The Guatemalan government, helmed by President Alejandro Giammattei, continues to impede the country’s institutions meant to combat official corruption. While these attempts to maintain a culture of impunity began years prior, the recent removal of a respected prosecutor from a special anti-impunity bureau represents a significant new blow.
Corrupt politicians, narcos, the military, and the business community have consolidated their power.
“In the last years, especially in the last month, there have been significant steps back in the struggle against corruption,” Edie Cux, legal representative with the anti-corruption group Acciona Ciudana, tells The Progressive. “The most chilling action was the illegal removal of Juan Francisco Sandoval.”
Attorney General Consuelo Porras “represents the structure that seeks to hide cases of corruption,” he adds, “especially in this government.”
On July 23, Porras announced that Juan Francisco Sandoval, the internationally renowned head of Guatemala’s Special Prosecutor’s Office Against Impunity (FECI), was to be removed from his position for his alleged “frequent abuses to the institutionality” of the ministry.
In a July 23 press conference following his removal, Sandoval provided examples of Porras’s office maintaining an atmosphere of impunity. These included the arrival of a group of Russians to the presidential house, where a carpet full of money was presented to the president. Following the press conference, Sandoval fled the country in fear of his safety.
Sandroval’s accusations seemed to be confirmed when prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche was named the new lead prosecutor of the anti-impunity office. Curruchiche, a close ally of Porras, has been accused of protecting business leaders and politicians from prosecution.
The removal of the praised investigator led to weeks of Indigenous-led public protests, including widespread road blocks demanding the return of Sandoval and the resignations of President Giammattei and Attorney General Porras.
The international community has condemned these developments. The United States responded to the removal of Sandoval by partially suspending cooperation with the attorney general’s office; publishing a list of politicians and far-right activists, primarily of the far-right Foundation Against Terrorism, accused of corruption and strengthening the culture of impunity; and calling for new sanctions against officials accused of corruption.
But this does little to prevent further corruption.
“They only begin to worry when you touch their assets,” Alejandra Colom, an anthropologist at Guatemala’s Del Valle University, tells The Progressive. “Removing the visas of those of Foundation Against Terrorism is symbolic and seems correct, but it isn’t something that makes them worry.”
Corruption impacts every aspect of Guatemalan society, in both urban and rural areas. It means the constant collapse of a “mega” highway project in Chimaltenango, a lack of supplies in schools, and limited health care access. Rural communities continue to see an absence of the state, and corruption means that they will continue to be underserved.
The Biden Administration sees corruption as one of the key aspects fueling migration to the United States. The Obama Administration also sought to combat corruption in Guatemala through the Alliance for Prosperity, which was largely developed by then-Vice President Joe Biden.
But today, the administration lacks one of the key institutions in the struggle against corruption: the United Nations-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, commonly known as CICIG, which was shuttered in 2019.
In 2015, CICIG gained international notoriety after investigators uncovered a graft conspiracy in the country’s tax system during the administration of President Otto Pérez Molina. The revelations led thousands to gather weekly in plazas across the country to protest the theft of millions of tax dollars and to demand the resignation of Pérez Molina.
By September 2015, Pérez Molina, his vice president Roxana Baldetti, and key cabinet members resigned. But the ground-breaking revelations of corruption in the presidency also led to reforms, the strengthening of institutions, and an increase in the independence of the judiciary.
These reforms would be short lived. As CICIG gained more notoriety, investigators began to look into the economic elite. In response, a campaign against CICIG was launched in 2017 during the administration of president Jimmy Morales, a former comedian and outsider candidate who was elected in 2015 as a result of the anti-corruption wave. The Morales administration declined to renew the agreement with the renowned body, and CICIG was closed on September 3, 2019, and all pending investigations were moved to the office of Guatemala’s Special Prosecutor Against Impunity (FECI).
Anti-corruption efforts have largely been rolled back or co-opted since 2019, and attacks and threats have been launched against those who seek to maintain the independence of the judiciary. As a result, a majority of the key figures in the struggle against corruption, including former Attorney General Thelma Aldana, have fled the country.
“The institutions that had been strengthened in those years are practically abandoned and all the people who were considered part of that new institutionality most are already in exile,” Colom says. This has allowed corrupt politicians, narcos, the military, and the business community to consolidate their power.
“Those of us in favor of the fight against corruption in 2015 were naive for a moment in believing that those protests and actions were going to counteract forces that had been controlling the country since the ‘50s,” Colom says. “Not just the business elite but the army, too.”