‘Guatemala: Hope for the Future’ explores country’s struggle for democracy
Speakers discuss corruption and other challenges as well as strategies for moving forward
LOUISVILLE — Presbyterians are being encouraged to show their support for the people of Guatemala, where political division and corruption continue to threaten democracy despite the election of a progressive president in 2023.
Ongoing challenges facing Guatemala were the focus of a Jan. 30 webinar hosted by the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness and the Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA (GHRC).
Activists urged Presbyterians to take steps, such as writing letters to the editor, to demonstrate solidarity with the Guatemalan people and the reform efforts of President Bernardo Arévalo.
It’s very important for the international community to show its support, said Pat Davis, GHRC’s board president. “I think we have to be part of the hope” for Guatemala, which is “one of the world's poorest countries, with a poverty rate of 77%, an extreme shortage of land, and soaring rates of malnutrition.”
Davis joined two other panelists for the webinar titled “Guatemala: Hope for the Future.” The fellow panelists were Miguel Ángel Gálvez Aguilar, a respected Guatemalan scholar and judge, and Luis Fernando Mack, a Guatemalan sociologist, political analyst and political science professor at Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.
Other participants included Veronica Serrano, director of outreach and development for GHRC, and Doug Michael, co-chair of the Guatemala Partnership Committee of the Presbytery of Western North Carolina.
Michael reminded webinar viewers of Presbyterians’ long history of solidarity work and partnership in the country, with a presence that dates to at least 1882, and that the 226th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approved a resolution last year in support of the Guatemalan people. In keeping with that, “we will pray for the people of Guatemala, work to become better informed of the country's history and the ongoing situation there, support those who are working for democracy and their efforts to eliminate corruption, and advocate to the U.S. government and to international bodies on behalf of peace and justice in Guatemala,” he said.
Learn more about recent events in Guatemala here.
Webinar host Catherine Gordon of OPW provided an overview of Guatemala’s current and past struggles, which have included “many years of military rule, a 1954 coup orchestrated by the CIA, decades of internal armed conflict, the frustrated hopes of the 1996 peace accords and a series of corrupt governments.”
Eager for change, the Guatemalan people elected Arévalo as president in August 2023, but delay tactics by the old-guard Congress and others made it difficult for him to even be inaugurated.
“The issue of Bernardo Arévalo taking possession as the president, representing the Semilla party, encountered many problems to be able to get to January 2024 to assume power,” Aguilar said through a translator. “There was a whole systematic campaign of criminalization against the Semilla party. There were denunciations in the Supreme Court of Justice. They tried to cancel their legitimacy as a party. They tried to annul elections and annul the political party, Semilla.”
Indigenous people mobilized to protect not only the Semilla movement but the democratic process with actions that included a strike and a march, but a year since the inauguration of the president, little progress has been made, Aguilar said.
Mack, speaking through a translator, said many people in Guatemala had hoped that there would be more dramatic change taking place by now. “President Arévalo is trying to do a lot of things, but he has a really tight fence around him, a political fence around him, that's limiting what he can do,” and persecution from his opponents in the courts and attorney general’s office persist.
“There are even questions about whether he'll be able to complete his full term, or if these forces in Guatemala will end up putting him into jail before his term is over,” Mack said.
But Mack is hopeful that the people will prevail over the ultra-right by harnessing the same energy that helped bring Arévalo to office. “The hope is that the people of Guatemala have learned something from the process this past year and previous years, so that they can prepare their arsenal, their capabilities, their unity, to confront the challenges of the future, which is to dismantle the corrupt, persecuting power that is currently operating.”
Promotional materials for the webinar note that the Guatemalan people continue to struggle with poverty, food insecurity and violence that are fueling irregular migration and displacement. And human rights defenders are often killed, Davis said. A non-governmental organization known as UDEFEGUA reported that, between March 2023 and August 2024, at least 18 human rights defenders were murdered in Guatemala, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.
“While Arévalo is attempting to push forward a more progressive agenda, there's a backlash, and the people who are who are most affected by that backlash are not often the ones in the news media,” Davis said. “There is a systematic attack on indigenous defenders, land defenders and environmental defenders.”
One of the positive steps that Arévalo has taken is to meet with four major indigenous groups or cooperatives in the country as part of an effort to establish a plan to address land issues, Davis said.
“Land is a huge issue in Guatemala,” she explained. In fact, “the lack of fertile, farmable land is one of the major, if not the major, driver of migration from Guatemala.”
There has been a history of exploiting indigenous land and resources without any kind of restraint, she said. Though Arévalo has tried to “address the land crisis … he comes right up against the economic elite who are trying to drive him out of office.”
Indigenous people wind up being evicted from their land by private actors or police so that it can be used for things like mining and palm oil plantations, Davis said.
“Migration will continue as long as the ancestral rights (to the land) are not recognized,” she said. “They're farmers, and their connection to the land is sacred.”
There are multiple ways to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Guatemala, including tapping into resources gathered by GHRC. Also, you can “witness, which I know the Presbyterian church is doing in Guatemala, document, as possible, abuses and the conditions on the ground and then really important is speaking out,” Davis said.
Guatemala has continued to be in the news since the webinar.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Guatemala had reached a deal with the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to accept migrants from other countries who are being deported from the United States. The U.S. would then pay for the deportees to be returned to their home countries, according to the Associated Press.
Arévalo also announced the creation of a border control and protection task force on the northern border of the country to fight transnational crime. “With a border that has been strengthened and which is secure, we guarantee the peace and security of our people,” he said.
The announcement came during a five-country tour of Central America by new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
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