in listening share, an increase of 31% from the year previously.

In 2014, a report was released stating that BBC Radio 6 Music had overtaken BBC Radio 3 in numbers of listeners per week for the first time. The digital station's weekly average was 1.89m listeners (up 5.5% on 2013) while BBC Radio 3's average weekly listenership was 1.884m.

In 2018, BBC Radio 6 Music was the 10th most popular radio station as measured by weekly reach – between Talksport and Absolute Radio – and the 6th most popular as measured by listener hours – between BBC Radio 5 Live and Kiss.

Listener figures peaked at 2.8million in 2022, with figures in 2023 up year-on-year to 2.7 million.

Nominations and awards
Several of BBC 6 Music's presenters and shows have won Sony Radio Academy Awards. In 2006 presenter Marc Riley won a Silver award for The Music Radio Personality of the Year. In April 2008, comedy duo Adam and Joe's 6 Music Saturday morning show won the Broadcasting Press Guild award for Radio Programme of the Year. George Lamb also won the Sony 'Rising Star' award. In May 2009, Adam and Joe won three Sony Radio Silver awards.

Following the announcement that 6 Music was to be closed, Adam and Joe won the best comedy prize at the Sony Radio Academy Awards in May 2010, with Jarvis Cocker winning the rising star award, voted for by listeners, for their 6 Music shows. Two years later, the station was named UK Station of the Year at the Sonys, with the judges citing its "confidence across its schedule that not only reflects a real passion for music but also a firm understanding of the audience they are broadcasting to."

Controversies
In 2007 BBC 6 Music was in the press because of scandals over rigged competitions. It emerged that in 2006 the Liz Kershaw Show faked a competition by using producers and their friends as "competition winners", leading to the firing of a junior producer. On 20 September 2007, it was announced that the Head of Programmes, Ric Blaxill, had resigned.

In May 2008 George Lamb was reprimanded for using his programme to back Conservative candidate Boris Johnson for London mayor.

6 Music Festival
In January 2014 the BBC launched 6 Music Festival, a new music festival featuring artists that "share the alternative spirit of the network". The festival takes place in a different city each year, with the first edition held in Manchester in February 2014 and headlined by Damon Albarn. Tickets sold out in six minutes for the event, but Albarn's headline set was criticised and it was claimed that the festival "just didn't work".

6 Music Festival returned in 2015 in Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead, with performances from Neneh Cherry, Royal Blood, The Charlatans and Hot Chip. The festival was praised as a "triumphant celebration of the left-field", and compared favourably to the 2014 event. The 2016 event was held across three venues in Bristol with performances from Foals and Bloc Party. The daily capacity was 5,000.

The 2017 edition took place in March of that year (unlike previous festivals, which took place in February) in Glasgow, and included major sets from Future Islands, Sparks, Depeche Mode, The Shins and Belle and Sebastian. It again included evening gigs, daytime gigs, talks and screenings. No festival took place in 2018. However, the station did curate the Belfast event of the Biggest Weekend.

The 2019 edition of the festival took place in Liverpool. It ran for three days across four different venues and included sets from The Good, the Bad & the Queen, Anna Calvi, John Grant, Idles, Fontaines D.C. and She drew the gun.

The 2020 edition was held at the Roundhouse in Chalk Farm, London.

The 2022 edition took place in Cardiff. Róisín Murphy headlined the Saturday night event.

The 2023 BBC Radio 6 Music Festival was held in Manchester at the O2 Victoria Warehouse (headline acts), Band on the Wall (BBC Music Introducing showcases) and RAMONA (DJ mix show). Acts taking part included Tim Burgess, Christine and the Queens, Hot Chip, Lava La Rue, Phoebe Green, Antony Szmierek, Afflecks Palace, Arlo Parks and the Big Moon.

Presenters

 * Afrodeutsche
 * Craig Charles
 * Gideon Coe
 * Matt Everitt
 * Guy Garvey
 * Deb Grant
 * Chris Hawkins
 * Mary Anne Hobbs
 * Steve Lamacq
 * Amy Lamé
 * Lauren Laverne
 * Don Letts
 * Stuart Maconie
 * Cerys Matthews
 * Huey Morgan
 * Gilles Peterson
 * Emily Pilbeam
 * Iggy Pop
 * Mark Radcliffe
 * Tom Ravenscroft
 * Marc Riley
 * Tom Robinson
 * Sherelle
 * Huw Stephens
 * Jamz Supernova

Stand-in presenters

 * Sudan Archives
 * Ólafur Arnalds
 * Gemma Cairney
 * DJ Paulette
 * Ezra Furman
 * Jayda G
 * Vic Galloway
 * Nubya Garcia
 * Nabihah Iqbal
 * Michael Kiwanuka
 * Annie Mac
 * Cillian Murphy
 * Róisín Murphy
 * Nemone
 * Bill Nighy
 * Katie Puckrik
 * Tarsza Williams

Current

 * Samantha Moy – Head of 6 Music, 2020–present
 * Bob Shennan – Network Controller, Radio 2 and 6 Music, 2009–2016
 * James Stirling – Head of Programmes, 6 Music, 2012–
 * Jeff Smith – Head of Music, Radio 2 and 6 Music / head of the weekly playlist meeting
 * Lorna Clarke – Controller of Pop (Radio 1, 1Xtra, Radio 2, 6 Music, Asian Network) 2019–present, Head of Production, Radio 2 and 6 Music, 2017-2019 and Network Manager, Radio 2 and 6 Music, 2010–2017

Former

 * Paul Rodgers – Head of 6 Music, 2016–2020 previously Editor, 2008–2012, and Head of Programmes, 2013–2016
 * Lesley Douglas – Network Controller, Radio 2 and 6 Music, 2004–2008
 * Ric Blaxill – Head of Programmes, 2004–2007

title: BBC Radio 6 Music


text:
Mixin

In object-oriented programming languages, a mixin (or mix-in)   is a class that contains methods for use by other classes without having to be the parent class of those other classes. How those other classes gain access to the mixin's methods depends on the language. Mixins are sometimes described as being "included" rather than "inherited".

Mixins encourage code reuse and can be used to avoid the inheritance ambiguity that multiple inheritance can cause (the "diamond problem"), or to work around lack of support for multiple inheritance in a language. A mixin can also be viewed as an interface with implemented methods. This pattern is an example of enforcing the dependency inversion principle.

History
Mixins first appeared in Symbolics's object-oriented Flavors system (developed by Howard Cannon), which was an approach to object-orientation used in Lisp Machine Lisp. The name was inspired by Steve's Ice Cream Parlor in Somerville, Massachusetts: The owner of the ice cream shop offered a basic flavor of ice cream (vanilla, chocolate, etc.) and blended in a combination of extra items (nuts, cookies, fudge, etc.) and called the item a "mix-in", his own trademarked term at the time.

Definition
Mixins are a language concept that allows a programmer to inject some code into a class. Mixin programming is a style of software development, in which units of functionality are created in a class and then mixed in with other classes.

A mixin class acts as the parent class, containing the desired functionality. A subclass can then inherit or simply reuse this functionality, but not as a means of specialization. Typically, the mixin will export the desired functionality to a child class, without creating a rigid, single "is a" relationship. Here lies the important difference between the concepts of mixins and inheritance, in that the child class can still inherit all the features of the parent class, but, the semantics about the child "being a kind of" the parent need not be necessarily applied.

Advantages

 * 1) It provides a mechanism for multiple inheritance by allowing one class to use common functionality from multiple classes, but without the complex semantics of multiple inheritance.
 * 2) Code reusability: Mixins are useful when a programmer wants to share functionality between different classes. Instead of repeating the same code over and over again, the common functionality can simply be grouped into a mixin and then included into each class that requires it.
 * 3) Mixins allow inheritance and use of only the desired features from the parent class, not necessarily all of the features from the parent class.

Implementations
In Simula, classes are defined in a block in which attributes, methods and class initialization are all defined together; thus all the methods that can be invoked on a class are defined together, and the definition of the class is complete.

In Flavors, a mixin is a class from which another class can inherit slot definitions and methods. The mixin usually does not have direct instances. Since a Flavor can inherit from more than one other Flavor, it can inherit from one or more mixins. Note that the original Flavors did not use generic functions.

In New Flavors (a successor of Flavors) and CLOS, methods are organized in "generic functions". These generic functions are functions that are defined in multiple cases (methods) by class dispatch and method combinations.

CLOS and Flavors allow mixin methods to add behavior to existing methods:  and   daemons, whoppers and wrappers in Flavors. CLOS added  methods and the ability to call shadowed methods via CALL-NEXT-METHOD. So, for example, a stream-lock-mixin can add locking around existing methods of a stream class. In Flavors one would write a wrapper or a whopper and in CLOS one would use an  method. Both CLOS and Flavors allow the computed reuse via method combinations. ,  and   methods are a feature of the standard method combination. Other method combinations are provided.

An example is the  method combination, where the resulting values of each of the applicable methods of a generic function are arithmetically added to compute the return value. This is used, for example, with the border-mixin for graphical objects. A graphical object may have a generic width function. The border-mixin would add a border around an object and has a method computing its width. A new class  (that is both a graphical object and uses the   mixin) would compute its width by calling all applicable width methods—via the   method combination. All return values are added and create the combined width of the object.

In an OOPSLA 90 paper, Gilad Bracha and William Cook reinterpret different inheritance mechanisms found in Smalltalk, Beta and CLOS as special forms of a mixin inheritance.

Programming languages that use mixins
Other than Flavors and CLOS (a part of Common Lisp), some languages that use mixins are:

Some languages do not support mixins on the language level, but can easily mimic them by copying methods from one object to another at runtime, thereby "borrowing" the mixin's methods. This is also possible with statically typed languages, but it requires constructing a new object with the extended set of methods.
 * Ada (by extending an existing tagged record with arbitrary operations in a generic)
 * C# (since C# 8.0, by means of default methods of interfaces)
 * Cobra
 * ColdFusion (Class based using includes and Object based by assigning methods from one object to another at runtime)
 * Curl (with Curl RTE)
 * D (called "template mixins"; D also includes a "mixin" statement that compiles strings as code.)
 * Dart
 * Factor
 * Groovy
 * Java (since Java 8, by means of default methods of interfaces)
 * JavaScript Delegation - Functions as Roles (Traits and Mixins)
 * Kotlin
 * Less
 * Magik
 * MATLAB
 * OCaml
 * Perl (through roles in the Moose extension of the Perl 5 object system)
 * PHP's "traits"
 * Python
 * Racket (mixins documentation)
 * Raku
 * Ruby
 * Rust
 * Sass (A stylesheet language)
 * Scala
 * Smalltalk
 * Swift
 * SystemVerilog
 * XOTcl/TclOO (object systems builtin to Tcl)
 * TypeScript (mixins documentation)
 * Vala

Other languages that do not support mixins can support them in a round-about way via other language constructs. For example, Visual Basic .NET and C# support the addition of extension methods on interfaces, meaning any class implementing an interface with extension methods defined will have the extension methods available as pseudo-members.

In Common Lisp
Common Lisp provides mixins in CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) similar to Flavors.

is a generic function with one argument that uses the  method combination. This combination determines that all applicable methods for a generic function will be called and the results will be added.

is a class with one slot for the button text.

There is a method for objects of class button that computes the width based on the length of the button text. is the method qualifier for the method combination of the same name.

A  class. The naming is just a convention. There are no superclasses, and no slots.

There is a method computing the width of the border. Here it is just 4.

is a class inheriting from both  and.

We can now compute the width of a button. Calling  computes 80. The result is the result of the single applicable method: the method  for the class.

We can also compute the width of a. Calling  computes 84. The result is the sum of the results of the two applicable methods: the method  for the class   and the method   for the class.

In Python
In Python, an example of the mixin concept is found in the  module, which has both a   class and a   class. They act as servers for UDP and TCP socket servers, respectively. Additionally, there are two mixin classes:  and. Normally, all new connections are handled within the same process. By extending  with the   as follows:

the  class adds functionality to the TCP server such that each new connection creates a new thread. Using the same method, a  can be created without having to duplicate the code in. Alternatively, using the  would cause the process to be forked for each new connection. Clearly, the functionality to create a new thread or fork a process is not terribly useful as a stand-alone class.

In this usage example, the mixins provide alternative underlying functionality without affecting the functionality as a socket server.

In Ruby
Most of the Ruby world is based around mixins via. The concept of mixins is implemented in Ruby by the keyword  to which we pass the name of the module as parameter.

Example:

In JavaScript
The Object-Literal and  Approach

It is technically possible to add behavior to an object by binding functions to keys in the object. However, this lack of separation between state and behavior has drawbacks:

 * 1) It intermingles properties of the model domain with that of implementation domain.
 * 2) No sharing of common behavior. Metaobjects solve this problem by separating the domain specific properties of objects from their behaviour specific properties.

An extend function is used to mix the behavior in:

Mixin with using Object.assign

The pure function and delegation based Flight-Mixin Approach

Even though the firstly described approach is mostly widespread the next one is closer to what JavaScript's language core fundamentally offers - Delegation.

Two function object based patterns already do the trick without the need of a third party's implementation of.

In other languages
In the Curl web-content language, multiple inheritance is used as classes with no instances may implement methods. Common mixins include all skinnable s inheriting from , user interface delegate objects that require dropdown menus inheriting from StandardBaseDropdownUI and such explicitly named mixin classes as  ,   and   class. Version 7.0 added library access so that mixins do not need to be in the same package or be public abstract. Curl constructors are factories that facilitates using multiple-inheritance without explicit declaration of either interfaces or mixins.

Interfaces and traits
Java 8 introduces a new feature in the form of default methods for interfaces. Basically it allows a method to be defined in an interface with application in the scenario when a new method is to be added to an interface after the interface class programming setup is done. To add a new function to the interface means to implement the method at every class which uses the interface. Default methods help in this case where they can be introduced to an interface any time and have an implemented structure which is then used by the associated classes. Hence default methods add the ability to applying the mixin concept in Java.

Interfaces combined with aspect-oriented programming can also produce full-fledged mixins in languages that support such features, such as C# or Java. Additionally, through the use of the marker interface pattern, generic programming, and extension methods, C# 3.0 has the ability to mimic mixins. With Dart 2.7 and C# 3.0 came the introduction of extension methods which can be applied, not only to classe, but also to interfaces. Extension Methods provide additional functionality on an existing class without modifying the class. It then becomes possible to create a static helper class for specific functionality that defines the extension methods. Because the classes implement the interface (even if the actual interface doesn’t contain any methods or properties to implement) it will pick up all the extension methods also. C# 8.0 adds the feature of default interface methods.

ECMAScript (in most cases implemented as JavaScript) does not need to mimic object composition by stepwise copying fields from one object to another. It natively supports Trait and mixin based object composition via function objects that implement additional behavior and then are delegated via   or   to objects that are in need of such new functionality.

In Scala
Scala has a rich type system and Traits are a part of it which helps implement mixin behaviour. As their name reveals, Traits are usually used to represent a distinct feature or aspect that is normally orthogonal to the responsibility of a concrete type or at least of a certain instance. For example, the ability to sing is modeled as such an orthogonal feature: it could be applied to Birds, Persons, etc.

Here, Bird has mixed in all methods of the trait into its own definition as if class Bird had defined method sing on its own.

As  is also used to inherit from a super class, in case of a trait   is used if no super class is inherited and only for mixin in the first trait. All following traits are mixed in using keyword.

Scala allows mixing in a trait (creating an anonymous type) when creating a new instance of a class. In the case of a Person class instance, not all instances can sing. This feature comes use then:

In Rust
Rust makes extensive use of mixins via traits. Traits, like in Scala, allow users to implement behaviours for a defined type. They are also used for generics and dynamic dispatch, allowing types implementing a trait to be used interchangeably statically or dynamically at runtime.

In Swift
Mixin can be achieved in Swift by using a language feature called Default implementation in Protocol Extension.

title: Mixin


text:
Sky Sci-Fi

Sky Sci-Fi (formerly Sci Fi Channel and Syfy) is a British pay television channel owned and operated by Sky, a division of Comcast. It was launched in 1995 as a localised variant of the US network Sci Fi Channel (now Syfy), with a similar programming line-up. It was on air each day from 8;00 am until 2:00 am, but only on cable as a lack of transponder space on satellite meant that it was only able to broadcast for few hours each day on that platform. It wasn't until the launch of Sky Digital in 1998 that the channel's full broadcast hours were available on satellite.

On 13 April 2010, Sci Fi Channel was relaunched as Syfy, as part of an ongoing global rebranding. The relaunch was accompanied by the premieres of V and Human Target. The channel was given a new on-air look and a tagline of "Imagine greater".

Sky applied for a Sky Sci-Fi trademark on 4 May 2022. On 14 June 2022 Sky confirmed that the channel rebrand would take place at 11am on 26 July, accompanied by a refreshed schedule of new and existing content.

History
Programming in the channel's early years followed the US channel's model, then consisting largely of archive shows such as Lost in Space, The Incredible Hulk, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and films from the Paramount and MCA vaults. The channel was also notable for being one of the first UK television channels to show anime movies and television series on a regular basis. These programming choices were supplemented by a few 1980s animated series shown in the mornings such as Robotech, Bionic Six and G-Force, although they were dropped as the channel's lineup became more independent of the original US channel.

Currently, most archive and anime programming have been phased out of the channel, which now concentrates on contemporary show, movies, and other programming. One original UK production was the late-night show Headf**k, which featured excerpts from unusual TV shows, short films (including Chris Barfoot 'Phoenix' and 'The Reckoning') and music videos from around the world. Later episodes were presented by David Icke.

Programmes on the channel throughout more recent times have included UK premieres of big name US shows like Heroes, Flash Gordon, Eureka, and more recently Knight Rider, Legend of the Seeker and Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Also shown as of February 2007 are digitally remastered episodes of Star Trek (not to be confused with the remastered series with new CGI); in October the channel secured an exclusive deal with CBS to air Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, remastered from original film elements to current HD standards with new HD CGI sequences, and as of November 2012 have been broadcasting them in (mostly) chronological order.

Acquired programming

 * The Ark
 * Chucky
 * From
 * Reginald the Vampire
 * SurrealEstate

Viewership and reach
As of April 2008, the channel reached an average of three million UK and Ireland households a week, appealing equally to male and female demographics.

Initially, the channel shared its analogue satellite transponder with no less than five other channels, limiting its output to early evenings and late nights with the rest of its continuous daytime programming (including cartoons) restricted to cable customers. With the launch of Sky Digital in the UK the channel eventually expanded to exclusive broadcasting on its own channel and now broadcasts round the clock most days each week.

Most watched programmes
The following is a list of the ten most watched shows on Syfy (previously Sci-Fi), based on Live +7 data supplied by BARB up to 10 September 2017. The number of viewers does not include viewers from Ireland, repeats or airings on Syfy +1.

HD feed
A high-definition simulcast channel was launched on the Sky+ HD service as the 31st high-definition channel on Sky. A range of high definition movies, including Sci Fi Channel original production Ba'al: The Storm God, aired on the channel along with Eli Stone, Tin Man and Sanctuary.

It was added to Virgin Media on 1 April 2010.

title: Sky Sci-Fi


text:
Sacred king

In many historical societies, the position of kingship carries a sacral meaning; that is, it is identical with that of a high priest and judge. The concept of theocracy is related, although a sacred king does not need to necessarily rule through his religious authority; rather, the temporal position itself has a religious significance behind it.

History
Sir James George Frazer used the concept of the sacred king in his study The Golden Bough (1890–1915), the title of which refers to the myth of the Rex Nemorensis. Frazer gives numerous examples, cited below, and was an inspiration for the myth and ritual school. However, "the myth and ritual, or myth-ritualist, theory" is disputed; many scholars now believe that myth and ritual share common paradigms, but not that one developed from the other.

According to Frazer, the notion has prehistoric roots and occurs worldwide, on Java as in sub-Saharan Africa, with shaman-kings credited with rainmaking and assuring fertility and good fortune. The king might also be designated to suffer and atone for his people, meaning that the sacral king could be the pre-ordained victim in a human sacrifice, either killed at the end of his term in the position, or sacrificed in a time of crisis (e.g. the Blót of Domalde).

The Ashanti flogged a newly selected king (Ashantehene) before enthroning him. So that he might remember what it felt like to suffer as a man, to restrain him in his thereafter acquired god-like power, as the Auriga reminded the conquering hero returning home in his triumph, the crowd's ecstatic adulation rolling in waves across his ego, that he remained but a mortal, and must die.

From the Bronze Age in the Near East, the enthronement and anointment of a monarch is a central religious ritual, reflected in the titles "Messiah" or "Christ", which became separated from worldly kingship. Thus Sargon of Akkad described himself as "deputy of Ishtar", just as the modern Catholic Pope takes the role of the "Vicar of Christ".

Kings are styled as shepherds from earliest times, e.g., the term applied to Sumerian princes such as Lugalbanda in the 3rd millennium BCE. The image of the shepherd combines the themes of leadership and the responsibility to supply food and protection, as well as superiority.

As the mediator between the people and the divine, the sacral king was credited with special wisdom (e.g. Solomon or Gilgamesh) or vision (e.g. via oneiromancy).

Study
Study of the concept was introduced by Sir James George Frazer in his influential book The Golden Bough (1890–1915); sacral kingship plays a role in Romanticism and Esotericism (e.g. Julius Evola) and some currents of Neopaganism (Theodism). The school of Pan-Babylonianism derived much of the religion described in the Hebrew Bible from cults of sacral kingship in ancient Babylonia.

The so-called British and Scandinavian cult-historical schools maintained that the king personified a god and stood at the center of the national or tribal religion. The English "myth and ritual school" concentrated on anthropology and folklore, while the Scandinavian "Uppsala school" emphasized Semitological study.

Frazer's interpretation
A sacred king, according to the systematic interpretation of mythology developed by Frazer in The Golden Bough (published 1890), was a king who represented a solar deity in a periodically re-enacted fertility rite. Frazer seized upon the notion of a substitute king and made him the keystone of his theory of a universal, pan-European, and indeed worldwide fertility myth, in which a consort for the Goddess was annually replaced. According to Frazer, the sacred king represented the spirit of vegetation, a divine John Barleycorn. He came into being in the spring, reigned during the summer, and ritually died at harvest time, only to be reborn at the winter solstice to wax and rule again. The spirit of vegetation was therefore a "dying and reviving god". Osiris, Dionysus, Attis and many other familiar figures from Greek mythology and classical antiquity were re-interpreted in this mold (Osiris in particular is conspicuous in this as he was a figure of Egyptian mythology). The sacred king, the human embodiment of the dying and reviving vegetation god, was supposed to have originally been an individual chosen to rule for a time, but whose fate was to suffer as a sacrifice, to be offered back to the earth so that a new king could rule for a time in his stead.

Especially in Europe during Frazer's early twentieth century heyday, it launched a cottage industry of amateurs looking for "pagan survivals" in such things as traditional fairs, maypoles, and folk arts like morris dancing. It was widely influential in literature, being alluded to by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, among other works.

Robert Graves used Frazer's work in The Greek Myths and made it one of the foundations of his own personal mythology in The White Goddess, and in the fictional Seven Days in New Crete he depicted a future in which the institution of a sacrificial sacred king is revived. Margaret Murray, the principal theorist of witchcraft as a "pagan survival," used Frazer's work to propose the thesis that many kings of England who died as kings, most notably William Rufus, were secret pagans and witches, whose deaths were the re-enactment of the human sacrifice that stood at the centre of Frazer's myth. This idea used by fantasy writer Katherine Kurtz in her novel Lammas Night.

Examples

 * Chakravartin, a righteous king derived from Indian religious thought.
 * Devaraja, cult of divine kings in Southeast Asia.
 * Germanic kingship
 * Holy Roman Emperor
 * Imperial cult
 * The Omukama of Kitara ruled as a heavenly sovereign.
 * The High King of Ireland, according to medieval tradition, married the sovereignty goddess.
 * Almamy—derived from al-Imam, meaning "the one leading the prayer" in Arabic—regnal title of theocratic monarchs of Futa Toro, Futa Jallon and West African rulers.
 * The Eze Nri, ruler of the defunct Igbo Nri Kingdom in present-day Nigeria. He was addressed as "Igwe," meaning "heavenly one" in the Igbo language, and has bequeathed his title to the monarch of a contemporary traditional state of the same name.
 * The Emperor of Japan is known in Japanese as Tennō – "heavenly sovereign", and was formerly believed to be a living kami.
 * The Kende was the sacred king of the Magyars in the 9th century.
 * The Khagan (Ashina)
 * The Kings of Luba became deities after death.
 * The temporal power of the papacy
 * Pharaoh, title of Ancient Egyptian rulers. The pharaoh adopted names symbolizing holy might.
 * The last vestige of Athenian monarchy, Archon basileus, mainly retained the duties of overseeing certain religious rites.
 * King of Rome
 * Rex Sacrorum
 * Pontifex Maximus – a title adopted by the papacy
 * Roman triumph, according to legend first enacted by Romulus
 * Augustus
 * Son of Heaven, East Asian title
 * Shah and Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist, Islamic concepts in Iran
 * The kings of Sparta claimed direct descent from Heracles himself, and served as hereditary priests.
 * King of Thailand
 * The pre-colonial emperors and kings of the Yoruba people, the Obas, and their contemporary successors
 * Madkhalism in Islam
 * Kings in pre-Christian Scandinavia and England claimed descent from gods such as Odin (House of Wessex, House of Knýtlinga) and Freyr (Yngling). Scandinavian kings in pre-Christian times served as priests at sacrifices.

Monarchies carried sacral kingship into the Middle Ages, encouraging the idea of kings installed by the Grace of God. See:
 * Capetian Miracle
 * Royal touch, supernatural powers attributed to the kings of England and France
 * The Serbian Nemanjić dynasty
 * The Hungarian House of Árpád (known during the Medieval period as the "dynasty of the Holy King"')
 * The Prince-Bishops, existing in various European countries in Medieval and later times.

In fiction
Many of Rosemary Sutcliff's novels are recognized as being directly influenced by Frazer, depicting individuals accepting the burden of leadership and the ultimate responsibility of personal sacrifice, including Sword at Sunset, The Mark of the Horse Lord, and Sun Horse, Moon Horse.

In addition to its appearance in her novel Lammas Night noted above, Katherine Kurtz also uses the idea of sacred kingship in her novel The Quest for Saint Camber.

title: Sacred king


text:
Pinckney's Treaty

Pinckney's Treaty, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo or the Treaty of Madrid, was signed on October 27, 1795, by the United States and Spain.

It defined the border between the United States and Spanish Florida, and guaranteed the United States navigation rights on the Mississippi River. With this agreement, the first phase of the ongoing border dispute between the two nations in this region, commonly called the West Florida Controversy, came to a close.

Thomas Pinckney negotiated the treaty for the United States and Don Manuel de Godoy represented Spain. It was presented to the United States Senate on February 26, 1796, and, after debate, was ratified on March 7, 1796. It was ratified by Spain on April 25, 1796, and ratifications were exchanged on that date. The treaty was proclaimed on August 2, 1796.

Background
In 1763, Great Britain established two colonies, East Florida and West Florida, out of territory along the northern Gulf of Mexico coast ceded from France and Spain after the French and Indian War, which formed part of the larger Seven Years' War. The British received all of Spanish Florida from Spain and received the portion of French Louisiana east of the Mississippi River, New Orleans, from France as well as all of French Louisiana west of the Mississippi that had been secretly given to Spain the previous year. Both East Florida and West Florida were never extensively settled by the British and were ceded to Spain (which ruled both provinces as separate and apart from Louisiana) in the 1783 Treaty of Paris at the end of the American Revolutionary War. When the transaction was made however, the boundaries of West Florida, which had changed while under British sovereignty, were not specified.

In 1763, West Florida's northern border was initially set at the 31st parallel north, but it was moved in 1764 to 32° 28′, the junction of the Mississippi River and the Yazoo River and now the location of Vicksburg, Mississippi, to give the West Floridians more territory, including the Natchez District and the Tombigbee District. After reacquiring the colony, Spain insisted that its West Florida claim extended fully to 32° 28′, but the U.S. asserted that the land between 31° and 32° 28′ had always been British territory and so rightfully belonged to the United States.

In 1784, the Spanish closed New Orleans to American goods coming down the Mississippi River. In 1795, the border was settled, and the United States and Spain concluded a trade agreement. New Orleans was reopened, and Americans could transfer goods without paying cargo fees, the right of deposit, when they transferred goods from one ship to another.

Article II
The southern boundary of the United States with the Spanish colonies of East Florida and West Florida was established as a line beginning on the Mississippi River at the 31st parallel north, the 1763 line, drawn due east to the middle of the Chattahoochee River, then downstream along the middle of the river to the junction with the Flint River, then due east to the headwaters of the St. Marys River, and then along the middle of the channel to the Atlantic Ocean.

Article III
A joint Spanish–American team was stipulated for surveying the boundary line.

Article IV
The western boundary of the United States with the Spanish colony of Louisiana was established as the middle of the Mississippi River from the northern boundary of the United States (how far north the Mississippi extended was still unknown) to the 31st degree north latitude, and both Spanish subjects and U.S. citizens would have free navigation along the full length of the Mississippi from its source to the ocean.

Article V
The United States and Spain agreed not to incite native tribes to warfare and to promote mutually-beneficial trade relationships by tribes on both sides of the border. Previously, Spain had supplied weapons to local tribes for many years. The agreement put the lands of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations of American Indians in the new boundaries of the United States.

Articles VI and VII
Spain and the United States also agreed to protect and defend the vessels of the other party anywhere in their jurisdictions and not to detain or embargo each other's citizens or vessels.

Ramifications

A joint Spanish–American team surveyed the boundary line. Andrew Ellicott served as the head of the U.S. contingent. The region that Spain relinquished its claim by Pinckney's Treaty was organized by Congress as Mississippi Territory on April 7, 1798. Natchez was the territory's first and only capital.

Grant (1997) argues that the treaty was critical for the emergence of American expansionism, later known as "Manifest destiny," because control of the Natchez and Tombigbee districts was needed for dominance of the Southwest by the United States. The collapse of Spanish power in the region was inevitable, as Americans poured into the district, and very few Spaniards lived there. Spain gave up the area because of international politics, not local unrest. Spanish rule was accepted by the French and British settlers near Natchez. Relations with the Indians were tranquil. However, with the loss of Natchez, Spain's frontier was no longer secure, and the rest of its territory was gradually lost.

Under the secret Third Treaty of San Ildefonso of October 1, 1800, Spanish Louisiana, comprising both the vast territory west of the Mississippi and New Orleans, was formally retroceded to France, but Spain continued to administer it. Again, as in 1783, the boundaries of the territory being exchanged were not specified. As a result, when France and the United States concluded the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, a new dispute, the second phase of the West Florida Controversy, arose.

This time, the disagreement was over whether the portion of West Florida that was first under British and then Spanish control since 1763 (between the Mississippi and Perdido Rivers) was included in the 1801 treaty and thus the Louisiana Purchase. The United States laid claim to the region by asserting it to be included. Spain held that such a claim was baseless. While the politicians squabbled, American and British settlers in the region declared an independent Republic of West Florida in 1810. Its capital was located at St. Francisville. It was quickly annexed by the United States and incorporated into the Territory of Orleans, which joined the Union as the state of Louisiana in 1812. The present-day Louisiana civil parishes (equivalent to counties elsewhere in the United States) which had been part of the former republic are referred to as the "Florida Parishes."

Also in 1812, the U.S. annexed the Mobile District of West Florida between the Perdido and Pearl Rivers and declared that it had been included in the Louisiana Purchase. Spain disputed that and maintained its claim over the area. The following year, a federal statute was secretly enacted authorizing the president to take full possession of the area with the use of military force as deemed necessary. Accordingly, General James Wilkinson occupied this district with a military contingent. The Spanish colonial commandant offered no resistance. The annexed land was incorporated into the Mississippi Territory and partitioned five years later when the Alabama Territory was established.

In 1819 the United States and Spain negotiated the Adams–Onís Treaty in which Spain ceded all of both West Florida and East Florida into the United States. Since the mid-19th century, the southern (east–west) boundary established by Pinckney's Treaty has formed the state line between:

 * Florida and Georgia
 * Florida and Alabama – between the Chattahoochee and Perdido Rivers
 * Louisiana and Mississippi – between the Pearl and Mississippi Rivers

The line is not a state line between the Pearl and Perdido Rivers to provide Mississippi and Alabama with access to the Gulf of Mexico.

title: Pinckney's Treaty