Miguel Angel Sandoval
One of the greatest acquisitions, of what happens after 25J, from the social point of view, is the recovery of one of the many historical threads, which had been lost in an unprecedented way, due to the weight of the methodical campaigns, to times stronger, sometimes less, to disappear, as it were, from the legacy of the October revolution, which had finally been transformed over the years into a holiday and a way to boost internal tourism, with the famous bridges for the Public employees. For this reason the process of 1944-54 had in fact been buried.
Of course, at another level, there was a continuous effort to disappear the traces of this historical process, perhaps the most important modern social process, it can be affirmed, which is the most relevant of the 20th century. It is the ten years of spring in the country of eternal tyranny, as Luis Cardoza y Aragón said, referring to that decade of the governments of Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Arbenz, the latter overthrown by the 1954 invasion.
By way of example, in school history textbooks, this process disappeared imperceptibly, little by little, but the fact is that it stopped studying, remembering. Today we know that the threads of social, collective memory subsist despite everything and that an event, in this case an election, can contribute to triggering it.
With the invasion coup of 1954, the best efforts to make a better country, free democratic, modern were truncated. And with that defeat in 1954, the foundations were laid for what later in the 1960s became the internal war in our country that concluded after countless sacrifices with the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. Everything This is found in the threads of memory that are now, at least in part, resurfacing in large sectors of Guatemalan society, which now reveals itself as possessing a tenacious memory.
It is evident that other factors contribute to this resurgence of memory, and one of them is that the Semilla presidential candidate, Bernardo Arévalo, is the son of President Juan José Arévalo Bermejo (1945-1951) who, until 25J, slept in oblivion and out of the immediate memory of the people, especially of the new generations. And it is then that there is a confluence between the complaint against corruption, citizen weariness in the face of the authoritarian drift of the country, with the rescue of the memory of Juan José Arévalo, a good president.
With the 25J an emblematic cry was reborn, which seemed forgotten, buried, and is the cry that today is heard throughout the country: long live Arévalo! And of course one is tempted to reflect on what is called historical memory, the force that founding facts have in a country, which remain in the social imaginary, sometimes as something daily or sometimes in drawers of the social unconscious that return. when one least imagines it and with it, one can think of the omnipresent threads of the memory of a people or a society.
In recent years, various events have resulted in reflections on what historical memory is. Some linked to the history of our country, others linked to processes that occurred in other countries. The first has to do with an event that had remained in the deep memory of the people of Totonicapán. On the occasion of the so-called bicentennial of the country’s independence, there was a moment that brought to the memory of a few, the history of the indigenous uprising of Totonicapán, in 1820 and that before the celebration of the country’s independence, had commemorated the bicentennial.
In it, the idea of a conceptual artist set the tone. Seeing in a museum, the chair that Atanasio occupied during the days that he was leader of the Totonicapán revolt, he proposed to take the chair from the museum to the town of origin, in a caravan from the capital to Toto. The COVID pandemic did the rest. There was no event. However, it would seem that when reading the creole independence act, there is a part that says that it was done for others to do it, there is a clear allusion to the uprising of Totonicapán, that the idea of an artist, around the chair, which the indigenous hero had occupied, allowed us to appraise the value of symbols in memory.
Another of the events takes place in Spain and is about those who disappeared in the civil war (1936-1939) and the Franco regime (Francisco Franco died in 1975). In the film “The Silence of the Others”, by Almodóvar, the elderly, perhaps children or grandchildren of those murdered in the years 36-39, revive in documentary film, the memory of the disappeared relatives, after at least half a century of their the subject seemed completely forgotten. But memory returns and fundamental data of the life of a country is recovered. In this case, it is the memory of the civil war and the missing dead in the so-called Spanish civil war.
I was only giving a couple of examples regarding the memory recovered in other facts and events, but which, in the present case, is the recovery of the thickest features of the process of the October revolution, in this case unleashed or triggered by the electoral triumph of a young party, Semilla, with a candidate Bernardo, son of President Arévalo.
In this regard there are some essential reflections. One of them has to do with the legacy of the October revolution. Although it is true that today the cry of Viva Arévalo travels the country, perhaps it is opportune to emphasize, for the use of the new generations, that, during the government of Juan José Arévalo, several institutions were introduced into national life that to date They are the main legacies of that democratic revolution. One of them is the Labor Code, which in the years since then and particularly after the counterrevolutionary invasion of 1954 has suffered systematic attacks to make it disappear.
They are the systematic attacks with cyclical peaks, which have tried, among other attempts, to repeal it, to reform it until it was unrecognizable, and in a general way, to not respect it. And it must be said, because it is about the neoliberal thought that slipped in everywhere, that fooled in every way, that made every effort to circumvent the labor code. That is why one of the greatest expectations among many is unrestricted respect for the labor code, which integrates the most important labor rights, among which decent wages, union rights, organization, etc.
The other great achievement is social security. The IGSS, founded in that revolution, and in both cases the labor code and social security, as the most relevant legacies of President Juan José Arévalo. In the case of the IGSS, the attempts to privatize it, defund it, and use it as political loot are widely known. But with a fixed idea: to separate it from the October revolution. In the same line of thought as with the working code. In the least serious of cases, the labor code is recalled, but it is decaffeinated, that is, all the relationship with the October revolution is removed. With the democratic spring of the 10 years of revolutionary governments, which began with Arévalo and ended with the 1954 coup-invasion against President Jacobo Árbenz, orchestrated, directed, financed by the US government, in the barbaric years of the Cold War.
Many more things are found in the legacy of the democratic spring, education with normal schools and those of the federation type, rediscovered sovereignty, agrarian reform, political freedoms, the flourishing of culture (creation of the Ballet, symphony, etc. .), many more things, including the right to vote for women in the Arevalo election. These are the facts of the governments that for ten years made us dream, as a country and of course, our parents, our grandparents.
But since 25J, we have been witnessing the attempt to retrace the steps taken and resume them, project them, to build a better country. In those efforts to the renewed cry of Viva Arévalo!, surely we find ourselves.
