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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. Some 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 given rise to a large mobilization in favor of fair functioning and democratic government.
Guatemalan democracy after 1996 was marked by neoliberal policies that favored the market economy and privatization. He has also noted the rise of an organization of careerist politicians who, in the words of jailed journalist Rubén Zamora, have created a “kleptocracy. “corrupt political connections, fueled criminal activity, and perpetuated high levels of poverty.
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 the prosecution of Guatemalans for corruption, including former President Otto Pérez Molina and former Vice President Roxana Baldetti. However, the government expelled the CICIG in 2019. In response, the Guatemalan public accused political elites, high ranks, and business leaders of forming 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 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 electoral effects shocked the political system. Arevalo won 11. 8% of the total votes, only Torres (15. 9%). As no candidate won a majority, a second circular was held on 20 August. Arevalo won comfortably with 58% of the vote. vote, compared to 37% for Torres.
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, claimed—erroneously, it turned out—that the electoral software had favored Arévalo’s candidacy. official.
As a result, the Attorney General’s Office, through Attorney General Consuelo Porras, accused Arévalo’s party of using forged signatures in its registration process. According to her, as many as 100 of the 25,000 signatures required for registration were forged. On July 21, a month before the second election circular, 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 meddling in the electoral procedure 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 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 through The Conversation, an independent, nonprofit news organization that brings you data and research to make sense of our complex world.
Written by: Bonar Hernández Sandoval, Iowa State University.
Learn more:
Money can’t fix Central America or prevent migration to the United States.
Corruption triumphs in Guatemala’s presidential election
Bonar Hernández Sandoval does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.