Global Courant 2023-05-31 20:20:36
Guatemalans living in the United States can help influence their home country’s politics when they vote in the June 25 presidential election.
But despite the potential influence of the diaspora, only a handful of candidates showed up for a May 5 candidates forum in Los Angeles. That left the Guatemalan community in Southern California frustrated and angry, feelings many know all too well when it comes to national politics.
Twenty-three candidates are contesting the office of president of the republic of the deeply restive Central American nation. They will all haunt the 89,554 registered voters now living on American soil. The metropolitan triangle that includes Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana is home to most of the American Guatemalan diaspora, about 230,000 people out of a total estimated at 1.6 million.
But the dismal turnout for the third presidential forum, hosted by the Guatemalan Migrant Network, and held at the Church of Scientology’s Celebrity Center International in Hollywood, left many local Guatemalans questioning the integrity of the immigrant voting process, already beset by allegations of official mistreatment and technical accidents.
In his opening speech at the forum, Walter Batres, President of the Guatemalan Migrant Network, praised the three candidates who showed up, in a language that appealed to the other 11 invited aspirants who opted out.
“You didn’t get off the plane, you didn’t apologize, you responded to an invitation that the migrants gave you,” Batres told the three participants, leading to loud applause from the 200 or so people who attended. filled the room.
“That shows that you do have a visa,” Batres added in unison.
The three candidates who came were Amílcar Pop, from the Winaq URNG party; Bernardo Arevalo, from Movimiento Semilla; and Edmond Mulet, of the Cabal Party. Of those three, only Mulet reached double digits in a May 2 poll, with 10.1%.
Among the no-shows was Carlos Pineda (Citizen Prosperity), a right-wing businessman who led the May 2 poll with 23.1%, but whose The candidacy was recently ruled out by Guatemala’s Constitutional Court about alleged violations of electoral law; and Zury Ríos (Valor-Unionista), daughter of the late right-wing dictator and evangelist Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military and, briefly, de facto president whose tenure coincided with one of the most violent periods of Guatemala’s 36-year, genocidal civil war that erupted in 1996 ended with hundreds of thousands dead and 1 million displaced.
For decades, Guatemalans living in the US have helped bolster their ancestral nation’s income stream by returning remittances. If for no other reason, many immigrants believe, that should give politicians an incentive to care about their votes. Guatemalan leaders and activists in Southern California said they are most concerned about containing the Guatemalan emigration flow, restoring the country’s economy and restoring the rule of law.
“The oligarchy has co-opted the entire state,” said Mario Ávila, a local activist and organizer who sympathizes with the left-wing Movement for the Liberation of Peoples (MLP), whose presidential candidate is Thelma Cabrera. “If we fill Congress with a large number of MLP delegates, we are going to create a Congress of dignity and we will make more structural changes and we will be able to remove all those corrupt judges and prosecutors.”
In 2019, the first year Guatemalan expatriates were allowed to vote, 19 candidates ran for president. On that occasion, a total of 8.1 million voters at home and abroad were registered and 5 million participated. In the first round of elections, Sandra Torres of the National Unity of Hope party came first, with 1.1 million votes (25.53%), followed by Alejandro Giammattei (VAMOS) (13.96%), Mulet (11.22 %) and Cabrera (MLP) (10.37%).
The electoral trend in the United States, while exponentially smaller, was remarkably different. Among the migrants, Cabrera received 235 votes, more than double that of Giammattei, who won in the second round.
“There is great dissatisfaction,” says Ávila, the activist, who attributes the different results to increased resistance among immigrants to Guatemala’s political ruling class. This year, he and other LA activists have been trying to build local support for MLP candidates, focusing on the Mayan community in the Westlake-MacArthur Park neighborhood.
“The migrant is more alert,” Batres said, adding that candidates cannot easily buy the vote of American immigrants, while in Guatemala it is common for politicians to bribe voters with just a T-shirt or a sack of rice.
The three candidates who appeared in Los Angeles had similar concerns.
Pop, 45, of indigenous Qeqchi descent, is a lawyer who ideologically identifies as a leftist. He was elected to the Guatemalan Congress for two terms and is currently a legislator of the Central American Parliament.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, he said he wanted to focus on improving economic conditions in Guatemala to counteract the brain drain of young, well-educated professionals fleeing the country.
“We want to technologically and industrialize Guatemalan agriculture, generate enough technology and deploy on micro-enterprises, come out of underdevelopment,” he said. He said he hoped to achieve that in part by improving services at Guatemala’s foreign consulates — which he says lapsed under President Giammattei — and by strengthening diplomatic ties with the US government.
Arévalo, 64, a sociologist and former diplomat, said his four-year foreign services budget proposal would double that of the Giammattei administration, from $118 million to $237 million. He also pledged to review the consulate’s current workforce to determine whether staff changes are needed.
He also stressed the need for the federal government to invest more in job creation and health care.
“The people who leave from Huehuetenango, San Marcos and Quetzaltenango are not people who want to go on vacation or experience adventure. Those people leave because there is no other way to survive than to find work where it exists,” Arévalo stressed, referring to the western regions of Guatemala close to the Mexican border.
Mulet, 72, the third candidate, stressed the need to fight corruption, which depletes resources and undermines economic development. The center-right lawyer, former president of Congress and former ambassador to the United States, vowed to attract more investment by strengthening the rule of law.
“The culture of care for migrants is going to change,” said Mulet, who was critical of the Giammattei government.
At the end of the forum, Yolanda Nish, originally from Quetzaltenango, felt that the three candidates largely echoed each other.
“They were all almost the same,” said the San Fernando Valley resident. “I’m happy to participate, but I wouldn’t vote for anyone, even if they convinced me, because even if I were there (in Guatemala) they don’t keep their promises.”
Originally from San Marcos County, Emilsa Bautista traveled all the way from Dallas to attend the LA Forum. The restaurant owner arrived in the United States 30 years ago.
“I want to know who I’m going to vote for,” said Bautista, a native of Tecún Umán, on the border with Mexico.
For American voters accustomed to choosing between two political parties, the idea of having to sort through 23 candidates may be unthinkable.
Cristhians Castillo, a researcher at the Institute of National Problems at the University of San Carlos, in Guatemala City, said there are 30 registered political parties in Guatemala, and all of them are required by law to field candidates for Congress and municipal councils, the elections will also be held on June 25. In these elections, 160 deputies, 20 members of the Central American Parliament and 340 mayors will be elected to four-year terms starting in 2024.
Castillo said the large number of parties reflects the presence of many satellite parties circling large parties. They are especially useful for forming coalitions with major parties that can then pass or block legislation, and for protecting the major parties and their representatives from prosecution and political scrutiny. The 160 deputies to be elected in June will also appoint judges and magistrates to the Supreme Court.
Like that of most of its Central American neighbours, Guatemala’s democracy is shaky and electoral institutions arouse deep suspicion about their competence and impartiality.
A prominent recent example involved 52-year-old Cabrera, the MLP candidate, from Retalhuleu province, in southwest Guatemala, a leftist of Mam Maya descent and one of the most impoverished rural areas in the country.
But her candidate’s registration was refused by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), leading to a legal battle. On May 2, the Constitutional Court rejected the MLP’s appeal, arguing that Cabrera’s vice presidential nominee, former human rights lawyer Jordán Rodas, did not have a standard candidate registration document.
In an interview with The Times, political scientist Anita Isaacs, a professor at Haverford Collegesaid Cabrera and Rodas were blocked because they both have visions of social change that break with the status quo of the political establishment.
“They represented the option of resuming the peace accords, resuming the hope of building a society where the rule of law prevails and where a more inclusive and democratic state and society, in all respects, is deepened,” Isaacs added, referring to the negotiations between the government and the left-wing guerrillas that ended the civil war, but did undermined by corruption and the widespread attribution of impunityaccording to human rights organizations.
The odds of minor party candidates advancing to the August 20 runoff if no candidate wins more than 50% of the first-round vote are slim. Of the three candidates who visited Los Angeles, Mulet has the best chance of moving forward, Castillo said.
“What the research does is expose the wear and tear that the traditional political class has had,” he continued, noting that the three candidates with the highest disapproval scores all have close ties to former presidential administrations.
LA resident Leonel De La Cruz shares his preferences for candidates with no dark past on WhatsApp.
“You know who can do something for the country, and we know those who have shady ties,” said the Guatemala City resident.
