Guatemala

President Bernardo Arévalo spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations on Monday, September 23, about anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala, the state of democracy in the region, the root causes of migration, and the country’s foreign policy under his administration. Below are highlights from his conversation with Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, Chief Executive Officer, MCC Productions. These selections have been lightly edited for clarity. You can view the full transcript here. This meeting is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Meeting Series on Democracy.  On migration: “Levels of poverty in our country are pushing people out of their villages and making them look for work in different places. We are doing it in different ways. First of all, we are very strongly working to dismantle human trafficking networks that are also causing a lot of misery and pain to these populations as they try to move into the United States. And we are working together, with the United States and with other countries like Canada and we’re discussing it now with countries in Europe, even with Mexico, expanding programs for temporal labor so that we have bigger contingents of people that can go for six months or a year and then come back to Guatemala with the possibility of returning again for another six months or a year to work on different issues. But it’s a short-term solution … a problem that will not cease to exist until you actually, as you say, tackle the root causes. And the root causes is poverty and underdevelopment. It is not until the moment in which we actually begin to bring decent livelihoods and dignified livelihoods to these people that migration is going to cease. People are going away not because they want to come to the United States and break from their families and uproot themselves from their communities. This is happening in communities which are very tightly knit.”  On crime: “We have captured in these eight months five times more crooks than the government—previous government did in the last year between capturing cocaine in the ports to uprooting cocaine plantations and marijuana plantations. We are engaging in a very, very clear policy designed to gain control over the jails because the prison system was completely lost in the hands of the criminals. We are claiming it back. It is taking time but we are entering prison by prison, claiming them back, reorganizing them, restructuring them, and we are working in expanding our police force. We have as a goal to have 12,000 new policemen and women in the streets in our four years so to get the level of police force per capita to the international standards because that’s one of the reasons why you have a prevalence of crime. So we are tackling it from different angles.” On Venezuela: “We rejected the results announced by the National Electoral Council of Venezuela. We said that they were just not acceptable, that they were not credible. We have stated very clearly that we reject the declaration of Maduro as the winner, and that we demand some sort of recount […] of the ballot stations.  So either a recount by the actas by some sort of international actor that is agreed upon, that is trusted, and that then you can use that and count that; or to have new elections organized. But in any case we are very clearly rejecting the current process as credible at all and we are not recognizing Maduro as the president. What needs to happen I think that the international community needs to support Venezuelan actors to try to find a way to either recount or go back to the ballots to have a solution.” On Taiwan:  “We made a decision that we’re going to sustain our diplomatic relations with Taiwan. And we made it very clear from the very beginning that that was going to be the situation […] So we made it very clear and we have kept our word. We told them as well that we believe that what we need to do is actually get relations between Guatemala and Taiwan to a strategic level, one in which we see more investment and trade between our countries and not just exclusively cooperation. We are discussing both with Taiwan and with the United States the possibility that Guatemala gains access to CHIPS Act fund considering the fact that we have an open and privileged relationship with the United States, we have open access to this market, and we have a privileged relationship with Taiwan. So why not triangulate this relationship and explore the possibility of making high-tech investments in Guatemala with a view to export to the United States market?” On Ukraine:  “The argument that for us it’s critical is what type of world do we want in the future. Do we want an international world ruled by law, or do we want the law of the jungle? And for us, the invasion of Ukraine was a critical breach by a member of the Security Council of one of the fundamental principles of international law. And for a country like us, like Guatemala, for a small country with big neighbors around, the structure of an international system in which the laws guarantee some level of equality in the face of the law is a fundamental principle. It enables us. It gives us better opportunities. The multilateral system is, for us, critical in terms of actually enabling us to come together and to identify ways to work. And that is what the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens.” On José Rubén Zamora: “The next morning after my inauguration, the minister of interior went to visit José Rubén at his cell and discussed with him the change of the conditions in which he was being detained, which were tantamount to torture. And we—in accordance to him, we improved them as much as we can legally, because we also have to do it in the context of our legal system. We offered him a change of prison, as well, which he considered and he declined at the end. And we continuously—we continuously visit him in order to inquire about his conditions, and try to help and improve them as much as we can. But we cannot change our judicial order, and it’s not within our reach. I have made publicly that I believe that José Rubén Zamora is a perfect example of the abuse of justice that you have. He is the victim of this corrupt system that not only wanted to punish him for his very active journalism denouncing corruption, but he wanted to make him a cautionary tale to all other journalists and activists that were trying to resist the corrupt regime. And that’s why he is in jail. In every way that we can, we try to work with him on different areas. But we do not have control over the courts. And it is the courts, the ones that are deciding whether he stays or not.” Compiled by Antonio Antonelli. 

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Welcome to “Women Around the World: This Week,” a series that highlights noteworthy news related to women and U.S. foreign policy. This week’s post covers September 24 to September 30.