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Guatemala President-elect Bernardo Arevalo meets with judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in Guatemala City.
Guatemala’s rocky presidential transition
In recent days, supporters of Guatemala’s President-elect Bernardo Arévalo have been blocking roads across the country to protest ongoing efforts by federal prosecutors to block him from taking office.
The background: In August, Arévalo, a former diplomat who ran on an anti-corruption platform, pulled off an upset, defeating former first lady Sandra Torres. Her supporters, including the current ruling party, alleged fraud, but those claims were disputed by international observers and dismissed by Guatemalan courts. Government prosecutors have since sought to outlaw Arévalo’s political party on a registration technicality.
The protests, led by indigenous groups and Arévalo’s supporters, began after federal agents last weekend attempted to seize voting records from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. Arévalo’s supporters say these claims are an attempt by the establishment to prevent their upstart candidate from taking office.
The US and the Organization of American States — the region’s foremost multilateral body — have supported Arévalo, who on Tuesday met with senior officials in Washington. The protesters say they won’t back down until the attorney general resigns. Arévalo, who has called the attacks on the electoral authorities a “coup,” is due to be inaugurated in January.
A woman walks next to a campaign sign of Guatemala's President-elect Bernardo Arevalo.
Can Guatemala’s president-elect have a party?
The formerly little-known Arévalo has already faced various legal challenges to his victory, which completely blindsided the country’s political establishment. Experts say Arévalo should still be able to take office in January as planned, but the fate of his party is unclear. Arévalo’s camp has said they will appeal the ruling all the way to the Supreme Electoral Court.
Bernardo Arevalo of the Semilla party addresses supporters
Anti-corruption candidate, Bernando Arévalo, wins Guatemalan election
The votes are in, and Guatemalans have overwhelmingly chosen Bernando Arévalo to be their next president, with a majority forcefully rejecting the establishment and voting for a candidate who promises to clean up government corruption. If only it was that simple.
Arévalo won the election by running an aggressive anti-corruption campaign, which helped galvanize young people — who make up a huge portion of the voting population (the average age in Guatemala is 26, compared to 38 in the US) — behind him. Being a self-declared Taylor Swift fan may have helped, but when it comes to the deep-rooted corruption in the government will he be able to just “Shake it off?”
Arévalo won 58% of the vote, but he faces a long road to the Jan. 14 inauguration. The attorney general’s office – which needs to certify the election – is already attempting to suspend the legal status of Arévalo’s Movimiento Semilla Party.
Arévalo will face massive barriers to fulfill his promises to voters of unraveling deep-rooted corruption in Guatemalan politics – and that presumes he makes it. Last week, the attorney general said it was investigating how the party got its signatures to register, its founders, and potentially Arévalo himself, and with the party losing its legal protections on Oct. 31, the outgoing Congress could strip Arévalo of his immunity.
How is this possible? The last two presidential administrations have purged Guatemala’s judicial system and attorney general’s office of anti-corruption judges, forcing dozens of prosecutors and judges into exile. The current president, Alejandro Giammattei, is seeking to overhaul the supreme court before leaving office to stack it with judges friendly to his coalition who will be ready to strike down Arévalo’s anti-corruption agenda.
Comparative maps showing which countries had official diplomatic ties with Taiwan just before the UN recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1971 to today.
The Graphic Truth: Taiwan's shrinking recognition
Honduras announced this week that it’ll sever official diplomatic ties with Taiwan and instead recognize China. This would bring the number of countries with formal ties to the self-ruled island down to 13, with only two Central American allies (Belize and Guatemala) remaining. China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province, has been playing tug-of-war with Taipei for influence in Latin America for years. We look at which countries had official diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1971, just before the UN switched recognition of China’s government to the People’s Republic, compared to today.
A family fleeing Russian invasion of Ukraine arrives at a train station in Lviv, Ukraine.
Hard Numbers: Ukraine’s refugee crisis, Germany may keep nuclear plants, Guatemala rejects Sputnik V, Australia hit by “rain bomb”
660,000: More than 660,000 refugees fled Ukraine in the five days after Russia invaded Ukraine, and half of them have gone to neighboring Poland. The UN estimates that the worsening conflict could force up to 5 million people to flee.
3: Germany says it is looking into extending the lifespan of its three remaining nuclear plants because of uncertainty about the future of energy supplies in Europe. Still, Germany’s energy minister said that reviving the plants, which were set to shut down later this year, won’t help with the 2022-23 winter season because the shutdown is so far advanced.
1 million: Authorities in Guatemala say that 1 million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V COVID vaccine are set to expire because large swaths of the population are rejecting the shot. An additional 1.7 million doses of the second Sputnik jab will expire there next month.
10: At least 10 people have been killed by severe flooding in southeastern Australia in an event described as a massive “rain bomb.” Australia has been hit by a range of extreme weather events at least partly linked to climate change in recent years, most notably severe bushfires in 2019-2020 that decimated 74,000 square kilometers of forestry.
What We're Watching: India's rape problem, Iranian antics at sea, Guatemala has another anti-corruption prosecutor
India's rape problem: Hundreds of protesters have flocked to the streets of New Delhi for four days straight after a 9-year old girl was raped and murdered in a small village outside the capital while going to fetch water for her family. Some demonstrators burned effigies of India's PM Narendra Modi, saying that the government has not done enough — or anything, really — to address the country's abysmal rape problem: there were more than 32,000 rapes recorded in 2019, certainly a vast undercount given the stigma associated with reporting sexual assaults in India. The scourge of sexual violence against women and girls in India was brought to light in 2012 when a 23-year-old woman was gang raped and murdered while traveling on a bus in the nation's capital, prompting international outrage. Four men have been arrested in connection with this week's attack, though they have not been charged. The city of New Delhi, meanwhile, has ordered an inquiry to probe events surrounding the young girl's death, though Indians who have been sounding the alarm on violence against women for decades aren't expecting much to come of it.
Iranian antics in the Arabian Sea: Iran has upped the ante in the ongoing maritime wars: last week, an Iranian drone attack on an Israeli-linked tanker operated by a British company, killed a Briton and a Romanian, prompting British PM Boris Johnson to warn of "serious consequences." Now, this week, the Brits said another tanker off the coast of the United Arab Emirates had been hijacked, likely by Tehran, though the ship has since been declared safe. What's Iran's strategy here? The drone attack fits into the pattern of the ongoing Israel-Iran shadow war (Israel has targeted several Iranian vessels bound for Syria, transporting oil and weapons.) But some observers wonder whether all these high-seas shenanigans could also be an attempt by Iran's powerful and ultra-hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to scuttle ongoing negotiations on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal. The last round of talks in Vienna adjourned in June, and while the Biden administration says it's committed to returning to the negotiating table, trust between Washington and Tehran is extremely low.
Guatemala appoints possible fox to mind hen house: Guatemala has appointed a new anti-corruption prosecutor, just weeks after the dismissal of his predecessor provoked street protests and drew a stern rebuke from los yanquis. The Central American country ranks a lowly 149th on the Corruption Perceptions Index, and recent efforts to change that have been less than inspiring. Back in 2019, the government kicked out a UN body that was probing graft, creating its own local anti-corruption team instead. In July, the government of President Alejandro Giammattei sacked the leader of that group, who fled to neighboring El Salvador and claimed he'd been ousted for finding out things that Giammattei didn't want him to know. Protesters then hit the streets and the Biden administration, which is trying to stamp out corruption in the region, called foul. The new guy, Rafael Curruchiche, is a former prosecutor focused on electoral crimes. But critics point out past allegations that he too has used his power to protect corrupt politicians, including former president Jimmy Morales.
Biden plays the (Central American) Triangle
In recent months, large numbers of men, women, and children from the so-called Northern Triangle of Central America – Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador – have left their countries in hopes of applying for asylum in the United States. This wave of desperate people has created a crisis at the US border and a political headache for President Joe Biden. US border officials now face the highest number of migrants they've seen in 20 years.
Biden has a plan to manage this emergency. The idea is to invest $4 billion in these three countries over four years to help create the political and economic conditions that can make them more prosperous, and more secure. The goal is to persuade Honduras, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans that they and their children can thrive where they are.
The Triangle countries need the help. The people who live there have taken hits from poverty, crime, gang violence, drought, COVID-19, and two category 5 hurricanes in November 2020. In recent years, the US has directed money toward training and technical assistance to help farmers grow more food, the physical infrastructure needed to expand trade, and better nutrition for women, children, and babies. The difference this time is that Biden is offering much more money, nearly double the amount the US approved for these countries over the past four years.
But the Triangle countries have long been plagued with government corruption. In fact, earlier this week, Rep. Norma Torres (D-CA) published a State Department list of 16 public officials from these three countries that are subject to "credible information or allegations" of corrupt acts. The list includes current Honduran and Guatemalan lawmakers, a senior aide to El Salvador's president, and former state officials from all three governments. The accusations include financial crimes and drug trafficking.
How can the Biden plan produce the broad benefits Washington hopes will stabilize these countries if state officials steal a lot of the money? The text of the plan offers several answers. To receive US help, the governments of these countries must "allocate a substantial amount of their own resources and undertake significant, concrete, and verifiable reforms," show "verifiable progress to ensure that U.S. taxpayer funds are used effectively," and "combat corruption." The Biden plan also directs some of the investment into "civil society organizations that are on the frontlines of addressing root causes" Lending from the International Monetary Fund comes with similar strings attached.
Yet, the Triangle governments have other financial options. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele dismissed the latest corruption allegations from Washington as "geopolitics," and thanked China for providing his country with 500,000 doses of a Chinese-made COVID vaccines and $500 million in investment "without conditions."
Bukele may be inflating the size of that investment, and his comments are partly political bravado and negotiating strategy. But later that evening, El Salvador's Congress ratified a deal with China, signed in 2019 after the Salvadoran government dropped diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, that would invest about $62 million in port infrastructure along El Salvador's coast, a water purification plant, a library, and a soccer stadium.
Honduras and Guatemala don't yet have formal ties with China, but that might change soon.
So, there's the Biden dilemma. You can't ease the flow of desperate people toward the border without investing in better economic conditions in the Northern Triangle. You can't be sure your investments will reach their target without political reforms that reduce corruption. You can't always use money to try to force these governments to reform when they can turn to China and other sources for investment.
On the other hand, isn't Chinese infrastructure investment in these countries a good thing? Maybe Washington can get the development and stability it wants in Central America without having to spend so many US taxpayer dollars to get it. The true answer to this question depends, of course, on what China chooses to invest in.
What do you think, Signal readers? What's the most effective way to solve this dilemma? Let us know.
Asylum seekers wait for a meal at a migrant camp where social distancing is difficult to practice in Matamoros, Mexico.
Migrants on the move
"We are on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years. We are expelling most single adults and families. We are not expelling unaccompanied children." So said US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this week. US Customs and Border Protection reports an average of 565 children traveling alone now crossing the border per day, up from 313 last month.
Who are the migrants? US officials say most people now reaching the US border are adults travelling by themselves, but numbers of both families and unaccompanied children are growing. There are changes in where they're coming from. With exact numbers from border officials, the Washington Post's Nick Miroff reports that the highest number of families is now coming from Honduras, the most unstable country in Central America. Many kids traveling alone come from Guatemala, where the youth population and unemployment are both high and smuggling networks are most fully developed. There are now fewer migrants from El Salvador, where the Nayib Bukele government has made progress against gang violence.
Why the surge? The transition from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in Washington has persuaded some would-be-migrants that a limited window now exists for entry into the US. Human traffickers, short on cash following the migration slowdown of the Trump years and most dangerous months of pandemic, are now eager for more income, and thus reinforcing that message. Making matters more urgent, in November two major hurricanes inflicted severe human and economic damage in Central America, particularly in Honduras.
Taking to the road is always dangerous, especially for young children. Most take this step for the same reasons that others have taken it before them: they hope to find a much better life for themselves and their families away from the violence, corruption, and poverty all around them. In particular, research published last year by Doctors Without Borders found that more than 75 percent of Central American migrants traveling with children toward the US border reported leaving their home countries due to threats of violence, including forced recruitment by gangs.
Countries along the route are struggling to cope. In January, under pressure from the US and Mexican governments, Guatemalan police turned back a caravan of thousands of Hondurans. Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has warned that migrants remain vulnerable to his country's violent drug gangs, which have a history of kidnapping, sexual assault, human trafficking, and forced gang initiation of migrants. In addition, the surge in numbers of migrants entering Mexico headed north comes at a moment when COVID-19 makes sheltering migrants much more complicated.
Those who reach the US border may not find what they're hoping for. The US isn't ready for them, and the Biden administration, under intense criticism from Republicans for enabling this surge by promising to loosen Trump administration border restrictions, isn't welcoming them. Under the current policy, single adults and families are being refused entry as part of US efforts to contain COVID-19. "I can say quite clearly don't come," Biden has said to the migrants. "We're in the process of getting set up… Don't leave your town or city or community."
Mayorkas has promised a "safe, legal and orderly immigration system," including by streamlining the process by which asylum applications are filed and considered, but that will take time and prove much easier said than done. Last week, the Biden administration announced it would begin processing backlogged asylum applications for about 25,000 people that had stalled under the Trump administration's Remain in Mexico policy, but that process won't move quickly either.
Bottom line: Life on the road is hard and getting harder, but that isn't stopping larger numbers of desperate people from taking the risk in hopes of applying for asylum. Every government along their path is scrambling to prepare.