As we all are well aware that hundreds of protesters broke into Guatemala’s Congress and burned part of the building Saturday amid growing demonstrations against President Alejandro Giammattei and the legislature for approving a budget that cut educational and health spending. Protest erupted big and took the shape of violence. More than 40 protesters and bystanders were arrested in Guatemala City over the course of yesterday afternoon, evening and night. There were also several arrests in at least another couple cities. Police were all over the center last night. All of this happening is not just because of controversial budget but it is deep rooted into the history of Guatemala and I am going to take you through the history of Guatemala’s violence and corruption.
So let me put first things first, Guatemala is not a country that’s had an easy time of it, historically speaking. It’s had dictatorships (including one backed by the US that was pretty much done to aid the United Fruit Company, now known as Chiquita, in doing so setting up a literal banana republic), an almost four-decade-long civil war that only ended in 1996, authoritarian governments leading to almost 200,000 people being killed or forcefully ‘disappeared’ for their political views, and a handful of military coups in the past century. This is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Guatemalans are no strangers to protest, nor to having things to protest about. Secondly, protesting in Guatemala — at least historically, and well within living memory, has a serious cost attached to it. It’s not something that’s done lightly.
Guatemala has also been dealing with some real income and wealth inequality, and has one of the highest, if not the highest incidences of poverty in Latin America. It also has a large Indigenous population — if you remember the Maya from history class, it’s worth also remembering that they’re a culture that very much still exists, and who took the brunt of the Guatemalan Genocide and (as is depressingly common), they’re often left behind in terms of access to services. Natural disasters have also hit the country hard in recent months, with Hurricane Eta hitting in early November and Hurricane Iota following almost immediately afterwards — and that’s on top of COVID, which is still going on. Disaster relief in Guatemala has been not great, which has heightened tensions as the poorest people in the country are suffering with little relief in sight.
Corrupt Institutions-
In addition to all this because, you know, this is definitely a situation that needs more things piled on. Guatemala has (as is fairly common in South and Central American politics) long had issues with corruption and mismanagement. You’ve seen it in Brazil, you’ve seen it in Venezuela, and most recently you’ve seen it in Peru, where the President was recently ousted due to accusations of corruption. (This sparked off a series of protests that are still ongoing, and involved the guy who ousted the last guy getting ousted himself. It’s a whole thing.)
It’s pretty much endemic to the region as a whole, but Guatemala still manages to hold its own. Corruption is rampant in its politics; at least the last two leaders, Jimmy Morales and Otto Pérez Molina, left office in a cloud of corruption. It’s bad enough that a UN commission in 2019 quite literally called the Guatemalan government ‘a mafia coalition’ that ‘cannot be solved without a profound restructuring of the state’. Corruption is baked into the system like the filling in an empanada, and pretty much everyone, from every party and at all levels of government, is trying to get their proverbial beak wet. In 2019, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index put Guatemala at 146 out of 198 countries in terms of national corruption. (The US, for comparison, is at 23; the UK is at 12; China is at 80; Russia is at 137.)
In other words, this is a real and significant problem that has been recognised around the world as something to be concerned about.
So Here We Are-
So that brings us to what’s happening now. In January, a new President — Alejandro Giammattei — took over after an election that took place in 2019. Giammattei promised a hardline stance against corruption, but honestly, that hasn’t really happened and no one really expected it to; people have been making promises like that for decades at this point. (After the last President, Jimmy Morales, got rid of the independent UN anti-corruption watchdog, Giammattei pledged to set up a Guatemalan-based watchdog in its place. While this has happened, and while he’s made some overtures to rehiring people fired by Morales in an attempt to obstruct any anti-graft efforts, his new commission is linked with the Office of the President and so its independence is questionable at best.)
While all of this is going on, the Guatemalan Congress has been pootling along, as governments do. This has included passing a very controversial new budget bill on Tuesday November 17th, which increased the benefits of lawmakers (in the form of stipends for food and expenses), but cut funding for the judiciary and human rights programs, and in what would prove to be the tipping point, slashed the fund for malnutrition aid to poor communities by $25 million. (This is a big deal. Guatemala has the fourth highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world; almost 50% of children under five are stunted, and in Indigenous areas, 65% of the population is chronically malnourished. If you’re looking for a ‘let them eat cake’ moment, this is probably as close as you’re likely to get.) This is especially contentious as a large chunk of this budget itself the largest in Guatemala’s history, is likely to be funded by debt. (Additionally, there have been criticisms about the nation’s COVID funding, with much of the proposed infrastructure allowed for in the bill going to projects that are unlikely to help Guatemala’s recovery in the immediate future, and that are closely linked to big business; in short, it certainly looks like emergency funding is being moved into projects designed to profit a small number of people at the expense of a struggling populace.)
Considering that many Guatemalan lawmakers are currently accused of corruption, this was considered by some to be an opportunity for Giammattei to walk the anti-graft walk and veto the bill, using the opportunity to make a statement about what is and isn’t acceptable from government. He declined to do so, which really lit the fuse on outrage across the country, with protests being planned for Saturday, November 21st. In response to this, Giammattei called for reforms to the bill, but there’s the sense that it was too little, too late; the protests quickly morphed from outrage about this bill to outrage about the government and Guatemalan corruption in general, with calls for politicians — as many as 125 out of the nation’s 160-strong legislature — to resign. Even his own Vice President, Guillermo Castillo Reyes, called for Giammattei and himself to hand in their resignations together ‘for the good of the country’.
As yet, this hasn’t happened — but as the protests took place on Saturday (including the burning of a government office and at least 40 arrests), you can probably expect this story to continue for a while. Whether anything significant changes as a result is a different issue, given the quagmire that is Guatemalan politics, but it’s clear that the people have obviously reached some sort of a breaking point, which is never a comfortable position to be in, if you’re President of a country that has a habit of deposing its leaders.
