[The recent arrests of opposition candidates, students, and
professors have a haunting resonance in Latin America. Nearly three
dozen journalists, activists, judges, prosecutors, investigators, and
former government officials have been forced to flee.]
[[link removed]]

POLITICAL CRISIS IN GUATEMALA INTENSIFIES  
[[link removed]]


 

Jeff Abbott
November 23, 2023
The Progressive
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The recent arrests of opposition candidates, students, and
professors have a haunting resonance in Latin America. Nearly three
dozen journalists, activists, judges, prosecutors, investigators, and
former government officials have been forced to flee. _

2013 Mural at la Escuela de Historia, USAC, reading: "We harvest the
memory to live the resistance.", (Fratticidio, CC BY 4.0)

 

The far right in Guatemala is increasing its efforts to prevent
progressive President-elect Bernardo Arévalo from taking office. On
November 17, Guatemala’s unpopular Attorney General’s
office officially requested
[[link removed]] to
strip Arévalo, Vice President Karin Herrera, and congressional
representatives of their immunity, opening them up for investigation
for supporting
[[link removed]] student
protests in 2022.

“What we are seeing here is yet another weak and illegitimate case
[against Arévalo]. It is absurd,” Marielos Chang, an independent
political analyst, tells _The Progressive_. “The case that the MP
[Public Prosecutor’s Office] has presented is trying to generate
fear in the people who are protesting.”

[6D8A9421.jpeg]

Guatemala’s president-elect Bernardo Arévalo of the Movimiento
Semilla Party addresses the press on July 12, 2023 (Jeff Abbott)

Attacks against the democratic process have steadily increased since
Arévalo’s surprise success in the first round of voting in the
presidential election on June 25. First those opposed to Arévalo
tried to convince voters
[[link removed]] he
was a “communist” and a “threat to the Christian religion,”
but he still won
[[link removed]] the
presidency in a landslide in a runoff on August 20. Then prosecutors
aligned with those seeking to maintain corruption and impunity sought
to stoke
[[link removed]] fears
of a conspiracy of fraud, but the population came out to the streets
[[link removed]] to
condemn the attempted _coup d’état_.

The charges against the students stem from protests that erupted in
2022 against the fraudulent election of Walter Mazariegos as the
rector of Guatemala’s national (and only) public university, the
University of San Carlos (USAC).

The elections came down between Jordan Rodas, the country’s former
Human Rights Ombudsman and a widely popular candidate to head the
university against Mazariegos. But according to students and teachers,
there was massive fraud
[[link removed]] involved in
the election
[[link removed]],
which saw Mazariegos gain the rectorship. 

Driven by the legitimate accusations of fraud,
[[link removed]] students
and professors protested
[[link removed]].
The main campus of the university was occupied for nearly a year. 

Throughout the case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has sought to
criminalize
[[link removed]] Arévalo
and other members of his party for their support of students and the
protests, even though other ruling party candidates
[[link removed]] participated
in forums with students at the time. The case focuses heavily on
tweets from Arévalo, Herrera, and other politicians, causing concern
over a crackdown
[[link removed]] on
freedom of speech. 

Guatemala awoke on November 16 to a series of massive raids by the
country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office. While embedded corruption
and the influence of drug traffickers in the Central American country
would be among the alleged reasons for the raids, the reality is that
the efforts were targeting student activists who have protested
against the problematic election of the rector of San Carlos
University. 

In total, six people of the twenty-six with arrest warrants were
detained for their alleged part in occupying the university. Among
those were three professors and Marcela Blanco
[[link removed]],
a twenty-three-year-old student from the private Rafael Landivar
University who was also a congressional candidate for Arévalo’s
Movimiento Semilla Party. 

The six who were detained are facing charges of aggravated usurpation
on a continuous basis, destruction of cultural property on a
continuous basis, sedition, and illicit association.

The recent arrests of opposition candidates, students, and professors
have a haunting resonance in Latin America. These arrests echo similar
tactics used by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in
Nicaragua, which has sought to crush student movements along with the
Catholic Church as part of their effort to establish their
authoritarian regime in the Central American country. 

“The Dictators playbook is similar,” Chang says. 

“What we are seeing in Nicaragua is comparable to what is happening
in Guatemala,” she explains. “We have seen how students were
imprisoned for crimes of sedition, for disturbing public order, or for
precisely destroying cultural property for challenging Daniel
Ortega.” 

Guatemala’s continuing worsening of the political crisis is poised
to intensify the causes of emigration from the country, especially to
the United States, an expert on immigration from Guatemala,
tells _The Progressive_. He requested anonymity due to the recent
attacks on critical voices from the country’s Public Prosecutor’s
Office.

“There are already dozens of people who have been leaving,” he
says, including those who work in the courts and Public Prosecutor’s
Office opposed to the attorney general, journalists, and human rights
defenders. “At the end of the day, the message is, ‘look, no one
here is invulnerable,’ and the Public Prosecutor’s Office will
create a case for them here and [in order to] ruin them.”

In the past four years, nearly three dozen journalists, activists,
judges, prosecutors, investigators, and former government
officials are known
[[link removed]] to
have been forced to flee the country due to spurious charges brought
against them by the Public Prosecutor’s Office led by Attorney
General Porras. The latest wave of criminal charges
[[link removed]] has
once again pushed
[[link removed]] many
to flee the country.

[Por_la_defensa_de_mi_autonomía_USAC_2022.jpeg]

Mural reading "For the defense of my autonomy"at the Faculty of Law
building, USAC, September 28, 2022 (Fede Ratas, CC0).

Camilo García, a student leader, was expelled from USAC for
participating in the 2022 protests against election fraud. The MP
sought to arrest him on November 16, but he left Guatemala prior to
the charges. “We are being criminalized for defending [a public
education] institution and its autonomy,” García stated in a post
on his social media condemning
[[link removed]] the
raids and the arrests. “It is clear to us that this is not a time to
remain silent.”

But for rural communities abandoned
[[link removed]] by
the Guatemalan state, the situation is far worse. The political
instability, lack of opportunities and access to justice is further
eating away at hopes for a better future. 

“It is not just the material economic need or lack of political [and
social] freedoms, but hopelessness is something that triggers people's
desire to leave,” the anonymous Guatemalan expert explained,
detailing his experience working in rural Indigenous communities.
“And emigration is increasing. We cannot say in what numbers, but it
is increasing. It can be felt with the lack of workers [in parts of
the country like Huehuetenango].” 

He adds, “Guatemala, as it appears, is a hopeless country.”

_Jeff Abbott is an independent journalist currently based out of
Guatemala. “The Other Americans” is a column created by Abbott
for The Progressive on human migration in North and Central
America._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech.  Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we
publish on national politics, culture, and events including U.S.
foreign policy; we also focus on issues of particular importance to
the heartland. Two flagship projects of The
Progressive include Public School Shakedown
[[link removed]], which covers efforts
to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. _

* Guatemala
[[link removed]]
* democracy
[[link removed]]
* Human Rights
[[link removed]]
* migration
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]