New leader will take power in Guatemala and raise hopes for a fragile democracy
Since Bernardo Arévalo burst onto Guatemala's political scene last year as a crusader against corruption, he has faced a murder plotthat of his party delay and a barrage of legal attacks aimed at preventing him from becoming president.
Now comes the hardest part.
Mr. Arévalo's inauguration on Sunday — six months after his presidential victory delivered a stunning rebuke to Guatemala's conservative political establishment — will mark a sea change in Central America's most populous country. His landslide election reflected widespread support for his proposals to curb corruption and revive a faltering democracy.
But as Mr. Arévalo prepares to govern, he must assert control as he takes on an alliance of conservative prosecutors, members of Congress and other political figures who have gutted Guatemala's government institutions in recent years.
“Arévalo has the most thankless job in Guatemala today because he arrives with exceptionally high expectations,” said constitutional law expert Edgar Ortíz Romero. “He has been given a budget for a Toyota, while people want a Ferrari.”
Mr. Arévalo's opponents in Congress have already tried to handcuff him by passing a budget late last year that would severely limit his ability to spend on health care and education, two of his top priorities.
But finding resources to spend is just one problem Mr. Arévalo faces. Even more urgently, he faces multiple challenges from Guatemala's entrenched establishment aimed at quickly crippling his ability to govern.
The power struggle unfolding in Guatemala, a country of 18 million people, is being closely watched across Central America, a region already tense due to the growing power of drug cartels, the exodus of migrants and the spread of authoritarian tactics in neighboring countries such as El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The transition of power in Guatemala has been anything but orderly, marked by arrests, rumors of arrests and fears that officials opposing Mr. Arévalo would go even further to prevent his inauguration from ever taking place.
Mr. Arévalo's opponent in the presidential race, a former first lady, refused to acknowledge his victory.
Speculation has swirled in Guatemala City, the capital, in recent days that prosecutors would demand the arrest of Mr. Arévalo's running mate, Karin Herrera, potentially derailing the inauguration as both the president-elect and the vice-elect president must be present in Congress. The transfer of power must be legitimate on Sunday.
Guatemala's highest court has handed down a verdict order protecting Ms. Herrera from arrest, granting her and Mr. Arévalo a reprieve.
Still, prosecutors and judges opposed to Mr. Arévalo intensified the judicial assault that began shortly after the national elections, casting doubt on whether a transfer of power would take place at all.
In an effort to cast doubt on Mr. Arévalo's election victory, where he won by more than 20 percentage points, prosecutors have obtained arrest warrants for four magistrates of Guatemala's highest electoral authority over claims of corruption in the procurement of election software.
The four magistrates were all traveling abroad when the arrest warrants were issued.
Also the attorney general's office on Thursday arrested Napoleón Barrientos, a former interior minister, said he refused in October to use force to maintain order against protesters demanding the resignation of the attorney general.
Such moves have become commonplace in Guatemala since conservative political figures shut down a groundbreaking U.N.-backed anti-corruption mission in 2019, transforming the country from a testing ground for rooting out corruption to a place where dozens of prosecutors and judges have tried to crack down on crimes to take. have fled into it banished.
Brian Nichols, the State Department's top official for the Western Hemisphere, condemned what he said called “the latest actions by anti-democratic actors in Guatemala,” including the arrest of Mr. Barrientos for “defending the right to peaceful protest.”
That show of support followed months of maneuvering by the Biden administration in support of Mr. Arévalo after he shocked many in Guatemala, including members of his party, by advancing to a runoff that he subsequently won by a wide margin.
Such a position stands in stark contrast to US support for the Guatemalan military during a brutal civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996 and resulted in a conviction of genocide for a former dictator who attempted to exterminate a Mayan people, and with the way the CIA developed a system of genocide. A 1954 coup that overthrew the popular, democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz.
After that coup, Mr. Arévalo's father, Juan José Arévalo, a former president still admired in Guatemala for allowing freedom of speech and establishing the social security system, spent years in exile in Latin America.
The younger Mr. Arévalo, a soft-spoken sociologist and diplomat, was born in Uruguay at the time and grew up in Venezuela, Mexico and Chile before the family could return to Guatemala. He is the most progressive figure to come this far in Guatemala since the restoration of democracy in the 1980s.
As efforts intensified last month to prevent Arévalo from coming to power, the United States imposed measures sanctions about Miguel Martínez, one of the closest allies of the outgoing president, Alejandro Giammattei, on widespread bribery schemes.
And in a crucial step, also the American authorities in December imposed visa restrictions on nearly 300 Guatemalan citizens, including more than 100 members of Congress, for undermining democracy and the rule of law in their efforts to weaken Mr. Arévalo and prevent him from being inaugurated.
“The gringos have made the impossible possible because Congress is now much more docile,” said Manfredo Marroquín, head of Citizen Action, a Guatemalan anti-corruption policy group.
Mr. Marroquín said that pressure from the United States could even open the way for members of Mr. Arévalo's party to join the leadership of Congress, potentially easing a major source of tension for his government. One of Mr. Arévalo's key allies in Congress, Samuel Pérez, said Friday that he was preparing to serve as president of Congress, even as the president-elect's opponents in the chamber were maneuvering to take control of the to keep a room.
“Pressure from the United States prevented a coup; without it we wouldn't be here,” Mr. Marroquín said. “The Americans are like insurance: there in times of crisis.”
Yet Washington's support for Mr. Arévalo has exposed rifts in Guatemala. In his final weeks as president, Mr Giammattei, who is barred by law from re-election, has become increasingly strident in his statements. criticism of the United States sanctions and the international support for Mr Arévalo.
Once again dealing a blow to Mr. Arévalo, Mr. Giammattei withdrew Guatemala from an anti-narcotics task force established jointly with the United States in 2020. The move could weaken Guatemala's ability to combat drug trafficking groups, which have expanded their power across the country.
At the same time, Mr. Arévalo's efforts to forge alliances have revealed how challenging it will be for him to govern. This month he announced Guatemala's first cabinet in which women hold half of all ministerial positions, but the celebration was short-lived.
The appointment of a member of one of the country's top business associations led to calls that Mr. Arévalo, who has pursued centrist policies, was drifting to the right. Another cabinet candidate withdrew after old comments resurfaced criticizing a prominent indigenous activist.
In a country where indigenous people make up almost half the population, there was also outrage that only one minister in his cabinet was indigenous, despite the crucial role indigenous groups played in protesting efforts to stop Mr. Arévalo from to gain power.
“It is expected that this new government will be different,” said Sandra Xinico, an anthropologist and indigenous activist. “But we have once again seen how indigenous people are excluded from the political process.”