Elections and Democracy in Guatemala

 

In Guatemala,  Indigenous and campesino groups have declared an indefinite national strike in response to judicial harassment of president-elect Bernardo Arévalo and his party Movimiento Semilla. Thousands of demonstrators have blocked traffic on major thoroughfares across the country. Indigenous and community leaders say the protests will continue until Attorney General Consuelo Porras and prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche resign and the Constitutional Court puts an end to what Arévalo has termed  “a slow-motion coup”  to prevent him from taking office in January.     The strike entered its  fifth consecutive day today, with at least 28 active blockade points nationally. At the road blocks, Indigenous authorities, including the 48 Cantones de Totonicapán and Indigenous mayors' offices, are joined by university students and faculty, health workers, teachers, and a  wide range of civil society groups .  The strike comes after Guatemala’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) was raided for a fourth time last week by officials from the Attorney General’s office. A  live stream video of the raid shows  distressing scenes of police wrestling vote tally boxes from the arms of justices who plead with officers to respect the will of voters. The 20-hour raid was part of ongoing investigations into spurious claims of election fraud targeting Arévalo and his Semilla party. International observers have said there is no evidence of vote tampering.      For the people who voted for Arévalo, an anti-establishment candidate who promises to challenge entrenched corruption and impunity, the raids are an attempt on the part of political elites to weaken or disqualify their president-elect.     Attorney General Porras and special prosecutor Curruchiche, seen as the key operatives in the campaign to sabotage Arévalo and Semilla, have both been  sanctioned by the U.S. government for anti-democratic actions and obstructing investigations into corruption in Guatemala. Since Arévalo’s surprise showing in the first-round presidential election in June, Porras and Curruchiche, together with judge Fredy Orellana, have repeatedly pursued fraud allegations and other supposed irregularities. The criminalization of Semilla follows a worsening trend of lawfare, institutional intimidation, and judicialization of dissent in Guatemala, as NACLA contributor  Vaclav Masek observed i n the lead-up to the August 20 runoff that handed Arévalo a landmark victory.      Arévalo met with senior officials in Washington this week, after the U.S. State Department released a statement saying it was “ gravely concerned ” about ongoing efforts to undermine a peaceful transition of power. The U.S. government has imposed visa restrictions on current and former members of congress, justice officials, and “anyone else who undermines democracy.” In a statement, the White House expressed support for Arévalo “following last week's undemocratic efforts to undermine the will of the Guatemalan people, intimidate election authorities, and prevent the peaceful transition of power."     In the face of the ongoing judicial harassment against Arévalo and Semilla, the TSE is considering  extending the formal election period until the January presidential inauguration, a move that would protect the party from suspension.      The Organization of American States (OAS) described the situation in Guatemala as "a political persecution similar to those carried out in authoritarian regimes." The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has raised concerns about the risk of violence as political tension runs high. In solidarity, NACLA staff  DONATE to support our work SUBCRIBE to the NACLA Report

Hope in Guatemala

The anti-corruption candidate’s stunning upset could mark a new and hopeful era for the country.  Arévalo is the son of Juan Jose Arévalo, Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, who held office from 1945 to 1951. 

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/bernardo-arevalo-guatemala-election/

Bernardo Arévalo's Unexpected Victory Brings Guatemala Another Democratic Spring The anti-corruption candidate's stunning upset could mark a new and hopeful era for the country. But only if he is allowed to take power—and to exercise it. www.thenation.com

Bernardo Arévalo’s Unexpected Victory Brings Guatemala Another Democratic Spring

The anti-corruption candidate’s stunning upset could mark a new and hopeful era for the country. But only if he is allowed to take power—and to exercise it.

Daniel Judt, August 23, 2023

Quetzaltenango, Guatemala—On Sunday night, in the central plaza of Xela, the second-largest city in Guatemala, a crowd of several hundred gathers to watch the results of the country’s presidential election. When the press calls the vote for Bernardo Arévalo, a university professor turned anti-corruption politician, the crowd erupts. ¡Viva Arévalo! Viva Guatemala! Fireworks go off. A young campaign volunteer runs up to the podium, takes the microphone, and cries, “Today is the beginning of Guatemala’s next Democratic Spring!”

It is a reference to Arévalo’s party, Movimiento Semilla, whose language is full of seasonal metaphors. (“Semilla” is Spanish for seed). It is also a nod to the party’s birth during the “Guatemalan Spring” of 2015, when citizens took to the streets to oust President Otto Pérez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti for corruption (both are now in prison). Most meaningfully, though, it is an invocation of the decade of social democracy that Guatemala witnessed from 1944 to 1954. That period, commonly known as the “Democratic Spring,” has remained an ironic point of light in Guatemalan historical memory—an era that gave way to a US-backed coup, a decades-long campaign of genocide during which the state murdered some 200,000 indigenous Guatemalans, and, most recently, a series of “democratic” governments marred by corruption, poverty, and political repression.

Now, with Arévalo’s victory, the phrase “Democratic Spring” has transformed from nostalgia for a distant past to hope for a near future. The comparison is personal. Bernardo Arévalo is the son of Juan Jose Arévalo, Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, who held office from 1945 to 1951. The invocation of Arévalo Sr. is a political strategy. Many still remember him as one of the country’s two best presidents, along with his successor, Jacobo Arbenz. But it is also an instructive reminder of what it will take for the current Arévalo to lead Guatemala toward—or back to—a genuine form of democracy.

It is something of a miracle that Arévalo even made it to the final round of voting. In February, before the first round, the country’s electoral commission used spurious accusations to bar three candidates from participating. Two were wealthy businessmen running popular campaigns. The third, Thelma Cabrera, was a Mayan Indigenous rights activist whose party, the left-wing Movement for the Liberation of the People (MLP), had performed unexpectedly well in 2019. It seems likely that Arévalo snuck through on the strength of his dismal support. Most polls had him in last place.

Arévalo, 64, is impeccably calm and soft-spoken. His lack of bombast, together with his party’s emaciated infrastructure—Semilla did not accept the bribes and gifts that sustain Guatemala’s leading parties—helped him stay under the radar. They also helped him garner support. Semilla’s party proposals are nothing if not rigorously sensible: lower the cost of electricity and food by breaking up monopolies; bring workers into the formal economy, which would lower the skyrocketing rate of immigration to the US; clean up government agencies, by following a detailed ten-step plan. Over and over on the campaign trail, Arévalo reiterated this last commitment. His words were vague (“together, as a people, we will fight against corruption”). But coupled with his honest style and clean background, they earned him a valuable epithet: the “anti-corruption” candidate.

In the first round election on June 25, Arévalo received 12 percent of the vote, enough to put him in second behind Sandra Torres, a former first lady with no meaningful ideology beyond a commitment to gaining power. (Torres had run for president twice before, in 2015 and 2019, and lost both times.) Or, really, Torres finished second, Arévalo third, behind some 1.2 million blank or spoiled ballots. Even as Arévalo’s victory is fêted, it should not be forgotten that the real winner of the first round was a simple, resounding no.

Stunned by Semilla’s advance to the second round, the current government scrambled to disqualify Arévalo. The supreme court investigated “fraud” in the vote count. The attorney general tried to dissolve Semilla on the grounds that the party had falsified voters’ signatures. The police raided Semilla’s headquarters in Guatemala City. But the attacks backfired.They reinforced Arévalo’s image as an anti-establishment candidate and carried his name out into rural areas that Semilla’s campaign, largely a social-media operation, would not have otherwise reached. Despite the fact that Torres and her UNE party used all sorts of illegal tactics on election day—busing voters to polling sites, handing out food supplies in exchange for votes, instructing her election monitors to challenge Semilla ballots—Arévalo won the second round by over a million votes. In Xela, a few Semilla poll monitors told me that their UNE counterparts accepted Torres’s money and then cast their ballots for Arévalo.

Juan Jose Arévalo took office in 1945, in the wake of a revolution that toppled the country’s military dictatorship. It was a tenuous popular front of communists and anti-communists, leftists and centrists, momentarily united to fight for democracy. Arévalo was the ideal candidate. A left-liberal philosophy professor of a Deweyan cast, he advocated the overcoming of “old class hatreds” with a flighty platform of “spiritual socialism.” Eloquent in speech and manner, upper-class but never a part of dictatorial circles, anti-communist but with vague leftist sympathies, he was, as one historian writes, “all things to all people.” 

Arévalo senior had significant blind spots. He never pursued land reform and did little for rural education. But he did pass a labor code that established the right to unionize, capped the workweek at 48 hours, and instituted health and safety standards for all laborers. (A Nationcontributor wrote that the law made the US’s Wagner Act look like “sheer fascist reaction.”) He also created a robust social security system, the IGSS, which is still active today. Crucially, he tolerated and benefited from a coalition of left-wing parties without which the most impactful elements of “Arevalismo” would not have survived. The communist-leaning Party of Revolutionary Action, for example, played a critical role in executing Arévalo’s policies—and beating back several coup attempts against him. Fitfully but genuinely, as historian Greg Grandin has argued, Arévalo cultivated a union of “socialized democracy and democratized socialism.”

Like his father, Bernardo Arévalo’s greatest strength, for now, is that he is all things to all people. This is evident even within the Semilla office in Xela. Rene, a recent college graduate who joined the party in May, eagerly affirms that Semilla is “not socialist” and labels the party as both progressive and centrist. Her colleague Guillermo, a serious politico in his late 20s, speaks of Arévalo as a Guatemalan Salvador Allende who will begin to “transition” the country out of “unsustainable capitalism.” In Xela and its environs, I heard socialists and centrists and evangelical Christians say they would vote for Semilla. Ex-guerrillas are happy he won; so is the US government. “Semilla is a party of an elite class,” Percy Aguilar, a former mayoral candidate in Xela for the left-wing MLP party, told me. “A radical left would try to transform the state. Semilla doesn’t want to transform the state. They want to keep the state we currently have, only without corruption.” He voted for Arévalo anyway. 

It is still not a given that Arévalo will take power in January of next year. At the time of writing, Torres has not recognized his victory. There are rumblings from the attorney general’s office about another prosecution of Semilla. The speeches by congressmen at the celebratory gathering in Xela’s central plaza are tinged with worries and warnings. Stay alert, the message goes, and be ready to protest. 

Even if the transition does go smoothly, it is likely that Arévalo will be limited to working through executive power and administrative appointments. Semilla has just 23 representatives in the 160-seat national congress, and the prospects of a center-left coalition are slim. The intense repression of leftist, Indigenous parties has seen to that. “Whoever wins,” Aguilar told me last week, “the political left will continue to disappear in Guatemala.” 

If Arévalo and his movement are to have any hope of upending Guatemalan politics for the long run—of creating a new Democratic Spring—they must reverse this trend. Cleaning up government ministries and strengthening social services are essential goals. But a move from corrupt capitalism to upstanding capitalism will not root out the troubles of a country at the sharp end of global power. Semilla’s promise of a renewed democracy will remain unfulfilled without the cultivation of a strong anti-capitalist left. If the invocation of the first Democratic Spring in Guatemala carries any counsel for Bernardo Arévalo, his party, and the blander forms of liberal anti-authoritarianism now in vogue around the world, perhaps it is this. 

Daniel Judt is a graduate student worker at Yale, where he studies American political economy and labor history.

Interpretation Crisis at the Border Leads to Deportation of Mayan-Langua...

No he ganado un solo caso de asilo”

No he ganado un solo caso de asilo”: el duro proceso buscando refugio en EEUU que retiene a los migrantes en México

Como resultado de las nuevas políticas del presidente Trump, las autoridades rechazan cava vez más solicitudes de refugio sometidas por centroamericanos que huyen de la violencia y pobreza extrema. Así lo afirman abogados entrevistados por Univision Noticias, una demanda y la organización ACLU.

ISAIAS ALVARADO

23 NOV 2019 – 10:34 AM EST

COMPARTE

La abogada Brenda Luján. Crédito: Isaias Alvarado/ Univision

TIJUANA, México.- La guatemalteca “Rosa” y su hija de 11 años llevan más de cinco meses en un limbo migratorio que las mantiene angustiadas. Solicitaron asilo a Estados Unidos en junio y las devolvieron a México para esperar sus citas en una corte federal de California. Cuando llegó a un albergue en esta ciudad fronteriza, alguien le tradujo lo que redactaron en su proceso y lo que escuchó le bajó la moral.

“Pusieron que yo no tengo miedo de regresar a Guatemala y eso no es cierto”, reclama “Rosa”, sentada en el patio de la Casa del Migrante de Tijuana, el que ha sido su hogar temporal este otoño. “Cruzamos la frontera el 16 de junio y nos regresaron. En la entrevista que me hicieron no me preguntaron por qué salí de mi país, ni por qué iba a Estados Unidos. Nada”, asegura.

“Rosa” ruega que no se publique su nombre, ni se fotografíe su rostro. Tiene mucho miedo. Relata que salió de su país porque pandilleros le pidieron dinero para dejarla trabajar en su salón de belleza. Ella los denunció con la Policía en mayo, pero nadie fue a investigar. Mientras tanto, siguieron las amenazas a través de cartas y llamadas telefónicas. La acosaban hasta cuando salía a comprar al mercado.

“Me dejaban papeles afuera de mi casa exigiendo dinero. Me dio miedo porque a finales de mayo ellos fueron a degollar a una señora a su casa, ella no quiso pagar la extorsión. Tuve miedo y me salí”, contó.

Guatemala Deal Is another Trump Fraud

Washington, D.C.—On July 26, the United States announced that it had signed a new “safe country” asylum deal with Guatemala. The deal—which contradicts a July 14 Constitutional Court ruling that President Morales could not unilaterally sign a “safe country” agreement without Guatemalan congressional approval—was struck after President Trump threatened last week to impose a travel ban and raise tariffs against Guatemala. While many details of the agreement remain unclear, by negotiating a migration deal in secret at a vulnerable moment for Guatemala’s democracy, the Trump administration is setting the stage for a potential constitutional crisis and a humanitarian disaster in a Central American nation already struggling to uphold the rule of law and guarantee basic human rights.

“There is nothing safe about this deal,”said Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Director for Citizen Security Adriana Beltrán.“Guatemala is plagued by violence, poverty, and corruption and it reportedly has fewer than a dozen asylum officers nationwide.”  

“It is unclear how and if this supposed deal will actually be implemented given the rulings of Guatemala’s Constitutional Court,” Beltrán added. “What is clear is that the U.S. government is sending an incredibly damaging message to the region—appeasing President Trump’s agenda takes priority over respecting rule of law or upholding human rights.”

The agreement could force hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to apply for protection in Guatemala. Morales’ administration maintains that the July 26 agreement is not a “safe third country” deal (directly contradicting the White House); nor have Morales administration officials confirmed whether the United States will be returning non-Guatemalan asylum seekers from the U.S.-Mexico border to Guatemala under the terms of the agreement. Moreover, it is unclear how the agreement will be implemented and whether President Morales will seek congressional approval as mandated by the courts. 

Over 235,000 Guatemalans have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year; between October 2018 until last month, Guatemala has ranked number one in terms of seeing the greatest numbers of children and family members apprehended by Border Patrol authorities. 

Ed, note,  The 3rd Country Deal does not apply to people fleeing Guatemala. 

Guatemala's Government agrees to Asylum

Guatemala and the Trump administration have agreed an an asylum deal.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/world/americas/guatemala-safe-third-asylum.html?

In our  (IRWG) resolution to the DSA  convention, one of our points is to oppose any expansion of Guest Worker or H2A programs. Today, the Trump administration is seeking to expand H 2 A in an agreement with the ( corrupt) government of Guatemala.

This is an artful ploy, and we need to respond with precision. Those who primarily see an issue of humanitarian relief may support the Trump administration in this move.

The proposal would provide a new, expanded H2A work force for Guatemalan workers. The problem is not the workers, the problem is the exploitive, colonial program.

From the United Farmworkers Union.

We have to stop these Trump H-2A changes or farm workers will suffer.
See below. https://antiracismdsa.blogspot.com/2019/07/trumps-h2a-changes-hurt-farm-workers.html

Border Patrol Trained Killers in Guatemala

Washington Trained Guatemala’s Mass Murderers — and the Border Patrol Played a Role

Now two Guatemalan children have died under Border Patrol custody. The agency’s role in Latin American oppression has a long history. It has has operated with near impunity, becoming arguably the most politicized branch of federal law enforcement...

January 10, 2019 Greg Grandin and Elizabeth Oglesby  THE NATION

Young Girl from Guatemala Dies in ICE Custody

7-Year-Old Migrant Girl Dies From Neglect In ICE Custody

Jakeline Maquin  NBC News

A 7-year-old Guatemalan girl who crossed the southern border into the United States illegally earlier this month died of dehydration and shock after being apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol in New Mexico.

The girl and her father were part of a group of 163 people who surrendered to Border Patrol officers on the night of Dec. 6, south of Lordsburg, N.M., according to The Washington Post, which first reported the story.

She was identified on Friday as Jakelin Caal Maquin, in a statement by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan. 

7-year-old migrant girl taken into Border Patrol custody dies of dehydration, exhaustion. WaPo:“A 7-year-old girl from Guatemala died of dehydration and shock after she was taken into Border Patrol custody last week for crossing from Mexico into the United States illegally with her father and a large group of migrants along a remote span of New Mexico desert, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday. The child’s death is likely to intensify scrutiny of detention conditions at Border Patrol stations and CBP facilities that are increasingly overwhelmed by large numbers of families seeking asylum in the United States. According to CBP records, the girl and her father were taken into custody about 10 p.m. Dec. 6 south of Lordsburg, N.M., as part of a group of 163 people who approached U.S. agents to turn themselves in. More than eight hours later, the child began having seizures at 6:25 a.m., CBP records show. Emergency responders, who arrived soon after, measured her body temperature at 105.7 degrees, and according to a statement from CBP, she ‘reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.'”

"No podemos vivir en el país de donde venimos": El drama de las familias...

Kevyn Merida, former child refugee shares his story

Release Melida and Estrella from ICE detention

We support the release of Melida and her 4-year-old daughter, Estrella, from family detention in Karnes City, TX. Melida has a 10-year-old U.S. citizen daughter, a sister with a green card, and other U.S. citizen family and friends all waiting for her in New York and willing to care for her while her case proceeds. She has already endured more than eight months of detention, suffering constantly while her daughter has been chronically ill and required hospitalization. She's terrified of returning to Guatemala, where the family of the gang member who was convicted of murdering her sister-in-law wants retribution. ICE has the authority to release her but, so far, has denied every request. If prosecutorial discretion means anything, it means that Melida and Estrella should be released.

Melida and her daughter Estrella—who celebrated her 4th birthday in detention—are asylum seekers from Guatemala who have now been incarcerated for more than eight months.

They are being held at the family detention facility in Karnes City, TX, where 78 mothers recently initiated a hunger strike to protest prolonged detention and deplorable conditions.¹

Melida's sister-in-law was murdered by a gang member in 2012, and her family testified against the murderer. He was convicted, and his family seeks revenge. 

Testimony of recent migrants

http://www.c-span.org/video/?c4505321/dulce-medinas-testimony-members-congressional-progressive-caucus

Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Destroy Their Economic Livelihoods, and They Will Come

Todos somos hijos- video

Guatemala's new president

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-guatemala6nov06,1,4475218.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true
From the Los Angeles Times
Guatemala's new president will assume great burden
Alvaro Colom must now confront massive emigration to the U.S. and organized crime. His first meeting will be with leaders from the Maya community that helped elect him.
By Héctor Tobar
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

November 6, 2007

GUATEMALA CITY — Alvaro Colom awoke Monday to the realization that an entire country of poor and desperate people was depending on him.

Having won Guatemala's presidential election Sunday night, Colom will inherit a series of seemingly intractable problems when he takes office Jan. 14.

Guatemala is one of the most troubled societies in Latin America. Thousands of its citizens migrate to the United States in search of work each year. Organized-crime groups have infiltrated many key government institutions.

"The people of Guatemala voted for change. We will do everything we can to give it to them," said Colom, a slim 56-year-old engineer.

In a news conference and subsequent interview with The Times, Colom said his government would undertake a series of efforts to improve the lives of the country's Maya population. Long Guatemala's poorest residents, the Mayas voted overwhelmingly for Colom.

"We have a historic debt with our indigenous people," Colom said. "Our government will be one with a Mayan face."

Colom said he also planned to reach out to the millions of Guatemalans who live in the United States. The Guatemalan government will work to provide more services to its citizens who live abroad, including assistance to families that wish to return the bodies of those who die far from home.

The Guatemalan consulate in Los Angeles, which serves hundreds of thousands, will be expanded, Colom said. And he will back a measure to provide Guatemalans abroad with the right to vote in their homeland.

"The level of civic activism of the Guatemalans in the United States is much higher than it is here," Colom said.

Colom won Sunday's presidential election in the rural villages where more than 20 different Mayan languages are spoken, humble places where the people feel distant from their largely Spanish-speaking government.

One of his first meetings as president-elect, he said, would be today with the Council of Elders, a group of Maya leaders. Colom met the elders during his previous work as director of the government's National Fund for Peace, a development agency.

"Few Guatemalans know the Council of Elders exists, but they're so powerful they can provoke uprisings," said Colom, who is also one of the few non-Indians to be trained in the rites of Maya shamans.

"We need to learn to live together," Maya and non-Maya, he said. "People see the existence of so many cultures in our country as a threat. But it's a resource and source of strength."

In Sunday's election, rival Otto Perez Molina beat Colom by a large margin in Guatemala City and its suburbs, home to one in four voters. But Colom won in all but one of the country's 21 provinces.

Nationwide, Colom defeated Perez Molina by 52.8% to 47.2%, according to final results released Monday.

Political analysts said it was the first time in Guatemalan history that a candidate had won a presidential election by carrying the countryside while losing in the capital.

Perez Molina, a former army general, won the urban vote by calling for a "firm hand" against the crime wave sweeping the country, and said he would use the military to crack down on organized crime. Many feared that a Perez Molina victory would mean a return to authoritarian government.

Guatemalan voters rejected his message. But analysts said that Colom would face a series of challenges as he attempts to rule this country of 13 million people.

"One day, the United States is going to stop the flow of migrants," said Edgar Gutierrez, director of a human-rights think tank here. "If Colom doesn't develop a regional strategy that seeks an immigration reform in the U.S., and if he doesn't invest in the problem of unemployment, he's going to have serious problems."

Colom, a self-described social democrat, said investment in the rural economy was desperately needed to stop emigration. He said he would implement a little-used provision of the 1996 peace accords that ended Guatemala's civil war, one that allows the government to buy property to redistribute to landless farmers.

The president-elect also proposed the creation of a fund tied to the millions of dollars in remittances that Guatemalans send home each year from the United States. Many community groups in the United States pay for schools and other projects in their Guatemalan hometowns with remittances. The government should match those contributions, Colom said.

"We have to close the spigot that is producing emigration," he said. "Our dream is to generate the conditions so that people don't give in to the temptation to migrate."

hector.tobar@latimes.com