Despite grotesque judicial political opposition, Bernardo Arévalo, son of the “revolutionary” ex-president Juan José Arévalo, assumed the presidency of Guatemala 70 years after the decapitation of the “National Revolution” that his father had undertaken. Paradoxically, Arévalo’s government is promoted and sponsored by the US government.
The main challenges of the government of change
Arévalo, perhaps unconsciously, calls his government the second democratic spring. The first was the National Revolution (1944-1954) that his father undertook and which was violently aborted by the US.
This second democratic spring has among its urgent challenges:
To rebuild the institutionality of the crime-ridden state. Two centuries into the Republic, Guatemala has no serious, legal state institutions. Crime operates from within the internal structures of the state. This is evident in the criminal findings of the now defunct International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which have not been investigated or punished. It is evident in the latest and current shameful political-legal confrontation between oligarchic factions that obey and disobey the US government.
Curing this terminal “state cancer” implies an almost “lethal” surgery of the state, and even against US interests.
Humanise and organise the Guatemalan “stampede” to the US. Although no one knows for sure how many children and young people, instead of going to school, walk to the US, it is estimated that an average of 1,000 Guatemalans leave for the US every day in search of a better life. This is no longer migration. It is a human stampede caused by the nefarious impacts of violent neoliberalism, unemployment and existential anomie.
Moreover, the country, being a forced passage to Mexico, is inevitably obliged to “allow” waves of migrants from other countries coming from the South to the North.
Apart from building a “sense of existence and belonging”, Arevalo should focus on creating sources of work. And the deregulated free market does not create decent job opportunities anywhere.
Curb the chronic child malnutrition of 65 per cent of children. In departments with a demographic majority indigenous population, 8 or 9 out of 10 children under 5 years of age are malnourished. A country with malnourished children is a country with a damaged “hard disk” for the present and for the future.
This is increased by the unstoppable growth of the “dry corridor” as a result of the impact of climate change, more land is no longer producing food no matter how hard farmers work. Famine is a latent reality in a growing Guatemala that eats only twice a day.
Reorganising the internal security system. With hunger, unemployment, and no state (authority), violence is the most common escape valve. If the “free possession and carrying of arms” factor (constitutionally established) is added to this equation, we have a country of “armed armies of the hungry” on the horizon. A consequence and breeding ground for the growth of the unstoppable “drug trafficking industry”. And if to this is added US political-military intervention, as is happening, Guatemala’s fate is painful.
Health and education for survival. The neoliberal system imposed with the signing of the Peace Accords (1996) destroyed all public services, and turned them into lucrative businesses for narco-investments, not in a few cases. The truth is that the population’s needs for health, education, housing and food are growing, and the private sector is unable, and unwilling, to respond. In addition, the impacts of climate change, plus “natural” disasters, add up and demand education and health for survival.
Change as a “painkiller” that does not cure what hurts
The popular hope sown in the second spring (in the middle of summer) led by Bernardo Arévalo was undeniable. Despite the fact that Arévalo publicly stated that his government would not be anti-neoliberal, but anti-corruption. And with the make-up of his Cabinet of Ministers, and with the dubious record of his political party Semilla, even anti-corruption has been distorted, since the idea of “good corruption” is now dangerously installed in the country’s vision, as opposed to the oligarchic bad corruption of those disobedient to Washington.
His cabinet of ministers is made up of members of the business sector (agglutinated in the rights-predator CACIF) and USAID consultants. In addition, the vast majority of his ministers were officials of previous governments. In the election campaign, his party promised a “government without CACIF” for Guatemala.
Another sign that the promised change is a euphemism is the unexpected formation of the Board of Directors of the Congress of the Republic, headed by Deputy Samuel Pérez, of the ruling party. This board was the product of a “shady deal” with politicians from traditional right-wing parties, sponsored (under threat) by the US Embassy, according to a public denunciation by the deputies themselves.
This act reinforces the feeling that “corruption is good” as long as it is promoted and sponsored by the US government. Incidentally, the US, under threat, brazenly prevented the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the judicial system from continuing with the proceedings against Semilla, for forgery of signatures, and investigations into allegations of electoral fraud.
The US government’s “political occupation” of Guatemala was most evident in the shameful act of the last transfer of power.
While international delegations (including the King of Spain) left Guatemala in embarrassment at the political shenanigans, US planes landed in Guatemala on 14 January with US diplomats, publicly threatening the “corrupt and disobedient to the US” who were delaying the transfer of power. To the extent of leaving the country in “political limbo” without a president or Congress for several hours on 14 January.
Indigenous people were manipulated by USAID to “legitimise” the minimum effort.
The democratic spring that operates as a painkiller in Guatemala has already had its first victim. And these are the “ancestral indigenous authorities” who were and are financed by USAID and manipulated by some indigenous leaders who believe that “strengthening the bosses’ democracy or the racist state” is the way to achieve development and inclusion for the people.
For more than 3 continuous months, the US Embassy kept dozens of impoverished Mayans and peasants sleeping in the streets of Guatemala City in the collective action called “peoples’ resistance”, under the slogan “in defence of democracy”.
In exchange, the embassy offered, according to published information, to construct buildings for them or announced more projects and scholarships. There are 16 development programmes undertaken by USAID in Guatemala. It is with this financial “investment” that USAID manages to establish its “North American progressivism” in this Central American country.
It is almost impossible for peasants or indigenous people to abandon their crops to “protest for 3 months” far from their fields. There is nobody, no peasant family that can stand it.
What is certain is that this protest was intended to overshadow, to silence, the demand and the indigenous actors who are promoting the proposal for plurinationality, via the process of a Popular and Plurinational Constituent Assembly in Guatemala.
The award-winning and applauded ancestral authorities (lauded as heroes of democracy by the bosses, the Embassy, and their caporals) never raised the banner of the defence of indigenous territories, indigenous self-government, or prior consent, much less the need for a plurinational state, in the almost 100 days of Mayan protests.
Momentary discomfort for some Mayan caporals in the service of US colonialism arose when Arévalo presented his Cabinet. He did not include any “Mayan heroes” who defended him from the streets. USAID had to appease them.
A similar situation is occurring in the legislature. Guatemala has a population with 44% self-identified indigenous people, and there are professional Mayans, but there are no indigenous people in the current Congress of the Creole Republic (except Sonia Gutiérrez, for the coalition of the old left).
Perhaps to hide this racist evidence of Semilla, in the “negotiation” for the Board of Directors, the ruling party included the only indigenous Congresswoman as an ornamental filler, as the last member.
No matter how one looks at it, and no matter how hard it tries to legitimise this “minimal effort” to keep Guatemala’s bosses’ state afloat, change for the better is what is least in sight in these parts.
The progressive middle class, or well-behaved with the US, will regain the traditional “labour hope” in the state under a government of the second democratic spring. But the country’s large social majorities, especially the indigenous, will continue to widen the columns of the migratory stampede towards the US with an uncertain destination.
Ollantay Itzamná is a defender of Mother Earth and Human Rights from Abya Yala.
@JubenalQ
