Throughout 2023, the rollback of democratic institutions and the consolidation of authoritarian rule have continued in Central America.
This advancement of anti-democratic trends comes despite the surprise electoral success of a progressive candidate in Guatemala’s presidential elections—a victory that has been marred by direct attacks trying to overturn the results. The majority of Central American nations continued to see major rollbacks in political and constitutional rights.
“This has been a year of a tremendous deterioration of democracy within the region,” Juan Pappier, the Deputy Director of the Americas at Human Rights Watch, tells The Progressive.
“This has been a year of a tremendous deterioration of democracy within the region,”—Juan Pappier
In Nicaragua, the regime of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice President Rosario Murillo, further consolidated its hold on power by attacking enemies and awarding allies. The regime announced in August it was banning the Jesuit order from the country and confiscating its property. This announcement came a week after the government expropriated the land and buildings of the Jesuit-run University of Central America in Nicaragua, commonly known as the UCA. To justify this dispossession, the regime deemed the university a “center of terrorism.” By contrast, the Ortega and Murillo have favored evangelical churches, awarding pro-government pastors who have national platforms and permits.
Murrillo—who was declared “co-president” in 2021—also took control of the country’s supreme court, a move further expanding the regime’s influence.
While the international community has maintained pressure on Nicaragua, countries such as nearby El Salvador have come to Ortega’s defense. In a letter to the Organization of the American States (OAS), Salvadoran officials called on the body to respect the internal affairs of the increasingly isolated Nicaragua.
Gobierno Danilo Medina
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.
El Salvador has also seen the further consolidation of the authoritarianism of the administration of Nayib Bukele, the country’s millennial president who has joked in the past that he was the “world’s coolest dictator.”
Bukele recently filed to run for a second term in 2024, an act prohibited by the country’s constitution. He continues to rule El Salvador under a State of Emergency declaration which he claimed in 2022 was needed to combat gang violence. On November 3, El Salvador’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal gave Bukele the green light to run for re-election. The campaign for a second term has generated condemnation from many of Bukele’s critics.
“Bukele’s [running for a second term] ends a process of a full consolidation of political power by Nayib Bukele and his family,” Pappier says. “They seek to control all the political power of the country and transform El Salvador into a police state.”
In Honduras, the election for the country’s new attorney general, who will oversee the public prosecutor’s office, has been marked by a lack of political consensus and a further delay in the establishment of an internationally backed anti-impunity body.
On November 1, Honduran officials elected an interim Attorney General who is allied with the ruling leftist Libre party and President Xiomara Castro. The opposition protested, arguing the move brings the country toward a dictatorship “like the ones in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” according to Reuters.
There was great concern both nationally and internationally ahead of Guatemala’s 2023 general elections, driven by the arbitrary blocking of candidates by the courts, the co-optation of the judicial system, and general attempts to maintain impunity and corruption networks.
Jeff Abbott
Bernardo Arévalo sits down with journalists from Al Jazeera in Jocotenango, Sacatepequez Guatemala in July 2023.
But the results of the first round of voting were surprising, with the darkhorse progressive anti-corruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo of the Movimiento Semilla party winning enough votes to pass through to the second round. The run-off election against right-leaning Sandra Torres resulted in Arévalo’s landslide victory; but as the country breathed a sigh of relief, the attacks against the president-elect and his party increased.
There have been at least four different attempts from Guatemala’s Public Prosecutor’s office to weaken or de-legitimize the incoming administration before Arévalo assumes office on January 14, 2024.
The prosecutor has attempted to suspend Arévalo and his party over accusations of falsified signatures in the formation of the party, and attempts to connect the president-elect to 2022 student protests. But prosecutors have also gone after the members of the country’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal for facilitating an “electoral fraud,” which resulted in an investigation into the purchasing of the software for digitizing the electoral results.
Guatemala’s Supreme Court is currently overseeing requests to remove the immunity of Arévalo and others, which would open them up to investigations, while commissions in Congress are currently trying to remove the immunity of the members of the electoral body. But members of at least one of these commissions have openly denounced the threats against the president-elect.
“These are pressures from very powerful people, but they are not going to intimidate me. In fact, they are going to embolden me more,” Enrique Montano, a rightwing independent Guatemalan congressional representative, declared after he received a message threatening his daughter during a session considering the stripping of immunity of the heads of the country’s electoral body. “In my opinion what they want is for Bernardo Arévalo to not become president,” Montano said. “It is the reality and I say it publicly.”
The attacks on the electoral process further escalated on December 8, when Guatemala’s Public Prosecutor’s office officially requested that the electoral body annul the results of the election, citing irregularities, and then sought to strip president elect Arévalo of his immunity. This attempt stems from far-right allegations of fraud and of allegations of other irregularities that originate prior to the 2019 presidential elections, with prosecutors accusing the party of falsifying 5000 signatures.
Members of Guatemala’s Public Prosecutor’s office are currently sanctioned by the United States for anti-democratic and corrupt actions.
Arévalo is set to assume the presidency on January 14, 2024, but his administration will face an uphill battle.
Blanca Alfaro, the president of the electoral body, quickly rejected this request. The OAS also condemned the prosecutor’s attempt to overturn the elections, labeling the move as a coup d’etat.
Arévalo is set to assume the presidency on January 14, 2024, but his administration will face an uphill battle. Officials and members of the economic elite that have supported the recent attacks on democracy will continue to undermine Arévalo’s administration as they try to maintain their influence and impunity.
“If the popular will is not respected, Guatemala runs the risk of having a serious impact on its international relations and isolating [the country] from the international community,” Pappier says. “It will have consequences, not only for the diplomatic relations but [also] for the commercial relations of the private sector.”