Paul Solana
The result of the second electoral round to elect the president in Guatemala confirmed the surprise: Bernardo Arévalo, a sociologist and career diplomat, added 58% of the votes as a candidate for the Seed Movement, a political force born from the progressive sectors after the protests of the 2015. Arévalo defeated Sandra Torres on August 20, political leader of the National Unity of Hope (UNE), ex-wife of the late businessman Álvaro Colom, who governed Guatemala between 2008 and 2012; in 2019, Torres had spent four months in prison for embezzlement of public funds. The contrast between the political forces and the candidates explains the orientation of the massive vote in this election: a progressive sociologist, with calm manners and an honest career, at the head of a new political force, defeated a political leader of one of the parties in power , marred by corruption scandals.
After knowing the results, the mobilizations in the Plaza de la Constitución and in the Obelisk of Guatemala City had the freshness, color and spontaneity of the self-convocations; Although victory was very likely, the president-elect clarified that neither he nor his party called on the people to celebrate. However, the people celebrated. With blue and white flags as the only banner, and with horns that provided the necessary noise in any good party, thousands of people mobilized to the nearest point to express their joy. The same thing happened in Chalatenango, Totonicapán or Huehuetenango, the main cities of the country. “Here these types of celebrations are usually held for soccer celebrations, not for a presidential contest,” Arévalo acknowledged. It is true: since the elections won by his father, President Juan José Arévalo, who incarnated the “revolution of 1944”, and those of his successor, Jacobo Árbenz, elected in 1950, who gave continuity to that period of nationalist transformations in tune with With what was happening in other countries in the region, in the last 70 years the Guatemalan people had no reason to celebrate again.
In the last 70 years the Guatemalan people have had no reason to celebrate
In the Plaza de la Constitución, among the handwritten banners, a small, simple one stood out, with a message loaded with history: “Spring has arrived”. Another similar phrase was painted on the esplanade: “Another spring will bloom in Guatemala.” The expression refers to the democratic spring that took place in this country in those years that were followed by decades of counterrevolution, war and genocide.
In the name of the Father
In 1944, the popular protests against the dictatorship of General Jorge Ubico put an end to a decade and a half of the enthronement of the dictator in power. Professor Juan José Arévalo assumed the presidency a year later. It was the first time in the history of Guatemala that there was a popular government. After Arévalo’s mandate, in 1950 Jacobo Árbenz was elected, another nationalist who followed in the footsteps of his predecessor. For almost ten years the town experienced an unprecedented “spring in the country of eternal tyranny,” as defined by the Guatemalan writer Luis Cardoza y Aragón (paraphrasing Alexander Von Humboldt, who had said of Cuernavaca, Mexico, that it was the “city of Eternal Spring”). But on June 27, 1954, the good weather ran out. Árbenz was forced to resign in the name of anti-communism agitated by the United States and the interests of the United Fruit Company, the banana company that did its big business in Central America and incidentally served as a cover for the North American Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, that was in charge of promoting coups d’état in the countries that they wanted to stop being the “backyard” of the United States in Latin America.
From then on, a stage of counterrevolutionary violence began that unleashed the hunt for popular leaders and once again annulled democratic liberties. The conquests that had been achieved during that spring were dismantled. In the 1960s, guerrilla groups emerged that resisted the new dictatorships and sought to forge their own paths of liberation. With ebbs and flows, the revolutionary struggle and the dirty war against the people continued well into the 1980s. That decade was the bloodiest of the conflict: massive human rights violations and massacres at the hands of the national Army trained and directed by US interference intensified. It was not until 1996 that the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Union (UNRG), which brought together all the insurgent forces in the country, finalized Peace Agreements with the State, which shortly after failed to fulfill all the commitments that should give political life a democratic matrix. And social. Since then the country has been left in the hands of the same old oligarchy, complemented by a new corrupt political bureaucracy.
In these elections, those who control the country’s strings lost their father’s son.
The left, entangled in the labyrinths of an institutional framework designed for the owners of power, did not find a way to get out of the trap. Until, in these elections, those who control the strings of the country slipped out of their hands the father’s son. Bernardo Arévalo, born in Uruguayan exile of the former nationalist president who first ignited the illusion of a popular government in this country, unexpectedly slipped into the ballot and they could no longer stop him.
That hope of so many young people
“This is a victory not only for Arévalo and the Seed Movement but also for the youth, the people, the women of Guatemala who have fought for many years to change this country,” analyzes Andrea Plician, a 24-year-old girl who participates actively in the Kaji Tulam House of Memory, a space that seeks to bring the country’s history closer to young people. “Until now, in Guatemala there was an increase in the despair of the youth, seeing leaders criminalized, students criminalized, people who have had to leave the country, but a little over three months ago that began to take another turn,” he says. On Sunday Andrea volunteered as a prosecutor at her polling place; She did it with such concentration and energy that she regretted that night that she didn’t have the strength to go to the festivities. “Guatemala has a structural problem, which has existed for more than 500 years – he continues -; It is a society rooted in classism, racism, misogyny, LGBTIQ-phobia, it is a violent country that has historically experienced genocide. Now the Seed Movement began to reflect the demands of the youth, not only Arévalo but also the vice-presidential candidate, Karin Herrera, who represents women, and the same Seed team that began to represent many young women… That’s why the youth We put what little trust we had in the system and we began to think about how we could build a different country. That hope found an opening in the Seed Movement. Now, that hope is going to have to be worked on, not only from the state government but from the society that also needs to make transformations in its social imaginaries”, she concludes.
Strengthen popular power
Raúl Nájera also supervised the elections to take care of the votes of the Seed Movement throughout the day. He is one of the referents of HIJOS Guatemala. “In this context of confrontation that the de facto power proposes, it is necessary to strengthen support for the new government. There are ideas expressed by Arévalo and by Semilla leaders with whom we do not agree, that have to do with economic issues or the role of the Army, but that will be seen along the way, “he reflects. The acronym of his organization means Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence, and under it are grouped young people who took on the challenge of fighting against the militarization in which the country was plunged after the signing -and the betrayal by the State– of the 1996 Peace Accords. “Uncertain days are coming, legal actions are expected against Semilla and against those who have stood up to power, so we must strengthen support for this transformation process that is taking place. start. But Semilla should also open up to the ideas of the indigenous, peasant, student and union movements”, he proposes. He concludes his reasoning with a clarification that, although he does not obscure the support he manifests for the new government, makes the differences clear: “Social democracy is not what we want, we come from another history, from other revolutionary processes. Our support has to do with understanding that popular power has to be strengthened, that we have to return to the neighborhoods, we have to get into the peasant and indigenous communities”
It’s going to have to lie on the town
The peasant leader Carlos Barrientos, a long-time militant of his country’s revolutionary struggles, agrees with Raúl: “Semilla is a fundamentally urban party, with a limited presence in peasant and indigenous towns. They feel more comfortable defining themselves as social democrats, rather than the left. It is a progressivism that pulls to the center more than to the left. What they are considering is the fight against corruption, but also that the social function of the State be recovered, that is, that there be social policies that benefit the majority. They are not proposing a transformation of the system ”, he analyzes. Currently, Carlos is executive secretary of the Peasant Unity Committee (CUC) and Guatemalan delegate for Via Campesina International and the articulation of social movements of ALBA. From this internationalist and continental experience, he evaluates the possible alignments with other governments in the region: “I think it remains to be seen if Arévalo can be placed in the line of progressivism or the Latin American left. What is known is that the Seed Movement seeks to identify with AMLO [Andrés Manuel López Obrador, actual presidente de México], or be located closer to President Gabriel Boric in Chile. There is a significant distance from other expressions that are much more progressive, more to the left, more radical, such as Cuba or Venezuela. However, it remains to be seen, because there are many lawsuits that have historically been deferred. The Seed Movement is going to have to lean towards the town, that is where it will be seen”. Finally, beyond the rigorous analysis, he acknowledges: “It is a joy that a victory has been achieved, that is the first thing that must be valued. There is a lot of hope that there can be changes and there is the expectation that those changes can be made.
a gigantic task
Conrado Martínez maintained iron optimism throughout the campaign. Ten days before the second round, he bet that Arévalo would reach 85% of the vote. He lost that bet, but his happiness is such that he says he will gladly pay it back. “We won the opportunity to put an end to corruption and move towards the national development that the people of Guatemala deserve and need, but the next four years will be a gigantic task,” he acknowledges, perhaps to dampen his excessive enthusiasm. Like so many of the people in their sixties or seventies who mobilized on Sunday night after the results were confirmed, Conrado had his participation in the revolutionary organizations of the UNRG. He suffered exiles and, when he could, he returned to his country to integrate into social and political life. He works on low-income housing projects, and together with his colleagues they will propose that the new government create a Ministry of Housing, something that Guatemala never had. “It is urgent to carry out works to maintain support in these four years. This can be done in infrastructure, in education, in health, where there is a great need », he proposes. “Guatemala has so many shortcomings in daily life, that with three or four fundamental areas in which progress can be made, that will bring support to the government.”
* * *
During the electoral campaign, the now president-elect Bernardo Arévalo read some verses by the revolutionary Guatemalan poet Luis de Lión, kidnapped by the Army of his country in 1984 and still missing:
why does death insist
in vainly killing life,
if the humblest seed
breaks the strongest stone?
They say that those verses are inspired by the name of the political force that channeled society’s desire for change. With the victory, the people of Guatemala earned the right to hope for a new democratic spring. It remains to be seen if, as the poet sang, this time the humble Seed is capable of breaking the strongest stones.
Fuente CTXT.es
