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In 2019 migration from Guatemala has been a key issue in the U.S. and Mexico. So far in 2019 more than 24,000 Guatemalans have been detained at the U.S.'s southern border. President Donald Trump's administration has been trying to address the issue by bullying Mexico into taking action to detain migrants from Guatemala and other countries. At the same time, however, Trump has largely avoided placing blame on the Guatemala's political and business elites for their failures to address longstanding governance problems. Around three-quarters of Guatemala's labor force works in the informal economy. Around 60% of the country's population lives in poverty. Economic problems are compounded by high levels of violence. Guatemala recorded 3,881 murders in 2018. But rather than focus their energy on working to catalyze meaningful economic development or introduce effective new social programs, Guatemala's elites are working to stifle efforts to crack down on political corruption. On June 16th Guatemala will hold elections to select a new president. This year's contest has been marked by allegations of corruption and influence-peddling. To discuss why Guatemala's 2019 presidential election matters, I reached out to Jo-Marie Burt, a Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a D.C.-based think-tank.
Nathaniel Parish Flannery: Guatemala's 2019 election is taking place in the context of a major struggle over corruption and entrenched elites working to preserve their privilege. At this point do you see any candidate who is likely to stand up to Guatemala's elites if elected?
Jo-Marie Burt: This a highly volatile and uncertain election process. A month ago, the top three contenders in the Guatemalan presidential race were women: Zury Rios, the daughter of ex dictator Efrain Rios Montt, who was convicted in 2013 of genocide; Thelma Aldana, the crusading formal Attorney General who prosecuted a sitting president for massive corruption; and Sandra Torres, the former First Lady and third-time presidential candidate. Zury Rios and Thelma Aldana have since been knocked out of the race.
In the case of Rios, it is fairly straightforward: the Guatemalan Constitution prohibits family members of de facto rulers to run for office. In the case of Aldana, who was Guatemala’s best hope for continuing the struggle against corruption, it is less so — she was essentially shut out because sitting elites, who are terrified of her because of her anti-corruption credentials, filed spurious criminal charges against her in an ultimately successful attempt to end her candidacy.
This leaves Sandra Torres. She too was almost knocked out of the race when the prosecutor’s office filed campaign finance violations charges against her in relation to her 2015 presidential bid. She managed to dodge those charges; some say by forging an alliance with the very corrupt elites she once claimed to be fighting against.
Some polls put Torres as the front-runner. But her anti-vote is pretty high —in a recent Gallup poll, nearly 30% say they’d never vote for her— so while she will likely be one of the top two contenders in Sunday’s elections, she may have difficulty, as she did in 2015, prevailing in the second round election scheduled for August.
Aldana was also a front-runner, and many Guatemalans feel frustrated that their preferred candidate was shut out of the electoral process. There are some interesting candidates who represent a real force for change — Thelma Cabrera, a Mayan indigenous woman and social movement leader, or Manfredo Marroquin, who used to lead Transparency International’s Guatemala chapter — but they don’t have very high poll numbers.
Other candidates who, though are polling under 10% are the most likely to make it to the second round, given the gap left by the exclusion of Zury Rios and Thelma Aldana, include Alejandro Giammattei, Roberto Arzú, and Edmond Mulet. They all represent the status quo. Each faces charges of connections to organized crime or other illicit activity. Not surprisingly, each opposes CICIG — the UN anti-corruption body — despite the fact that more than 70% of the Guatemalan people support the CICIG.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that the Guatemalan political system is highly fragile and weakly institutionalized, some say by design. Two-thirds of the population don’t identify with any political party. Many don’t vote. Party politics is a chess game of the elites, and money matters. A 2015 CICIG report found that most of the country’s political parties rely on funds from powerful business elites or criminal groups, leaving them highly vulnerable to influence peddling. Last April, one presidential candidate was arrested in Miami, believing he was cutting a deal with the Sinaloa Cartel only to find his interlocutors were DEA agents.
In this context the issues that matter to most Guatemalans — education, jobs, poverty, rising inequality, the devastating effects of climate change on the country’s agricultural output — are not part of the conversation, aside from vague campaign promises that are quickly forgotten once elections are over. At a recent rally organized by Roberto Arzu, one woman told a Nómada reporter that politicians come and promise lots of things, but never fulfill their promises.
Parish Flannery: Guatemala is in the news for its role as a launching point for migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. Are any candidates proposing policy changes that could meaningfully address the root causes of migration such as poverty, gang violence, and weak job prospects?
Burt: Guatemala ranks 143rd of 180 places on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Yet the current government, led by Jimmy Morales, has done everything in its power to undermine the fight against corruption, including dismantling institutions, including the international anti-corruption body CICIG and the Attorney General’s Office, that have achieved important successes in combating both the scourge of systemic corruption and organized crime. This is not only because some of his family members, and he himself, have come under the CICIG’s spotlight. His main charge, with backing of powerful military and business elites, has been stop the anti-corruption crusade, as well as trials against military officials accused of human rights violations during the 36-year armed conflict.
In fact, the Morales government has shown itself to be quite uninterested in governing. In many parts of the country, the state is virtually absent, and the population has been left to fend for itself. In the face of climate change, which has brought terrible droughts to the Guatemalan countryside, the government’s silence has been defeating. In the face of criminal and gang violence, rather than find ways to protect the population, the government has dismantled the police, which went through a rigorous reform effort several years ago, and replaced it with cronies to do their bidding. Violence against women is endemic in Guatemala, yet the Morales government has done nothing to address the problem. So it is any wonder that Guatemalans are fleeing in record numbers?
Parish Flannery: What is the role of the United States Government in all of this?
Burt: The U.S. has a long and sordid history in Guatemala, including responsibility for the 1954 coup d’état that ushered in decades of brutal military governments that committed acts of genocide against the Mayan population, as noted by a UN truth commission as well as two Guatemalan courts.
But in the past ten years the U.S. has changed its tune —under Clinton the US actually apologized for its role in the coup and in the subsequent carnage. Since then and especially over the past ten years the US has been at the forefront of international support for building the rule of law in Guatemala. The US was a key supporter of CICIG, of judicial and prosecutorial reforms, and of development efforts in rural areas.
Under Trump, the US has abandoned this role, backing down in its support for CICIG when the government announced it would not allow its head, Ivan Velasquez, to return to the country. He’s been running CICIG from abroad since last year! When CICIG shuts its doors in September, corrupt elites and organized crime rings will celebrate. This is a massive, and completely avoidable, failure of US foreign policy. If the U.S. really wanted to slow migration from Guatemala, it would work to strengthen Guatemalan institutions, the rule of law and anti-corruption efforts, while also supporting job-creation and development initiatives. We are part of the problem.
Parish Flannery: At this point what do you expect to see happen in the election?
Burt: It’s anybody’s guess. It’s likely that Sandra Torres will make it to the second round. There will be a very high level of abstentions and null votes. The turnout is likely to be low. Any of the status quo contenders could make it to the second round, and could possibly defeat Torres, given her high anti-vote rating.
It’s also important to watch what happens between the first-round vote, the second-round vote scheduled for August, and the inauguration of a new president and a new Congress on January 11, 2020. There's this very long six-month period in which you have a lame-duck president and a lame-duck Congress. You're likely to see a push to pass a series of regressive laws that they've failed to get passed, including a law seeking to curb the autonomy of NGOs and an amnesty law for war criminals.
