Guatemala: News & Updates

The U.S. government has called out Guatemala for its treatment of corruption and human rights prosecutors and judges.

Numbers of high ranking prosecutors and judges are in jail for their work against corruption and many more have fled the country. 

The attorney generals office categorically rejects this criticism, calling the U.S. ill-informed and stating it "lacked knowledge of the Guatemalan justice system."

Last year the  Attorney General Maria Consuelo Porras herself was included in a list of corrupt and anti-democratic actors published by the U.S. State Department, singling her out for thwarting corruption investigations.

October 13 the U.S. announced that it will donate 95 vehicles, valued $4.4 million to the Guatemalan government.  

This concludes a 2019 proposal by the U.S. to donate equipment to Guatemala's border security forces.

The donation is funded through a Defense Department foreign military “capacity-building” authority established in 2017 as Section 333 of Title 10, U.S. Code, used as an alternative to the Foreign Military Financing program (FMF). Due to human rights and corruption concerns, there has been a prohibition on using  the FMF program to aid the Guatemalan security forces and military.

Payment for the vehicles is part of the U.S. defense budget and does not come from the dedicated annual foreign assistance appropriation. 

Journalists and activists criticize the aid for the border protection forces, fearing the equipment could be used to block migrants crossing the border, an act that is already in motion.

Besides the dangers for refugees and others transiting, the last money and equipment from the US government ended up being misused for intimidation against human rights and anti-corruption activists, a part of the ongoing crackdown on independent media and anti-corruption prosecutors and judges. 

All this is bad enough, but the track records show that the anti-drug efforts barely produce any fruit. Even though 90% of all cocaine entering the United States passes through Guatemala, only 7-15 tons were seized by Guatemalan police. This hardly makes a dent in the total cocaine trafficking and is far behind other South and Central American countries.

Topping this off is the fact that the Guatemalan state has the necessary financial resources to pay for the donated vehicles.

Just two weeks back the Guatemalan Congress passed a law, promising each veteran of the 36-year long civil war, the equivalent of $4,500 U.S. dollars. The bonuses will be handed out with no regard for war crimes or crimes against humanity that the ex-soldiers may have committed during the conflict. The total is around $450 million.

Spending this $4.4 million on military is obviously a mistake. The money could have been spent far better, helping the civil society and simultaneously achieving crime fighting goals. 

It could provide food security to half a million Guatemalans suffering from hunger. 

A more efficient anti-crime program than militant oppression is always prevention. Funding community-based violence prevention would reduce violent crime; making communities safer might discourage the population from emigrating. 

A further crime driving factor is the massive corruption keeping the country hostage. The U.S. budget could have been used to renew the 2010's efforts to strengthen Guatemala's judiciary, building an independent justice system, which is needed to reach a significant change in the rotting justice structures. 

Over all, it is obvious that the military aid would do more bad then good and that Guatemala's society is likely to keep suffering for years. 

As Fiscal Year 2022 is almost over, we are hearing numbers of 750 or more migrant deaths over the past twelve months. While, tragically, it does still happen that migrants die while being chased by Border Patrol agents or shot when attempting to cross the border, the majority of these deaths are a result of the so-called “prevention through deterrence” strategy that forces people to take on more dangerous routes when traveling up to the southern U.S. border to seek safety. And if they do make it through to the U.S., they are often expelled immediately or put into deportation proceedings, waiting for their hearing in Mexican emergency shelters or U.S. detention centers. Read IRTF's monthly overview of recent updates on U.S. immigration and what has been happening at the border!

https://www.irtfcleveland.org/blog/migrant-justice-newsletter-sep-2022

Dignity, justice, and criminalization in Guatemala.

The last few months in Guatemala have seen strong state repression against community leaders, activists, journalists, and human rights defenders. However, history shows us that the people rise up and resist in order to transform everything that oppresses; now more than ever we need international support and solidarity to accompany the peoples of Guatemala and the struggles they have waged for decades.

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala,  urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.

Since the Biden administration restarted the Central American Minors Refugee and Parole Program (CAM program), initionaly initiated by the Obama administration and later withdrawn by Trump, not much has happened. 

Underfunding and personal shortage at the nine national resettlement agencies led to the inability to handle the mass of applications. 

Due to this bottleneck only a few hundred cases filed before the Trump administration ended the program have been completed since March 2021.

For many children this slow processing of applications means waiting times of over a year and no information on how long it will take until they are reunited with their familes.

Organizations are now calling for the support of consuls to help the children with their application interviews and pass case information on to the waiting parents or guardians.  

On September 17, the New York Times published an article  by Anatoly Kurmanaev and Jody García including misinformation and false claims about the US government's efforts to support democracy in Central America. 

The article claims that the Biden administration is working to end corruption and impunity in Guatemala, while being inactive as the military backed government  “methodically dismantled the last vestiges of independent institutions." The US is supporting this illegitimate government, referring to the Guatemalan ruling class as "democratic allies." 

Besides this, Biden lied about stopping the sanctions against Nicaragua, which the U.S. and many "western" countries have been using since the 1980's to squeeze its economy and cause political change. 

The article also states that the U.S. aided the return to democracy in Honduras. In fact, the U.S. has always held mutually beneficial relations to the Honduran government which came to power by an U.S. backed coup.     

Once again a North American company seeks to rob Guatemala of its natural resources. 

Under heavy protest, the Canadian mining corporation Bluestone Resources is going forward with the open-pit mining operation Cerro Blanco in Asunción Mita, in the department of Jutiapa.  

Knowing this new gold mine would cause irreparable damages to the surface and subterranean water flows risking the water security of millions, the community called in a Municipal Consultation of Neighbors, a legally binding state tool that lets local residents make decisions about their territory. 

On September 18, the Mitecos and Mitecas residents, after strong backlash from Bluestone Resources, went to the polls to vote on the future of their homes. The outcome was clear. 87% of the voters opposed Bluestone's mining plan, yet the company had an ace up their sleeve. 

Following the democratic decision, the corporation turned to the corrupt government of Guatemala.

Only a day later, on September 19 the Ministry of Energy and Mining (MEM) rejected the Municipal Consultation of Neighbors' vote, stating that the Municipal government of Asunción Mita does not have the authority to make that decision. 

It is not the first time, that the MEM has acted as a private attorney for the big mining corporation. 

More on MEM's and the government's involvement in illegal mining in the following article.    

On behalf of IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) members, we wrote six letters this month to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries.  We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice.

IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.