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Guatemala is currently undergoing one of the most sustained rollbacks of anti-corruption efforts in the hemisphere. As the country’s public prosecutor’s office has sought to persecute former prosecutors, attorneys general, journalists, activists, and investigators associated with the struggle against corruption, officials who were accused of acts of corruption from years prior are being let off with impunity.
“This consolidation of authoritarianism aims to restore an order that restores a state that is organized to guarantee the interests and privileges of a small elite.”
“It is the consolidation of authoritarianism,” Jorge Santos, member of the Guatemalan human rights organization UDEFEGUA, tells The Progressive. “This consolidation of authoritarianism aims to restore an order that restores a state that is organized to guarantee the interests and privileges of a small elite.”
One example is the case against Blanca Stalling, an ex-magistrate of the Guatemalan supreme court who was removed in 2017 after facing influence trafficking charges. In February 2017, she was arrested by the Guatemalan National Police while carrying a loaded handgun on the run to escape charges. The case was officially closed on July 5, and Stalling remains on the U.S. Department of State’s “Engel List” of corrupt and anti-democratic actors.
Guatemala’s special prosecutor’s office against impunity (FECI) did not appeal this decision. The office, which handles the prosecutions for cases of corruption, is currently headed by Rafael Curruchiche, a former prosecutor who is widely viewed as an ally of corruption.
The FECI was originally headed by Juan Francisco Sandoval, but he was fired and forced into exile in July 2021. The Guatemalan public prosecutor’s office has argued that Sandoval was fired for “abuse of authority” and has sought to obtain his extradition from the United States to prosecute him.
A source told the daily newspaper La Hora that, following the termination of the case against Stalling, the public prosecutor’s office will be filing charges against Sandoval for “supposed irregularities” in the case and to align with the defense of the former supreme court magistrate.
The investigation into Stalling was coordinated by the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) along with assistance from the public prosecutor’s office. This is not the only case against a Guatemalan official or business person to be closed.
On July 6, former congressional representative and presidential candidate, Estuardo Galdámez, a far-right politician and former member of Guatemala’s elite special forces known as Kaibles, was conditionally released from prison to house arrest with a fine of 100,000 Quetzales, or nearly $13,000. Galdámez was arrested in December 2020 after being accused of requesting a bribe of five million Quetzales, or about $650,000, for the construction of a hospital in the poor northern town of Ixcan in the department of Quiché.
A Guatemalan court also ended an agreement with the United States, Brazil, and other countries that made investigating bribery cases involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht easier to prosecute. Sandoval denounced the decision to end the agreement, tweeting that “the case will go unpunished.”
As the public prosecutor’s office and the courts ended anti-corruption efforts, the public prosecutor’s office laid off fourteen key prosecutors and others from their positions. Among them was Hilda Pineda, who had headed the human rights prosecutor’s office, which had overseen cases of crimes against humanity from the country’s thirty-six-year internal armed conflict. Two district prosecutors were also fired.
The failure for these high-profile cases to advance is a symptom of the larger deterioration of the rule of law in Guatemala. The arbitrary arrest and prosecution of prosecutors and investigators, the attacks on judges, the exile of other judges, journalists, and activists, and the overarching attacks by the Guatemalan government has had the effect of consolidating power around the biggest critics of anti-corruption efforts.
“We are passing a moment where judicial independence is weakest,” Jordan Rodas, Guatemala’s outgoing human rights ombudsman, tells The Progressive. “An independent justice is not convenient. That is why these types of attacks come to undermine judicial independence, which has forced many justice operators to seek exile to safeguard their integrity.”
The unrelenting effort to fully end the independence of the branches of government has constantly sought to remove one of the country’s few independent bodies: Guatemala’s human rights ombudsman (PDH). This has led to an effort of the far right to remove Jordan Rodas before he ends his term in August 2022.
“There is an insistence on the part of these actors of the official alliance to give an example of power in dismissing the human rights ombudsman,” Santos says. “This is clearly a spurious and illegal action.”
Rodas has been celebrated for his work in defending various social movements in Guatemala, including the LGBTQ+ movement, the movement for justice for war crimes (his brother was among the 45,000 people disappeared in the thirty-six-year internal armed conflict), and various movements in defense of territory. He worked to defend the rights of every Guatemalan, including those who are incarcerated or accused of crimes. But since taking office in 2017, he has faced constant attempts to either discredit or attack him.
“There is someone looking out for human rights in Guatemala?” President Jimmy Morales asked after an anniversary event for the country’s national guard. But these attacks intensified after Morales expelled the CICIG in September 2017.
In December 2019, Morales continued to criticize Rodas’s work during a speech in which he accused civil society organizations of being funded by “radicals,” and the PDH of “defending rapists.” Rodas responded on Twitter, saying “enough of the lies,” and that the human rights body “works for everyone.”
On June 2, the ruling party brought a vote to remove Rodas from his position in congress but failed to find sufficient votes. But these far-right politicians have continued to seek to remove Rodas from office, just months before he is set to end his term.
“We are going to see you exiled or [in jail], you will see,” Raúl Falla, a far-right activist and lawyer for the Foundation Against Terrorism said to Rodas as he entered the hearing against Virginia Laparra, the local head of FECI in Quetzaltenango, who faces charges of abuse of power.
The Guatemalan congress is currently in the process of selecting the candidates for Rodas’s successor. Given the current rollback of institutionality, the process has Rodas concerned.
“There is a lot of risk that [PDH] will lose the status of an independent institution,” Rodas says. “Well, there is a very high possibility that someone who is anti-human rights will [be appointed to the office].”
There are currently three candidates, but human rights defenders also remain concerned about the outcomes, especially as the frontrunner, José Alejandro Córdova Herrera, has faced investigation for his alleged involvement in a “parallel commissions” case, but the country’s constitutional court ruled that he could not be investigated for his alleged involvement in the graft.
“This is an enormous problem for Guatemalan society,” Santos says. “There is great concern about the effects that the restoration of this regime of impunity is already having on Guatemalan society.”