After months of attempts by Guatemala’s far right to deny the results of the 2023 elections, President-Elect Bernardo Arévalo, the progressive anti-corruption candidate, was sworn into office shortly after midnight on January 15, 2024.
Jeff Abbott
A man carries a sign that reads "a united people will never be defeated" during a march ahead of the transition of power on January 14, 2024.
The day was marked by a mixture of joy and tension as the festivities in Guatemala’s historic center were briefly disrupted by protests against delays in congress due to political squabbling. But congress eventually swore in the new congressional representatives, elected a new directive council, and opened the door to the swearing in of Arévalo and his Vice President Karin Herrera.
Outgoing president Alejandro Giammattei was not in attendance at the ceremony.
Arévalo, sixty-five-years-old, is the son of Guatemala’s first democratically elected president, Juan Jose Arévalo (1945-1950), who ushered in a period of progressive reforms known as the “Ten Years of the Guatemalan Spring.” That era came to an end with the CIA-backed 1954 coup d’état against Juan Jose Arévalo’s successor Jacobo Árbenz. Bernardo Arévalo is the first progressive to hold the presidency in the past seventy years in the Central American country. He campaigned on restoring state institutions and rooting out corruption.
Jeff Abbott
Hundreds broke down barricades after congress delayed the process that permitted President Arévalo to take office in protest of what was seen as another attempt to undermine the change of government on January 14, 2024.
Following his inauguration, Arévalo addressed the thousands of people who gathered in the plaza to hear the new president, recognizing the important role of Indigenous communities and Guatemala’s young people in the historic victory. “There cannot be democracy without social justice, and social justice cannot prevail without democracy,” Arévalo declared.
In the months leading up to the inauguration, Guatemala’s attorney general, María Consuelo Porras, and anti-impunity prosecutor Rafael Curruchiche carried out multiple attempts to undermine Arévalo by accusing the incoming administration of falsifying signatures in the first round of the elections. They also attempted to strip the president-elect of his immunity that protects him from spurious investigations and illegally called for the elections to be annulled. The attacks against the electoral process continued right up to the day of the inauguration.
“There cannot be democracy without social justice, and social justice cannot prevail without democracy,” —Bernardo Arévalo
On January 11, the Public Prosecutor’s office confirmed arrest warrants for the four judges of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal as part of a case related to the purchase of the vote tallying software. The same day, ex-Minister of the Interior David Napoleón Barrientos was arrested for dereliction of duty. But a judge freed Barrientos on January 16, aftering determining the accusations lacked merit.
Indigenous ancestral community governments from across Guatemala led a massive months-long protest decrying the attempts against Guatemala’s democratic order. Community-organized roadblocks shut down the country for weeks, and the Indigenous leaders maintained a permanent presence outside the offices of the attorney general in protest, demanding the resignations of Porras and Curruchiche, along with the judges involved in what Arévalo called a coup d’état.
Jeff Abbott
Bernardo Arévalo speaks with Indigenous ancestral authorities from communities across Guatemala ahead of the December 7 march in defense of democracy.
“The Indigenous Peoples and especially the community [ancestral] authorities were the protagonists of the defense of democracy, with the support of urban residents in the capitol,” Gabriela Carrera, a political science professor at the Guatemalan Rafael Landivar University, tells The Progressive.”
In his inauguration speech, Arévalo recognized the important role Indigenous communities play in the defense of democracy.
The efforts of Indigenous leaders and residents were supported by the United States and the European Union, which both issued visa restrictions and sanctions on those involved in the attempts to undermine the results of the election.
But Arévalo’s inauguration does not mean that these attacks against his administration will end in the coming years. The new administration will face greater challenges, especially as he will inherit a country that has been devastated by systematic corruption.
The change of government comes as one of Guatemala’s primary public hospitals faces a crisis after going three days without electricity—a representation of the massive problems that face the country, especially in terms of infrastructure and health care.
Jeff Abbott
In Guatemala City's Central Plaza ahead of the ceremony to swear in Bernardo Arévalo on January 14, 2024, a woman makes a sign announcing "a new dawn" and "a new hope" for the country.
Electricity went out in the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Guatemala City on January 3, leaving patients without medical attention. While many patients were transferred to other hospitals during the crisis, at least seven people died.
The power outage was eventually blamed on a lack of maintenance. But the crisis in the hospital highlights a larger problem: the fact that the primary public hospital has long been plagued, as a result of corruption, by the lack of attention and lack of instruments needed to treat patients.
Guatemala also faces a massive collapse of infrastructure, one largely attributed to rampant corruption within government agencies. In fact, Guatemala’s infrastructure has long been neglected, even prior to the arrival of Giammattei in 2020. The Departments of San Marcos and Huehuetenango in the Guatemalan Highlands contained more than half of all abandoned government construction projects in 2018.
Over the past fourteen years, the extent of projects left in a state of limbo has expanded across the country.
The new administration must confront this continued crisis and move beyond the decades-long status quo.
In Guatemala City, construction of a major overpass was abandoned following the suspension of the project in November 2023. Other parts of the country have seen problems including sinkholes and the construction of poorly-designed bridges.
“Sections of highways in the interior are marked by corruption,” Renzo Rosal, a Guatemalan independent political analyst, says. “ Most of them were overvalued and constructed by obscure companies that were awarded contracts.”
The new administration must confront this continued crisis and move beyond the decades-long status quo.