The president denies an election -- in Guatemala

Democracies end when leaders refuse to honor an election they lose.

Readers will notice the parallels. 

There is a lost election, a president who won't leave, a Congress with members loyal to the leader, an effort to delay an inauguration, and a Guatemalan version of Taylor Swift, a young woman with a huge social media following, who motivates young voters.

The problems at our southern border don't "just happen." People in Guatemala are fleeing something.

Jack Mullen spent his youth in Medford, Oregon. He joined the Peace Corps after graduating from the University of Oregon. He cited the summer months working alongside me thinning and picking pears as "agricultural experience," and the Peace Corps assigned him to Guatemala where he grew crop demonstration plots. He wrote me this introduction to his Guest Post.

"My Guatemalan years, 1970-72, were rather uneventful by recent Guatemalan standards. Then-President General Carlos Arana Osorio's benign neglect towards rural Guatemala meant that I, and other Peace Corps volunteers, worked in a peaceful environment, largely unaware of national politics.

The government's benign neglect ended in the 1980s, long after I left, when militias, along with the Guatemalan army, and with the tacit approval of the Reagan administration, destroyed over 600 villages and killed over 200,000 inhabitants, mostly women and children. Many fled to Mexico, and years later to the U.S.

For those concerned with long-term solutions to our border policies, I feel the Biden administration's efforts to uphold Guatemala's recent election of Bernardo Arévalo will play a role in keeping Guatemalans from fleeing their country. Most of the people I worked with in Guatemala in years past feel the same."

Jack Mullen in New York City

 Guest Post by Jack Mullen 

One of the Western Hemisphere’s most corrupt countries, Guatemala, with help from the Biden Administration, is now, of all places, a beacon for democracy.

The history of Guatemala’s governance ever since the 1954 U.S.-led military coup has been nothing more than a series of shady politicians, backed by a corrupt military, all in the service of the country’s oligarchy.

Last year, in the words of one diplomat, Cinderella arrived.

As I noted in the December 18 Guest Post, an unusual new political force, voters under the age of 30, along with disadvantaged Mayan indigenous groups, worked together to give an anti-corruption congressman, 65-year old Bernardo Arévalo, a landslide Guatemalan presidential election victory with 61% of the vote.

The five months between the August elections and Arévalo’s planned January inauguration provided ample time for Guatemalan election-deniers to swing into action.

Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras’ investigators raided the national electoral offices, seized boxes of vote tallies, and declared the election a fraud. Members of Arévalo's newly-created Semilla (Seed) Party, including Marcela Blanco, the local TikTok dancer who inspired so many young Guatemalans to vote, were arrested.

Photo from Blanco's Instagram account

An October nationwide strike by students and indigenous Mayan groups actually scared a number, but not enough, of Guatemalan elites into accepting the August election results. On November 30 the Guatemalan Congress stripped the immunity from four of the top electoral judges, causing them to flee the country in fear for their lives.

Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley, along with Senators Tim Kaine and Peter Welch, flew to Guatemala. On December 8, the three senators pressed President Alejandro Giammattei’s cabinet to respect the democratic transfer of power. The Cabinet agreed. However, short hours later, a Guatemalan prosecutor and the Guatemalan Congress declared the August election “null and void.”

The U.S. State and Treasury Departments flew into action. The State Department cancelled visas for two-thirds of the members of the Guatemalan Congress and the U.S. Treasury applied the Magnitsky Act and froze U.S. assets of various Guatemalan oligarchs.

This was unlike anything the U.S. government had done in the past. The Giammattei administration had developed close ties with the President Trump. The Trump administration remained silent when Giammattei closed down an American-funded anti-corruption commission.

A huge, early crowd packed the National Plaza on January 14 to witness the noontime swearing in of Bernardo Arévalo as Guatemala’s president. Not so surprising, Guatemala’s Congress held a secret special session with the intent of postponing the inauguration.

Arévalo’s noon swearing-in was postponed. Arévalo could not be found. The disappointed crowd, many of whom had come from the far reaches of the country, grew anxious. As the sun set with the Guatemalan army surrounding the crowd in the plaza, still no sign of Arévalo. I don’t know what went on during the secret meeting of the Guatemalan Congress, but shortly after midnight, Arévalo was sworn-in as president of Guatemala. I’d like to think that inside the walls of the corrupt Congress, a Guatemalan Mike Pence upheld the legitimate results of the election.

Guatemala is treated as a small speck on the world stage. The Guatemalan narrative deserved much fuller coverage by the U.S. press. An engaged electorate rose up, and against all odds, and with a big boost from Gen Z voters, stopped authoritarianism in its tracks.

Meanwhile, inside the U.S., a general ennui encases young U.S. voters. The overriding issue with them is the age of the presidential candidates, so why bother to get involved and vote?

Democracies die either by a coup d’etat or by an uncaring electorate. The U.S. must not fall asleep, otherwise historians will write: Democracy 2023-24, when Guatemala woke up and America slept.

 

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