Daniel Cerqueira writes in the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) blog on the manipulation of the judiciary by elements of the Pacto de Corruptos and its effect on Indigenous communities and their rights to land and challenges for the future.
The attacks by the Public Prosecutor’s Office and a rotten wing of Guatemala’s Judiciary against the 2023 electoral process leave no doubt that the country’s justice system has been captured by corruption networks. After these illegal attempts to prevent the inauguration of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo, Guatemalan democracy remains hostage to the “pact of the corrupt” (pacto de corruptos) among several congressmen, judges, prosecutors, military, businessmen and criminal organizations. Over the last few years, this scheme between public and private actors has been waging two wars in Guatemala; a low-intense war against democracy and a total war against Indigenous peoples. This article comments on some aspects of this warfare, characterized by mass evictions and the arbitrary use of punitive power, which is anchored in a legal, political and institutional framework that seeks to guarantee private interests over indigenous territories.
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Guatemala is one of the few countries where criminal proceedings, rather than civil or agrarian, are widely used to evict Indigenous communities. The judicial authorities in charge of these proceedings are not entitled to review the validity of the property title grounding trespassing criminal charges. At the same time, Guatemala is perhaps the only country in Latin America where an Indigenous community in possession of a given territory must resort to an ordinary civil lawsuit to reclaim its property, a procedure that is much more costly, slower and more cumbersome than a constitutional remedy.
Accusations of crimes of trespassing and aggravated trespassing have been used to carry out violent court-ordered evictions against Indigenous peoples, without prior notification or guarantees of resettlement, and without the opportunity for communities to exercise their right of defense and demonstrate ownership of the territories they have historically occupied. During evictions, there have been reports of the burning and destruction of homes, belongings, traditional clothing, food sources, crops, and the loss and theft of animals, thus eliminating the possibility of returning to the land. Frequently, evictions are the result of the enforcement of search warrants against countless members of a given community facing charges of trespassing private property.
You can read the full piece, with links, here, Guatemala: judicial kleptocracy at war with Indigenous peoples.
Categories: Corruption, Criminalisation, Culture, Environment, Evictions, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Legal, Military, Mining, Resource Extraction, Violence
Guatemala Solidarity Network 
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