Guatemala’s political establishment was shaken to its core this year when an unwelcome outsider, Bernardo Arévalo, defied the odds to win the 2023 presidential elections. The upset sparked hope for change in a country plagued by graft, but it also set Arévalo and his progressive platform on a collision course with a corrupt pact unafraid of tanking democracy in pursuit of self-preservation.
Stunned by the elections, the pact has mounted increasingly brazen and often baseless legal attacks on President-elect Arévalo and his party, the Seed Movement (Movimiento Semilla). The controversial maneuvers have enraged Guatemalans, sparking mass protests and institutional chaos, while also drawing a flurry of sanctions from the United States. A timely intervention by the country’s highest court could grant Arévalo safe passage to his inauguration on January 14, but will do little to deter further legal attacks.
Amid the turbulence, Guatemala finds itself at a crossroads. If Arévalo takes office, it would see political mafias forfeit control of executive powers that have anchored yearslong efforts to perpetuate corruption. But if his adversaries stop him, it would effectively end democracy in Guatemala, surrendering the state to white-collar criminals.
An Unwelcome Upset
The panorama looked bleak for Guatemala as parties hit the campaign trail in early 2023.
All of the leading candidates came from a deeply conservative political class that has dominated Guatemalan politics since the country transitioned from military rule to democracy in 1985. Many were linked to corruption — specifically, to an alignment between the main branches of government in favor of graft and impunity, orbiting around the administration of departing president Alejandro Giammattei.
Known colloquially as the Pacto de Corruptos, or “corrupt pact,” this alliance came into the elections on a high. In just a few years, it had succeeded in kneecapping practically any state body capable of holding corrupt actors to account. Particular attention was paid to gutting the Attorney General’s Office and the judiciary, which had taken on high-impact corruption cases in the 2010s with the help of a now-defunct United Nations-backed commission.
With impunity rife, the pact turned its gaze to the elections, leveraging its clout in the courts to disqualify a series of unwanted candidates on dubious grounds. This included an eccentric businessman who had suddenly topped the polls, a vocal anti-corruption crusader who previously headed the country’s top human rights office, and a rogue elite who had publicly criticized Giammattei. Their rivals sidelined, the stage was set for an establishment pick to prevail.
“The only thing that was missing in order to consolidate the complete capture of the institutions was to win the election,” Marielos Chang, cofounder of Guatemalan pro-democracy group Red Ciudadana, told InSight Crime.
But one candidate flew under the radar. Little attention was paid to Bernardo Arévalo, the son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president. Running on a progressive, anti-corruption platform with the center-left minority party, Semilla, Arévalo was lagging in the polls coming into the first round of votes on June 25. Posing minimal threat, the pact saw no need to eliminate him from the race.
It proved a seismic miscalculation, as conservative candidates flopped on election night.
“Several candidates of the dominant political bloc were competing,” Chang said. “Because of that internal dispersion, they ended up losing.”
Instead, to the surprise of almost everyone, Arévalo snuck into the August run-off.
The Pact Strikes Back
Arévalo’s rise was not part of the plan. And to make matters worse, he looked set for a comfortable victory in the presidential run-off against a candidate who had lost the previous two elections by a wide margin.
The stakes were high. For Giammattei and his allies, controlling the presidency had brought with it command of billions of dollars via the national budget and key ministries. These funds grease the system undermining Guatemalan institutions, as lucrative state bounty — from government contracts to ministerial appointments — can be traded for kickbacks in congress or distributed to loyal networks of prosecutors and judges. Giammattei’s tenure had been marred by corruption scandals. His closest ally, Miguel Martínez, was recently sanctioned by the Treasury Department for dishing out state contracts to favored bidders.
Arévalo and his party were not part of this world. His ascendancy threatened to deal a financial gut punch to a system that had aggressively tried to keep the presidency within its fold.
Arévalo’s anti-corruption platform was also a problem. After years spent fostering a climate of impunity, the pact now faced the prospect of an anti-graft drive that would leave a host of crooked politicians, prosecutors, and judicial officials exposed to arrest. Among those most exposed was Attorney General Consuelo Porras and her number two, Rafael Currichiche, who had both faced US sanctions for obstructing justice and shielding political allies.
The pact wasted little time. Days after Arévalo’s first-round upset, in early July, Guatemala’s highest legal authority – the Constitutional Court (Corte de Constitucionalidad – CC) – suspended the election results after a group of defeated conservative parties complained of irregularities, despite not presenting evidence. It led to a partial recount that did not alter the results.
Soon after, the Attorney General’s Office tried to revoke Semilla’s status as a party and later raided its offices. Prosecutors launched an investigation into the alleged falsification of signatures during Semilla’s registration, again without evidence. The raids also hit the electoral tribunal that had certified the first-round results.
The legal attacks, seen by many as a brazen plot to prevent the August run-off from taking place, sparked international outcry and institutional chaos that reached the country’s Constitutional Court. In a twist, the court, which had previously suspended the first-round results on dubious grounds, opted to shield Semilla from investigation until the end of the electoral cycle.
It proved a crucial intervention, as Arévalo won the August 20 presidential run-off by a landslide. Guatemalans flocked to the streets in rare scenes of jubilation to celebrate his victory. But despite his resounding win, the dust did not settle.
The Point of No Return?
Arévalo’s triumph sparked a new wave of legal challenges aimed at overturning the elections. With the stakes higher than ever, the Attorney General’s Office led the charge.
In early September, prosecutors opened dozens of ballot boxes during more raids on the electoral tribunal, prompting Arévalo to suspend the presidential transition and call for the resignation of Attorney General Porras.
“They’ve strayed from their constitutional mandate to investigate and prosecute, and are clearly moving towards an attempted coup,” Arévalo said in a September 12 press conference in response to the raids.
In October, discontent with the Attorney General’s Office boiled over. Thousands of protestors packed the main squares of Guatemala City, while others blocked roads around the country. Protesters chanted and held banners calling for an end to impunity and Porras’ resignation. But she refused to step down, even as protesters spent weeks camped outside her office.
“Porras and her judicial operators view this as a winner take all,” said Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “If Arévalo comes in, they think they are probably going to end up in jail.”
True to form, the Attorney General’s Office weathered the protests and doubled down. Prosecutors launched another challenge to Arévalo in late November, announcing plans to strip the president-elect of his political immunity over his alleged involvement in student protests. Again, prosecutors provided few details on the accusations, but pointed to Arévalo’s posts on social media as possible evidence of wrongdoing.
Then came another request to lift Arévalo’s immunity. At a press conference on December 8, prosecutors unveiled their investigation into Semilla’s registration, accusing Arévalo of fraud and money laundering while presenting incoherent evidence to back their case.
They followed the presentation by calling to annul the elections as a whole, despite having no authority to do so, a move immediately rejected by the electoral tribunal and foreign actors.
The Organization of American States called prosecutors’ actions an “attempted coup d’etat,” while US officials announced visa restrictions targeting over 100 Guatemalan legislators for “undermining democracy and the rule of law.” The European Union also condemned “attempts to nullify the elections…based on spurious accusations of fraud.”
But despite international outcry, the flagrant attacks have left Arévalo, and the elections as a whole, in a precarious state just weeks before his inauguration.
SEE ALSO: Democracy on the Line as Guatemalan Prosecutors Take Aim at President-Elect
What Now for Guatemala?
At first, Arévalo’s victory – a glitch in the systematic corruption that dominates Guatemala politics – looked set to steer the country toward greener pastures. He defeated corrupt political networks with the ability to alter election results, ban candidates, and extract millions in state resources, a power that even the region’s most powerful criminal groups would envy.
Yet the 2023 election has also proven to be the catalyst of institutional meltdown, exposing the deep criminality at the heart of the country’s political system. This will be difficult to overcome even if Arévalo takes office on January 14.
“With the number of people in the state connected to crime…it is a very high stakes situation,” Freeman said.
But despite the relentless legal attacks, democracy is holding its ground, at least for now. On December 14, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling ordering congress to ensure that all elected officials take office in January. Though the resolution should guarantee that Arévalo takes power, the court emphasized that it will not stop the Attorney General’s Office from continuing its investigations, exposing Arévalo and his party to continuing legal challenges upon taking office.
To make matters worse, the president-elect has already been hamstrung by the departing government. Semilla has lost its legal status as a party following the end of the electoral cycle. As a result, its minority bloc in congress may be unable to influence congressional commissions that administer state funds and are hotbeds for corruption.
The turbulent elections have also exposed the limitations of international support. In a sign of its waning influence in Central America, the United States’ warnings against electoral interference have largely fallen on deaf ears, despite sanctions targeting hundreds of state actors allegedly conspiring to undermine the democratic process.
This has left Arévalo and his allies up against corrupt political blocs which have, this year, proven themselves capable of surviving at all costs, even at the expense of a democratic political system.