On August 20, 2023, the Semilla Social gathering’s Bernardo Arévalo and Karin Herrera were elected president and vice chairman of Guatemala.
This election will deliver a proper finish to 69 years of anti-democratic, military-backed, corrupt, “open-for-global-business” governments when the transition of energy takes place on January 14, 2024. “The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has acknowledged the outcomes and what the folks have shouted is, ‘No extra corruption,’” President-elect Arévalo said in an August 20 press convention.
However Arévalo’s election received’t deliver an finish to the pursuits of an alliance of corrupt judges, prosecutors, politicians, and financial and army elites often called the “Covenant of the Corrupt,” who’ve run the nation for many years.
These elites, who now need to vacate the manager department of presidency for at the very least 4 years, retain appreciable management over most branches of the state and most establishments of the federal government. They dominate all sectors of Guatemala’s exploitative economic system.
As hundreds of thousands of lengthy dispossessed, impoverished Guatemalans, a majority being Indigenous Mayan peoples, have fun the Semilla Social gathering’s victory, seemingly impossible-to-overcome challenges nonetheless stay inside its borders — challenges the incoming authorities must deal with and work to treatment.
However earlier than it might get to work remedying the nation’s systemic inequalities, the occasion must overcome ongoing “lawfare” assaults towards its members, who face potential arrest on trumped-up prices. By legally attacking the Semilla Social gathering, the Covenant of the Corrupt, which controls the lawyer basic’s workplace, hopes to render the Semilla Social gathering itself unlawful, leaving Arévalo and Herrera as an impartial president and vice chairman. Such assaults are additionally concentrating on the role of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in officializing the ultimate vote depend.
Guatemala faces simply as many challenges from exterior its borders, specifically the insurance policies and actions of the United States-led “worldwide group,” together with Canada, the European Union, World Financial institution, Worldwide Financial Fund, and numerous transnational firms working in partnership with Covenant of Corrupt elites within the sectors of for-export meals manufacturing, mining, tourism, hydroelectric dams and maquiladora sweatshop garment manufacturing.
To grasp these challenges, we should ask necessary questions concerning the function and accountability of the U.S. and worldwide group over the previous 69 years of sustaining useful political and financial relations with successive military-backed, Covenant of Corrupt governments.
“Bitter Fruit”: U.S. Navy Coup
What would Guatemala be like at this time as a authorities and folks if the U.S. had not deliberate and orchestrated a army coup in 1954?
The June 27, 1954, “bitter fruit” coup violently ended Guatemala’s solely interval of precise democracy, from 1944-1954, crushing 10 years of social, financial, land and human rights reforms that the governments of President Juan Jose Arévalo (father of President-elect Bernardo Arévalo) and President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman had been working to implement.
The coup restored to energy the standard military-backed financial and political elites who had been in energy from 1931-1944, in the course of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Gen. Jorge Ubico — precursors to Guatemala’s Covenant of Corrupt governments of at this time.
After refusing to ascertain diplomatic relations with the democratically elected governments in energy from 1944-1954, Canada successfully legitimized the 1954 coup by establishing diplomatic relations with the military-backed authorities in 1961.
Quickly after, the Canadian authorities openly supported the arrival of the world’s largest nickel mining firm on the time, the Worldwide Nickel Firm, often called INCO, to take management of an enormous swath of Mayan Q’eqchi’ territories and start lengthy historical past of violent, dangerous and corrupt mining that proceed at this time.
“Scorched Earth” Genocide
What would Guatemala be like at this time if the U.S. had not — within the title of “preventing communism” — backed the Guatemalan army and demise squads in the course of the state repression and terrorism of the late Seventies, Eighties and early Nineties?
Tons of of hundreds of primarily Indigenous Mayan folks — younger and previous, women and men — had been savagely massacred, tortured and “disappeared” in “scorched earth” army campaigns within the highlands.
In four regions of the country, genocides had been carried out towards the native Mayan populations. Tens of millions of individuals had been violently displaced from their properties and lands in the course of the army campaigns, turning into desperately poor and internally displaced, or refugees in search of protected haven Mexico, the U.S. and past. Even at this time they’re still being hunted and killed by the regime.
Ignoring the Peace Accords
In 1996, complete peace accords had been signed that set out critical reforms and adjustments to treatment most of Guatemala’s historic inequalities, injustices and systemic racism, formally ending a long time of “inner battle.”
The reforms included, for instance, complete land reform, the institution of the United Nations Reality Fee to analyze battle crimes and crimes towards humanity from 1960-1996, recognition of the rights of refugees to return dwelling to their lands, long-overdue recognition of the rights of Indigenous (primarily Mayan) peoples. The U.S., Canada, and far of the worldwide group acknowledged publicly they supported the total implementation of the accords, however in apply the nations ignored the reforms by not conditioning future political and financial relations on correct implementation of the accords.
What would Guatemala be like at this time if these accords had not been ignored by ensuing Covenant of Corrupt governments and the U.S.-led worldwide group?
What if the U.S., Canada and worldwide group had really demanded full implementation of and compliance with the accords, as a substitute of getting proper again to “enterprise as traditional” — sustaining and increasing financial pursuits with 25 extra years of repressive governments managed by the Covenant of Corrupt elites proper by way of till at this time?
The previous can’t be modified, however asking these questions is greater than rhetorical. Answering these questions will present what the insurance policies and actions of the U.S., Canada and worldwide group have really been since 1954.
Hopefully, August 20, 2023, will mark a transformational before-and-after date in Guatemala’s historical past. The incoming Semilla Social gathering authorities and Guatemalan persons are already working — hopefully, cautiously, nervously — to start to deal with the just about impossible-to-overcome challenges confronting the wants and well-being of the bulk inhabitants.
Will U.S. and Canadian governments, politicians and media ask the laborious questions and demand critical reforms and adjustments as to how they train and impose our energy and pursuits on small nations world wide, or will they shortly get again to insisting on enterprise as traditional in assist of their political and financial pursuits?
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