New Leader Takes Over in Guatemala, Raising Hopes for Fragile Democracy

Since Bernardo Arévalo burst onto Guatemala’s political scene final 12 months as an anticorruption crusader, he has confronted an assassination plot, his get together’s suspension and a barrage of legal attacks aimed toward stopping him from taking workplace as president.

Now comes the exhausting half.

Mr. Arévalo’s inauguration on Sunday — six months after his presidential victory delivered a shocking rebuke to Guatemala’s conservative political institution — will mark a sea change in Central America’s most populous nation. His landslide election mirrored broad assist for his proposals to curb graft and revive a teetering democracy.

However as Mr. Arévalo prepares to manipulate, he should assert management whereas dealing with off in opposition to an alliance of conservative prosecutors, members of Congress and different political figures who’ve lately gutted Guatemala’s governing establishments.

“Arévalo has probably the most thankless job in Guatemala right this moment as a result of he arrives with exceptionally excessive expectations,” mentioned Edgar Ortíz Romero, a constitutional legislation skilled. “He’s been given a finances for a Toyota when folks need a Ferrari.”

Mr. Arévalo’s opponents in Congress have already moved to attempt to handcuff him by approving a finances late final 12 months that will severely restrict his means to spend on well being care and schooling, two of his high priorities.

However discovering sources to spend is only one problem Mr. Arévalo faces. Extra urgently, he faces a number of challenges from Guatemala’s entrenched institution aimed toward shortly crippling his means to manipulate.

The facility battle taking part in out in Guatemala, a nation of 18 million, is being carefully adopted all through Central America, a area already on edge over the increasing sway of drug cartels, the exodus of migrants and the unfold of authoritarian techniques in neighboring nations like El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The transition of energy in Guatemala has been something however orderly, marked by arrests, rumors of arrests and fears that the officers opposing Mr. Arévalo would go even additional to stop his inauguration from ever occurring.

Mr. Arévalo’s opponent within the presidential race, a former first woman, refused to acknowledge his victory.

In Guatemala Metropolis, the capital, hypothesis swirled in current days that prosecutors would search the arrest of Mr. Arévalo’s working mate, Karin Herrera, probably derailing the inauguration as a result of each the president-elect and vice president-elect have to be current in Congress on Sunday for the switch of energy to be respectable.

Guatemala’s highest court docket issued an order shielding Ms. Herrera from arrest, giving her and Mr. Arévalo a reprieve.

Nonetheless, prosecutors and judges against Mr. Arévalo intensified a judicial onslaught that started quickly after the nationwide election, elevating doubts about whether or not there would even be a transition of energy.

Searching for to forged doubt on Mr. Arévalo’s victory on the polls, the place he won by greater than 20 share factors, prosecutors obtained arrest warrants for 4 magistrates on Guatemala’s high electoral authority over claims of corruption within the acquisition of election software program.

The 4 magistrates had been all touring outdoors the nation when the warrants had been issued.

The lawyer normal’s workplace on Thursday additionally arrested Napoleón Barrientos, a former inside minister, saying that he refused to make use of pressure to take care of order in October in opposition to protesters demanding the lawyer normal’s resignation.

Such strikes have grown frequent in Guatemala since conservative political figures shut down a pioneering U.N.-backed anticorruption mission in 2019, reworking the nation from a testing floor for rooting out graft to a spot the place dozens of prosecutors and judged who’ve tried to tackle malfeasance have fled into exile.

Brian Nichols, the highest State Division official for the Western Hemisphere, condemned what he called “the most recent actions by anti-democratic actors in Guatemala,” together with the arrest of Mr. Barrientos for “defending the precise to peaceable protest.”

That expression of assist adopted months of maneuvering by the Biden administration in assist of Mr. Arévalo after he shocked many in Guatemala, together with members of his get together, by squeaking right into a runoff that he then resoundingly received.

Such positioning stands in distinction to U.S. support for the Guatemalan army throughout a brutal civil conflict, which lasted from 1960 to 1996 and resulted in a conviction of genocide for a former dictator who tried to exterminate a Mayan folks, and to the C.I.A.’s engineering of a 1954 coup that toppled a preferred, democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz.

After that coup, Mr. Arévalo’s father, Juan José Arévalo, a former president nonetheless admired in Guatemala for permitting freedom of speech and for creating the social safety system, spent years in exile round Latin America.

The youthful Mr. Arévalo, a soft-spoken sociologist and diplomat, was born in Uruguay throughout that point and raised in Venezuela, Mexico and Chile earlier than the household might return to Guatemala. He’s probably the most progressive determine to get this far in Guatemala since democracy was re-established within the Nineteen Eighties.

As efforts intensified final month to stop Mr. Arévalo from taking workplace, the USA imposed sanctions on Miguel Martínez, one of many closest allies of the departing president, Alejandro Giammattei, over widespread bribery schemes.

And in a pivotal transfer, American authorities in December additionally imposed visa restrictions on almost 300 Guatemalan residents, together with greater than 100 members of Congress, for undermining democracy and the rule of legislation of their efforts to weaken Mr. Arévalo and hold him from being inaugurated.

“The gringos have made the unimaginable potential as a result of Congress is now way more docile,” mentioned Manfredo Marroquín, the pinnacle of Citizen Motion, a Guatemalan anti-corruption coverage group.

Mr. Marroquín mentioned that strain from the USA would possibly even open the way in which for members of Mr. Arévalo’s get together to participate within the management of Congress, probably easing an enormous supply of stress for his authorities. Considered one of Mr. Arévalo’s high allies in Congress, Samuel Pérez, mentioned on Friday that he was getting ready to function the speaker of Congress, although the president-elect’s opponents within the chamber had been maneuvering to maintain management of the chamber.

“The strain from the USA has prevented a coup d’état; with out that, we wouldn’t be right here,” Mr. Marroquín mentioned. “The Individuals are like insurance coverage: there in occasions of disaster.”

Nonetheless, Washington’s assist of Mr. Arévalo has revealed fissures in Guatemala. In his final weeks in workplace, Mr. Giammattei, who’s barred by legislation from searching for re-election, has grown more and more shrill in his criticism of the sanctions by the USA and worldwide assist for Mr. Arévalo.

Dealing one other blow to Mr. Arévalo, Mr. Giammattei withdrew Guatemala from an anti-narcotics job pressure created in 2020 with the USA. The transfer might weaken Guatemala’s means to fight drug trafficking teams, which have been increasing their sway across the nation.

On the identical time, Mr. Arévalo’s efforts to forge alliances have revealed how difficult it is going to be for him to manipulate. This month, he introduced the primary cupboard in Guatemala during which ladies account for half of all ministerial posts, however the celebration was short-lived.

The naming of a member of one of many nation’s high enterprise associations prompted calls that Mr. Arévalo, who has hewed to centrist insurance policies, was drifting to the precise. One other cupboard nominee withdrew after outdated feedback surfaced of her criticizing a outstanding Indigenous activist.

In a rustic the place Indigenous peoples make up almost half of the inhabitants, indignation additionally arose as a result of just one minister in his cupboard was Indigenous, regardless of the essential function that Indigenous teams had in protesting in opposition to the efforts to maintain Mr. Arévalo from taking workplace.

“There’s an expectation that this new authorities might be completely different,” mentioned Sandra Xinico, an anthropologist and Indigenous activist. “However we’ve seen as soon as once more seen how Indigenous peoples are excluded from the political course of.”