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 elections in September, the Public Ministry registered electoral offices. These movements “seem designed to subvert the will of the electorate and erode the democratic process,” concluded the Organization of American States, an organization that represents 35 countries in the region. and promotes human rights, elections, security and economic development.
The advances are a democratic reaction in Guatemala that has lasted since 2019, when the government expelled a UN-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 recent past is 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 leading up to election day, the Constitutional Court, on grounds critics consider dubious, disqualified two emerging political outsiders: Thelma Cabrera, a left-leaning indigenous candidate, and Carlos Pineda, a conservative businessman and populist who has won a major role in the election.
This judicial interference in the electoral process, however, paved the way for another political outsider, Bernardo Arevalo of the center-left Seed Movement party. A growing number of Guatemalans, as well as young voters, saw Arevalo and his anti-corruption platform as an option for status quo claimants like former first lady Sandra Torres, who led most polls in the weeks leading up to the election.
The election results sent shock waves through the political system. Arévalo received 11.8% of the general vote, second only to Torres’ 15.9%. Because no candidate received a majority, a runoff election was held on Aug. 20. Arévalo won handily with 58% of the vote compared with Torres’ 37%.
Arévalo is not a political neophyte. He has served as a diplomat and currently occupies 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, alleged – incorrectly, it turned out – that the electoral software had favored Arévalo’s candidacy. They attempted to stop the results from being made official.
More consequently, the Public Ministry, led by Attorney General Consuelo Porras, accused Arévalo’s party of using false signatures during its registration process. It contended that up to 100 out of the 25,000 signatures required for registration were falsified. On July 21, one month before the runoff election, Public Ministry officials raided the Seed Movement’s headquarters and asked a judge 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 fearful over the prospect of a coup, Guatemalans took to the streets. The protests that began on Oct. 2 brought the country to a standstill for more than 10 days and united the urban and rural population.
Echoing a long-standing history of Indigenous activism in Guatemala, prominent Indigenous groups such as the Peasant Committee for Development and the 48 Cantones of Totonicapán played a vital role in the protests. Indigenous people, who make up nearly half of Guatemala’s population, face high poverty rates, poor 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 are well aware of the extent to which kleptocracy reinforces the country’s social ills. They realize that a democratic pushback can not only save Arevalo 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 climate change. Without those improvements, many will continue to migrate, despite the many dangers involved.
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 on The Conversation. More. . .
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation. With…
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s news and opinion research platform. Originally published on The Conversation. Speaker. . .