On August 20, 2023, Guatemalans voted to end 69 years of military-backed, corrupt, exploitative rule. Grahame Russell of Rights Action has just returned from a work trip to Guatemala, where he witnessed the historic day when Guatemalans voted overwhelmingly for the Semilla Party’s Bernardo Arevalo as president and Karin Herrera as vice-president.
It is hard to overstate what a monumental political shift the Semilla Party election could represent. Since a U.S.-backed military coup ousted Guatemala’s last truly democratic government in 1954, Guatemalans have suffered under 69 years of military-backed, corrupt, anti-democratic, “open for global business” regimes.
During almost this entire time, the United States, Canada and international actors including transnational companies - in the sectors of food exports, mining, tourism, hydroelectric dams and maquiladora sweatshops –have maintained full economic, political and military relations with these regimes, referring to them as “democratic allies.”
Even as the Semilla Party won the elections, the corrupt regime in power – known as the ‘Covenant of the Corrupt’ - is pulling out all the stops to prevent Arevalo and Herrera from taking over the executive branch of government on January 14, 2024. Already, assassination attempts against the president-elect and VP-elect Herrera have been thwarted.
The challenges Guatemalans face to re-build their democracy and rule of law, and begin to transform their country and society, government and state, come as much from outside their borders as from within.
More information: [email protected] / www.rightsaction.org
Grahame Russell has worked on human rights issues in Guatemala since 1989. Since 1995, he has been director of Rights Action (www.rightsaction.org). A non-practicing lawyer and part-time adjunct professor
at University of Northern British Columbia, Grahame, together with Catherine Nolin, co-authored and
co-edited TESTIMONIO – Canadian Mining in the Aftermath of Genocides in Guatemala (https://btlbooks.com/book/testimonio).
