\n<\/p>\n
On November 6, 2024, Guatemala\u2019s president, Bernardo Ar\u00e9valo, extended his congratulations to US president-elect Donald Trump on his victory and said, \u201cWe will continue to work with the US to strengthen our ties in the causes and under the common principles that have historically united us as nations.\u201d For Ar\u00e9valo, these \u201ccauses\u201d include democracy and the rule of law. An anticorruption advocate and champion of reform, Ar\u00e9valo won a landslide victory in Guatemala\u2019s 2023 general elections, despite vigorous attempts by the nation\u2019s powerful elites\u2014commonly referred to as el pacto de corruptos<\/i> (the pact of the corrupt)\u2014to block his ascent.<\/p>\n
Guatemala is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, ranking 154th out of 180 countries in Transparency International\u2019s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index. For years government officials have exploited their positions to amass personal wealth and power, while using the criminal justice system to stifle those advocating for the rule of law. The 17.6 million people of Guatemala\u2014particularly its indigenous communities, which constitute nearly half the population\u2014bear the brunt of this pervasive corruption. Around 55 percent of Guatemalans live in poverty; in predominantly indigenous regions, poverty rates are as high as 80 percent, and access to public services is half that available in nonindigenous areas. Nearly 50 percent of Guatemala\u2019s children under the age of five suffer from chronic malnutrition, one of the highest rates in the world. Despite the strength of community ties, the lack of relief for the impoverished means that there are few incentives for them to remain in Guatemala.<\/p>\n
That an anticorruption activist like Ar\u00e9valo won the presidency is nothing short of a miracle. In the first round of the elections, held on June 25, 2023, Ar\u00e9valo surprised everyone by finishing second in the presidential race, trailing only the establishment\u2019s choice, former first lady Sandra Torres. This qualified him for the runoff election. Although international observers from the European Union and the Organization of American States (OAS<\/abbr>) found no basis for questioning the outcome, several political parties challenged it before Guatemala\u2019s Constitutional Court on grounds of fraud. The Constitutional Court, which is beholden to el pacto de corruptos, took the unprecedented step of ordering a review of the vote and issued a provisional injunction halting the official announcement of the outcome. It was only after the Supreme Electoral Tribunal\u2014the country\u2019s highest electoral authority\u2014conducted the review and found no change in the results that they were officially announced.<\/p>\n But the public prosecutor\u2019s office\u2014led by Attorney General Mar\u00eda Consuelo Porras, a crucial member of el pacto de corruptos\u2014continued to oppose Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s candidacy. On July 12, 2023, the Special Prosecutor\u2019s Office Against Impunity (Fiscal\u00eda Especial Contra la Impunidad, or FECI<\/abbr>), which reports to Porras, secured a court order barring Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s party, Movimiento Semilla, from participating in the runoff on grounds of alleged irregularities in the signatures collected for its registration as a political party. On July 21 the FECI<\/abbr> raided Semilla\u2019s headquarters as well as that of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, allegedly to obtain supporting evidence. Ultimately the Constitutional Court allowed Semilla to participate in the runoff.<\/p>\n Ar\u00e9valo won the runoff on August 20, 2023, with about 60 percent of the vote, far exceeding Torres\u2019s 39 percent. That put his life in danger. A few days after his victory, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an autonomous OAS<\/abbr> organ mandated to protect human rights in the region, asked Guatemala to provide more protections for him and Vice President\u2013elect Karin Herrera, citing \u201cserious and urgent\u201d risks.<\/p>\n Meanwhile el pacto de corruptos <\/i>continued to pursue its obstructive tactics. On August 28 the national citizens\u2019 registry provisionally suspended Semilla\u2019s legal status as a political party, and two days later Guatemala\u2019s Congress required Semilla\u2019s elected deputies to serve as \u201cindependents\u201d without party affiliation. Two and a half weeks after that, the FECI<\/abbr> once again raided the Supreme Electoral Tribunal facilities, breaking into and photographing the contents of several ballot boxes without the tribunal\u2019s permission. In December 2023 the FECI<\/abbr> declared that the elections should be annulled. It later alleged that tribunal judges had engaged in fraud and breach of duty by using \u201coverpriced\u201d software to transmit preliminary election results, and it sought to strip them of their immunity from prosecution\u2014clearly an attempt to pressure the judges to block Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n The OAS<\/abbr> electoral observers in Guatemala said that the FECI<\/abbr> raid was \u201cwithout due cause, violating the functions, independence and autonomy of the electoral body,\u201d and they condemned the \u201cartificial fabrication of crimes and accusations\u201d by the public prosecutor\u2019s office as \u201cintimidating practices\u201d that sought to \u201csow doubts about the electoral process and the results of the popular will expressed unequivocally at the ballot box in both electoral rounds.\u201d Nonetheless, on December 1, 2023, Congress stripped four electoral judges of immunity from prosecution, prompting them to flee the country. A week later, building on previous allegations of irregularities in Semilla\u2019s registration, the public prosecutor\u2019s office asked a court to strip Ar\u00e9valo of his immunity and once again called for the elections to be annulled. The OAS<\/abbr> called this move an \u201cattempted coup d\u2019\u00e9tat by the Public Prosecutor\u2019s Office of Guatemala.\u201d The UN\u2019s human rights chief, Volker T\u00fcrk, similarly condemned it as a measure \u201caimed at nullifying the outcome of the general elections.\u201d<\/p>\n Guatemala\u2019s indigenous communities played a crucial part in defending democracy as el pacto\u2019s legal maneuvering to undo the elections unfolded. They were at the forefront of nationwide protests, chanting, holding banners, blocking roads, camping outside the public prosecutor\u2019s office, and calling for the vote to be respected and for Porras to resign. Sanctions announced by the United States, the European Union, and Canada against several of el pacto\u2019s members added to the pressure. On December 14 the Constitutional Court issued a decision requiring that Ar\u00e9valo, Herrera, and other officials be allowed to take office on January 14, 2024. At the same time, however, in a nod to el pacto\u2019s influence, the court did not stop the public prosecutor\u2019s office from continuing its investigations into the president-elect.<\/p>\n Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s inauguration was set for 3:00 PM<\/abbr> on January 14, 2024. Though it was delayed by nine hours as his opponents made a last-ditch effort to prevent it, the inauguration symbolized the revival of democracy in Guatemala. The last time the country had witnessed something similar was at the outset of the \u201cTen Years of Spring\u201d (1944\u20131954), after Guatemalans overthrew Jorge Ubico, a military dictator who had shown fascist leanings during World War II. Semilla (\u201cseed\u201d) was named partly in reference to that democratic spring, during which Ar\u00e9valo\u2019s father, Juan Jos\u00e9 Ar\u00e9valo, became Guatemala\u2019s first democratically elected president in 1945.<\/p>\n Juan Jos\u00e9 Ar\u00e9valo was not a Marxist but described himself as a \u201cspiritual socialist.\u201d His government and that of his successor, Jacobo \u00c1rbenz, promoted new social welfare programs that led to higher wages for industrial and agricultural workers. \u00c1rbenz\u2019s government also legalized a communist political party that then elected four members to Congress. They were among the supporters of Decree 900, a controversial land reform measure known as the Agrarian Reform Law. Adopted in 1952, the law provided for the expropriation of unused land from large property owners and its redistribution to peasant families. By far the largest landowner in Guatemala was an American corporation, the United Fruit Company. It grew bananas on a small portion of its holdings and left the rest fallow. Approximately three quarters of its land was expropriated, and as the company had placed a very low value on the unused land to keep its tax bills low, the compensation it received was minimal.<\/p>\n United Fruit, aided by forces in the US intent on resisting the threat of communism wherever it appeared, fomented a coup against the \u00c1rbenz government. Two former partners in the New York law firm that represented the company, John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen Dulles, were by then, respectively, secretary of state and director of the CIA<\/abbr>. In 1953 Allen Dulles had spearheaded the CIA<\/abbr>\u2019s covert operation that overthrew the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, following the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In 1954 the CIA<\/abbr> repeated that feat in Guatemala. These two coups might be considered the most extreme examples of CIA<\/abbr> intervention in the affairs of other countries.<\/p>\n In the three decades after the coup, Guatemala had a series of governments mainly headed by military men and became known for violent abuses of human rights. Disappearances as a mode of repression seem to have originated in Guatemala and spread from there to other countries in Latin America. Left-wing insurgencies began to develop in the Guatemalan highlands during this period.<\/p>\n Repressive violence in the urban areas of Guatemala peaked during the presidency of General Fernando Romeo Lucas Garc\u00eda, which began in 1978. Under his rule there were thousands of disappearances and thousands of killings by right-wing death squads. Guatemala\u2019s armed forces also became focused on counterinsurgency during this time. Reports of rural massacres started to appear, and large numbers of Guatemalan peasants began to flee their villages, some to parts of the country not yet suffering from conflict, others across the border and into the Mexican state of Chiapas.<\/p>\n Efra\u00edn R\u00edos Montt came to power in March 1982 through a coup that installed him as head of a military junta. During his seventeen-month tenure, the armed forces engaged in numerous massacres, most of which occurred in the parts of the Guatemalan highlands where guerrilla groups were active. Many of the victims were villagers thought to be providing the guerrillas with recruits or food or care for their wounded. But all the residents of a village could be killed, not just those suspected of collaboration. The region where the largest number of killings is thought to have taken place is known as the Ixil Triangle, because it includes three small towns, Nebaj, Chajul, and Cotzal, and because much of the Mayan population there speaks the Ixil language. The guerrillas also committed significant abuses against villagers who may have resisted their activities, though they are not known to have carried out large-scale massacres like the armed forces did.<\/p>\n Ignoring the slaughter taking place in the countryside, the Ronald Reagan administration claimed that there had been great improvements in the country\u2019s human rights situation because there was a decline in disappearances and death squad killings in the capital, Guatemala City. Reagan traveled to Central America in December 1982 and met with R\u00edos Montt in Honduras, where he asserted that \u201cPresident R\u00edos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment\u2026. I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.\u201d Most famously, Reagan declared that the reports of human rights abuses were \u201ca bum rap.\u201d<\/p>\n R\u00edos Montt was toppled by another military coup in August 1983. Under his successor, \u00d3scar Mej\u00eda V\u00edctores, rural massacres declined, and urban disappearances and death squad killings increased. Civilian government was restored with the December 1985 elections, in which a Christian Democrat, Vinicio Cerezo, became president. Though his election inspired hope for an end to violence, and though rights abuses were less frequent than they had been under military governments, killings and disappearances continued, and the Cerezo government did not attempt to prosecute those responsible.<\/p>\n In the latter part of Cerezo\u2019s presidency, a peace process between the government and the guerrilla groups in the highlands got underway, slowly and fitfully. It did not make much progress until the inauguration of Alvaro Arz\u00fa as president in early 1996. A businessman who had served as mayor of Guatemala City, Arz\u00fa made the achievement of a peace agreement his priority and succeeded by the end of the year.<\/p>\n One of the most significant elements of the agreement was the formation of the Commission for Historical Clarification. To some it seemed a weak body because it could not name those who had committed abuses and it lacked the power to compel testimony. In response the Catholic Church launched its own project to document human rights abuses, under the direction of Bishop Juan Gerardi, the church figure who had been most active in attempts to protect human rights.<\/p>\n Gerardi produced a 1,400-page report in 1998 entitled Guatemala: Never Again!<\/i> It documented the cases of 52,427 victims of violence\u2014torture, rape, disappearance, and murder. It estimated that in the previous thirty-six years there had been about 150,000 conflict-related deaths and about 50,000 disappearances, and that government forces had been responsible for about 80 percent of the deaths. About 80 percent of the crimes the report documented took place between 1980 and 1983, during the presidencies of Lucas Garc\u00eda, R\u00edos Montt, and Mej\u00eda V\u00edctores. More than half took place in the department of El Quich\u00e9, which includes the Ixil Triangle. Two days after the publication of Gerardi\u2019s report, he was found beaten to death in the garage of his parish house. Three members of the military were convicted of the murder in 2001.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n The truth commission, chaired by a German legal scholar, Christian Tomuschat, who had been chosen by UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, issued its report in 1999. It found that there had been more than 200,000 deaths in the armed conflict and attributed 93 percent of them to the armed forces. It stressed the large number of crimes committed against Mayan women and girls, who were tortured, raped, and murdered. Most strikingly, it found that the killings constituted \u201cacts of genocide against groups of Mayan people\u201d and that these were carried out \u201cwith the knowledge or by the order of the highest authorities of the State.\u201d Though the commission had been barred from naming names, it was abundantly clear that the blame lay with such men as R\u00edos Montt.<\/p>\n Though Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had published many reports on atrocities in Guatemala, neither group had used the word \u201cgenocide.\u201d If these atrocities were a genocide, it is the only case in the western hemisphere since World War II that could be credibly labeled as such.<\/p>\n The report likely contributed to the decision in 2012 of Claudia Paz y Paz, the attorney general appointed by President \u00c1lvaro Colom, a moderate reformer, to indict R\u00edos Montt for crimes against humanity and genocide. The charges against him focused on the killing of 1,771 Ixils and the forced displacement of another 29,000. Though many former heads of state had been prosecuted for human rights abuses and corruption in the courts of their own countries, this was the first time that such a prosecution had alleged genocide.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n R\u00edos Montt was convicted of genocide in 2013, but the verdict was set aside by the Constitutional Court on obscure grounds. Still, the court did not invalidate most of the testimony that had been presented at his trial. A few months after his prosecution resumed in early 2015, an investigator found that he was no longer fit to stand trial, and he died in 2018 at age ninety-one.<\/p>\n