Guatemala’s developmental challenges are profound and cannot be resolved in one single presidential term. But before president-elect Bernardo Arévalo and his team can begin to address these deficits, they must transform the way politics is done in Guatemala, Rachel Schwartz (University of Oklahoma) explains.

On August 20, anti-corruption reformer and Congressional deputy Bernardo Arévalo won Guatemala’s presidential runoff in a landslide, defeating former first lady Sandra Torres. Arévalo, the candidate of Movimiento Semilla [Seed Movement], triumphed with 58 percent to Torres’ 37 percent of the vote. He swept 17 of 22 Guatemalan provinces and, overall, earned the second-highest number of votes of any presidential candidate in Guatemalan history.

Arévalo secured his victory, but it was very far from a foregone conclusion. Almost no one expected him to be among the top-two vote-getters in the June 25 first round and to make it into the runoff. Arévalo has championed the inclusive, pro-democratic legacy of his father, President Juan José Arévalo (1945-1951), who initiated Guatemala’s decadelong Democratic Spring. The 1954 United States-backed coup cut short this reformist period, which devolved into 36 years of civil war (1960-1996). But despite his father’s legacy, President-elect Arévalo had little name recognition: only 27 per cent of Guatemalans reported that they knew who he was days before the first round. And this showed in the polls. Arévalo was projected to receive a mere three per cent of the vote yet exceeded these expectations nearly four-fold.

This breakthrough also stunned domestic and international observers because the ruling government of President Alejandro Giammattei (2020-present) maneuvered to disqualify candidates who vowed to challenge the status quo—the central motif of Arévalo’s campaign. Officials within the Attorney General’s Office (MP), Constitutional Court, and Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) were in on the pre-electoral interference. By the first-round vote, Arévalo was virtually the last anti-system candidate standing—both an indication that the regime did not take his candidacy seriously and an important reason for his second-place finish in the June 25 contest.

After Arévalo’s success, the government wielded similar legal tactics to disband Semilla, criminalise electoral officials, and intimidate poll workers. Yet the runoff proceeded, as domestic mobilisation and international pressure prompted previous regime allies to affirm the integrity of the results. Torres, an establishment figure with high unfavourability, was handed her third consecutive runoff defeat. The perfect storm of circumstances —strategic missteps by the corrupt ruling elite, a domestic and international backlash to attempted election interference, and an opponent with a low vote ceiling— created an opportunity for what many hope will be Guatemala’s next “democratic spring.”

But the challenges Arévalo faces—both in reaching the January 14, 2024 transfer of power and governing thereafter—are enormous. Despite the wide margin of victory and domestic and international recognition, the prosecutors that sought to derail the runoff vote remain on the offensive, continuing their legal attacks against election officials and Semilla organisers. Though these authorities are more isolated than ever, the judicialisation of the 2023 contest is likely to drag on until Arévalo’s inauguration and could even persist after.

The tasks facing Arévalo once in office are also daunting. Staggering levels of poverty, inequality, and unemployment diminish the life chances for a large swath of Guatemalans, particularly in the country’s rural indigenous highlands. Guatemala is home to the highest rate of child malnutrition in Latin America and the sixth highest in the entire world. The country suffers from crumbling infrastructure, including a massive sinkhole that paralysed a major Guatemala City metro highway just two weeks before the runoff. Rampant tax evasion and corruption, which deprive the public sector of much-need investment, diminish the quality of infrastructure, as well as healthcare and education. Extreme weather due to climate change has also wreaked havoc on Guatemala’s largely agricultural economy and fueled out-migration.

Guatemala’s developmental challenges are profound and cannot be resolved in one single presidential term. And before president-elect Arévalo and his team can begin to address these deficits, they must tackle a problem that is far more fundamental: they must transform the way politics is done in Guatemala. The country has long been held hostage by a loose alliance of elite interests, which, while not entirely unified, readily close ranks when their political and economic power, rent-seeking schemes, and ability to sidestep the rule of law come under threat. This coalition has engineered a political system premised on ransacking state coffers, co-opting institutions to evade sanction, and doling out public contracts to a predatory economic class in exchange for kickbacks. These practices directly undermine core state functions like collecting tax revenue, upholding the rule of law, and providing much-needed public goods and services.

A corrupt system with deep roots

As I detail in my recent book, Undermining the State from Within: The Institutional Legacies of Civil War in Central America (Cambridge University Press, 2023), this corrupt system has deep roots. The elite coalition that orchestrates it was forged amid Guatemala’s counterinsurgent campaign in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As high-level military intelligence officers seized control under the guise of eliminating the leftist insurgency, they not only oversaw massive human rights abuses but remade the rules of the game within public agencies, fomenting corruption and organised crime. Rather than aberrations, these practices became hardwired into state institutions themselves.

As violence dissipated and the warring parties entered negotiations, counterinsurgent leaders sought to cement the wartime order by forging a broader web of allies—business owners who benefitted from fraudulent tax and contracting arrangements, crime bosses who needed impunity to protect illicit profit streams, and civilian authorities who saw the state as a fount of personal enrichment. As Guatemala transitioned from military rule in 1986, this dominant coalition used the weak political party system, privatization of state assets, and co-optation of judicial institutions to preserve its shared interests within the new, nominally democratic setting. The predatory system has remained remarkably resilient since then.

Arévalo is not just up against overwhelming domestic needs, but also corrupt practices that must be dislodged if he hopes to achieve his social and economic policy goals. The good news, however, is that when it comes to building new forms of political consensus Guatemala is not starting from scratch. There are recent experiences that can guide Arévalo and Semilla as they seek to remake governance.

In the mid-2010s, Guatemala witnessed a robust anti-corruption movement that rallied around the United Nations International Commission against Impunity (CICIG), which partnered with domestic prosecutors to uncover state corruption and strengthen institutions. The campaign exposed a raft of criminal networks headed by the ruling Patriot Party, whose president and vice president were removed and imprisoned in 2015. Though the CICIG faced virulent elite backlash and was ousted in 2019, the broad anti-corruption mobilization drew supporters from across class, ethnic, and ideological lines. It also catalysed the Semilla movement, which later transformed into a political party.

Guatemalans need not even look back to the previous decade to find inspiration for a new kind of politics. Beyond Arévalo’s stunning electoral performance, his campaign itself broke the mold and signaled that Guatemalans are eager for leadership not beholden to wealthy, criminal interests. Illicit campaign finance is a routine feature of Guatemalan elections. State contractors, criminal interests, and other elite sectors fund parties and politicians with the expectation that they will reap economic rewards and enjoy impunity once their beneficiaries reach office. But Semilla refused to accept dirty contributions, instead relying, in part, on small donations—a first in Guatemala’s electoral history. Though many have been sceptical of Semilla’s reach because of its urban, educated base, the organic outpouring of support across rural campaign stops before the runoff illustrates that the party’s pro-democratic, anti-corruption message found wide resonance.

The predatory elite that has maintained a stranglehold on power in Guatemala since the conflict-era remains formidable. However, the opposition movement that coalesced to defend democracy during the 2023 election has revealed chinks in its armour and planted the seeds of a new societal consensus. It provides hope that the rules of the political game can be remade for the benefit of the many, rather than remain in the hands of the few. And when it comes to tackling the most pressing day-to-day challenges Guatemalans face, this is an indispensable first step.

Notes:
• The views expressed here are of the author rather than the Centre or the LSE
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• Banner image: Bernardo Arévalo in Guatemala City. / Daniel Hernandez-Salazar (Shutterstock)