Jeff Abbott
A church in Guatemala City.
As Christian nationalism rises within the Republican party in the United States, politics in Guatemala are falling under a similar influence. The far right continues to advance in the largely conservative Central American country, seeking to maintain impunity, corruption, and promoting religion-influenced policies, all the while maintaining relationships with drug traffickers.
Guatemala was once a Catholic-majority nation, but in the last several decades evangelical churches have gained more of a presence in the country. Today around 40 percent of Guatemalans identify as evangelical Christians, according to a July 2022 Gallup poll—one of the largest such populations in Latin America.
The influence of religion in Guatemalan society runs deep. Today it is common to see street preachers in towns across the country, preachers on buses, in municipal governments, and religious influence in congress, and in the presidency.
“Christian language and discourse are now normalized,” Iduvina Hernández, the director of the Guatemalan organization Security in Democracy, tells The Progressive. This presence of religious influence has led to the performance of public prayer by state security forces, including the National Civilian Police, and by municipal governments, as well as within the country’s congress, which has pursued legislation to establish a national day of prayer.
These connections between religious groups and the government have continued into the post-peace accords era. But it is only in the last fifteen years that evangelical and pentecostal religious influences have entered into the political sphere. Yet at the moment, there is no one unifying figure in the political advancement of religious politicians.
“There has not been a great evangelical leader,” Roberto Antonio Wagner, a professor and independent political analyst, tells The Progressive. “We may not be very far away from a time when we have a figure that can [exploit this].”
In spite of this, conservative religious influence also plays into the construction of public policy. In addition to its national day of prayer initiative, Guatemalan congress declared the country the “Iberoamerican pro-life capital,” and has sought to approve anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ laws, which were later vetoed and archived by the government due to concerns over their constitutional legality.
“Some religious expressions are serving as the adhesive that this hyper-conservative [political] construction needs,” independent political analyst Renzo Rosal tells The Progressive. “They are serving as amplifiers that spread the message, that spread fears, but also as a cohesion mechanism so that those fears are transformed into mechanisms of unification.”
While there has yet to be a unifying force for evangelicals in government, the origins of this religious influence in politics are nothing new. It dates back to the darkest days of the country’s internal armed conflict.
Protestants and evangelicals have been present in Guatemala since the late 1870s following the Liberal Revolution, but it was the earthquake of 1976, which saw evangelical groups arriving in large numbers for relief efforts and televangelists like Billy Graham arriving to proselytize the population. The goal was to spread the evangelical faith in order to counter the rise of Liberation Theology in the country, viewed as a Marxist-inspired theology that arose from the Catholic Church.
“If they are going to call me a dictator for promoting religious freedom, I will gladly be a dictator.”
The dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt between 1982-1983 permitted the churches to spread. Ríos Montt, a born-again member of the California-based Christian Church of the Word, used the evangelical churches as a means to carry out the counter-insurgency during the internal armed conflict.
“Neo-Pentecostalism has counter-insurgent ideological roots [in Guatemala],” Hernández says. “The dictatorship of Efraín Ríos Montt opened the door [to Pentecostal churches].”
Ríos Montt would hold weekly sermon broadcasts on State television and radio. According to Hernández, it was also during this time that the church gained influence within the military, as among many high-ranking officials. The country’s thirty-six-year internal armed conflict left 200,000 people dead and more than 40,000 people disappeared.
The ties between the allies of the far right within the military and politicians have continued into the post-war period and the return of democratic rule.
Among the first pure evangelical political parties in Guatemala was Vision con Valor, founded by Harold Caballeros, who was an evangelical pastor prior to his entrance into politics. During the 2015 election, Ríos Montt’s daughter Zury Ríos was their presidential candidate, but she did not rely on religious appeals in her campaign.
In 2015, Guatemala elected Jimmy Morales, an outspoken evangelical and former comedian who is famous for performing in Blackface and who had deep ties to the country’s military elite. His administration oversaw the elimination of anti-corruption efforts in the country and pursued anti-LGBTQ+ policies, including the first attempts to outlaw marriage equality. Added to this, the Morales administration moved Guatemala’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
“There is always a relationship with actors who continue to be very close to evangelical conservative groups that maintain a very dogmatic closeness with Israel,” Wagner says. “We see bumper stickers and a lot of other people who come together with the pro-life movements.”
Religious politicians in Guatemala have also sought to limit public events. In 2018, the Guatemalan congress voted to ban the Swedish heavy metal band Marduk from the country ahead of their planned concert. The reasoning for the vote was that the band’s music was “satanic.”
Current president Alejandro Giammattei, a devout Catholic, has placed his religion at the forefront of his administration. In March 2022, Giammattei oversaw ceremonies to declare Guatemala as the “Pro-Life Capital of Iberoamerica,” stating his dedication to denying the right to abortion in the country. The declaration was met with outcry from many Guatemalans, but evangelical groups in the United States praised the move.
In June 2022, Giammattei traveled to Washington, D.C., arguing before a meeting of the Organization of American States that criticism against his government is a result of his faith. During his visit, Giammattei also made a speech at the 2022 International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C.
“If they are going to call me a dictator for promoting religious freedom, I will gladly be a dictator,” Giammattei said in his speech at the summit. “If they are going to tell me that I am a violator of human rights for respecting life from its conception, I am a violator of human rights.”
The country’s congress has regularly evoked the Bible as their mandate for ruling the country. Upon gaining the presidency of congress, representative Shirley Rivera declared, “Let us respect what the Bible says in the book of Romans XIII,” proceeding to cite the Bible verse, which states, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
Rivera would later call on all Guatemalans to “pray that God fill” the massive sinkhole that had formed on one of the country’s primary highways. In response, evangelical and pentecostal groups gathered to pray over the sinkhole, while the government dragged its feet in actually responding to the crisis. The sinkhole grew bigger, leading to the months-long closure of the highway.
Religion has also entered into providing educational documents within the country’s court system, which is being promoted by the far-right Guatemala Prospera organization, formerly led by Manuel Espina with assistance from the evangelical John C. Maxwell Leadership Foundation. Guatemala Prospera has also been involved in lobbying within the United States. In January 2022, the official Twitter account for the Guatemalan judicial system called on Guatemalans to participate in twenty-one days of prayer and fasting for the country.
But there is another aspect of this religious-political agenda.
The lines between drug traffickers and Christian pastors have also blurred, as Guatemala has seen the rise of narco-pastors across the country. An investigation by the Guatemala-based Spanish investigative journalist Asier Andrés for the now defunct media site Nomadá exposed the deep relationship between narcos and the evangelical churches.
In 2018, Univision published an investigation connecting Mega-church pastor Carlos “Cash” Luna to drug traffickers, although the link has not been proven. His massive church, Casa de Dios, sees around 12,000 parishioners every weekend, and Luna has been known to use a private jet.
Luna took to the pulpit in August to lambast his critics following the fleeing of the country’s Human Rights ombudsman, Jordan Rodas. He called Rodas a snake, and criticized jailed journalist José Rubén Zamora. Both were critics of Luna.
But the links between Luna and criminal groups are clear. His church has received support from many shady individuals, including “Queen of the South” Marllory Chacón Rossell, who is known as a prominent drug trafficker, and former Vice-President of Guatemala Roxanna Baldetti, who donated a giant Guatemalan flag worth fifty thousand Quetzales, or almost $6,500. Baldetti was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for her part in a multimillion dollar scheme to steal funds from the country’s tax system. She has also been indicted in the United States on accusations of drug trafficking.
Evangelical pastors have also been linked to other networks, including coyotes, or human trafficking networks that assist migrants in reaching the United States, as well as narco-supporting congressional representatives who have sponsored the conservative, religion-backed legislation.
This is part of the spread of the prosperity gospel. This theology argues that wealth is provided by God, and it has maintained a prominent discourse in churches. It is a narrative that benefits criminal groups, especially since Guatemala’s 1985 constitution frees churches of the requirement to pay taxes.
Taken together, these shifts signal that a religious narco-state is forming in Guatemala, where churches continue to maintain widespread influence in communities.
“Very few people can live [in Guatemala],” Wagner says. “[We] are seeing this transformation of narco-religiosity in the country.”