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Zury Ríos

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Zury Ríos

Zury Mayté Ríos Sosa (born 24 January 1968) is a Guatemalan former politician. She is the daughter of the late general, and President of Guatemala Efraín Ríos Montt.

She began her political career with her father, whom she defended against accusations of genocide against him. She served four terms in Congress, from 1995 to 2012, where she was chair of the Foreign Relations Committee. She also served on the Steering Committee of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) and was the chair of the IPU's Latin American Group where she was elected unanimously by parliamentarians from the Latin American nations. Zury was the presidential candidate for the party VIVA at the 2015 elections.

Zury Ríos Sosa was born in January 1968, the third child of José Efraín Ríos Montt and María Teresa Sosa Ávila. Ríos Sosa's father, a former Guatemalan army general and illegitimate President of Guatemala, was found guilty of genocide against the Ixil Maya and crimes against humanity.

Her brothers, Enrique and Homero, both followed their father's military footsteps and enlisted in the armed forces: Homero, a military doctor, was killed by guerrillas in 1984, while rescuing wounded army soldiers and attempting to put them aboard an army helicopter that was brought down by rebel weapons fire in El Petén; Enrique was chief of the Army General Staff before resigning his commission in September 2003 when charged with having embezzled Q30 million (3.25m/US$3.75m). When she was 10 years old, her father renounced Catholicism and became an ordained minister in a Guatemalan offshoot of the Gospel Outreach Church.

Zury Ríos studied at schools in Guatemala and Spain, where her father was assigned as military attaché following the 1974 presidential election, a process tainted by accusations of electoral fraud in which he had been a candidate. She graduated magna cum laude in political and social science from Francisco Marroquín University. Her first job (1988–1989) was as a lecturer in social and economic studies at the Escuela Cristiana Verbo in Guatemala City and she has also worked as a primary school teacher.

She has been married four times. Prior to her current union, she was married to Jeovanny Chávez, deputy José García Bravatti, and businessman Roberto López Villatoro. During her marriage to López Villatoro, she was also known as Ríos de López.

On 20 November 2004, at a ceremony held in General Ríos Montt's compound near Antigua Guatemala, and with the general presiding at the ceremony, she married U.S. Congressman Jerry Weller (R-Illinois). Following the wedding, she stated that although she planned to live in the United States with her husband, she would continue serving in the Guatemalan legislature; a lawyer for Weller told the U.S. House Ethics Committee that she did not plan on becoming a U.S. citizen.

In March 2006 the Wellers announced that she was pregnant, and a daughter, Marizú Catherine, was born on 17 August 2006 in a Guatemala City hospital. The child holds dual U.S. and Guatemalan nationality.

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