Miguel Angel Sandoval
There are not many doubts about the complicated situation we are experiencing. Sometimes there is the impression that someone wants to destroy the democratic process in our country, as well as the recent electoral event. This is because there are no reasons to carry out actions that only generate more tension. Especially when it is known that Guatemalan society is in a state of tension. Perhaps not all of it, perhaps not in all of its organized expressions, but that there are reasons to take great care with each action that is performed, is part of the abc of our analysis, or at least, it is what it should be.
By way of example, towards the end of the week there was a statement by the country’s indigenous authorities which, in summary, said that if the MP continued in its effort to end democracy or put it at risk, there would be an organized response from of the indigenous peoples. With this, at least two realities are stated: the first is that the political issue is going beyond the strictly electoral and is now an issue of the country, of democracy. In other words, what the indigenous authorities are proposing goes far beyond Semilla and its electoral victory.
The second, that the position of the indigenous authorities, where the State, due to its historical absence, does not have control mechanisms or concrete incidence, places the State itself in conditions of enormous difficulty for any type of action. The reading that is done is or can be quite simple. With the political declaration of the indigenous authorities, the MP goes on the defensive since it has no way of preventing the indigenous leaders from acting as they best understand. In this case, the prosecution could not impose on the indigenous authorities or ancestral authorities, a vision of justice that is not shared by the indigenous peoples, nor could it cite an authority that it does not understand and that it does not know in the ways that define its actions. .
A “pulse” is then established between two visions of the national conglomerate, around what is known as justice, and in it, the MP is losing. In particular because they have time against them. Not only because they are part of a government that is on its way out, but also because for indigenous leaders, time is not measured by the calendar of political processes, of an electoral nature, such as the one we are currently in. Although the issue is the health of democracy, it is no less true that from the perspective of indigenous peoples, democracy has become a guarantee for their rights to be known, heard, resolved. While, for the dominant vision in Guatemalan society, democracy, in its current version, is only the pretext to maintain a state of affairs that does not favor the ‘indigenous peoples’.
And these visions become an unknown subject for the officials who are leaving, because beyond their political affinities, they find before them an actor who values time with other parameters. Meanwhile, for the indigenous authorities, it is a question of raising a national agenda, of change, of democratic possibilities. Hence the contradiction mentioned. And there is no way to resolve this, unless the MP understands that he cannot prosecute social, political, or in the case at hand, electoral processes. But, also, if the judicialization is promoted for reasons that are rejected by broad sectors of society, which, as we see, decided to speak up.
