Three keys to understanding the voracious corruption that corrodes Guatemala

Bernardo Arevalo his investiture on Sunday as president of Guatemala. For months he faced a judicial onslaught attributed to the country’s powerful economic and political elite with one purpose: to perpetuate corruption.

Executed by the Prosecutor’s Office, the offensive sought to withdraw his immunity, achieved the suspension of his Semilla party and tried to annul the results of the elections due to alleged electoral anomalies.

Arévalo assures that it was a “coup attempt” motivated by her promise to persecute the corrupt, with which, against all odds, she comfortably won in the second round in August.

Analysts and humanitarian activists point out three keys to understanding the magnitude of the problem:

A “predatory” elite

Heir to the oligarchy that emerged in the colonial era, the Guatemalan elite is considered one of the most “predators” from the continent, former Human Rights Attorney Jordán Rodas, exiled in Washington, told AFP.

With 60% Of its 17.8 million inhabitants in poverty, Guatemala has an inequality of “the highest in Latin America, with an underserved population, mostly rural and indigenous and employed in the informal sector”reported in a World Bank report in October.

According to a 2019 Oxfam International report, the 1% of the richest in Guatemala “He has the same income as half the population.”

In Guatemala, with a high concentration of fertile land in a few hands, the most powerful families, such as the Castillos, the Boschs, the Novellas or the Herreras, own sugar mills, coffee plantations, breweries, real estate companies, and banking businesses.

“It is a predatory elite, co-responsible for the rampant corruption of the last governments and for migration because starvation wages expel Guatemalans from the country”Rhodes commented.

The State, for that elite, does not “It is to achieve the common good, but to get rich, without satisfying their voracity”added the former attorney (2017-2022).

“They support each other because they want a State that does not collect taxes or apply labor or environmental standards,” added Manfredo Marroquín, co-founder of Acción Ciudadana, the local version of Transparency International.

The “corporate dictatorship”

Created in 1957, the Coordinating Committee of Commercial, Industrial and Financial Associations (CACIF) brings together the conservative business leadership. “It is the real power that governs the destinies of the country”Carmen Aída Ibarra, from the ProJusticia citizen movement, told AFP.

With a State weakened by the civil war (1960-1996), the economic, political and military elites wove, according to analysts, a network of corruption of such dimensions that it led the UN to become directly involved with the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (Cicig), installed in 2007.

In 2015, CICIG and the prosecutor’s office discovered a bribery network that involved then-president Otto Pérez, who had to resign and went to prison, from which he was recently released with bail.

They also accused political parties of illicit financing in the 2015 elections with money from big businessmen and organized crime, affecting Pérez’s successor, Jimmy Morales.

In 2017, congressmen approved reforms that sought to shield political leaders from these accusations, sparking protests that forced them to recant. The protesters called it the “corrupt pact”.

“It is the collusion of politicians, officials and several elite businessmen with a perverse intention to perpetuate themselves in power as a corporate dictatorship, which has nothing to do with ideology,” Rhodes explained.

The reign of impunity

Morales expelled CICIG in 2019 and appointed Consuelo Porras as the new attorney general, who was confirmed in her position by the current outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei, named by the previous prosecutor’s office in a bribery case that was unsuccessful.

Porras, sanctioned by Washington for considering her corrupt, is accused of leading the criminal prosecution against Arévalo.

With CICIG gone, former prosecutor Claudia Paz y Paz, exiled in Costa Rica, told AFP, “they were co-opted” Cortes, Prosecutor’s Office, Congress, Executive, Comptroller’s Office “placing officials who, in alliance with part of the economic elite” act to “guarantee impunity.”

“They appointed judicial hitmen to build cases against journalists or officials who denounce corruption. “They have deputies who approve laws under bribery, and prosecutors who are the tool of persecution,” Marroquín stated.

According to Edie Cux, director of Citizen Action, “several of these traditional power groups even have ties to organized crime.”

Of 180 countries, Guatemala ranks 150th (from lowest to highest) in Transparency International’s corruption ranking.

For Marroquín, the “agenda” of the elite is “clear”: “to continue in a State of total corruption and impunity, which is the oil that gears the entire political and economic system of the country.”

“It is a thousand-headed monster,” Rhodes illustrated.