In Guatemala, the historic victory of Bernardo Arévalo has unleashed the wrath of the country’s conservative elite. The coming months will prove crucial as Arévalo and progressive forces struggle to guarantee a peaceful democratic transition.
Maya K’iche’ Guatemalan historian and columnist, María Aguilar, writes in Jacobin about the elections and the challenges facing democracy in the face of government and corrupt elites’ attempts to fully overthrow the judicial system in favour of maintaining the status quo. Winning the election was one thing, becoming President will mean overcoming many and various challenges from the current regime.
On June 25, Guatemalans went to the polls to cast their votes for presidential, congressional, and mayoral candidates in a ritual that occurs every four years but that, in recent years, had become almost meaningless given the levels of corruption, poverty, and inequality that envelop the country. Since Guatemala’s return to democracy with the signing of the Peace Accords in 1997, electoral cycles have tended to be inundated with candidates facing serious accusations. Among those seeking the presidential office have been confessed murderers, generals accused of genocide and other human rights violations, and countless candidates with proven accusations of corruption.
[…]
On the night of June 25, while the news broadcast the preliminary results of which two candidates would move forward to the second electoral round, the country seemed to stand still. To everyone’s surprise, fighting for second place was the candidate for the Semilla Party, Bernardo Arévalo de León, who did not even appear in most of the polls and was relegated to last place within a group of twenty-three candidates competing for the presidency.
Guatemala is not a country used to good news. Nobody could believe what they saw. Nobody dared celebrate. It was as if time had stopped completely while supporters and opponents waited for the votes to return the popular-polling candidates to first place. As the hours passed, despite what the numbers on the screen announced, none of the television channels ventured declaring Arévalo the second-place winner. “It’s too early to talk about trends,” political analysts claimed, even after over 90 percent of the votes were processed.
The shock was not unfounded. According to the calculations of the economic, political, and military elites, conservative sectors that have historically dominated the country, Arévalo’s triumph should not have happened. These groups, in control of the constitutional court, the Supreme Court, the attorney general’s office, Congress, and the executive, made concerted efforts to eliminate any candidates perceived to be in competition with their designated candidates for the race.
[…]
Ever since the initial triumph, the established authorities — comprised of government bodies like judges, courts, and the attorney general’s office — have been doing everything in their power, short of staging a military coup, to impede Arévalo and his party from assuming office on January 14, 2024.
In recent days, due to the attorney general’s actions, the country has experienced what could be classified as a soft coup d’état — no longer led by the military but by judges and prosecutors, who have twisted and violated electoral laws and the Constitution to advance a criminalization case against the party, cancel it, and imprison its leaders and candidates. The harassment has been so severe that the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, has been present for all transition proceedings.
[…]
In recent months, there has been a surge of optimism in Guatemala, a country accustomed to voting every four years for the menos peor, or “least worst,” candidate. According to polls, over 30 percent of those who voted for Arévalo did so with the hope that the situation in the country would improve, while another 30 percent did so with the hope that “things would remain the same,” which can also be interpreted in terms of the fear of a further erosion of democracy.
However, the last few weeks have also witnessed unprecedented turmoil and a breakdown of the legal order. As arrests of dissenting voices continue, the next few months will be crucial in determining the future of a nation grappling with corruption and striving toward democracy.
You can read the full piece, here, Guatemala’s Progressive President-Elect Will Face an Uphill Battle.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Justice, Presidential Elections, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
Post comments here