Consuelo Porras’s second term as Attorney General of Guatemala will end on May 17, 2026. This presents an opportunity for the next head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office (Ministerio Público — MP) to review institutional policies and practices that instrumentalize criminal law to evict indigenous communities from their ancestral lands for the benefit of companies and landowners who claim ownership of the lands.
Daniel Cerqueira writes in the Due Process of Law Foundation (DPLF) website, a short analysis on the findings of a recent report. This report, titled, ‘Desalojo y criminalización de los pueblos indígenas en Guatemala: el rol del Ministerio Público’ (Eviction and criminalisation of the Indigenous communities in Guatemala: The role of the Public Prosecutor’s Office) was produced by DPLF and allied civil society organisations.
Recent reports by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and United Nations bodies conclude that Guatemala’s justice system has been captured by political and economic networks seeking to protect their interests and ensure impunity. The Public Prosecutor’s Office’s actions during the current attorney general’s tenure are perhaps the most notable expression of the judicial kleptocracy that undermines the rule of law and democratic stability in the country. In fact, attempts to obstruct the electoral process and prevent the president-elect from taking office in 2024 have led the European Union, the United States, Canada, and dozens of other countries to impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on Consuelo Porras and other high-ranking officials of the MP and the judiciary.
The consequences of the capture of the justice system have been profound: anti-corruption prosecutors forced into exile, independent judges removed from office or criminalized, and units investigating corruption networks—such as the Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity—dismantled. This institutional deterioration has had a direct impact on the protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights, leading to mass evictions and arbitrary criminal charges of trespassing and aggravated trespassing against communities and their leaders, all anchored in a legal, political, and institutional framework that hinders the protection of Indigenous peoples’ collective property rights over their territories.
You can read the full piece, with links, including to the full report, in Spanish, here, Trespassing the Rule of Law: the role of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the evictions of Indigenous communities in Guatemala.
Categories: Accompaniment, Corruption, Criminalisation, Criminalization, Culture, Environment, Evictions, Genocide, Guatemala, Human Rights, Impunity, Indigenous peoples, Justice, Land, Racism, Report, Resource Extraction, Solidarity in Action, Violence
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