Authoritarian pressure and democratic resistance in Guatemala

Abstract

The results of the first and second round of elections in Guatemala in 2023 stopped the accelerated steps towards an authoritarian and corrupt prolongation that the country was going through. This unforeseen turn has given rise to the emergence of signs of a possible opening of a new cycle that would make possible the recovery of the democratization process. But also the emergence of contradictions and antagonisms that threaten the necessary changes. 

When the year began, the general elections to be held in June, maintained a low level of enthusiasm and public attention. There was a coincidence of analysis that it would be an election dominated by pessimism and probably with the least hope for change in the last four decades. Citizen disillusionment extended everywhere, appreciating as a distant memory the expectations generated in 2015, when anti-corruption movements gave rise to possibilities of containing the repetition of numerous abuses and enrichment of officials, politicians and businessmen, colluded in illicit networks. 

On this occasion, in the context of these general elections in 2023, the recurrence of official dispositions that have shown a clear tendency to close democratic freedoms and rights and the beginning of a new and prolonged authoritarian period in the country, led by illicit economic political networks, has been a cause for concern.

Now, is the recovery and sustainable advance of a new democratization, repeatedly challenged by actors who seek to prevent it, viable?

ECA Estudios Centroamericanos, Vol. 79, No. 774, 2024: 47-64.