Hundreds of Guatemalans left parts of the capital on Thursday to protest alleged corruption by a deeply unpopular government, the highest office of life and attacks on freedom of expression.
University students, professors and other workers marched from the campus of the capital’s public university with symptoms not easy for the corrupt to leave. “If there is no justice for the people, let there be no peace for the government!” said one.
President Alejandro Giammattei is criticized for his re-election of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, who has been criticized through the U. S. government. The U. S. and others for blocking corruption investigations and prosecuting the prosecutors and judges who conducted them.
More recently, it arrested award-winning journalist José Rubén Zamora, whose newspaper El Periódico is infamous for its investigations into corruption, adding that he opposes Giammattei.
The protesters were heading to Guatemala’s historic center and the seat of power.
Leaders of Guatemala’s indigenous population also joined Thursday’s march, warning that the emerging burden of living in the country hurts the population.
Enrique Saquic, indigenous leader of Santa Lucia Utatlán, said: “They are strangling us, our brothers, our other people are the ones who suffer with all this burden of living.
He pointed out that the co-optation of the judicial formula has left Guatemalans defenseless.
Daniel Pascual, head of the Peasant Unity Committee, said the burden of living “means building on the hunger of the poor. “
“Corruption after all is the theft of people’s money, and those who pay taxes are the deficient and the middle class, because the rich do not give a contribution to the country,” Pascual said.
The United States sanctioned Porras and put him and others on a list of corrupt actors in Guatemala who pose a risk to democracy. Giammattei, however, subsidized it, renewing it for a period of four years this year.
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