Guatemala, the key country in Central America, is being shaken by an intense struggle for power, which was reflected in protest demonstrations in the streets, road blockades and fierce fighting in the heights.
Guatemala, like the rest of the countries in the region, suffers from continuous economic decline and a drain on its population. 30% of the GDP of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua depend on remittances. At the moment, only the economies of Costa Rica and Panama do not depend on the vital remittances sent by migrant workers to their families.
The current power struggle in Guatemala is also a reflection of the profound changes in the Central American reality. The United States crushed the Central American revolution in the 80s, after the signing of the Peace Agreements in 1987, 1992 and 1996, it disarmed the guerrillas and imposed a new regional order by creating the SICA and other organizations, but the new imperialist order did not brought a consolidation of democracy, nor greater economic development, but quite the opposite: our countries were slowly disintegrating due to the neoliberal offensive.
Throughout the region, the traditional bourgeois sectors, far from becoming stronger, were weakened. New bourgeois sectors emerged, nurtured by corruption and the distribution of the state budget. This is the origin of the prolonged inter-bourgeois conflict in Guatemala, which also has similar expressions in other countries in the region.
Guatemala has a peculiarity: the dying bourgeois democracy does not function with a stable regime of political parties, but rather these are created at each electoral situation and disappear at the end of the elections, or at the end of the presidential term. The National Unity of Hope (UNE) is an exception to this rule.
Since the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996, in Guatemala, a reactionary status quo was gradually established and consolidated, where, from the shadows, the mafias have exercised power, especially under the administrations of Perez Molina, Jimmy Morales and Alejandro Giammattei.
The levels of corruption and economic decline are so serious that the inter-bourgeois conflict was strongly expressed in the electoral campaign, where Bernardo Arévalo, a not very well-known candidate of the newly created Semilla Movement party, managed to sneak into the second round, and ended up winning. the elections, despite the atmosphere of skepticism and abstentionism. The urban middle class rebelled, and together with the popular and indigenous sectors they demanded a change of government.
Arévalo’s triumph, an expression of popular discontent, caught the mafias in power off guard. Then, the Public Ministry (MP) began a furious campaign to annul the results of the second round of elections. First was the annulment of the legal personality of the Semilla party, then the seizure of the voting records, later the pre-trial against Arévalo, and finally the declaration by second-order prosecutors that the elections were void.
The United States has deep contradictions with the Guatemalan mafias in power, because they, in their desire to accumulate capital, do not strictly follow their dictates. These are not anti-imperialist at all, but the conflict is there. For this reason, the United States unconditionally supports Arévalo, applies sanctions and threatens many more, because it sees a magnificent opportunity to regain full control in Guatemala.
Sentences come and go. The last one was pronounced by the Constitutional Court (CC), shutting up the MP prosecutors, but at the same time confirming that the investigations into the Semilla Movement and Bernardo Arévalo must continue, with the clear objective of nailing flags to force them to negotiate a key point: that the next government does not touch the power of the mafias.
The crisis related to the electoral result is closing, but a new, much more intense one will open as soon as Arévalo assumes the presidency of the republic on January 14. Arévalo’s government will be under three fires: on the one hand, the democratic aspirations and change of the majority of the population, on the other the pressures from the United States government so that the new government is a puppet of its policies, and finally the resistance of the mafias that will defend to the death their businesses and spaces of power.
For our part, from the PSOCA we will always call to continue the fight, calling on Bernardo Arévalo and Karin Herrera to fulfill their promises, raise new demands, always warning that the workers, the popular sectors and the powerful indigenous organizations must maintain political independence. at any cost. ________________________________________
Source Central American Socialist Party (PSOCA)
