The pre-election polls weren’t wrong for Sandra Julieta Torres Casanova. The former first lady won the first ballot in Guatemala with 15.78% of the vote and will face Bernardo Arévalo in a second ballot on August 20, a “covered” who got almost 12%, four times more than the polls predicted.
Torres, who has moved from social democracy to a more conservative position, is on his third attempt. In the previous two elections, he reached the second round, losing to Jimmy Morales and Alejandro Giammattei.
She defines herself as a woman of the people who was born in Melchor de Mencos, a small town in the Petén department of northern Guatemala, on the border with Belize. She is known to the Guatemalans as First Lady during the reign of Álvaro Colom, who died that year. Those who have worked with her say that this 67-year-old communicator has a strong and demanding character.
The candidate from the National Unity of Hope (UNE) gives few interviews to the press and, when she agrees, takes a confrontational stance at every interview. She dislikes criticism so much that in 2019 she accused six editors of elPeriódico of violence against women to prevent the magazine from publishing anything related to her.
One of the biggest downsides of his career was the complaint about alleged concealment of electoral finance during the 2015 election campaign, when his main fundraiser was Gustavo Alejos, former President Álvaro Colom’s private secretary. An audio recording leaked to the press depicts a conversation between Torres and Alejos: he assures her that a developer has offered him $5 million, a case being handled by the Juan Francisco Sandoval prosecutor’s office. The conversation took place, but the candidate assures that she did not receive the money.
For that case, Torres was jailed for four months before regaining his freedom under the guidance of Attorney General Consuelo Porras, the controversial head of the public ministry accused of obstructing the fight against corruption. The former prosecutor in the case, now in exile, accused his boss of “altering and misrepresenting” the allegations against Torres.
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As Colom’s wife, Torres assumed power beyond the First Lady’s social figure, a post from which she promoted programs such as the Bolsa Solidaria, a food package for the poor that she promises to give back if she achieves the presidency now as an “improved.” stock market”. The memory of the relief supplies reaching areas that the Guatemalan state has traditionally forgotten brings great support to Torres on the ground.
“The vast majority of people in rural areas choose them to support social programs,” confirms Aura Cumes, a Mayan Kaqchikel researcher and teacher from the city of Chilmtenango. “In fact, a large part of the state budget has been allocated to it. And while it has reached the people, it has garnered votes in rural areas. This also happened in the urban realm, in the so-called outskirts.” However, Cumes acknowledges that the candidate also has a “strong anti-voice”, which he attributes in part to machismo and classism on the part of the non-indigenous urban population, who reject it what he represents.
In the book Rendición de Cuentas, former finance minister Juan Alberto Fuentes reports that during the Colom government it was Torres who wielded real and absolute power. The former first lady, who settled in the social democratic party UNE with which her husband presided over the country, has shown a right-wing ideological turn in her positions but avoids speaking out about her ideology. When Torres was asked in a recent interview how he identified himself, he downplayed his performances and concluded with the sentence: “My ideology is Guatemala.” In these elections he integrates a binomial with the evangelical ex-pastor Romeo Guerra
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