In El Faro English, Roman Gressier talks with the Huxi Hurak (president) of the Xinka Parliament, Aleisar Arana, in the midst of the national strike/blockade being carried out by, primarily, indigenous authorities across the country in opposition to the attempts by the corrupt elites (pacto de corruptos) to overturn the results of the presidential election.

In front of an austere gray façade of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) with a dozen spacious square windows in Guatemala City, hundreds of demonstrators have gathered since Monday, October 2, amid a national strike convened by Indigenous authorities. The demonstrators are demanding —a month and a half after the August elections— respect for the results and the resignation of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, the visible head of efforts to boycott the victory of social-democrat Bernardo Arévalo and prevent the transfer of power set for January.

The main highways of the country and even Puerto Quetzal have seen blockades for four days. Academics and university students, unionists, campesino collectives, human rights organizations, and an increasing number of analysts and journalists are joining in the demands in a gradual crescendo, amid repeat episodes of police repression. In the capital, the MP has drawn its blinds.

Aleisar Arana is the Huxi Hurak (president) of the Xinka Parliament, which represents the second-largest Indigenous population in Guatemala after its Mayan peoples. Together with more forceful ancestral authorities like the 48 Cantons of Totonicapán or the Indigenous mayors’ offices of Sololá around Lake Atitlán, the Xinka are openly challenging the country’s traditional political elites. “Some ask me, ‘Why are you blocking (the streets)?’ But those doing the blocking are the Constitutional Court, the justice system. Consuelo Porras is,” he says in this interview with El Faro. “As soon as they take away their blockade, we’ll quickly pack up and go home.”

Arana accuses President Alejandro Giammattei and ultraconservatives in the private sector of orchestrating behind closed doors the attacks on the elections and Arévalo through the justice system, but he expresses optimism. Despite the fact that the Xinka Parliament managed in August to secure “a very short meeting because they are always in a hurry,” he believes Arévalo will keep his promise to fight corruption and commitments to halt mining concessions and to acknowledge ancestral land rights — that is, Arana caveats at the protest in front of the MP, “if he is sworn in.”

You can read the full piece, with links and photos, here, “Dialogue with Indigenous peoples must be part of the democratic springtime in Guatemala”.

Categories: Corruption, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Legal, Presidential Elections

Tags: Aleisar Arana, Bernardo Arévalo, El Faro, El Faro English, Parlamento del Pueblo Xinka, Roman Gressier, Xinka Parliament