Ollantay Itzamná*, Prensa Latina employee
This polychromatic theater in Guatemala has served the United States well. to promote the deposition of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, to prosecute Rafael Correa in Ecuador, to imprison Lula in Brazil, to politically kill Cristina Fernández in Argentina.
In 2023, the North American Embassy and USAID conceived the Theater of “Defense of Democracy” to establish the government of a political party they sponsored, Semilla. A neoliberal, pro-imperialist social democratic party.
To the extent that, at the insistence of a section of the oligarchy that was “disobedient to Washington”, the said political party was investigated and sanctioned for the alleged forgery of the eight thousand signatures (out of the 23,000) in its registration process and before the infatuation The Organization of American States (OAS) ordered President Alejandro Giammattei and the Public Prosecutor’s Office not to continue the investigation against Semilla “because it is an attack on electoral democracy,” since the Public Prosecutor’s Office was tasked with examining the records of the 2023 election results.
If in 2015 the theater of the fight against corruption Made in USA was to legitimize the USA. in his “war on regional progressivism that disobeys Washington.” This “struggle for democracy waged in Guatemala” serves to legitimize the United States. in his attempt to “establish progressive governments obedient to Washington on the continent.”
If all goes well, we will witness “fights for democracy” on the streets and at the ballot box in various countries across the continent to establish the progressivism welcomed and endorsed by Washington.
What do indigenous organizations that were previously apolitical and are now “fighting” to fire a prosecutor who disobeys Washington have to do with this?
In 2015, the North American ambassador to Guatemala, Todd Robinson, gave an anti-corruption speech from a half-destroyed school in the country, calling Guatemalans outraged by corruption to the streets. The corporate press and the NGOs that received USAID funding repeated this call, and the urban middle class took to the streets and led this emotional battle.
Eight years later, the result of this theater is more than catastrophic: dozens of lawyers, prosecutors and judges are being persecuted, indicted, exiled, imprisoned by the sector of the oligarchy that disobeys Washington and now has control over the entire state apparatus because the US . have abandoned the “anti-corruption warriors” after their heroic deeds in the anti-corruption wars waged on the continent. Corruption increased.
Why 48 cantons and the indigenous mayor’s office of Sololá?
In 2023, the indigenous organization of the 48 cantons of the Totonicapán department and the office of the indigenous mayor of Sololá come into action. Both organizations, historically apolitical, have a public connection to USAID (as evidenced in their photos of official events and USAID’s financial report).
Both organizations remained unscathed in the internal war (1960 to 1996). From what is known about the struggles of these legitimate organizations in their territories, they never challenged the racist Creole nation-state, let alone organized politically to challenge the country’s wealthy for power. In addition, their territories were a bastion for the electoral victory of parties of former genocide soldiers.
UNITED STATES. He is trying not only to test his progressive government in Guatemala, but also to legitimize his polychromatic social actor without any plurinational horizon.
IN THE USA. Not only is it interested in establishing a progressive government in Guatemala that obeys its interests, but it is also urgently needed to create and legitimize (in the national imagination) a social actor that is obedient and proactive to Washington’s interests and is capable of clouding the emergence of anti-neoliberal, plurinational or anti-imperial social subjects that exist in Guatemala.
If the organization of the 48 cantons and the office of the indigenous mayor of Sololá are truly indigenous and aware of the internal colonization of their people, why do they only demand the dismissal of judicial officials who do not obey Washington’s interests? Don’t they know from history that replacing these officials will be equally or more deadly to Indigenous people? Why are they trying to reform, re-oxygenate and restart a two-hundred-year-old Creole state that has deprived them of their commons? Why do they not demand the need for a plurinational constituent assembly process to create a plurinational state with popular self-determination? Why are they defending a liberal employer democracy that has made them campaign figures?
Perhaps this situation of social recovery is a moment for these indigenous organizations and the others who are on the streets to move from demands for the dismissal of public officials to demands from voters for a consensus on a political constitution that recognizes indigenous peoples as subjects of political rights (and not just as cultural assets like today). Indigenous peoples need a plurinational state because the existing nation-state functions as an employer’s estate and mistreats Indigenous peoples as unwanted pawns.
It is important to note that there are Indo-peasant movements in Guatemala that have been working for more than a decade to achieve a popular and plurinational Constituent Assembly process to overcome the internal colonialism suffered by indigenous peoples and to create a plurinational state. And beyond that, these anti-imperial and anti-neoliberal community movements are on the streets, striking and shouting their messages and slogans. But they are invisible to the corporate press and the USAID-funded alternative press.
They do not appear in the histories of elected President Bernardo Arévalo or of the hereditary authorities (constituted today as guardians of racist democracy), let alone in the writings of the “Mayan intellectuals or not” sponsored by USAID.
Who will benefit from the strengthening of the bicentennial racist state?
Nobody knows whether Bernardo Arévalo will resist the “cunning justice” that the disobedient sector is applying to Washington. If he assumes the presidency, it is very likely that he will abandon his promised “fight against corruption” and make a pact with his opponents to reunite the oligarchy and pacify official Guatemala.
The truth is that the state of Guatemala will continue to be racist, ethnophagic and deadly towards indigenous peoples. It is likely that some lower-level government positions in the new government will be filled by people serving as indigenous authorities or Maya intellectuals. But Guatemala will continue to be as racist as it was and is in its two centuries of republic (even if food was applauded or distributed to “brave” indigenous peoples as part of the indefinite national strike) because it was born to obedient and disobedient Indigenous people destroy equally. For this reason, one should dream of another state, another legal system, other plurinational institutions and other life projects.
Spontaneous and simultaneous crowds on the streets
At the moment there is a social upturn in all parts of the country, which may be replicated and motivated by socio-digital networks. “Blankets” and shouts of “outraged citizens rejecting corrupt officials” emerge from unexpected corners.
The neighborhood shows its kindness and solidarity towards the demonstrators, offering them food and drinks. That is real. Time will explain what or how this unprecedented upswing was triggered, which certainly exceeds the organizational capacity of the 48 cantons and the indigenous mayor’s office of Sololá, whose scope is limited to two departments.
We hope that this mobilized discontent of the population, as if it were a volcanic magma flowing through the streets, will not only take an organizational form to advance a real democracy in the country, but above all to advance its demands for the easy dismissal towards a People’s and Plurinational Constituent Assembly process to create a new country in which indigenous peoples and farmers cease to be pawns or servants of “employer democracy” or to “re-oxygenate the deadly ethnophagic nation-state.”
rmh/oi
*Quechua researcher, lawyer and anthropologist. Correspondent and columnist for several alternative media in Latin America
(Taken from selected signatures)