By Ollantay Itzamná
Despite the grotesque judicial political opposition, Bernardo Arévalo, son of the “revolutionary” former president Juan José Arévalo, assumed the presidency of Guatemala 70 years after the decapitation of that “National Revolution” that his father undertook. The paradox is that the Arévalo government is promoted and sponsored by the North American government.
Main challenges of the government of change
Arévalo, perhaps unconsciously, nominates his government as the second democratic spring. The first would be the National Revolution (1944-1954) that his father undertook and which was violently aborted by the United States.
This second democratic spring has among its urgent challenges:
Compose the institutionality of the State monopolized by crime. Two centuries after the Republic, Guatemala does not have a legal and serious state institution. Crime operates from the internal structures of the State. This is evident in the criminal findings that were not investigated or punished by the defunct International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). It is evident in the latest and current embarrassing political-legal confrontation between oligarchic factions that obey and disobey the North American government.
Curing this terminal “state cancer” implies almost “lethal” surgery by the State, and even against North American interests.
Humanize and organize the Guatemalan “stampede” towards the US. Although no one knows for sure how many children and young people, instead of going to school, walk to the US, according to calculations it is known that an average of a thousand Guatemalans leave daily in search of Life towards the US. US border control speaks of close to 300 thousand Guatemalan migrants in 2023. This is no longer migration. It is a human stampede caused by the disastrous impacts of violent neoliberalism, unemployment and existential anomie.
Furthermore, the country, as it is a forced passage to Mexico, is inevitably forced to “allow” waves of migrants from other countries coming from the South to the North.
Apart from building an “existential sense and belonging”, Arévalo must focus on creating sources of work. And the deregulated free market does not create decent job opportunities anywhere.
Stop the chronic child malnutrition of 65% of children. In departments with a demographic majority indigenous, 8 or 9 out of every 10 children under 5 years of age are malnourished. A country with malnourished children is a country with a damaged “hard drive” for the present and the future.
This increases with the unstoppable growth of the “dry corridor” as a result of the impact of climate change, more areas of soil no longer produce food due to the greater efforts of farmers. Famine is a latent reality in a growing Guatemala that eats only twice a day.
Reorganize the internal security system. With hunger, unemployed, and without a State (authority), violence is the most everyday escape valve. If the factor of “free possession and bearing of arms” (constitutionally established) is incorporated into this equation, we have a country of “armies of armed hungry people” on the horizon. A consequence and breeding ground for the growth of the unstoppable “drug trafficking industry.” And if the North American political-military intervention is added to this, as is the case, the fate of Guatemala 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, in many cases. The truth is that the needs of health, education, housing, and food are increasing among the population, and the private sector cannot, nor does it want to, respond. Furthermore, the impacts of climate change, plus “natural” disasters, add up and require education and health for survival.
A change as a “painkiller” to 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 said that his government would not be anti-neoliberal, but rather anti-corruption. And, with the formation of his Cabinet of ministers, and with the dubious record of his political party Semilla, even the anti-corruption thing is distorted, since, now, the idea of “good corruption” is dangerously established in the country’s imagination. , in the face of the bad oligarchic corruption of those disobedient to Washington.
His Cabinet of ministers is made up of members of the business sector (grouped in CACIF, a predator of rights) and USAID consultants. Furthermore, the vast majority of his ministers were officials from previous governments. Be careful, in the electoral 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 Representative Samuel Pérez, of the ruling party. This directive was the product of a “dark negotiation” with politicians from traditional right-wing parties, sponsored (under threat) by the North American Embassy, according to a public complaint by the same deputies.
This act reinforces the feeling of: “corruption is good” as long as it is promoted and sponsored by the North American government. By the way, the US, shamelessly, under threats, prevented the Public Ministry and the judicial system from continuing with the processes against Semilla, for forging signatures, and investigations into the allegations of electoral fraud.
The “political occupation” of Guatemala, by the North American government, was much more noticeable in the embarrassing act of the final transfer of command.
While international delegations left Guatemala embarrassed by the political joke (including the King of Spain), North American planes landed, on January 14, in Guatemala with American diplomats, publicly threatening the “corrupt disobedient to the United States” who were delaying the transmission of command. To the point of leaving the country in “political limbo” without a president or Congress, for several hours on January 14.
Indigenous people manipulated by USAID to “legitimize” the minimum effort
The democratic spring that operates as an analgesic in Guatemala already has its first victim. And those are “the ancestral indigenous authorities” that were and are financed by USAID and manipulated by some indigenous leaders who believe that “strengthening the bosses’ democracy or the racist State” is what will achieve development and inclusion for the people.
The North American Embassy, for more than 3 continuous months, maintained dozens of impoverished Mayans and peasants sleeping in the streets of Guatemala City in the collective action called “resistance of the people,” under the slogan: “in defense of democracy.” .
In exchange, the Embassy offered, according to published information, to build buildings for them or announced more projects and scholarships. There are 16 development programs that USAID undertakes in Guatemala. With this financial “investment” he manages to establish his “North American progressivism” in this Central American country.
In fact, it is almost impossible for peasants or indigenous people to abandon their crops to “protest for 3 months” away from their fields. There is no body, no peasant family that can endure.
The truth is that this protest had the purpose of overshadowing, silencing, the demand and the indigenous actors who promote the proposal of plurinationality, via the Popular and Plurinational Constituent Assembly process, in Guatemala.
The awarded and applauded ancestral authorities (praised as heroes of democracy, by the bosses, the Embassy and their foremen) never raised the flag of the defense of indigenous territories, indigenous self-government, prior consent, much less the need of a plurinational State, in the almost 100 days of Mayan protests.
The momentary discomfort for some Mayan foremen in the service of North American colonialism arose when Arévalo presented his Cabinet. He did not include any “Mayan heroes” who defended him from the streets. There USAID had to appease them.
A similar situation occurs in the Legislature. Be careful, 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 (with the exception of Sonia Gutiérrez, for the old left coalition).
Perhaps to conceal this racist evidence from Semilla, in the “negotiation” for the Board of Directors, the ruling party included as ornamental filler, as the last member, the only indigenous Congresswoman.
No matter how you look at it, and no matter how much effort is made to legitimize this political “minimum effort” to keep the patron state of Guatemala afloat, change for the better is what is least visible in these parts.
The progressive or well-behaved middle class in the United States will recover the traditional “job hope” in the State under a government of the second democratic spring. But, the great social majorities of the country, especially indigenous people, will in fact continue to widen the columns of the migratory stampede towards the United States with an uncertain destination.
Ollantay Itzamna. Defender of the Rights of Mother Earth and Human Rights from Abya Yala.
