Despite months of underhand, and blatantly corrupt, manoeuvres against the newly elected President, Bernardo Arévalo, and Vice-President, Karin Herrera, the inauguration took place in the capital yesterday. Even last minute attempts to hold things up were carried out by the ‘pacto de corruptos’, but to no avail. Despite this, there were criticisms of the make-up of the new cabinet.
Roman Gressier and José Luis Sanz write in El Faro English on the positive and negative responses to the new cabinet which was unveiled on the 8th January.
For weeks Guatemalan President-Elect Bernardo Arévalo kept his very first executive decision, his cabinet ministers, a carefully guarded secret, amid widespread suspicion that AG Consuelo Porras would seek to criminalize names on any preliminary list.
In a public event on Monday, six days before their Sunday inauguration, he finally introduced the 14 ministers, seven women and seven men. But his underscoring of gender parity, a first in Guatemala, quickly opened a flank of criticism of the same cabinet.
Only one cabinet member is Indigenous —Labor Minister Miriam Roquel— in a country where over 40 percent identify as Mayan, and despite widespread recognition that Indigenous-led demonstrations were vital in stopping elite-sponsored efforts to annul the election result and even imprison Arévalo.
The 48 Cantons of Totonicapán —one of the most influential Indigenous authorities, who met with Arévalo during the transition and organized mass protests in defense of the election— wrote in a statement on Tuesday: “We call on the government, during its first 100 days in office, to consider our voices and demands. (…) We Original peoples do not lose hope of one day being part of a government that is inclusive, not in discourse alone.”
Some critics were more strident yet. “This colonial state is not ours, and hoping for a Ladino man to save us as peoples is cold, hard colonialism,” wrote Kaqchikel Mayan anthropologist Sandra Xinico on X. But others rebuffed the very focus on ethnicity, citing that top prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche —the AG’s right hand— is also reportedly Kaqchikel.
The president-elect anticipated criticism: “We know that we have not reached the pluriculturalism that we would have wanted,” he said on Monday, promising to “continue to build better representation throughout our term on all levels of the administration.”
You can read the full piece, with links, here, Arévalo’s Choice of Cabinet Clashes with His Base’s Expectations.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Presidential Elections
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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