By Ollantay Itzamná
When one reviews the unfinished histories of Guatemala, especially the century that runs from 1923 to 2023 (validity of the Monroe Doctrine), the common denominator is North American interventionism. Not only by aborting the National Revolution in 1954 to avoid “communism”, or by pushing for the signing of the Peace Accords (1996) to implement the neoliberal system, but also by configuring the “common sense” of the community to install the “belief”. ” by: Bernardo Arévalo/Semilla is the only hopeful option in a country that could not be in two hundred years.
Three “infallible” truths that constitute the ideological certainty of the left in relation to the United States
What is good for the US is good for Guatemala. Because of this truth shared in the collective subconscious (a product of the condition of coloniality), all the humiliating policies of the North American government towards Guatemala are applauded with gratitude.
North American companies appropriated the fertile soils, the electricity business. The domestic market is a captive North American market. Guatemala has become a garbage dump for American second-use automobiles… But, no one questions the North American imperial system, nor does neoliberalism. Here, it is celebrated with gratitude that the Yankee appoints or deposes rulers.
North American financial cooperation is as benign for the country as the “Franciscan works” were during colonial Christianity. Of all the NGOs that currently support Bernardo Arévalo, and what was the Semilla party, all or almost all of them publicly flaunted the USAID logo as their financier. Indigenous organizations such as 48 Cantons constantly appear in USAID financial reports.
In the revolutionary imagination of these parts, accessing a scholarship, financing or work with USAID is a vehicle for social advancement or revolutionary status. Perhaps this explains why the suspension of the North American visa is assumed in Guatemala as the worst sociopolitical punishment.
In this way, the diminished financial cooperation of USAID is assumed almost like the blessed Franciscan charity that was distributed to the poor during the Spanish Colony… Whoever dares to question USAID is censured as “anathema sit.”
The actors or subjects legitimized by Washington are as good/holy as those anointed by the Christian Emperor. Political, social, cultural, economic or religious actor that has North American support is assumed as a good and legitimate actor for Guatemala.
If Washington supports an actor, the crimes that he is accused of in Guatemala are unnecessary. The Semilla party that brought Bernardo Arévalo to the presidency was denounced and sentenced for the falsification of 5 thousand signatures, undeclared money, among others. But, all of this enters with a positive sign into the collective imagination of the left who believe that “Salvador Chapin comes from Washington speaking fluent English.”
A similar situation occurs with the current indigenous actors who “fight” to save bosses’ democracy or to re-oxygenate the racist Creole nation state. If these have the approval of the OAS, the American Embassy or the USAID, they are assumed and applauded as “heroes” by the racist left.
This pathological cultural configuration is hidden even in anti-imperialist movements such as the Movement for the Liberation of the People (MLP). “We do not have to be so elementary and attack the United States” “We should not publish the crimes or the judicial sentence against Semilla” “We should not publicize the public relationship of the leaders of the 48 Cantons with the USAID”, are some ejaculations that are They listen without much echo.
The truth is that in today’s Guatemala, being anti-imperialists or anti-USAID is no longer an ideological issue, but rather a matter of dignity and existential political clarity. Social democracy was never able to resolve the postponed historical debts of societies, much less for subaltern peoples. Thus, North American progressivism in Guatemala will not be able to provide work for the entire pro-North American left, much less the indigenous people who, now, sleep in the streets guarding the lethal bosses’ democracy.
Ollantay Itzamna. Defender of the Rights of Mother Earth and Human Rights from Abya Yala.
