Bernardo Arévalo won Guatemala’s runoff in a landslide but faces a troubled transition amid reported assassination plots and ongoing judicial maneuvers.
Emily Taylor writes in NACLA on the ‘second Guatemalan spring’ and the challenges ahead.
Guatemalans flocked to public squares all over the country as results came in on August 20, waving the country’s sky-blue flags and setting off fireworks late into the night. Chanting “Sí se pudo” or “Yes, we could” and singing the national anthem, they celebrated the victory of a new president that few expected would rise to the top before the first round of voting on June 25. “We are going towards a new spring,” president-elect Bernardo Arévalo of the Movimiento Semilla party said in a statement the day after the election. “No one can prevent the will of the people of Guatemala.”
Ronalth Ochaeta Aguilar, who has been part of Semilla since 2017 and was elected on June 25 to represent the department of Guatemala in Congress, described a grueling campaign. Although “it was very low cost (financially),” he said, “it was done with lots of heart, effort, and determination” on the part of the entire Semilla team. Arévalo’s unexpected showing in the first round, Ochaeta recalled, brought an explosion of “total joy.” He repeated what has become a slogan on social media: “Nadie nos vió venir”—nobody saw us coming.
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In the lead-up to the runoff, Guatemala’s elites tried to disqualify Arévalo and his party from the election. These efforts have continued in the wake of the second round. These developments come on the heels of a turbulent campaign season in which three leading presidential candidates were excluded from the race. In the days after the first round, and before legal challenges began, some noted that Arévalo would not have been allowed to run if the establishment thought he could actually win. The race continues to be marred by what many have called “extreme judicialization” or political lawfare, in which the courts played an active role in shaping the election.
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The Public Prosecutor’s office, which is controlled by allies of the current administration, made another attempt to suspend Semilla’s status as a political party days after the second round while also escalating attacks on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE).
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Ongoing threats from Guatemala’s ruling elite, both through political lawfare and through physical violence, demonstrate the tenacity of existing power structures and the immense promise of Semilla’s growing coalition.
You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, Guatemalans Celebrate Return of “Democratic Spring” as Potential Violence Threatens Transition.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Presidential Elections, Solidarity in Action, Violence
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