On December 8, 2023, Guatemala’s prosecutors and Congress called for the annulment of the election results. A few weeks earlier, Guatemala’s attorney general had attempted to lift President-elect Bernardo Arévalo’s immunity from prosecution. The attorney general alleged that the center-left politician, who won the election thanks to his anti-corruption campaign, posted messages on social media in 2022 encouraging academics to occupy the country’s public university. In an unprecedented attempt to save him from coming to power, officials accused Arevalo of complicity. in the occupation of the university, illicit association and damage to the cultural heritage of the country.
During the presidential election in September, the Public Ministry raided electoral offices. These actions “appear to be designed to overturn the will of the electorate and erode the democratic process,” concluded the Organization of American States, a group that represents 35 countries in the region and promotes human rights, fair elections, security and economic development.
The advances are a democratic backlash in Guatemala that has lasted since 2019, when the government expelled a U. N. -backed anti-corruption commission.
Meanwhile, Guatemalans are fed up with rampant corruption and election interference. On October 2, 2023, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Guatemala City and blocked more than a hundred roads and highways to demand respect for the elections. a broad cross-section of urban and rural society, including Mayan and non-indigenous communities.
As a professor of history who studies social movements in Latin America, I see the current climate of protest as part of a long history of instability and political mobilization in Guatemala. As in the past, these anti-democratic actions will likely lead more Guatemalans to migrate to the United States.
Guatemala’s afterlife has been marked by violent political unrest and activism.
Between 1960 and 1996, the country experienced a bloody armed confrontation between leftist insurgents and the army. Around 200,000 Guatemalans were killed, most of them belonging to the indigenous Mayan population.
The armed confrontation, rooted in territorial conflicts and opposition to the military dictatorship, has led to a large mobilization in favour of a just functioning and democratic government.
Guatemala’s democracy in the post-1996 years was marked by neoliberal policies that favored free market economics and privatization. It also saw the rise of a cadre of careerist politicians who, in the words of the jailed journalist Rubén Zamora, created a “kleptocracy.” This system hinged on corrupt political dealings, nurtured criminal activity and perpetuated high poverty levels.
Guatemalans have adopted an active, perhaps even militant, stance of kleptocracy.
In 2015, they took to the streets en masse to protest government corruption. Their mobilization includes movements by the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG, a UN-backed framework tasked with investigating and prosecuting crimes and strengthening Guatemala’s judicial system.
The commission’s investigation led to prosecutions of Guatemalans for corruption, adding former President Otto Pérez Molina and former Vice President Roxana Baldetti. However, the government expelled the CICIG in 2019. In response, Guatemalan public opinion accused political elites, senior officials, and business leaders. to form a “pact of the corrupt” to thwart the fight against corruption.
The 2023 elections in Guatemala were positioned in this fragile political climate.
In the weeks before Election Day, the Constitutional Court, for reasons critics consider dubious, disqualified two emerging political outsiders: Thelma Cabrera, a left-wing indigenous candidate, and Carlos Pineda, a conservative and populist businessman who has won a following social networks.
This judicial meddling in the electoral process, however, opened the way for another political outsider, Bernardo Arévalo of the left-of-center Seed Movement party. An increasing number of Guatemalans, including young voters, saw Arévalo and his anti-corruption platform as an alternative to establishment candidates such as former first lady Sandra Torres, who led most polls in the weeks before the election.
The electoral effects sent surprise waves through the political system. Arévalo won 11. 8% of the overall vote, only Torres (15. 9%). As no candidate won a majority, a second circular was issued on 20 August. Arevalo won outright with 58% of the vote, compared to Torres’ 37%.
Arevalo is a political neophyte. He has served as a diplomat and most recently holds a seat in Congress. He is also the son of Juan José Arévalo, the country’s first democratically elected president.
After the election, political elites, including members of Torres’ National Unity of Hope party and President Alejandro Giammattei’s Vamos party, claimed—erroneously, it turned out—that the electoral software had favored Arévalo’s candidacy. official.
For this reason, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, through Attorney General Consuelo Porras, accused Arévalo’s party of using false signatures in its registration process. He said as many as 100 of the 25,000 signatures needed for registration were forged. On July 21, a month before the second round of the elections, prosecutors raided the headquarters of the Seed Movement and asked for a sentence to suspend the party.
Despite Arévalo’s resounding victory on August 20, the prosecution continued to try to suspend his party. On September 29, he took the unprecedented step of raiding the offices of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the electoral authority.
Disgusted by this interference in the electoral process and frightened by the prospect of a coup d’état, Guatemalans took to the streets. The protests, which began on October 2, paralyzed the country for more than ten days and united the urban and rural population.
Echoing a long history of indigenous activism in Guatemala, prominent indigenous teams such as the Peasant Committee for Development and the 48 cantons of Totonicapán played a key role in the protests. Indigenous peoples, who make up almost a portion of Guatemala’s population, face higher rates of poverty, difficult access to health care, and environmental degradation of their lands caused by mining and hydroelectric projects.
For many Indigenous voters, election interference highlighted the relationship between government corruption and their socioeconomic inequalities. The central role of indigenous communities in the protests was a sign of a new popular movement that may reflect the multiracial, multi-class coalitions that had emerged in the armed confrontation of the 1970s.
U. S. officials and agencies report that political corruption in Guatemala is one of the fundamental reasons for migration. In 2023, the U. S. Border Patrol apprehended more than 200,000 Guatemalans attempting to cross the U. S. -Mexico border.
Guatemalans themselves perceive very well the extent to which kleptocracy reinforces the country’s social ills. They realize that a democratic backslide could not only save Arévalo from ascending to the presidency, but also deprive their communities of the resources needed to improve health care, improve education, create jobs, reduce malnutrition, and combat change. climate. Without these improvements, many will continue to migrate, despite the many dangers this entails.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation. Guatemala…
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s news and opinion research platform. Originally published in The Conversation. More. . .
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s news and opinion research platform. Originally published on The Conversation. Con. . .
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s news and opinion research platform. Originally published on The Conversation. Speaker. . .